[Narration spoken only male voice, no singing, narrator is the main song]
Paul calls it the operation of God — the same power that raised Christ out of the grave, applied to you the moment you believed the gospel of your salvation.
That is why Ephesians can say "One Lord, one faith, one baptism." Israel's washings were many. The Body has one. And it is the one that put you in.
Paul's own commission
If water were the doorway, the apostle sent to us would have been standing in the river.
He was not.
"For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect." 1 Corinthians 1:17
Read the verses just before it. The Corinthians were splitting into camps over who had baptized whom, and Paul thanks God he baptized almost none of them. Crispus. Gaius. The household of Stephanas. And then he says he cannot recall whether there were any others. He could not remember his own baptism record. You do not forget the thing that saves people.
Not conferred, but revealed
And this is not a small point Paul is making. He is not offering you his opinion against Peter's opinion, as if the winner were whoever argued better in Jerusalem.
"But when it pleased God... to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen: immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood." Galatians 1:15-16
No committee. No borrowed doctrine. Paul says the gospel he preached "is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ." Galatians 1:11-12
That is why, when he finally did go up to Jerusalem and meet with Peter, James, and John, the outcome was already settled before he arrived: "they who seemed to be somewhat in conference added nothing to me." Galatians 2:6. Then Galatians 2:7-9 — the pillars gave Paul and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, seeing that the gospel of the uncircumcision had been committed to Paul, just as the gospel of the circumcision had been committed to Peter.Nothing added. Not because Paul's message was a smaller copy of theirs needing their stamp of approval, but because it was never theirs to add to. It was a mystery, hid in God from the beginning of the world, not made known in other ages to the sons of men, but now revealed unto his holy apostles. Ephesians 3:3-5, 9.
Two programs. Two commissions. Standing side by side, unsearchable and distinct.
That is why this baptism debate keeps going in circles. Everybody is reading Peter's washings and Paul's revelation as if they were one river. They were never one river.
Gracecountrymusic
