God likes stuff – so much that He became the stuff that we are made out of in order to save us. He became flesh.
In the midst of a raging controversy within the church of Christ dealing with whether God is sufficient for our salvation or if we have to depend on “stuff,” I find myself shaking my head in confusion. Can nobody else see that this is a false dichotomy? Hasn’t God shown us – first of all, by creating this world, and secondly, by requiring blood, earthly matter, to redeem that creation of its sin – that He chooses to use physical means to communicate love to us?
A new form of gnosticism is starting to take over the Church, diminishing it into nothing but a “spiritual congregation” – one that can flee not only from the physical world in which we were called to serve, but also one that avoids the physical elements that God instituted for His Church. Many Christians today are looking so much “to the heart” that they belittle the importance of baptism or the Lord’s Supper. If you are “spiritually nourished” or receive the “spiritual baptism” of the heart, there is no need for the actual sacraments that God taught us to practice. Perhaps we need to consider that water baptism is spiritual, and that the Lord’s Supper does offer spiritual nourishment.
Christ’s blood is certainly not something that we would want to “spiritualize” in the same way that the sacraments have been. If we ever thought that the physical blood of Christ wasn’t important, wouldn’t we end up with the conclusion that perhaps Christ only shed His blood in a spiritual sense? After all, God doesn’t depend on physical things, does He?
The question has never been over whether God needs us or depends on things or can’t live without His creation. It is not whether God can or can’t work immediately on a person’s soul. The point is, He has chosen to use physical things. Shouldn’t we simply accept God’s Word?
Call me crazy, but when the Bible says that “as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death” and “we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life,” I take it seriously. When Jesus told his disciples that the bread and wine were His body and blood, I’m pretty sure He was telling the truth. God told us to “make disciples of all nations” by “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” I think that makes it pretty clear that baptism is the entrance rite into our fellowship of God’s people. It is then that we become His disciples. Why should we frown on that, and say that physical isn’t good enough? God certainly thinks it is.
The Church is made up of bodies. Living, breathing bodies of flesh and bones. Remember, Christ took on a body like ours. And He used that body to bring salvation to the world. Can’t He also use water, bread, and wine to bring salvation and forgiveness to His people?
Let us end our faithlessness and disbelief that God would attach His blessings to earthly things. Didn’t He already prove that He brought salvation through the things of His creation by His incarnation? Therefore, listen to the words “baptism now saves you” and “this is My body” with ears of faith, knowing that God makes Himself present in the waters of baptism and in the bread and wine of communion. He’s God. He can do it that way if He wants to.