December 29, 2007...5:09 pm
What Was in The Cup? (Part III)
Luke 12:50
But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed!
We have seen that the contents of the cup that Christ drank from was that of God’s justice and wrath. Through the previous word study, it was also demonstrated the imagery of a cup has strong parallels with God’s judgment and wrath being both poured out upon and consumed by those without Christ.
In addition to the symbol of a cup, the water aspect of baptism is used to symbolize judgment being poured out.
Again, the answer as to how God saves sinners has always been by pouring out His wrath on a substitute instead of the sinner. The Bible is full of types, shadows, and symbols where the substitute at one time was a bull, goat, or other animals. They themselves did not merit any efficacy (Heb. 10:4), but merely pointed forward to what Christ would do. So both the substance and the reality belong to Christ (Col. 2:16-17).
The passage from Luke 12 again shows an instance where Christ is distressed about the baptism that He is to undergo. He was distressed contemplating drinking the cup as well as under going this baptism.
What I would like to do is shortly show two instances from Scripture where this image of baptism is used to demonstrate both justice and grace, justice in the sense that God’s justice is being satisfied, and grace in the sense that through God’s justice having been borne upon Christ we find grace and forgiveness.
1) 1 Peter 3:18-21
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ…
For the sake of brevity, I want to focus in on the phrase: In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism.
God’s judgment had come to fruition because mankind was overly ripe with wickedness and radically corrupted in every aspect, intention, and situation (Genesis 6:5). So God used the flood waters as a vessel of His judgment upon mankind. However, God’s grace found Noah, and Noah and his family were saved through water. But why does the passage say that they were saved through water? In this example, the water symbolized both justice and grace.
The reason why Noah and his family were saved is due to the fact that they were in it [the ark]. The ark is a symbol of Christ. Those that are in Christ, are in the ark. While the waters of judgment fall upon everyone outside the ark and upon the ark itself, everyone who is found to be inside the ark is saved. Here again is the glorious marriage of justice and grace. The waters in one sense fell down in judgment but in another sense, consider how much greater the waters came down in a flood of inexorable grace!
2) 1 Corinthians 10:1-2
For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.
This passage in 1 Corinthians 10 points back to the Exodus of the Israelites where they are led out by Moses from the enslaving captivity of the Egyptians. The Red sea was parted and the Israelites passed through the sea unharmed. What is interesting in this passage is the phrase They were all baptized into Moses.
But the question that we need to ask is, who got wet, the Israelites or the Egyptians? Again, we the see intermingling of justice and grace. The waters of the Red sea were a vessel of judgment used upon the Egyptians while the Israelites were saved through the water. The person of Moses is another typological occurrence that pictures Christ leading His people out of the captivity of sin and death into the newness of life both found in and given through Christ. In what sense were they baptized into Moses?
They were identified with Moses and brought into covenant with God.
In conclusion, if we identify ourselves with Christ, we find the outpouring of grace from Him. God gave Christ the justice that was due to us and gave us the grace that we would and could never merit nor deserve.
Will you be found to be in the ark or outside the ark? Will the judgment have fallen upon Christ or will it fall upon you? Embrace Christ lest you undergo a baptism that will never cease to be poured out and drink from a cup that will never run dry.
For we know Him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge His people.” It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb. 10:30-31).
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