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About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman The
Loss of Loyalty John
1:33 says that John the Baptist immersed people in water while Jesus would
immerse people in the Holy Spirit. You are correct if you tell me that our
English translations word it differently by stating that John and Jesus
baptized, not immersed. I say
that John the Baptist and John the author knew nothing about English. John
the Baptist would have spoken the Aramaic word "tabal" that John
the author translated into Greek as "baptizo", that we
transliterate into English as "baptize." No matter the language,
these words mean to "immerse". In
the first-century Greco-Roman world in which John the author lived, the
Greek word "baptizo" did not have a religious meaning as our
word baptize has. "Baptizo"
meant to immerse and was used in a variety of ways. We see this in Mark
7:4 that says "when they come from the marketplace they do not eat
unless they wash (baptizo)". Acts
2 states that Jesus did immerse or baptize His disciples in the Holy
Spirit. Due to our western
culture's individualism we tend view the reception of God's Spirit into
the disciples' lives to have personally united them with Jesus. What our
individualism misses here is that the Holy Spirit, who is not confined to
being in one place at one time, also united those disciples to each other.
I believe that this failure
has caused us to misunderstand 1 Corinthians 12:13. "For
we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews
or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to
drink." Since
the Greek word "baptizo" that is transliterated as
"baptized" in our English translation of 1 Corinthians 12:13
means "immerse", I translate the verse to say "we were all
immersed by one Spirit so as to form one body". By
replacing "baptized" with "immersed" I remove the
common concept of water baptism from the text. Water
baptism, then, is not the act whereby one enters the church, which is an
unbiblical doctrine that began to infiltrate church theology in the second
century and still persists today. It's not the immersion into water, but
the immersion into the Holy Spirit that causes us to enter the church. You
may say the text states that we drink of the Spirit as one drinks water,
suggesting Paul had water baptism in mind. I
say that nobody drinks the water in which they are baptized. Metaphorically
speaking, as individuals and the church, both drink God's life-giving
water that is the Holy Spirit. 1
Corinthians 12:13 tells me that church is more than a meeting in a
building owned by a legally designated charity. Church
is a community of disciples who received God's Spirit via an immersion or
baptism into the Holy Spirit. By
implication, then, disciples are immersed into the lives of those to whom
Jesus has personally placed in supportive and functional relationships
that is meant to create a healthy church. It's
what 1 Corinthians, chapter 12 is all about. In
general terms, our individualist western-world church knows little to
nothing about unity, the meaning of 1 Corinthians 12:13 and functional
loyalty that is seen in Jesus' prayer for unity (John 17). We
seek for a so-called church of our choice like we seek for deals at
Walmart or Amazon. If we
aren't satisfied, we head out on another church shopping spree. Where's
the unified loyalty Jesus prayed for? Scripture
Reference John
1:33 "And I myself did
not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, 'The
man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will
baptize with the Holy Spirit.'"
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