Always seek the inward in the outward

I've written before about the comfort that baptism can be.  Many think of it as some sort of gesture we make to show God (or maybe others) that we believe. But biblically, it's much, much more. Far more than it is our promise to God, it is God's promise to us.

Biblically, we are born again "of water and the Spirit" (John 3:5). This does not happen magically, simply by having water poured upon us.  The blessings of God come through faith- faith in the promise God makes to us in baptism. 

Jesus tells us in John 3 that we must be born again of water and the Spirit in order to enter the Kingdom of God. This should not be misunderstood. Many adults come to faith in Christ before they are baptized. If they die before baptism (which they will certainly seek, because Jesus has directed us to it), they still will be saved through their faith in the promise. The only person other than Jesus (well, and Enoch and Elijah, whom the Old Testament tells us were taken directly to heaven without having to die first) whom we know for sure is there is the penitent thief who died on the cross next to Jesus. What a blessed example he is! He repented, not because he had become so completely transformed by being near Jesus, but out of sheer, unadulterated fear. He did no works of restitution for the things he had done wrong. He did no penance. He was a sinful man who had lived a sinful life, and now was suffering the just punishment for his sin. He deserved no reward; he had earned none. He simply saw his sin, stared into eternity, and was frightened.

And so he called out to Jesus, "Remember me when You come into Your kingdom!" And Jesus said to him directly, personally, and in so many words, "Truly I say to you, today you will be with Me in paradise."

He trusted the promise. No, he wasn't baptized. Jesus made that promise to him directly, and it was true of him what the Bible also said about Abraham: " And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness" (Genesis 15:6, ESV- see also Romans 4:3 and Galatians 3:5-6).

That's what saving faith is: believing God. Not believing mere facts about God; as James points out, even the devils do that, and such "faith" saves nobody." But Jesus and His apostles promise over and over again that anybody- without exception- who believes and trusts in the promises God makes in Christ will live in heaven with Him forever. There is nothing more impossible than that such a person be lost!

Well, we might think, that's all well and good for the thief on the Cross. He heard Jesus make that promise to him, personally, with his own ears. But what about me? All I have is all those promises to "whoever" and to "anyone who." How do I know what the thief knew? How do I know that I- whose faith is often weak, who disbelieves as much as I believe, who falls back into sin every day and whose obedience and trust in God is at best a weak and faltering thing- am promised eternal life? And then, there's that all-time champion doubt people with OCD so often have: how do I know that I have properly "asked Jesus into my heart," or believe sincerely, or have jumped through all the right hoops so that I can be sure that those promises to "whosoever" apply to me?

And for that reason, God has arranged things so that it doesn't depend on our "getting it right" or on anything we do or don't do or on anything at all about us. God knows that we, like the thief on the cross, need more than a promise with any "if's" at all. He knows that as long as it depends to any extent at all on us, we can never be sure; we, after all, can always "drop the ball," or be deceived about whether we qualify.

And so, what Jesus did directly for the thief on the cross by telling him in so many words that he would be with Him that very day in paradise- not because the thief deserved it, or because he was sincere, or because he had jumped through the right hoops, or because of anything at all about him, but rather because Jesus said so, He says also to us in our baptism. He says it to each of us: "You shall be with Me in paradise- not because of you, but because of Me;  not because of what you are, but because of Who and What I am; not because you deserve it, but because I say so."

In Titus 3, the apostle says it bluntly:

(H)e saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,  so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

The thief was about to die. Jesus told him that he would be in paradise that very day. But we live day by day in this world, assaulted by the knowledge of our own sin and plagued by our own doubts, not only those which arise naturally from the fallen natures we will have to deal with until the day we die, but sometimes also by the quirks of a broken brain that gives rise to obsessions which lie to us so very plausibly. So baptism does something for us it didn't have to do for the thief. It gives us a remedy for the defeats we suffer every day in our ongoing struggle with our Old Selves, and a promise that no matter how many times we fail, that same promise will always be there for us to claim.  Martin Luther puts it this way in his Small Catechism:

What does such baptizing with water indicate? It indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. Where is this written? St. Paul writes in Romans chapter six: “We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Rom. 6:4)

But there's more. We don't hear Jesus's voice the way the thief did. So He gives us a voice we can hear. In John 20:20-23, we read,

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

Again, this is not magic. It's not that God gives pastors or anyone else the special power to forgive sins. But think about it: when the pastor tells you from the pulpit that Jesus died for your sins and forgives you, what is he doing but telling you in Jesus's Name that because of His death on the cross you are forgiven? When a Christian brother or sister assures us when our conscience troubles us that Jesus died for that sin, too, and that by faith in His promise we have forgiveness of all of our sins, what is he or she doing but announcing God's grace to us? And neither the pastor nor any other brother or sister does this by their own authority. No. They are doing it because Jesus has commanded it. And as a result, when they do so, Luther writes, "this is just as valid and certain, even in heaven, as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself." Jesus does not lie- and neither does His Word! And when a particular sin bothers us, Jesus gives us our pastor and our brothers and sisters to speak with His voice and tell us by His own authority that specifically that sin is forgiven us.

And there's even more! 

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul write that on the night on which He was betrayed- the night before He died- Jesus was with His disciples in an upper room and did something special not simply for them, but for us. The Bible tells us this about that night:

Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to the disciples and said: “Take, eat; this is My body, which is given for you. This do in remembrance of Me.” In the same way also He took the cup after supper, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you; this cup is the new testament in My blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”

"Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins." Once again, Jesus does for us what He did for the thief on the cross. Once again, we hear Jesus say, not to "whosoever" or to "the world," but to us, as individuals,  that the body that was broken on the cross and the blood that was shed there was shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins- and that His body was broken and His blood shed for whatever sin may especially weigh on our consciences.

He gives us that very body and that very blood to make sure that we understand that as vividly as possible. We take it into ourselves. We enjoy with Him a communion even more intimate than that which takes place between a husband and his wife. We take Him into ourselves; He becomes a part of us, and we become a part of Him,

How can such a thing be? Wrong question! Let us never let our human limitations and our human doubts rob us of the consolation which Christ's own words bring. Is anything too difficult for Him?

When you doubt your salvation or your conscience accuses you, never look inside of yourself for assurance that you really believe or that you really repent. All that you will find within yourself is sin and doubt and despair. And if you look into yourself and do think you find comfort in what you perceive in your own heart, nothing could be a greater spiritual disaster. Only the impenitent and the spiritually blind are comforted by the content of their own sinful hearts.

Instead, look outside of yourself. God has decreed that the inward take place by means of the outward. Just as Jesus ushered the thief, who repented out of sheer terror in the very hour of his death and had nothing whatsoever to offer in exchange for God's forgiveness and salvation, into the Kingdom by His promise that he would share that kingdom with Him that very day, so He promises us forgiveness and salvation and quiets our terror and our troubled consciences by the promise He makes to us in baptism, in absolution (the proclamation to us of God's forgiveness in Christ), and in the Holy Supper.

Never be afraid of that Supper, by the way. Nobody who comes to it wanting to be free of his sin and trusting in Christ's promise can ever receive anything harmful there. Anyone who comes seeking assurance that Christ's body was broken and His blood shed for her will receive that, and cannot be harmed by it.

Inside yourself is only sin and doubt and death and despair. But Jesus is outside of you, and He comes to live inside of you only when you seek Him in what is outside of you- in His promise poured and heard and eaten and drunk- and believed.

The inner comes by means of the outer. And nobody who seeks Jesus by claiming the promise He makes in baptism and in the Word and in the Supper will ever find anything but what the thief found when he asked Jesus to remember him in His kingdom: forgiveness, life, and salvation. Graphic: Copyright Concordia Publishing House. Published under CC 4.0 license.