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If we take the opening verses of Rom. 6: to teach the lesson conveyed by the
immersion of the believer in water, we shall be the better able to understand the reality of
the one baptism of Eph. 4::--
"Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Christ, were baptized into His
death? Therefore we were buried with Him by baptism into His death, that like as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so also we should walk in newness of
life, for if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in
the likeness of His resurrection."
When we turn to the epistle to the Ephesians, we find that we have been:--
"Made alive together with Christ, and raised together, and made to sit together in the
heavenlies in Christ Jesus" (2: 5, 6).
By consulting Eph. 4: 5 we read that there is ONE baptism. It is nothing less than a
piece of self-deception to make ONE read TWO, for if one baptism can mean two, then
one body may well mean two, one spirit two, etc. We know well that when John the
Baptist commenced his ministry there was ONE baptism--that of water, and he looked
forward to another baptism--that of spirit. During the Acts of the Apostles, there were
TWO baptisms, viz., water and spirit, the type and the reality. The reality has always
been the baptism of the spirit, and when the type has no dispensational place the reality
still remains untouched and unchanged.
True baptism united the believer with his Lord in His death and resurrection--a unity
typically set forth in the ceremony of water baptism. What therefore can have possessed
the mind of believers when we find them reasoning that while the reality is the baptism of
the spirit, and the type that of water, the removal of the TYPE removes the REALITY! Is
there not true tabernacle which the Lord pitched and not man, because the earthly type
has crumbled to dust? Is there no one sufficient sacrifice because the typical offerings
have ceased? What distorted logic is it that dares to say that those believers who, by the
Divine sentence, are united by one Spirit to the death, burial, resurrection and present
glory of the ascended Lord, are un-baptized? Col. 2: 11, 12 speaks emphatically on this
point:--
"In whom ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in the
putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with
Him by baptism, wherein also ye were raised with Him through the faith of the inworking
of God who raised Him out from the dead."
Doubtless in the days of the apostles and after there were those who would
strenuously deny that the Gentiles were "the circumcision" (Phil. 3: 3), simply because
they had not submitted to an external rite; nevertheless the circumcision without hands
was the real thing, while many who boasted of the carnal rite were foreigners to the
reality. In the same way, that baptism which united the believer with his Lord is
independent of the carnal ordinance. When the nature of the dispensation required
typical ordinances, God commanded water baptism in association with the real invisible
baptism. When the dispensation changed, and believers were "no longer children" and
they "put away childish things", the external ceremony was no longer imposed upon