Day 17 Monday - Mar 13, 2023; Mar 4, 2024; Mar 24, 2025
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. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. -Acts 2:38-39
Every now and then we can catch an important detail in the grammar one uses. A person for example who only speaks of a loved one in the past tense may be indicating that this person they are speaking of has died. There is a grammatical piece to notice about baptism too: you always receive it passively. Biblically, you don’t go baptize yourself. Instead, you get baptized.
Even here, when the men of Jerusalem ask the Apostles “what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37) Peter replies “Repent and be baptized…” Your part in baptism is always to receive it. This should even tell us how repentance, though something we do, is more something we participate in. The most fundamental characteristic of true repentance is not your sorrow for sin or intent to improve, but faith in God’s forgiving and sanctifying grace in Jesus Christ. Faith is passive, like in baptism itself, God is the chief actor and we are the recipients of his work. When there is a baptism God baptizes while we are baptized. When we repent, God is forgiving while we are forgiven.
Because these things happen in our life - the change of repentance, the act of baptism - it can be easy to forget that we are not the ones making them effective. We are rather the ones they are affecting.
All glory belongs to you, O God, in all things. Already at my baptism you were handling everything. Help me to trust you to the very end, and when I want to control more or struggle with the things in life I cannot control, grant me faith enough to let you do your work on me still. Amen.
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