By Russ Johnson
When my kids were little,
they loved birthdays.
Not surprising.
Cake.
Presents.
People singing badly
while you sit there pretending
you don’t enjoy the attention.
What’s not to love?
But there’s something
wonderfully strange
about a birthday party.
Nothing actually happens
when the candles go out.
Nobody becomes more alive.
The cake doesn’t add a year
to anyone’s existence.
And blowing out every candle
in one breath
does not appear to alter reality.
The whole thing is a celebration
of something that happened
before anyone arrived.
You were born.
That’s why we’re here.
The party doesn’t make it true.
The party exists
because it is.
I wonder if we’ve made baptism
far more complicated
by getting that order backward.
People have made a big deal
out of baptism.
And for good reason.
It’s a picture
of dying and rising.
A celebration of life.
But somewhere along the way,
people stopped treating it
as a celebration
and started treating it
as a transaction.
Like a magic key
that unlocks God’s approval.
As if getting into the water
makes something true
that wasn’t true
before we got wet.
But then Jesus
steps into the Jordan.
And immediately
we have a problem.
Because if baptism
is primarily about
getting something from God,
what exactly
was Jesus getting?
Forgiveness?
Acceptance?
A clean slate?
When John the Baptist hesitated—
“I need to be baptized by you,
and do you come to me?”—
Jesus replied:
“Let it be so now;
it is proper for us to do this
to fulfill all righteousness.”
(Matt. 3:14–15)
Jesus enters the water
with nothing to earn.
And when he comes up,
the heavens tear open.
The Spirit descends
like a dove.
And the Father says:
“This is my Son, whom I love;
with him I am well pleased.”
(Matt. 3:16–17)
The water didn’t make Jesus
the beloved Son.
It revealed the beloved Son
who was already standing there.
Before the sermons.
Before the miracles.
Before the cross.
Beloved.
Which should at least make us wonder
whether we’ve gotten
the order backward too.
Because when Paul later explains
what happened in Jesus,
he refuses to leave us
standing on the riverbank
watching someone else’s story.
He says:
“Don’t you know that all of us
who were baptized into 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. 6:3–4)
Notice the language.
With him.
Buried with him.
Raised with him.
And Paul’s vision stretches
far beyond the people standing
in a baptismal.
“One died for all, and therefore all died.”
(2 Cor. 5:14)
That changes the picture.
Because if his death was ours,
and his resurrection was ours,
then maybe we shouldn’t see
his baptism
as an isolated moment either.
Jesus wasn’t standing
in the Jordan
detached from humanity.
He was stepping
into our story.
His baptism was ours too.
That’s the mystery
Paul keeps returning to:
“Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Col. 1:27)
There was never a moment
when creation existed
outside the One
through whom all things
were made
and in whom all things hold together.
(John 1:3; Col. 1:16–17)
So Jesus doesn’t enter the water
to create a union that didn’t exist.
He enters the water as the One
in whom we already
“live and move
and have our being.”
(Acts 17:28)
He goes down into our death.
He rises into new life.
Which means our baptism
doesn’t have to make
something true either.
It can announce
what we’ve awakened to.
The same Spirit
that raised Jesus from the dead
lives in you. (Rom. 8:11)
And the same Father
calls us his children. (1 John 3:1)
Baptism doesn’t create that reality.
It gives us a way
to step into the water
and say we trust it.
Which helps make sense
of what happens in Acts.
After Pentecost,
Peter stands up and says:
“Repent and be baptized,
every one of you,
in the name of Jesus Christ
for the forgiveness of your sins.”
(Acts 2:38)
And just before that,
he announces what the prophet Joel
said God would do:
“I will pour out my Spirit on all people.”
(Acts 2:17)
Peter is inviting people
to respond
to what God has done.
Turn around.
See it.
Trust it.
Step into the water
and name it.
And whatever debates
we want to have
about the precise relationship
between baptism, forgiveness,
and Peter’s language in Acts 2:38,
the larger New Testament story
doesn’t leave forgiveness
sitting at the bottom
of a baptismal tank.
John writes:
“Your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.” (1 John 2:12)
Baptism isn’t a way
of unlocking God’s grace.
It’s a response to the grace
he has already shown us
in Jesus.
Which is perhaps why Jesus
didn’t reserve baptism
for religious professionals.
He told everyone to:
“Go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name
of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matt. 28:19)
No elaborate initiation ceremony
run by professionals.
No six-week class.
Just ordinary people
sharing good news
and water becoming
the obvious place
to celebrate it.
Perhaps the best example
is the Ethiopian official in Acts 8.
Philip tells him
the good news about Jesus.
They’re traveling down the road.
They come across some water.
And the man says:
“Look, here is water.
What can stand in the way
of my being baptized?” (Acts 8:36)
Nothing.
So they stop the chariot.
Head down into the water.
Philip baptizes him.
And they move on.
That’s wonderfully uncomplicated.
Good news.
Water.
Let’s go.
So if you’ve been baptized,
beautiful.
Remember what it announced.
If you haven’t,
find a friend who believes
and a spot with water.
A pool.
A beach.
A lake.
A bathtub.
Celebrate your faith
in what Jesus has done.
God didn’t wait
for your permission
to make peace with you.
Through Jesus,
God was pleased
“to reconcile to himself
all things.” (Col. 1:20)
And Jesus didn’t wait for the lost
to find their way home.
“The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)
Which brings us
back to the birthday party.
The candles
don’t make you born.
The cake
doesn’t give you life.
The party happens
because somebody already did.
That’s baptism.
A moment where you get to stand up
in front of your friends,
soaking wet,
and celebrate that his story
has included you all along.
The water doesn’t make you home.
It’s where you finally get to say:
I’m home.