Justification by faith does not dispense with the
necessity for Baptism. Hooker
condemned those ‘who fixing their minds wholly on the known necessity
of faith imagine that nothing but faith is necessary for the attainment
of all grace. Yet it is a branch of belief that sacraments
are in their place no less required than belief itself. . . If Christ
himself which giveth salvation do require Baptism, it is not for us
who look for salvation to sound and examine Him, whether unbaptized
men may be saved, but seriously to do that which is required.’[1] It has been said that ‘Justification through
faith might with equal accuracy be styled justification through union
with Christ. . . . So it is
that St. Paul, after dealing with justification in the first chapters
of the Epistle to the Romans, passes on to the “mystical union”
of the Christian with Christ’.[2] Since Baptism is the sacrament by which we
are incorporated “into Christ”,[3]
it is not surprising to find the Apostle associating justification and
Baptism. ‘Know ye not that
the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?. . . And such were some of you: but ye were washed,
but ye were sanctified,[4]
but ye were justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the
Spirit of our God.’[5] The three verbs in the same (aorist) tense
refer to the same point of time, which is undoubtedly the moment of
Baptism.[6] In Romans
[1]Eccles. Polity, V. lx. 4.
[2]E. J. Bicknell, The Thirty-nine
Articles, p. 204.
[3]Gal. 3:27; Rom. 6:3.
[4]The Greek verb is hagiadzo
which is here used forensically, ‘to free from guilt’. It is used in the same sense in Ephes. 5:26;
Heb. 2:11, 10:10, 14, 29, 13:12.
Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1944),
p. 5.
[5]1 Cor. 6:9, 11.
[6]Commenting on 1 Cor. 6:9,
11, W. F. Flemington says ‘This passage is important not only
because it uses the phrase “in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ’
and speaks of the Spirit of our God (both of which recall similar
language used about Baptism in Acts), but also because it links Baptism
with the great Pauline conceptions of justification and sanctification,’
The New Testament Doctrine of Baptism (1948), p. 56.
Dr. G. W. H. Lampe also takes this view and describes Baptism
as “pre-eminently the sacrament of Justification,” The Doctrine
of Justification by Faith (1954), pp. 53-68.
[7]Cp. Baptismal Office, ‘Grant
that the old Adam in this child may be so buried that the new man
may be raised up in him.’
[8]Rom. 6:7 (Greek text).