A Bible History of Baptism. Samuel J. Baird

The history of the ritual ordinances of God’s appointment is full of painful interest. Passing any reference to the times preceding the transactions of Sinai—the institutions then given to Israel constituted a system of transparent, significance, perfect in the congruous symmetry and simplicity of the parts and comprehensive fullness of the whole, as setting forth the whole doctrine of God concerning man’s sin and salvation. Designed not only for the instruction of Israel, but for a light to the darkness of the surrounding Gentile world, its truths were embodied in symbols which spake to every people of every tongue in their own language. Copied in imperfect and perverted forms into the rites of Gentile idolatry—although distorted, veiled and dislocated from their normal relations, they shed gleams of twilight into the gloom of spiritual darkness, and prepared the world for the dawning of the Sun of Righteousness, when he rose upon the nations. To multitudes of Israel, those ordinances were efficient means of eminent grace. With gladness, they saw therein—as through a glass, darkly, it may be, but surely—adumbrations of the salvation, grace and glory of the Messiah’s kingdom. And, if the fact be considered that at one of the darkest crises in Israel’s history, when the prophet cried—“I, even I am left alone,”—God could assure him—“Yet have I left seven thousand,”—we may possibly find occasion to revise our preconceptions concerning the history of the gospel in Israel. Still, undoubtedly there were multitudes in every generation of that people to whom the gospel preached in the ordinances brought no profit, for lack of faith. In their earlier history, indifference and neglect, and in the later, a self-righteous zeal for the mere outward rites and forms, were equally fatal. The splendor of the ritual, and the superfluous variety and frequency of the observances, were a poor substitute for faith toward God, and rectitude of heart and life. The result was that when Christ came, who was the end of all the rites and ordinances of the law, those who were the most strict and zealous in their observance were his betrayers and murderers.

When the Lord Jesus ascended the heavens, assumed the throne, and sent forth the gospel to the Gentiles, it was accompanied by two simple ordinances, which were eliminated out of those of the Levitical ritual, by the omission of the element of sacrifice. In them was symbolized and set forth the whole riches of that salvation which was represented in the more cumbrous forms of the Levitical system. By the supper, was signified the mystery of his atoning sufferings, and of the nourishment of his people by faith therein. By baptism, was shown forth the glory of his exaltation, and the sovereignty and power with which he sheds from his throne the blessings of his grace. But very soon, these ordinances, so beautiful and instructive in their simplicity, were corrupted through the misconceptions and ignorance of the teachers of the church. The Mosaic ritual, instead of being recognized, as Paul describes it, as a pattern or similitude of the things in the heavens, was regarded as a type of the New Testament church and of the ordinances therein administered. This one error became the inevitable cause of corruption and apostasy. Respecting the impending defection, Paul assured the Thessalonians, that the mystery of iniquity was already at work; and forewarned the elders of Ephesus of the coming of grievous wolves to rend the flock, and of apostasies among themselves, through the lust of an unhallowed ambition.

We have not the means, from the scanty and corrupted records which remain, of the age immediately following the apostles, of tracing the process of defection. But when, at length, the church emerges into the light of history, it is found to have realized a fatal transformation. The pastors and elders of the apostolic churches, from being simple preachers of the word, have become priests ministering at the altar, and offering better sacrifices than those made by the Aaronic line. For, while the latter offered mere animals, and the worshippers fed upon mere carnal food, the former, in the sacrament of the supper, the supposed antitype of those offerings, were believed to offer the body and blood of the Lord Jesus, and the people, in those elements, imagined themselves to receive and feed upon that very body and blood. So, too, while the “type baptisms” of the ancient ritual accomplished a mere purifying of the flesh, the baptism of water by the hands of the Christian ministry was regarded as the antitype of these, and considered effectual for accomplishing a spiritual regeneration, a renewing of the heart of the recipient.

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