Baptism and faith

In The Promise of Baptism (Eerdmans, 2007), James Brownson describes faith as 1) acknowledging God’s goodness to me in particular, 2) accepting and receiving the gifts He offers, 3) trusting Him, and 4) being loyal to Him, clinging in allegiance to Him. He neatly ties this to baptism in a number of ways.

First, “faith begins by acknowledging that God loves the world and sent Jesus to be its Savior. But faith takes another step when people accept that this is true for themselves in particular, when they recognize and accept the implications fof what they know for their own lives. When we undergo baptism, we are summoned not only to acknowledge that Christ died and rose for us and that we are cleansed of our sins and given new life by the Spirit. By undergoing baptism, we are publicly called to accept these gifts and promises, and to gratefully recognize that they are given to us in particular.”

Second, considering faith as truth, he writes, “I may see a briefcase full of cash on the ground and acknowledge that it is there. I may even stoop down and pick it up, accepting the random gift. But it is another matter entirely if someone has given that briefcase to me, and has invited me to follow him and to use the cash wisely as his disciple. Now I face a new set of questions: Do I trust this person enough to enter into this relationship? Is this person really treating me well, or simply trying to manipulate me? Will I be asked to do something crazy?”

In this analogy, Brownson doesn’t seem to be equating baptism with the stuffed briefcase; instead, baptism “points to God’s generosity, grace, and kindness in making his own, in joining us to Christ, cleansing us from sin, and renewing us by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Baptism also publicly calls us to trust the God who gives these gifts. If I’ve understood Brownson correctly, I’d want to tweak this analogy a bit and say that baptism, by giving us a share in the life of the body of Christ, does give us that briefcase, and calls us to use its contents well. which is to say, to use its contents trustingly.

“Allegiance,” he continues “is the natural extension of trust and the clearest indicator of its presence. And so baptism involves the making of promises on our part. We respond to God’s call and promise in baptism by declaring our commitment to be disciples of Jesus. We renounce evil and promise to be faithful to God’s call to us in Christ. Faith expresses itself as allegiance.”

This might seem to argue for believer’s baptism, but Brownson insists that “it is one thing . . . to note that baptism and faith are closely related; it is quite another to insist that baptism exists in order to express the faith which we subjectively have experienced.” Baptism’s “primary purpose,” however, is “not to give expression to our faith, but rather to give expression to the grace and promise of God directed toward us.” The emphasis is “on what God does” and not what we do.

He concludes the discussion by noting that baptism brings us into “the body of Christ, the dwelling place of the Spirit, where all God’s gifts are at work to take the word of Christ and make it alive and real to us. Here are brothers and sisters in Christ who will challenge us by their words, by their example, and by their love to recognize God’s goodness more clearly, to accept God’s gifts more openhandedly, to trust God more unreservedly, and to follow Jesus Christ more fearlessly. This is the life of faith – not just our own by the life of the body of Christ – to which our baptism summons us.”