Remember Your Baptism**

Lutherans like to say, “Remember your baptism” meaning, “When you doubt, look to your baptism for your assurance of salvation.”


But, to many American Christians, “Remember your baptism” seems antiquated.  Salvation couldn't possibly have anything to do with getting wet. 

Today's Christian repents of sins, and decides or chooses to follow Jesus, to live a good Christian life.  Assurance is based on a decision and a desire of the heart.  Right?

I recently heard a young woman ask a well-known Christian, “How do I know if I'm saved, if I [still] have blasphemous thoughts?”  He said that the condition of her heart was to be her evidence - to look in her heart for her love for God and desire for Him. 

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? Jeremiah 17:9

For anyone who's seriously doubted his own salvation, who's honestly examined his own heart - looking inward for that assurance, to a choice one makes, to how one feels...that's no comfort at all.

To look for assurance in my own heart - I see two perspectives.  I can have pride and confidence in my own ability to believe and to live as a good Christian.  Or, like the woman who questioned her salvation, I can despair, recognizing my heart's darkness and duplicity.

According to the Bible, God uses “means” to assure His people and to save them.

- To assure Abraham that he would possess the land, God passed through a blood path, making a type of blood oath.

- To mark the people for salvation at Passover, a lamb's blood was smeared on the doorpost.

- To seal the covenant at Mt. Sinai, Moses sprinkled blood on the Israelites. 

- To assure Gideon of victory, God used fleece.


And on and on...God's Word is filled with God using the physical to assure and to save.  We are physical beings, and we understand the physical.  

But grace is hard to grasp; grace isn't physical - and we get stuck.


The question becomes, “How do I get forgiveness?  How can I be assured that I'm saved, that I'm a Christian?”


I often ask people, “How do you know you're married?”  And the answer is always, “I had a wedding.”
 
So, to the question “How do I know I'm a Christian?” the answer is, “I'm baptized.”

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.   Mark 16:16

And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”  Acts 2:38

Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  1 Peter 3:21

...he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit...Titus 3:5

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word...Ephesians 5:25-26 

** I actually remember my baptism.  I was baptized in a Baptist church when I was 11.