Titus 3:4-7
But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.
Baptism Is a Big Deal
Baptism is a pretty big deal around here. You literally have to walk around a 3,000lb baptismal font just to get in the door. Today is Baptism Sunday; it’s the day that we remember Jesus’ baptism and celebrate our own. We baptized 2 children this morning and invited 20 people to put a stone with their name on it at the base of our baptismal font.
Baptism is a pretty big deal around here, but not because of the traditions we’ve developed or the architecture we’ve designed. Baptism is a big deal because of the 3 words that the Apostle Paul wrote to his friend Titus. Writing about specifically about baptism, Paul says, “He saved us.”
They’re just three words, but they mean so much. They’re just three words, but they prompt me to ask six questions: who, what, whom, why, how, and so what? Let’s take them one at a time.
He saved us. Who saved us? Well, God, of course. But Paul gets more specific than that. He calls him God our Saviour. He refers to the role of the Holy Spirit, who by the way, was given to you by the Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Who saved us? Father, Son and Holy Spirit – all three persons of the Triune God at work for one purpose – to save you. It’s the same Triune God whose name we’ve heard half a dozen times already today. We began our worship in his name. We recalled Jesus’ Great Commission to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – and we fulfilled it, twice today. We hear that name at the end of our prayers and in the blessing that will close our service today.
The Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – is all around us, united in one purpose and one action. What is it?
Paul tells us: He saved us.
I’m not going to spend too much time on this right now, because we’ll talk about it more later, but “save” a strong word. It conjures up images of firefighters and lifeguard, police officers rescue people from car accidents, drowning, burning buildings.
Salvation is about rescue and deliverance. Salvation implies the presence of danger – that there’s a serious, often life-threatening problem.
That’s what our Triune God does. He saves, i.e. rescues, delivers from danger, from a life-threatening problem. But he’s not out there saving some damsel in distress. Paul tells us whom he is saving too: He saved us.
That’s a strong word too. In other parts of the Bible, we hear Jesus say, “God so loved the world.” In other letters that Paul wrote he makes it clear that believers are the ones who can count on God’s rescue. But here Paul puts a finer point on it. He says, “God saved us.”
God saved you personally. He saved me individually. We are not lost in the countless billions of believers who have ever been born. We are not some nameless, faceless number in a vast sea of souls who have ever seen the light of day. No, God knows you personally, and he has saved you personally.
Who? What? Whom? You can’t get a whole lot simpler than that in a 3-word sentence. God saved you.
But now for the meatier questions, the more meaningful and specific ones.
I said before that “save” implies danger, i.e. serious, often life-threatening problems. You were in danger. Maybe not in danger of drowning, decapitation or dismemberment. No, you were in danger of something far worse – damnation.
We don’t often like to talk about it. We don’t even like to think about it. We often deceive ourselves into believing our own illusion of innocence. Take my son, for instance.
My baby is going to turn a year old later this month. There are days that his mother and I look at him and see the cutest, most precious, perfect child. It’s embarrassing, really, how much we love him, how much we think of him.
You can’t possibly tell me that that cute, precious, perfect baby is in danger of damnation, that God would ever send a child like that to hell! I mean, it puts a lump in my throat even to say it out loud.
But then you’ve got those days when he doesn’t stop whining from the time he wakes up at 5:00am until he begrudgingly falls asleep at 9:00pm. You see how incredibly skilled he is at identifying the one thing he’s not supposed to have or do, and despite all our best efforts, he finds a way to do it. He’s certainly capable of love and kindness – I’m confident of that; I’ve seen it – but he’s also more than capable of selfishness and greed and envy, of anger and disobedience and even spite.
Of course, that’s my child. Everything he is and does comes from me and his mother. For better or worse he is a product of who we are, and I know that I’m more than capable of selfishness, greed and envy, anger, disobedience and spite – and a whole lot more than that. I know where he gets it. He gets it from me, just like we got it from our parents, and they got it from theirs.
In the church we call it our sinful nature. It’s literally the condition of our hearts at birth. We inherit it like anything else – eye colour, hair colour, height, weight, sense of humour. So that even if you try really hard to be a good person and to do good things all your life, you’re fighting against your own nature, which, if you’re honest, you haven’t always been able to resist.
We can create this illusion of innocence – about our children, about ourselves – but that’s even more dangerous than the sins we commit, because it ignores the need for salvation.
That’s what God did. He saved us. There was a real problem, a deadly danger. God saved us from ourselves, from our sins, from the condition of our hearts since birth that would have damned us to hell forever, had it not been for kindness and love, his mercy and grace.
That’s the real answer to the question, “Why?” Why did God save us? Because we needed to be saved, sure, but much more than that, because he loves us – and not because we’re so lovable; it’s just the character of our Creator. Paul uses 4 words to describe him here: kindness and love, mercy and grace. Every one of those words describes God’s undeserved, his unconditional love for you.
God isn’t stuck with us. God doesn’t owe us anything. We’re not nearly as cute as we like to imagine ourselves, or so irresistible that he just can’t help but love us. We’re the exact opposite. We’ve done everything to disqualify ourselves from his love. We’ve been selfish, greedy, envious; we’ve been angry, disobedient, spiteful.
But he has been merciful and gracious, and the miracle of his mercy is that he loves us even though we are unlovable, even though we’ve done everything to push him away. He loves us enough to save us, even though we weren’t worth saving. That’s what makes it grace. That’s what makes him our Saviour. Salvation is a gift he gives us purely out of the goodness of his own heart, just because he wants to.
And this is the point that I really want you to take home today. Jesus said, “God so loves the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” God makes this grand, universal promise of salvation through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross for everyone who believes. But he applies it to you personally, individually. How? Through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. By baptism!
Baptism is the way that you can know that everything God promises to the world, he gives to you personally. Baptism is the way that God applies the salvation that Jesus accomplished for the world on a cross 2,000 years ago to you on a specific date in time that you can write down on a baptismal certificate or we can etch in stone for you to see and remember every time you walk in these doors.
Baptism is the way God adopts you into his family by his name on you – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – so that you can have the confidence of knowing that are God’s own child, and, more than that, that you are heir of heaven having the hope of eternal life in his name.
That’s our last question for today: So what? For what purpose did God save you?
So that you can hope – and not some vague sense of optimism or wishful thinking about the future. No, when God talks about hope, it’s a certain confidence. In baptism, God gives you the certain confidence that eternal life is yours.
Of course, when we hear about eternal life, we often fast forward to the end, to life in heaven. But that’s the beauty of baptism. In baptism God starts your eternal stopwatch.
I was baptized 34 years ago. I’ve committed a lot of sins since then (I’ve committed a lot of sins in the last 3-4 days). But because of my baptism, I don’t have to despair or fear that my salvation is in jeopardy. God saved me. Those baptismal waters still cover me in God’s grace and mercy. There is no sin I could commit so grievous that God’s grace cannot or has not forgiven. So, when I’m plagued by guilt and regret for the sins that I committed ages ago, or the ones more recent, I can look at the baptismal certificate I keep on my desk and I can thank that on the third day of May in 1987, my God applied my Saviour’s salvation to me personally and eternally.
You can do that too! Dig out your baptismal certificate from the file cabinet it’s been hiding in for years. Put it somewhere you’ll see it every day. Don’t have one? That’s ok! There are many ways to remember what God did for you when you were baptized.
Luther was a big proponent for making the sign of the cross on yourself every morning when you pray, because as you heard me say earlier today, when you were baptized the pastor said this to you: “Receive the sign of the cross on your head and on your heart to mark you as a redeemed child of Christ.” Making the sign of the cross isn’t some slavish way to pray according to the rules. It’s a reminder of what God did for you the day you were baptized.
God saved you because he loves you and because he wants you to live in his grace all the days of your life and into the eternal life you will share with him as heirs of heaven, God’s own dear children. And one of the ways he makes that yours is in baptism – the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. May he strengthen you to live in your baptismal grace all the days of your life. Peace be with you. Amen.