Remember your circumcision!

Continuing on my previous post's theme (actually these were composed simultaneously, then broken into two posts), I'm attempting an uneducated layman's answer to a question that has been posed more than a couple of times in the last few years due to a bit of confusion. The question is basically this, “What does ‘look to your baptism’ mean? How does it really help the struggling saint?”

With some help from Deuteronomy, I’m prepared to say, “Look to your circumcision!” If I’m allowed to say it… (oh, wait, this is my blog)…What I’d like to take here as given is that baptism is the sacrament by which God graciously distinguishes His covenant people, it is the outward sign through which we are ingrafted into the Messiah, the initiation rite for the covenant community.

So in considering Deuteronomy for help on “looking to your sacramental initiation,” I derived a handy little paraphrase of Chapter 30, Verses 1-10,18-20: “When the blessing and curse of the covenant have been called to mind, we return to the Lord our God and obey Him with all our heart and soul, and the Lord breaks our captive stare into sin, that we will be restored to the full blessings of covenant life. BUT, if we turn our hearts from God and reject the mercy promised when we were initiated into the covenant, we shall surely perish. Therefore, choose life; love God; obey His voice; cling to Him!” The shorthand for this is: “Remember your circumcision!” or as we would have it, “Remember your baptism!”

Turning back to the 10th chapter of Deuteronomy, verse 16, I can’t help but wonder if Moses might have used the shorthand in gentle confrontations. Here, it’s not so gentle: “Therefore circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer.” Which is to say, “Remembering that you were circumcised in the flesh, make your circumcision sure!…Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Or as we should have it, “Remembering that you were baptized with water, make your baptism sure!…Work out your salvation with fear and trembling…Snap out of this folly and think on the promises that God made at your baptism and quit acting like He cannot be trusted…Believe the good news which was proclaimed when the waters of baptism were applied to you!”

Imagine your bewilderment if your dearest friends and family just began responding to everything you said with, “I’m just not sure if I believe you.” You might say, “What do you mean? You either believe me or you don’t, so believe me. I’ve not given you any reason to doubt what I’m saying. Believe me.” How absurd it is when we say to God, “Well, I heartily affirm that you are trustworthy and that you are completely incapable of lying, but I’m just not sure that I believe what you say.”

May God grant that our selfish efforts at false humility are not the cause for such foolishness. “I believe God, it’s just so hard to believe that He really means it about me. I’m such a lowly, undeserving sinner; how can I believe that He means to include me?” While humility is certainly to be commended, the unbelief which is the only thing under the cloak of false humility, deserves the quickest sort of rebuke.

"Get yourself together soldier, remember your baptism! We've got responsibilities to tend and you're sitting here pondering whether or not to believe our Lord God Almighty? Believe Him!"