Here is just a summary of the third message in the sermon series, “Membership & Immersion: Baptized Into One Body”. The entire sermon can be found here.
To be clear, a central question we are considering in this series is this: Is it biblically appropriate to baptize someone without making them a member of the church? Having considered briefly the nature of the church and the nature of membership, we are ready to consider baptism.
While the third sermon in the series broadly covered a more thorough definition of baptism, I’m going to focus in this article on that portion that pertains to the association between baptism and membership. Baptism is, among other things, immersion into the body of Christ, the church.
According to the New Testament, life in Christ, but outside of His body—the church—is not a thing. The design of God for the believer is for life to be lived within the community of the saints. Romans 6:3-4 teaches that we have been baptized into the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, which we understand to be symbolized by immersion into water. In the same way, 1 Corinthians 12:13 teaches our baptism into His body, the church: For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body-- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free-- and all were made to drink of one Spirit. This too is symbolized by immersion into water.
Think about the implications of these two New Testament passages when understood side-by-side. They stand theologically parallel. One rite, baptism, pictures both union with Christ and union with His body. How strange indeed to think that it is appropriate to hold to one but not the other and call ourselves biblical. No one would argue that it is possible to have new life in Christ and yet not be joined to Christ, as taught in Romans 6:3-4. Why then should anyone contend that it is possible to have life in Christ without being joined to His body, as taught in 1 Corinthians 12:13? For both passages are united by the one picture of baptism.
This is not a tenuous connection in the least. Consider Ephesians 2:13-22:
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
Paul teaches that God did not secure through Christ multiple reconciliations between Himself and countless individuals. That is, there are not many bodies of Christ, i.e. Jesus and me, Jesus and you, Jesus and him, Jesus and her, Jesus and the Jews, Jesus and the Gentiles, etc. Rather, through Christ He joined many individuals into one body and reconciled that one body to Himself. He reconciled us to Himself in that one body, and He reconciled us to one another to create that body.
Both aspects of the work of Christ are depicted in baptism. When we baptize an individual without then recognizing them in the formal local expression of the church, we divorce these two works of Christ as if it is possible to be part of Christ and not His body.
Is it biblically appropriate to baptize someone without making them a member of the church? No.
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