June 27 – LD 26, Day 3: Baptism in the Name of the Blessed
Triune God
by Rev Arie den Hartog
Read: Matthew 28: 16 - 20
We are struck by the fact
that our Lord commanded that baptism should be done in the name of the blessed
Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The only true baptism is the baptism
that is performed in the name of the Trinity.
We also read in the Word
of God that at times, baptism is done in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. On
the day of Pentecost, Peter commanded believers to be baptized in the name of
Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. See Acts 2: 38. The meaning of
“in the name of Jesus Christ” is that baptism must be done by the authority of
the Lord Jesus. Our baptism means that we become members of Christ and receive
all spiritual blessings from Him.
In time however, the
formula that has commonly been used for baptism was the one Jesus gave to us in
the great commission. Baptism in the name of the triune God puts on the
foreground the greatest mystery of the Godhead. The one only true and living
God Who is absolutely one in His being, is at the same time three in His
persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. From the beginning, we must know and
confess this truth about God’s triune being even though this truth is at once
also a mystery far beyond our comprehension. We should not be troubled by this
if we know that God in His infinite being is so much greater than we can fully
know. If this were not true, we would be equal with God and God would not be
God.
It is clear that this
three-person God is one God only and not three gods. For this reason, the
baptism formula uses the word ‘name’ in the singular.
All three persons are
involved in all of God’s works of creation, providence and redemption. Without
a God who is the eternal Father, there could never have been the great
demonstration of the love of God by which our salvation was accomplished. This
love was revealed in the highest sense when God gave us His own dear Son to be
the propitiation for our sins. See I John 4: 8 - 10. Jesus, the Son of God,
saves us by sending into our hearts the Spirit of God, the third person of the
triune God.
Baptism is a sign that
we are incorporated into the covenant fellowship of the blessed triune
God.
The liturgy commonly
used for baptism in Reformed Churches has a beautiful statement regarding the
trinity in connection with our baptism. Let me quote this in the conclusion of
today’s meditation:
When we are baptized in
the name of the Father, God the Father witnesseth and
sealeth unto us, , that He doth make an eternal
covenant of grace with us, and adopts us for His children and heirs, and
therefore will provide us with every good thing, and avert all evil or turn it
to our profit. And when we are baptized in the name of the Son, the Son sealeth unto us that He doth wash us in His blood from all
our sins, incorporating us into the fellowship of His death and resurrection,
so that we are freed from all our sins and counted righteous before God. In
like manner, when we are baptized in the name of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost
assures us, by this holy sacrament, that He will dwell in us and sanctify us to
be members of Christ, applying unto us that which we have in Christ, namely,
the washing away of our sins and the daily renewing of our lives…
The reader of this
meditation is encouraged to look up several passages of scripture which are the
basis of the truth of this statement in the liturgy, such as Romans 6: 1 - 11
and Colossians 2: 10 - 13.