Baptism Quotes

“As Alexander Schmemann notes, we moderns feel no need to renounce Satan because we 'do not see the presence and action of Satan in the world.' The world looks so shiny and civilized that we don't grasp how 'such seemingly positive and even Christian notions as freedom and liberation, love, happiness, success, achievement, growth, self fulfillment...can in fact be deviated from their real significance and become vehicles of the demonic.' Baptism renounces 'an entire worldview made up of pride and self-affirmation' that twists life 'into darkness, death and hell.' What appears to be a gentle, middle-class neighborhood can be a nest of vipers. Baptism enlists us to resist domesticated dragons as much as a the feral ones.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

“Baptism's power doesn't stop when the water dries. God preaches in your baptism every day. When the bullies and demons return, remind Jesus and yourself you are his. When you want to slink into the shadows, God says, 'You are robed in Christ.' When you feel shackled by your past, God calls you to the future he opened at the font. Whenever you're insulted or falsely accused, hear God's declaration: 'Whoever has died [in baptism] is justified from sin' (Rom 6:7). When you're fearful, call on the Spirit, and he will give you words to speak. When a murderous mob surrounds you, remember your baptism is fulfilled in martyrdom. You are what God says you are, not what you feel. Consider yourself to be who baptism says you are.

Whatever happens, you are in your Father's love. Trust him. Stay loyal. Don't 'melt like water' (Josh 7:5). Plunged in God's water, you become God's water. Imitate the fish. Live in the water, and be God's rain on dry ground, God's flood again the wicked. Be God's water, for nothing is more powerful than water.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

“We're all Naaman, lepers reborn. We're all iron sinking toward Sheol until the wood and water save us. We're all Elijah, led to brooks in the wilderness. We're all Elisha, baptized into Jesus' Jordan baptism to share his Spirit. By the Spirit of Jesus, the baptized become a prophetic community, given the words of God to speak and sing to one another, qualified by the Spirit to stand in the Lord's council. Preachers aren't the only prophets in the church. Preachers lead and train a community of prophets. Wherever the Lord calls us to labor--whether we're at work, hoe, out in the neighborhood, or at the kids' baseball game--he fills our mouths with words of fire to kill and make alive (1 Sam 2:6; Jer 1:9-10).

Prophets must keep up a steady diet of God's word so that our words give life rather than spread death. When we drink the Spirit, our words drop like rain and drip like dew (Deut 32:2). Clothed with the Spirit of prophecy, we intercede for the world. Faithful prophets must be and remain filled with the Spirit. You're baptized: walk in step with the Spirit. You've been soaked in the Spirit: don't quench or grieve him, and you will prophesy, you will see visions, you will dream dreams.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

“Baptism makes us kings. It calls us to fight with spiritual weapons of prayer, righteousness, faith, the sword-word of the Spirit. It commissions us to rule with wise justice and to build with skill. When we sin, baptism assures us that 'the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise' (Ps 51:17). Baptism promises that the Spirit dwells among the fragments of a shattered heart.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

“Baptism is the good news that Jesus' royal rain has fallen from heaven to earth, and it incorporates the baptized into Jesus' work. Jesus establishes his justice through his body. United with the King, we're kings and queens, new Adams and Eves. By baptism, we dissonant children of Adam begin to resonate with creation. Soaked with heavenly rain, we become refreshing water for the world. The church is a cascade that sweeps away brutes and thugs; the church is a gentle shower to revive the thirsty and a cooling cup of mercy and justice, offered in compassion and humility. Whatever is born of flesh is flesh; what is born of Spirit is Spirit. Born of word, we are God's word to the world. Born of water, we are water.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

“Care of the poor, vulnerable, weak, destitute, and isolated is the biblical standard of a just society. No society is just or healthy if the weakest aren't protected, if you need money to get a fair hearing in a court, or if the poor are denied opportunities to flourish. the king's justice especially blesses the needy and poor (Ps 72:4, 12-14). He passes judgment in their favor and saves the helpless by crushing their oppressors, as Yahweh crushed the head of Rahab, the Egyptian sea monster (Isa 51:9).

The king's justice is summed up by the lovely phrase: 'The king is like rain upon the mowing, like showers that water the earth' (Ps 72:6; my translation). Without the rain of justice, everything dies--the garden withers to a wasteland. When a just king reigns, grain stalks stand tall and spread like cedars of Lebanon, and cities flourish like green fields, fresh as Eden (Ps 72:16). Rain refreshes and cleanses, glorifies and brightens. Rain on the mowing promises a future harvest beyond today's harvest. Blessed by Yahweh, the just king baptizes the land. Justice rolls down like waters, righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:24).”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

“Baptism enlists us in the great war of human history, among the troops of the seed of the woman as he fights the seed of the serpent. As it brings us into the army of the church, baptism equips us with a panoply of weapons--the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the sandals of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Eph 6:12-17). The warfare of the baptized is a warfare of faith fought with Spiritual weapons (2 Cor 10:1-6), a liturgical warfare of word, water, song, prayer, bread, and wine.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

“Crossing the Jordan from east to west, Israel is a new humanity, restored to an Eden that has expanded to become a garden land. They're baptized in the Jordan as a priestly people, entering sacred territory, the holy land.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

“As Israel is baptized into Moses, so they are baptized into Joshua, whose miracles mark him as a new Moses. Unlike the Red Sea, the Jordan doesn't kill. No world is wiped away. No Pharaoh drowns. The Jordan is a river of life. To enter the land, Israel needs both a baptism through death and a baptism of resurrection.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

“Water is a boundary. When Israel leaves Egypt, they surge out through the Red Sea and into the wilderness. Yahweh makes the arid land a fertile field and rains bread from heaven, but the wilderness isn't a permanent home. To flourish, Israel needs to flow into Canaan.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

“We don't observe purity rites, yet we still experience shame and sense our pollution. The obese man who recoils at his own body, the addict disgusted at the pathetic weakness of his will, the woman who can't see her pretty face in the mirror because her mother has always railed at her ugliness: all feel unclean. Shame, said John Paul II, is a withdrawal from visibility, 'fear in the presence of a second I.' When ashamed, we don't feel we have a right to visibility, so we erect screens between ourselves and others, between ourselves and God. We're alien to the world itself; we feel unworthy to step out into God's cosmic temple.

To those who feel ashamed and unclean, baptism is gospel. Reborn by water and Spirit, the baptized shine with the dazzling light of God's beauty. Baptism dissolves the barriers of shame that screen us from God and one another. It makes us one flesh with the body of the whole Christ. Baptism harmonizes us with creation.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

“In baptism, adults and infants are pledged to Jesus, sealed by the Spirit as soldiers, slaves, and sheep of God's pasture. The gift of baptism awakens faith, loyal allegiance to the one whose name we bear. If faith is loyalty, by definition it persists through thick and thin. A soldier who shrinks from battle isn't keeping faith with his commander. The Spirit gives the gift of faith and keeps us in faith; he keeps us loyal to our commander. What's crucial is not the size of our faith before baptism but the Spirit's gift of persevering faith after.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

“Eternal life erupts into the world through the church. 'Whoever is in Christ, behold a new creation!' Paul says (2 Cor 5:17, my translation). By the Spirit, the church is 'in Christ.' We have not yet entered fully into the new creation; we strain with the Spirit for creation's liberation from its bondage to decay. Yet, even now, filled with the Spirit of Jesus, the pledge of our inheritance (Eph. 1:14), the church is a whisper of final harmony in a dissonant world.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

“Baptism saves because it cleanses dead works from the conscience. In baptism, God says our guilty past doesn't control us. Baptism speaks God's word of forgiveness. Baptism has power to save because it joins us to Jesus' resurrection, which buries death and rises to eternal life.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

“We trivialize the devil, but we're haunted by ghouls of oppression and ghosts of victimization. Millions are scarred by sexual abuse or domestic violence. Hundreds of thousands stumble through nightmarish post-trauma from war, torture, genocide. Even materialists speak of 'personal demons.' To all such, baptism is gospel. Victimizers are rescued from their own cruelty, as the waters open a horizon of reparation and redemption. Baptism doesn't promise a trouble-free life. Israel was tempted in the wilderness, and Jesus faces off with Satan after his baptism (Matt 3:13-4:11). Baptism begins a war with Satan. But baptism promises the oppressed a defender greater than Moses, a defender who is already Victor.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death