Dear Family at Christ Community Church,

This Sunday we will have the joy of witnessing Harmony Van Donselaar receive the sign and seal of baptism by profession of faith. Our sermon text is Mark 8:27-33. In this passage, we will hear Peter bear witness to Jesus’s true identity: Jesus is the Christ! However, upon hearing Jesus announce His suffering, death, and resurrection, Peter will rebuke Jesus. Jesus’s true mission completely upended Peter’s expectations. Peter, like us, needed Jesus to turn his mind from the things of man to the things of God.

Baptism is one of the ways Jesus trains us to set our minds on the things of God. Baptism is not proof of our decision to follow Jesus. Baptism is a sign and picture of what Jesus’s death and resurrection accomplished for us. Baptism is not our pledge to follow Jesus but is rather the seal and guarantee of Jesus’s promise to unite us to Himself as God’s redeemed and beloved children. In this way, Jesus uses baptism to help us heed Paul’s words in Colossians 3:1-4:

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Baptism will continue to remind Harmony that she has died with Christ and that she has new, resurrected life hidden with Christ in God. The goodness and beauty of such a redemption go beyond what she or any of us can yet grasp. And yet Jesus uses baptism to assure her that He will lead her in the way of discipleship as she knows and follows Him.

I encourage you to reflect upon the meaning of your baptism this week. Think back on your life and consider how your baptism proclaims the Gospel of your redemption in every high and every low. If your redemption seems stale or abstract to you, boldly and humbly ask Jesus to renew your faith as His Word is preached and made visible in baptism this Lord’s Day!

Grace and Peace,
Matt