LENT DAY 16: Waters of Forgiveness

Day 16 Saturday - Mar 11, 2023; Mar 2, 2024; Mar 22, 2025

And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name. -Acts 22:16

There is a strong connection between our order of confession and forgiveness at the start of each church service and our baptism. As we have already talked about, baptism is closely tied to repentance. Thus, each week we confess our sins and return to the Lord we are living out the baptismal life. And every time we receive forgiveness, we are reaching into our baptismal grace. As Lathrop and Brugh put it in The Sunday Assembly, “The order of confession and forgiveness itself may be seen as the Christian assembly’s return to the gift of baptism.”

Paul himself was told to be baptized and wash away his sins, sins which we know were many. This is the guy, after all, who called himself the “foremost” of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). “But I received mercy,” he went on (1 Timothy 1:16). And baptism was a way in which it was clear that he did. Paul received the same mercy as a little baby who is baptized in our church. Paul - the foremost sinner who persecuted the church and killed the saints - that Paul received mercy. And one of the ways he did was he received baptism. It is a great equalizer and proof of God’s will to show mercy with each and every one of us - be it a foremost sinner who persecuted the church of God or a little baby who everyone thinks is just perfect.

Next time you hear a word of forgiveness shared with you, like in our confession and forgiveness on a Sunday morning you can rejoice that this word of mercy is true, and your baptism has declared its truth. Indeed, many times we announce the forgiveness in church “in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” just so that you might remember that this forgiveness is yours by the very name you were baptized with; indeed, that name and forgiveness that have been yours ever since!

I thank you Lord for choosing Paul to receive such abundant mercy. Through him you have shown that your forgiveness is greater than our sin. I thank you for choosing to forgive me too. And I thank you that my baptism has to shared this wonderful grace with me and all the saints. Let all of us who are baptized believe that your mercy is as real as the water of baptism. Amen.

This post is a part of my daily Lenten devotional on Baptism. You can read more about it here.