About the worst thing for a Lutheran is to find yourself thinking that your access to God isn’t through His Word but through yourself, as if in a direct line from your heart to the Holy Spirit. He’d call that Enthusiasm, but He doesn’t mean you’re too joyful and boisterous.
God’s Promises Are Better than Your Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm comes from a Greek word that means “God in you,” and it’s the name for an old enemy of Lutheranism. It’s actually a pretty common way of thinking, and it runs counter to a biblically informed understanding of who God is and who you are.
Why bring this up to talk about Baptism? Because the hardest thing about believing what Lutherans believe about Baptism is setting aside your Enthusiasm. Again, I’m not talking about your joy in the Gospel but your assumption that you don’t need any bridge to God. On the flip side, if you get Baptism right, you’ll keep turning back to the right bridge.
Eventually, a biblical understanding of who we are boils down to the assumption that our ability to reach out to God (if any) is a gift given by the Holy Spirit through the Word. This goes along with an understanding that God has promised in the Bible to reach out to us in certain ways. In other words, getting in contact with God isn’t a guessing game, and it’s not about being the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. It’s just about meeting Him where He says He’ll be.
Enthusiasm usually comes in when we start to assume that because we’re converted, now we can be the ones reaching out to or bridging the gap to God. But God never stops being the one to reach out. He comes down from heaven; we don’t go up. Paul reminds us in Galatians 3:3 that God not only converted us by His Spirit, but He also sustains us by it each day. So those biblical promises remain the place where we look for God to arrive in our lives, to bridge the unbridgeable chasm from heaven to earth.
One of those promises—Lutherans consider it one of the main ones—is made in Mark 16:16: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.” And 1 Peter 3:21: “Baptism, which corresponds to [this water], now saves you.” Putting salvation in Baptism like these verses do goes straight to the heart of the thing: The promise in Baptism isn’t a side benefit, not some addition to salvation or some additional matter. The promise of Baptism is actual salvation. Any lesser gift of God must roll up into that (like Luke 12:31, “And these things will be added to you”).
So what do Lutherans believe about Baptism? There’s no better place to go for an answer than Luther’s Small Catechism, which is how Lutherans have been teaching the Christian faith to their children for almost five hundred years. Here’s the quote:
It works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare. (Baptism, Second Part)
Baptism Works Forgiveness of Sins
“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)
“I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins.” (The Nicene Creed)
So it’s biblical—we’re baptized for the forgiveness of sins. This is Peter’s sermon in Acts 2, practically the first Christian sermon ever preached. When the people realize their sin, they’re pointed to Baptism for forgiveness.
It should be clear that their Baptism isn’t a good work to do to balance out their sins and appease God. Instead, it’s a cleansing that someone else undertakes upon them. And that someone else is always ultimately God, because it’s Christ who commanded Peter to baptize (Matthew 28:19). So just like Peter is an instrument of Christ when he preaches, he’s also an instrument of Christ when he baptizes. Underneath the image of the bodily cleansing is the cleansing of the soul—the forgiveness of sins.
But you can also think of Galatians 3:27: to be baptized into Christ is to “put on Christ.” That means to be covered with Him, so that when the Father looks to you, who still sins, He chooses to see his righteous Son.
To be clear, Lutherans don’t believe that the forgiveness given in Baptism is only for sins prior to Baptism. Instead, they believe that it truly is God’s act of giving a new heart, turning you from a sinner into a forgiven sinner, from a servant who must fear punishment into a child who always finds mercy—even though he may face loving discipline. In other words, when God forgives in Baptism, He changes His relationship to you.
And that changes everything.
Baptism Rescues from Death and the Devil
“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by Baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:3–4)
This only makes sense if you share the Lutherans’ understanding of the Christian life and then work backward to the Baptism where it began. We expect the Christian life to be challenging, not because we’re trying to get right with God, but because we already are right with God.
We expect a challenge, because we—finally alive—are surrounded by death, and because the devil targets Christians to take them away from God. We take it seriously when Peter says the devil “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). The devil’s most successful temptation for Christians is when he can get them to not believe. And that’s why Baptism can play such a central role for Christians long after the day of their Baptism. It’s always calling you back to belief.
Lutherans turn to their Baptism daily in repentance, remembering that they are not their own, that they have been claimed by Christ, that their sins are forgiven, and that the devil has nothing to say that is not a lie (however true it may sound).
Maybe his biggest lie is that you’re going to die on account of your sin. But Romans 6 teaches that this death already occurred in Baptism, as we were incorporated into Christ’s death for our sins. So, there’s no more spiritual death for us to fear—only newness of life to embrace.
In other words, to believe God’s promise of new life in Baptism is to stand firm against the devil.
Baptism Gives Eternal Salvation
“He saved us . . . by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:5–7)
If this seems to follow naturally from the first two things, then you’re all set. And it should: If you have the forgiveness of sins, then you’re right with God. And if you’re preserved from the efforts of evil to separate you from Christ (Romans 8:38–39), then that status is safe and will carry you through until you die an earthly death or until He returns on the Last Day.
But sometimes we think of the Christian life as stages that you walk through, and then it’s not obvious that having forgiveness means you’ll have eternal life. That’s where this verse, and the understanding of Baptism it unpacks, are so helpful. All of these things are bundled together: rebirth, renewal by the Holy Spirit, justification, the hope of eternal life. If you have one, you have them all. (I know there’s a way to read “hope” here that makes it sound like you’re “hoping for the best,” but that’s the wrong read. It’s not a hope because it’s uncertain, but because it’s still ahead of you.)
So this is the other thing: Lutherans believe that the gifts of God are an all-inclusive package. Forgiveness, life, and salvation all come at the same moment. If you have one, you have them all. And, sadly, if you reject one, you reject them all.
But—the sad case of rejection aside—what joy that enables! To know that you have an irrevocable promise of God that will bring you to eternal life and that, as long as you cling to that promise, He’ll not only forgive your sins but give you the Holy Spirit and equip you both for this life and for the life to come!
As long as you cling to that promise. This is the bump in the road—for two reasons that you really have to reckon with.
The spiritually low reason: There are times when it doesn’t feel like enough. There are times when you really do feel like you need to do some hard counterbalancing to your sin. Either you’ve done a little more damage than usual, or you’ve just gotten a particularly sharp picture of how far your life is from what Jesus’s model was. And then you feel like you should do a little more to set yourself right with God. But Baptism doesn’t let you. Everything that can be done to set you right with God is delivered in your Baptism. You could say that Lutherans cling to it with both hands so that they don’t grab on to something else.
The spiritually high reason: You feel like you could do more. And you should! If you’re feeling energy to spare, love for your neighbor, devotion to God, then you should get out and act on those impulses, which are given by the Holy Spirit! But when that day is done, Lutherans like to quote Luke 17:10: “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.” And then they cling to the promise of Baptism, because the righteousness of Christ is still far better than whatever partial successes a good day might have brought.
Final Thoughts About Lutherans’ Beliefs on Baptism
Baptism curbs Enthusiasm. It points us to Christ in the way He promises to be there for us. It points us to Christ all the time. So, really, there are two arguments for the Lutheran position here:
One is why we teach it: It’s biblical. The bible teaches baptismal regeneration, that in Baptism, the sinner is reborn as a child of God. This isn’t just any doctrine, either. You really have to reckon with it being a central, saving doctrine.
The other is why we emphasize it: Baptism puts a sharp stop to all our efforts to make our own path to God, to invent our own righteousness, to be our own saviors. This only makes sense if you recognize Baptism as God’s work on us and not our own pledge of faithfulness. But then it’s hard to unsee. God has bridged the path to His people, right into the middle of our lives.
Scripture: ESV®.
Catechism quotations are from Luther’s Small Catechism © 1986 Concordia Publishing House. All rights reserved.
Learn more about what Lutherans believe by reading an easy-to-understand summary in Lutheranism 101: Holy Baptism.
