Day 7 Wednesday - Mar 1, 2023; Feb 21, 2024; Mar 12, 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
Yesterday we looked at how in the book of Acts, no one delayed baptism. We see that again here. On Pentecost, when all these people gathered to see what was going on with these disciples on whom the Holy Spirit had been poured out, Peter stood up and explained it. He gave a sermon on how the pouring out of the Spirit just as Joel prophesied was yet the next proof that Jesus, whom the people had crucified, was in fact the Lord and Messiah. When the people heard it, “they were cut to the heart” (v37). They asked Peter what they should do. His reply? “Repent and be baptized…”
Now we can see that along with faith, there is another dance partner who loves to join with baptism at the gospel disco: repentance. Our catechism tells us that baptism “signifies that the old person in us with all sins and evil desires is to be drowned and die through daily sorrow for sin and through repentance”. Repeat that: daily sorrow for sin and repentance. Every day repentance wants to get on the dance floor and boogie with baptism’s promises.
Repentance is the act of turning away from something and back to God. Every day we can live out our baptism by repenting. How so? Well, every day that we repent we live into baptism’s promise of new life and forgiveness. Everything you need to repent God shares with you in baptism. Repentance is nothing less than to use what God has promised to those who are baptized. As Bo Giertz puts it, “Daily forgiveness and daily approach to God are just the application of baptismal grace, a daily use of the endowment we received in baptism.”
Lent is a season that can call our attention back to repentance. It is, therefore, a great season to learn how to live all the more into your baptism. As you spend more time in self examination, you are learning to take a deeper look into the ways you need baptism’s graces. As you give something up, you are learning the art of fasting - a practice that helps us learn we can let go of things to turn back to God. Sometimes the things we fast from are things we need to be rid of, and sometimes they are merely spiritual exercises along the way. As Lent takes you into repentance, incorporate what God has done for your repentance - and done all the way back at your baptism!
In short: if you want to get back to God, then start boogieing with baptism where Christ shows you all his gospel moves! Like a guided line dance, the baptismal boogie will always lead repentant hearts back to God.
Lord, I know I must repent. This much you have made clear in your Word. And I read in your Word today that in baptism you have given me your Holy Spirit and forgiveness in Christ. Let that promise be the foundation of my repentance this Lenten season, and may its graces always lead my repentance along the narrow way of Jesus Christ. Amen.
This post is a part of my daily Lenten devotional on Baptism. You can read more about it here.
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