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Heb. 10: 1 is not only true of animal sacrifice. It is true of all types or pictures of
spiritual truths when the reality has come:
"For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the
things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make
the comers thereunto perfect."
The Hebrew believers, now that they had the spiritual reality in the death and
resurrection of Christ, were asked "to go on to perfection (maturity)" and leave the
shadow behind. Believers today are asked to do the same thing, but many, however
much they may want to do this, feel they must still cling to the "picture book". For them
this is more real because it is appreciated by the senses, something they can see, touch
and feel. Such should remember that all ritual is but an illustration, a "shadowing forth".
It can never be the reality which is eternal and spiritual and God asks us to walk by faith
in these glorious realities and not by sight or feeling. Dr. Merrill Unger in Bibliotheca
Sacra writes:
"In these passages (Rom. 6: 3; Col. 2: 12; Eph. 4: 5) the holy Apostle is not
considering ritual baptism at all. The sublimity of thought, the context of the argument,
the exalted nature of the spiritual verities taught, support this position. He is speaking of
something infinitely higher, not of a mere symbolic ordinance that is powerless to effect
intrinsic change, but of a divine operation which places us eternally in Christ, and into
His experience of crucifixion, death, burial and resurrection."
In his book on Romans (chapter six), Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones states, in expounding
verses 2 and 3:
"The conclusion therefore at which I arrive is that baptism by water is not in the mind
of the Apostle at all in these two verses; instead it is the baptism that is wrought by the
Spirit . . . . . Again take the statement which the Apostle makes in Gal. 2:20 which is so
frequently misquoted: `I have been crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I,
but Christ liveth in me . . . . .'. Now there you have the identical doctrine (as Rom.6:2,3),
but baptism is not mentioned. That is because water baptism does not achieve union, it
does not produce it; indeed at that point it does not even represent it. This is a baptism
which is carried out by the Holy Spirit when He incorporates us into, engrafts us into the
Lord Jesus Christ" (page 36).
It is only fair to say that Dr. Lloyd Jones is not a dispensationalist and accepts that
water baptism has its place, but certainly not in Rom. 6: and Col. 2: This makes his
testimony all the more telling.
It is this spiritual baptism effected by the Holy Spirit that is the "one baptism" of
Ephesians 4: As to "hope", "Lord", "faith", "God" there is little, if any, difference
among true believers. But when we come to baptism, so many forget that the one
baptism is mentioned in equal terms with the above words. The emphasis in "one" is in
opposition to corporate diversity in the Body of Christ. There are those who suggest
water baptism can be blended with the Spirit's baptism here and yet be looked upon as
one baptism. We do not understand this kind of mental jugglery, but it cannot be true,
not only in view of the above arguments, but also because water baptism did not form a