Baptism – beyond the controversy Part IV

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In our last of four blogs on Baptism - getting beyond the controversy we continue with Part IV: ‘By one Spirit we were all baptised into one body’ 1 Cor 12 v 12. The gospel repairs the broken relationship between man and God…we are reconciled not just with God but with each other…if we allow the Spirit to baptise us into one body. Is this more difficult for us in the West which prides itself on the freedom of the individual? 
Click here to read Part III

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Baptism into one body

1 Cor 12 v 12 ‘By one Spirit we were all baptised into one body’

So far, we have seen that the New Testament teaches that believers are those that have been baptised into Christ Jesus (Rom 6v3/Gal 3v26). Then we have looked at how Jesus baptises us in the Holy Spirit (Acts 1 and 2), and now, how the Holy Spirit baptises us into one body, the body of Christ.

None of these ‘baptisms’ involve any water!

We have been so taken up with the controversy over infant baptism v believers baptism that it takes a jolt to even realise what the New Testament teaches about being baptised into Christ Jesus, or the baptism in the Spirit, and now, in this post, baptism into a body.

If baptism into Christ and the baptism of the Spirit is an individual event, this baptism is not.

In this baptism, the one doing the baptism is the Holy Spirit. The person being baptised is the believer. But it’s the end of any notion of independence. There are no lone-rangers in the church. Or at least there shouldn’t be! Once we have ‘seen’ this all our attempts to make our Christianity a private matter are demolished.

The church is not a building. That much we probably know. Nor is it simply an assembly of believers in one place; that’s closer, but not what the scriptures tell us. Nor is it the ‘body of Christ on Earth’ as if the church is disconnected from its Head, who is in heaven.

Whilst the word ‘church’ borrows from Greek democracy where citizens are called out, ‘ekklesia’, to assemble together, it has a richer meaning than this.

The key passage is 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Verse 13:

‘As the body is one and has many members…so also Christ, for by One Spirit we were all baptised into one body’

When we think of our own bodies, we know that the whole body is made up of many cells, tissues, and organs, all working together to make the whole organism function spontaneously. Each cell is alive and yet alive with who’s life? There is only one life, it is the life of the whole organism, the whole person.

The cells in my big toe on my right foot cannot boast ‘I’m alive with my own life’ as if they’re acting independently to the whole organism. The truth is they are as much ‘John Stevens’ as the rest of me. So it is with each believer. Our life is His life. I am no longer independent from Christ and no longer independent from other believers.

Where does the cell in my right toe derive its supply? And its role in the body? The answer is from the other cells around it. Life flows around the body spontaneously. How do my skin cells know what to do? Or my kidney cells?

What about in the body of Christ? Some do miracles, some speak in tongues, some prophesy, some teach, some are prophets, some teachers and so on.

But it doesn’t work unless we are willing to lose our independence. For many of us, particularly in the West, with its emphasis on individual liberty, and independence as a mark of freedom, we can end up resisting the Holy Spirit. We struggle to let the Spirit lead us INTO the truth. We may see it as an intellectual or even a prophetic truth, happy to leave it there, but are we willing to allow the Holy Spirit to lead us into the truth – and the truth into us?

Are our hearts open? Open to our fellow believers? Open to God? Are our hearts places like Jesus saw they should be, places of rivers of living water, flowing from believer to believer.

At the start of Jesus’ ministry, he called twelve individuals. By the end, they had been formed into a body.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, to the church in Corinth, was corrective. There had been some moral failings in the congregation, and the church’s unity was under threat. The purpose of the letter was to encourage the church to return to normal, as one body, not fragment, and to allow the Spirit to work among them:

‘Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation, let all things be done for edification…’   14 v 26

He didn’t say whenever you come together, don’t worry, the pastor will decide which hymns we’ll sing, the pastor will preach the word, the pastor will…that is the experience in many churches – just substitute Vicar or Priest or Minister, if ‘Pastor’ isn’t the title you give your church leader. Or, if you want to shift church cultures slightly: ‘Don’t worry, the worship leader will decide which songs are sung and how many times, the preacher will preach on the pre-set passage of Scripture, the…

It’s not that leaders in a congregation; elders, pastors, or teachers, the Vicar even, have no role, and are of no importance, but it is their prime function to facilitate the life of the body, the life of the Spirit, not to be the substitute for the Holy Spirit. If it is only one man functioning, the rest of the congregation cannot, they become little more than spectators locked away in permanent infancy, perpetually needing feeding rather than growing, participating, and functioning as ministering parts of the body.

The apostle Peter put it like this:

‘Coming to Him as to a living stone…you also, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house…’ 1 Peter 2 v 4,5

Each believer is a ‘living stone’ alive with the life of the Spirit.

Paul, in writing 1 Corinthians did not impose greater ‘control’ from the leadership, his main task was to remind the Corinthians that they had been baptised by the Spirit into one body and that they needed to function like human bodies function: full of spontaneous life, of different gifts and so on.

The Holy Spirit baptising us into one body in our experience, not just in theory, challenges our pride, ambitions, shyness, and all our fleshly desires to do things or not do things on our terms! If you’re an organiser, and an effective leader by nature, you may need to die to that ability and learn to be led by the Spirit. If you’re the type of person that reacts to every need by wanting to help and inspire others to do the same – you will need to die to that and learn to know when the Spirit is prompting, when to act, and who to involve. If you’re a teacher-type, quite cerebral, and have a love of doctrine and ideas, you may need to die to that and learn to be more spontaneous in the Spirit. And if you’re an artistic type and full of imagination and creativity, you may need to die to that and do what the Spirit is telling you to do.

This is perhaps the hardest baptism. Or is it just me? If you read the gospels with fresh eyes you’ll see just what a difficult job Jesus had with the twelve…and that’s before you get to their mothers! It’s all there: self-advancement, self-protection, self-confidence. It all had to die. And be replaced with confidence, or faith, in the Spirit of Jesus to reproduce the life of Christ in the body.

The apostles found it hard to maintain unity. Paul fell out with Barnabas and with Peter. Peter struggled with James. John was banned from one church. It’s no surprise we struggle and fail. Like the Corinthians, we need to return at times to the New Testament normal. The NT indicates that Paul and Barnabus were reconciled in the end. Peter, it seems, accepted Paul’s criticisms.

‘Normal’, in NT terms, is handing over control once more to the Holy Spirit, the One who sheds abroad in our hearts the love of God (Romans 5). That’s the starting point for us to re-open our hearts to one another, get the fire burning, and for our meetings, and everyday life, to be crackling and burning with the presence of the Holy Spirit and fire.

One final point. This is as much true if you’re a member of a church that meets in one room or part of a church of thousands. The question is: when you meet are you a functioning body, with the gifts of the Spirit freely distributed amongst you, or has that life of the Spirit been excluded from the congregation? If so, someone needs to press ‘Reset’.