February 14, 2014

From Jim McGuiggan.... Baptism: Ignorance and Ignorance

Baptism: Ignorance and Ignorance

Must I have all the answers?
One of my weaknesses in earlier years as a Christian and as a student of scripture was that I felt I had to have all the answers to all the dilemmas. Take the case of those who truly have never heard the gospel of Christ but who live exemplary lives and walk well in the best light they have. What about them? I’m not interested at this point in developing my view on that question (that’ll keep for another time if it suits God) but it does generate serious and complex questions. What am I to say about them? That’s a good question and needs addressed but there’s a more pressing question I think: what is that to me since I have heard? The ignorance of those people makes not an ounce of difference to my case because I have heard the voice of God in the gospel of Christ and the ignorance of some lovely Christ-believers about baptism is nothing to me for I have heard the voice of God in scripture.
There is ignorance that is culpable
All ignorance is not the same ignorance. Not only are there differing degrees of ignorance there are differing kinds of ignorance. If the head of a nation or a corporation were to order her subordinates to do something they all know is dishonourable we would judge her dishonourable. And if she claimed she knew nothing about the deed because, in fact, she had given her subordinates express instructions to tell her nothing about it being carried out we would still think her dishonourable. In truth, in such a case we would judge her behaviour more dishonourable because she was sly in her dishonour. If she was brought in front of a tribunal it might be the case that she is telling the truth when she says she has no knowledge of a specific act or transaction within the overall enterprise. We would judge that ignorance culpable. She is in the dark because she wanted and even ordered the darkness and we would hold her responsible for her ignorance. The above is relatively simple and uncontroversial. Other questions would be generated by the situation I’ve imagined but we’d have no trouble in finding the claim of “ignorance” to be inexcusable.
There is ignorance that is not culpable
Then there is ignorance that is the sheer lack of knowledge. A mother feeds her child poisoned food that she bought in her usual shop and is inconsolable when the doctors can do nothing and the child dies. An appropriate person tells a man with critically important documents that they are to be delivered to a certain place at a certain time. It turns out to be the wrong place and the wrong time and an important business contract is lost. Rather than feel ill toward this mother or this messenger we feel sadness because their ignorance was not the result of negligence or carelessness. In fact, in these cases they both trusted appropriate people. They did not know the truth and they did not know that they did not know the truth. If these illustrations don’t suit you it won’t be difficult for you to set up your own true-to-life cases.
There is ignorance that makes us scratch our head
In between these two extremes there is ignorance that we have qualms about. There’s a wife that has some reason to think her husband’s business dealings are crooked but she doesn’t want to know any more in case she discovers her uneasiness is well grounded. There's the case where a man is conned by shrewd talkers into investing his money and losing every penny. When he tells his story we are filled with sympathy but then someone points out that he was driven by greed to the point where he ignored the obvious risks and we now wonder. Then there’s the man who needs immediate First Aid and dies because the people around him are ignorant as to how to help. These people could have at some point taken the many free courses on First Aid that they knew were offered but for one reason or another they just didn’t want to. Someone slays himself and his friend laments, “It’s all so obvious now. I just didn’t recognize the signals he was sending out.” Instead of gluing himself to the television and re-runs he could have read up on counseling skills. But where would this all end? Must we become walking encyclopedias in every area? Surely not, but is there the other extreme, where because we are lazy and self-serving we spurn easily available knowledge that would enable us to help those in need? Again, if these illustrations don’t make my point you make it for me by setting up situations that are true to life.
If an angel came
Truth remains true even if I am ignorant of it. Truth remains true even if for some good reason I am not held responsible for my ignorance of it. The food was poisoned even though the mother was completely ignorant of it. The signal light was faulty though there was no way for the train-driver to know it.
Even if a truth-telling angel came from God to say that under certain circumstances God would tolerate ignorance about the gospel or about the virgin birth or bodily resurrection or atoning death of Christ, how would that alter the gospel? Not an ounce!
And what would we who have been privileged to know the truth on these matters be required to believe? And to preach? And to live out? In our anxiety to allow for the ignorance of some people we’re saying silly things. Instead of doing that let God handle the ignorance question! It's not for us to settle all the arguments. Our business is to thank God for truth revealed and live it out in life and proclamation to all we come into contact with.
And listen, the cure for their ignorance (or ours) is not a gutless silence, or any other kind of silence!
Ignorance and God’s mercy
There’s a Jew in Alexandria, in Egypt, who has loved the Lord with a trusting heart from his childhood. He's a humble and kind man whose service to God fills him with joy but in the past five years he has been severely disabled due to an accident. He doesn’t get to Jerusalem now and he misses it terribly; but he loves the Lord and he is saved by faith. There’s nothing at all controversial about any of that.
In Jerusalem it’s around 9 a.m. on Pentecost morning and while our Alexandrian believer sits prayerful and thinking, hundreds of miles away Peter is proclaiming the truth about Jesus Christ to over three thousand Jews. Peter is now saying, “Therefore, let all the house of Israel know with assurance that God has made this same Jesus, the one you crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36) and our North African Jew is blissfully ignorant. A multitude of his fellow-Jews, convicted of sin cry out, “Men and brethren what shall we do?” and Peter tells them to repent and be baptized in the name of that Jesus for the remission of their sins. And more than three thousand men and women eagerly do it. Our Jew in Alexandria is oblivious to it all and is quietly praising the name of the God of his fathers. What is his state before God now?
A little before nine, Jerusalem time, he was right with God. What happened to his relationship with God when Peter proclaimed the forgiveness of sins and the reception of the Holy Spirit through repentance and baptism in the name of the now glorified Christ? It’s 10 a.m. and is he now lost? Peter preached the gospel and a saved man automatically became lost? Whatever we say we believe, for fear of opening doors that should be kept closed, we know in our bones that our friend can’t be doomed. It’s true he hasn’t yet trusted in Christ and so been baptized and taken on the name of Jesus Christ. But his ignorance isn’t chosen and his heart has embraced and loved the truth he knows of God and he is a saved man. (And although he isn’t aware of it he is saved by the grace Yahweh has extended to him in Jesus Christ.)
Now, looked what has happened here. I sketched an imaginary situation and immediately questions are generated because the situation is complex. But what difference does it make to the people in Jerusalem under Peter’s preaching? What difference does the disabled Alexandrian’s ignorance make to the Jerusalem multitude? No one in the three thousand plus (Acts 2:41) jumped up and asked, “So what does this mean for my sick parents who couldn’t make it here today to hear this?” It’s only modern people that raise such questions. Peter must have known there were absent God-loving Jews but what had that to do with his Spirit-inspired message?
To claim that genuinely ignorant and godly people are exempt from having to believe or be baptized into Christ because they don’t know they’re called to and therefore can’t—that’s one thing. To shape our message so as to keep them ignorant or to shape our message to excuse those who know but won’t humbly submit to God in the matter is something else. Those people that reject God’s call are in trouble and those who help them to continue their refusal are in trouble as well (compare Matthew 5:19 and Luke 7:29-30).
It doesn’t matter how popular or eloquent the preacher or how thriving the church that does it, don’t permit anyone to keep you from submitting your heart and mind to Christ in this matter. Think noble things of God because he will work out the whole matter of "what if?" You know you can trust him to do that, don’t you? Well, commit yourself in trust to him and if you haven’t already done so, have yourself baptized into the Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as he and his apostolic servants have called us to do.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, theabidingword.com.

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