Baptismal meditation, November 6

Baptismal meditation, November 6 November 6, 2005

Galatians 3:26-29: For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Baptism is always an adoption ceremony. By birth into the human race, we are children of Adam, under the reign of death and sin. Through baptism into the Last Adam, Jesus Christ, we are delivered out of the realm of Adam, out of the family whose father is the father of lies, into a new family, whose father is the Father of the Truth Incarnate. As Paul says in Galatians 3, we are all sons of God through faith and because we have been baptized into Christ and have put on Christ. We are Abraham’s seed, His offspring, because we are baptized into the Seed of the Woman.


Of course, Naomi’s baptism demonstrates more clearly than most the fact that baptism is an adoption. Despite the close family resemblance between Matt and Naomi, Naomi is not in fact the birth child of these parents. Her place in the Breese family is not dependent on any blood relation, just as her baptism is not based on any relation of blood. Her baptism is based on God’s promise to be a God to our children and to those who come after us. Naomi is the blessed recipient of a double adoption – adopted into the Breese family by legal decree, and adopted into the family of God by baptism.

Further, despite the fact that she has no blood relations with anyone here, she is our sister, and that too is visibly manifested in her baptism. She has left father and mother, sisters and brothers, all her blood kin; but by the grace of Jesus Christ, she has received a hundredfold in return – brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, aunts and uncles. We are her kin, because we all bear the family resemblance to our Father as we put on Christ.

And beyond that, Naomi is a great sign in our midst of the global breadth of the gospel. From the time of Abraham, the Lord envisioned a family that would encompass not only Jews, not only descendents of Eber, not only Shemites. From the beginning, the Lord promised a worldwide family drawn from every tribe and tongue and nation and people. Naomi is a living testimony to that reality, a sign to us that God’s mercy extends from the River to the ends of the earth. Naomi’s mere presence in our church is a reminder of what we are all about, of what the gospel is all about.

Matt and Melissa, I don’t need to exhort you to treasure Naomi as a gift from God. I know you do and will. But I want to exhort all of you here at Trinity to treasure Naomi. She is a daughter of the king, a daughter of Abraham, a living sign that in Christ there is no Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female; for we are all one in Christ Jesus; and because we are Christ’s, we are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.

(Naomi Breese was born in Liberia.)


Browse Our Archives