Sixth Sunday of Easter

Six Sunday of Easter
1 Peter 3:13-22
May 10, 2026

Water, water everywhere, yet so many refuse to believe it.

Why is it that Baptism – the Sacraments in general – is such a divisive issue in the Christian church, and particularly in the Western Christian church, and more particularly, among the Protestants?

Did you know that if the protestant churches could find agreement on the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, that most of the denominational divisions among our churches would cease to exist, just like that.  There are certainly other matters of division for which we would need to battle, such as synergism vs. monergism, issues surrounding the Election or Predestination, the Regulative vs. the Ministerial use of Scripture, but we would all be so far down the path toward uniting the churches if we could just go back to what Scripture says concerning Baptism and the Eucharist.

And concerning Baptism, there was no division among the churches until the 16^th century.  Every apostolic father of the 1^st and 2^nd century, every post-apostolic father of the 2^nd through 4^th centuries, every Latin Father, every Cappadocian Father, every Desert Father, every post Edict of Milan father where Christianity was legalized, all the way up to and including Luther and the Lutheran reformers were in agreement.  Baptism saves.  It’s right there in Scripture.  Jesus says it, Peter says it, Paul says it many times, it’s very much what the Old Testament alludes to, that God saves people by water and the Word.  It really shouldn’t be that controversial.

And yet, in the 16^th century, on account of things like the French Enlightenment and the “radical reformation” movement, theologians rose up and built a dam in the stream, and all that “new theology” came over here to America.  The early church deemed it a damnable heresy to teach that a person has to make a decision to be saved; that it’s an act of the will to be saved, and yet it’s the most common belief and teaching in American Christianity because it fits with the American spirit of individualism and “play your part, pick yourself up by your bootstraps” and it always includes the outright rejection of Baptismal regeneration.

But theology cannot change and bend and stretch based on culture.  It has to remain consistent because God is consistent.  What sort of God would we have if He’s constantly changing His Word based on the culture or based on history or based on the most accepted or widely believed things?

If you understood the reason behind why so many American churches reject the Sacraments, especially baptismal regeneration, that it has nothing to do with Scripture but everything to do with the enlightenment, with rationalism, and with a deep animosity toward the Roman Catholic church, then you’d also discover that what we teach in the Lutheran church is purely orthodox and is what the Christian church has taught since the Apostles and the Apostles plainly taught it themselves.

“Baptism now saves you,” that’s what Peter wrote.  Is there another way to read it?  No

But this is how Satan works.  He takes the clear, plain, natural words of God, “do not eat of that tree…” and he twists them to mean the total opposite of what they say, “eat of that tree…”

But why do so many church bodies reject Baptismal Regeneration?  Well, the argument has morphed over the decades but it started in the 16^th century.

A rejection of baptismal regeneration was born from the Anabaptist movement, a fringe movement, a sometimes violent fringe movement led by several different men, perhaps the most well-known being Thomas Muenser or Felix Manz.  The language you hear today such as “believer’s baptism” or the rejection of the baptism of infants, it was all born there in the 16^th century by a group of followers who zealously fought against the Roman Catholic church, and against Lutherans.

The Anabaptists were eventually snuffed out, but what they stood for permeates much of the protestant church to this day.  And at the core of the Anabaptist teaching was Pelagianism, the ancient heresy which states that God puts a little good in every person at conception so that he can decide for himself to believe.  If you study either the French or American Enlightenment, one of the core pillars of that philosophy is individual liberty and individual responsibility.

Philosophy, when used to try and explain theology, always gum things up.  Pelagianism was born of 4^th century philosophy, and the 16^th through 19^th century French and American Enlightenment fed that heresy, and it has come back to life in full force to this day, only so few stand against it and condemn it as they did in the early church; we’re too tolerant of false teaching today.

Now, the Anabaptists were not the only separatist group to come after Luther and the Reformation. There was also the Smythian Baptists who broke away from the Anglican church in the 17^th century.  And most of the churches that have developed since the Revolution here in America all seem to pull from the Smythian Baptist or Calvinist or Wesleyan playbooks.  We Lutherans have just not had a lot of prolonged influence in American Christianity.  In fact, many protestants see us Lutherans as an appendage to the European Roman Catholic church, a church body who didn’t completely walk away from our Roman Catholic roots.

In a sense, I suppose that’s true.  The Lutheran church wanted to be what the church was before the Roman Catholic church’s influence pushed it off the rails.  In some respects, we are an Augustinian church, but that’s not even completely true.  Our worship and liturgy and our teaching tends to be very consistent with the 3^rd or 4^th century.

But when it comes to the Sacraments, we are truly an orthodox church.  Jesus says, “this IS my body/this IS my blood” and we believe IS means IS.  That’s orthodox.  Peter says, “Baptism now saves you,” and we believe baptism now saves you.  That’s orthodox.

So, let’s look at the text.

The context behind 1 Peter 3:13-22 is Jesus and His complete, once-for-all atonement and how this new reality given in Christ helps us in our suffering.  Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that HE might bring us to God.  Peter doesn’t write anything about cooperating with God or choosing to believe, but that Jesus brings us to God.

Jesus is the one who brings us to God and He does it by His death and victorious resurrection.  And He also went to this place of holding, this prison, to proclaim to the inmates there that He has won.  Some like to say that Jesus preaches repentance and offers them salvation, but no, the text does not say that or that those in prison even listened to what He proclaimed.  It might be nice to think that, but the text does not say it, and we don’t want to add that opinion into the text just because it seems like it’d be something Jesus would do.  All it says is that He went there to proclaim His victory like a king entering into the defeated enemy’s palace to sit on the enemy’s throne.  But that’s it, and we don’t want to go beyond what is written.

Peter writes that those in this prison are those who were disobedient before Noah’s flood – the dead who died without faith, who mocked Noah and refused to believe that a great flood was coming so that, in the flood, only 8 souls were saved in the ark.

Interesting stuff for sure, but still at the center of it all is Christ’s victory by His death and resurrection and how He helps us in suffering for the faith.  Even at the flood where Noah and his family were saved by water, Jesus was at the center.  Not only was Jesus at the center when it came to the condemned who refused to believe that wood and nails would save them, but He was at the center for those who were being saved, those on the ark which floated atop the water.

Then Peter writes that the flood, which no one can deny included water, which saved Noah and his family, was a type of baptism, and that baptism – which again is with water because we’re comparing baptism to the waters of the flood – is the antitype, the REAL DEAL which saves you.  And no matter how much someone may loath the idea that baptism saves, we cannot add a word to this text; we cannot add “doesn’t” to this text and call ourselves faithful to the text.  You can’t change the essential meaning of any text in Scripture just because you don’t like it or understand it.  This is where the Anabaptists let the philosophy of the Enlightenment get in the way of the plain, natural reading of the text.

Peter continues on.  He writes that baptism is not merely a removal of dirt from flesh.  This is important.  He’s essentially saying that baptism is not just some external thing we do to ourselves as if we’re jumping in the shower or washing ourselves in the tub.  It’s not performative in the sense that it’s our work doing something, but it’s performative in a different way.  It is Jesus’ performance on the cross being applied to us by the water.

Now, some translations use the word “pledge,” but it’s not a strong enough word.  Appeal or even demand is much more consistent with Peter’s point here.  That baptism is an appeal to God for a cleansed, good, clear conscience.  And it’s important that we understand the “who or what” is doing the appealing.  It’s not the individual being baptized doing the appealing, nor is it the one doing the baptizing making the appeal.  The Greek is clear: it is the baptism itself doing the appealing, the water, along with God’s Word, crying out to God to cleanse the person’s conscience; it is Jesus doing the conscience-cleansing.

Hebrews 9:14 says, “How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”

The salvation of Christ is “extra nos” or outside ourselves; it doesn’t happen in here, but happens out there, on the cross where His blood was shed.  And His work is applied to us “extra nos” by baptism, where water combined with the Word of God is applied to us, and all of it is grounded in our Lord’s death and resurrection, His victory over sin, death, and the devil.

Baptism is no different than any part of God’s work of saving sinners.  The Word of God comes to us, “extra nos” or from outside of us through preachers and teachers.  It’s not the preacher or teacher who saves you, but Jesus through the means of a preacher or teacher bringing you the good news.  In the Lord’s Supper, His true body and blood come to you “extra nos,” from outside of you.  It’s not the pastor giving you the bread and wine, nor his words as he institutes the sacrament that brings you the gifts of the sacrament, nor his doing the sign of the cross over the sacrament which isn’t commanded by God but is simply a tradition, but it is Jesus and His Word which says, “This IS my body, this IS my blood” which makes the sacrament and delivers to you the promise of forgiveness and strength.

And in Baptism, it is not the person doing the baptism or the person receiving the baptism, but it is the work of the resurrected Christ, by means of water bringing salvation and the gifts of God to the receiver.

It is all God’s work for you through Christ.  The cross itself was a means by which God brought the blood of Christ to the world.  The church, the ark of salvation is, in a sense, a means through which God brings His good and gracious gifts.  And the church floats effortlessly upon the waters of baptism which drowns the old man of sin and death and brings a new and glorious man, the new Adam – Christ and His righteousness to the people therein.

And all of this, the whole point of baptism, is for your comfort.  That in suffering, in weakness, when the devil’s attacking you and making a ragdoll of your faith, you can say, “I am baptized!  God made a sure and unchanging promise to me that He will not break.”  Suffering will come to the Christian; there’s no avoiding it.  But the good news of salvation by faith in Jesus applied to you in Holy Baptism…it gets you through each day.  You don’t have to rely on your feelings or convictions or promises, but you rely on Christ who rose again for you and applied His salvation to you in baptism.

And all you need to do is crack open your small catechism and read it, every day.  It draws you back to Jesus, back to Scripture, back to your baptism and reminds you that God is not beyond your struggles.

Baptism NOW saves you; you ARE baptized, and you are at peace with God.  Amen.