Here's a question for you: What are the top 5 things that are necessary for your Christian growth? Go ahead, say it out loud. Of course, the rest of us won't be able to hear, but that's OK. What would make the list of the 5 most important aids to Christian growth? Prayer? Evangelism? Bible study? Fellowship? Christian service? Time and time again, I've asked that question in evangelical circles and heard all of these answers — wonderful and good answers, but the glaring omission was the mention of the sacraments. We hardly hear about the sacra­ments these days at all, much less do we see them as essential to our growth in Christ.

And yet, baptism and the Lord's Supper are, in Scripture, linked to our salvation itself. Through these two sacraments God gives us the grace that he promises in his Word. That's right. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are means of grace. Not mere symbols, but means of grace.

Now, before you start thinking, "Gee, this sounds like a Catholic view of bap­tism and the Lord's Supper," let me assure you that the view of baptism that I'm presenting is the traditional Protestant doc­trine. In spite of the grad­ual movement of this great biblical sacrament to the periphery of the church's life and thought, it still occupies that same impor­tant place in the Bible itself and requires us to recover its grand place in our own day.

Now the focus of this arti­cle is on Christian baptism. The word baptism comes from the Greek word "bap­-tidzo," which means "to dip, to wash, or to sprin­kle." In fact, the word was used in ancient times to refer to immersing some­one or something. But the same word was also used to refer to watering one's lawn or plants. That's why it's impossible to argue for one mode of baptism on the basis of the word itself. What's important in this matter is what God does through this sacrament, in fulfillment of his promise to wash us from our sins.

One of the important dis­tinctions over the cen­turies of reflection on bap­tism is between "the sign" and the "thing signified." In baptism, the sign is water. You can put your fin­ger in it, you can drink it, you can play water polo in it. The water in baptism is no different from the water from the tap. But water ­the sign — is not the only thing involved in baptism. There is a convergence, a meeting, of Word, Spirit, and Sign, and the result is baptism. Through the Word of the Gospel, the Spirit connects this washing with water somehow to a real inward cleansing and regeneration. So, in bap­tism, normal water becomes sacred water, as the waters of the Red Sea, though normal water, became a means through which God redeemed his people from slavery in Egypt.

Just look at the biblical evidence for this view of baptism. The connection between the sign — water, and the thing signified ­that is, the actual cleans­ing by the Holy Spirit, is very close in Scripture. Mark 16:16 reads, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." When Ananias healed Paul, after Jesus had given the apostle his commission, Ananias said, "And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name" (Act. 22:16). Paul himself declared, "Don't you know that all of us who were baptized in Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were there­fore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life" (Rom. 6:3). To Titus, he writes, "He saved us, not because of right­eous things we have done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life" (Tit. 3:97). The illustration above, comparing the waters that saved Israel from Pharoah to the waters of baptism, is actually not original with me. Paul uses it in 1 Cor. 10:2: "For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accom­panied them, and that rock was Christ."

Then there's that thorny question about baptizing those little rug rats, What do we do about infant bap­tism? Isn't it just a hold­over from Roman Catholicism that Protest­ants just can't seem to shake off? First, let me say that I was raised in evangelical Bible churches and when I ran into people who baptized infants, I just assumed that they proba­bly didn't even read their Bibles. Maybe they weren't even really Christians. It was a shock to me to learn that many of the greatest defenders of biblical ortho­doxy in this century all believed that this was a biblical doctrine, so I began to listen to their arguments. After a lot of arguing and wrestling with the Scriptures, I finally gave in to a point of view I was sure I would never hold.

Now, what does that mean? Absolutely nothing. There have been people who have had just the opposite experience. Growing up in Lutheran or Reformed churches, they came to believe that the Scriptures did not teach infant baptism, so our experience doesn't deter­mine anything. But it should cause you at least to pause for a moment and ask, "What makes so many Bible-believing Christians embrace infant baptism as scriptural?"