Baptism: Ignorance and Ignorance
Must I have all the answers?
One
of my weaknesses in earlier years as a Christian and as a student of
scripture was that I felt I had to have all the answers to all the
dilemmas. Take the case of those who truly have never heard the gospel
of Christ but who live exemplary lives and walk well in the best light
they have. What about them? I’m not interested at this point in
developing my view on that question (that’ll keep for another time if it
suits God) but it does generate serious and complex questions. What am I
to say about them? That’s a good question and needs addressed but
there’s a more pressing question I think: what is that to me since I
have heard? The ignorance of those people makes not an ounce of
difference to my case because I have heard the voice of God in the
gospel of Christ and the ignorance of some lovely Christ-believers about
baptism is nothing to me for I have heard the voice of God in
scripture.
There is ignorance that is culpable
All
ignorance is not the same ignorance. Not only are there differing
degrees of ignorance there are differing kinds of ignorance. If the head
of a nation or a corporation were to order her subordinates to do
something they all know is dishonourable we would judge her
dishonourable. And if she claimed she knew nothing about the deed
because, in fact, she had given her subordinates express instructions to
tell her nothing about it being carried out we would still think her
dishonourable. In truth, in such a case we would judge her behaviour
more dishonourable because she was sly in her dishonour. If she was
brought in front of a tribunal it might be the case that she is telling
the truth when she says she has no knowledge of a specific act or
transaction within the overall enterprise. We would judge that ignorance
culpable. She is in the dark because she wanted and even ordered the
darkness and we would hold her responsible for her ignorance. The above
is relatively simple and uncontroversial. Other questions would be
generated by the situation I’ve imagined but we’d have no trouble in
finding the claim of “ignorance” to be inexcusable.
There is ignorance that is not culpable
Then
there is ignorance that is the sheer lack of knowledge. A mother feeds
her child poisoned food that she bought in her usual shop and is
inconsolable when the doctors can do nothing and the child dies. An
appropriate person tells a man with critically important documents that
they are to be delivered to a certain place at a certain time. It turns
out to be the wrong place and the wrong time and an important business
contract is lost. Rather than feel ill toward this mother or this
messenger we feel sadness because their ignorance was not the result of
negligence or carelessness. In fact, in these cases they both trusted
appropriate people. They did not know the truth and they did not know that they did not know the truth. If these illustrations don’t suit you it won’t be difficult for you to set up your own true-to-life cases.
There is ignorance that makes us scratch our head
In
between these two extremes there is ignorance that we have qualms
about. There’s a wife that has some reason to think her husband’s
business dealings are crooked but she doesn’t want to know any more in
case she discovers her uneasiness is well grounded. There's the case
where a man is conned by shrewd talkers into investing his money and
losing every penny. When he tells his story we are filled with sympathy
but then someone points out that he was driven by greed to the point
where he ignored the obvious risks and we now wonder. Then
there’s the man who needs immediate First Aid and dies because the
people around him are ignorant as to how to help. These people could
have at some point taken the many free courses on First Aid that they
knew were offered but for one reason or another they just didn’t want
to. Someone slays himself and his friend laments, “It’s all so obvious
now. I just didn’t recognize the signals he was sending out.” Instead of
gluing himself to the television and re-runs he could have read up on
counseling skills. But where would this all end? Must we become walking encyclopedias in every area? Surely not, but is there the other extreme, where because we are lazy and self-serving
we spurn easily available knowledge that would enable us to help those
in need? Again, if these illustrations don’t make my point you make it
for me by setting up situations that are true to life.
If an angel came
Truth
remains true even if I am ignorant of it. Truth remains true even if
for some good reason I am not held responsible for my ignorance of it.
The food was poisoned even though the mother was completely ignorant of
it. The signal light was faulty though there was no way for the
train-driver to know it.
Even if a truth-telling angel came from God to say that under certain circumstances God would tolerate ignorance about the gospel or about the virgin birth or bodily resurrection or atoning death of Christ, how would that alter the gospel? Not an ounce!
And
what would we who have been privileged to know the truth on these
matters be required to believe? And to preach? And to live out? In our
anxiety to allow for the ignorance of some people we’re saying silly
things. Instead of doing that let God handle the ignorance question!
It's not for us to settle all the arguments. Our business is to thank
God for truth revealed and live it out in life and proclamation to all
we come into contact with.
And listen, the cure for their ignorance (or ours) is not a gutless silence, or any other kind of silence!
Ignorance and God’s mercy
There’s
a Jew in Alexandria, in Egypt, who has loved the Lord with a trusting
heart from his childhood. He's a humble and kind man whose service to
God fills him with joy but in the past five years he has been severely
disabled due to an accident. He doesn’t get to Jerusalem now and he
misses it terribly; but he loves the Lord and he is saved by faith.
There’s nothing at all controversial about any of that.
In
Jerusalem it’s around 9 a.m. on Pentecost morning and while our
Alexandrian believer sits prayerful and thinking, hundreds of miles away
Peter is proclaiming the truth about Jesus Christ to over three
thousand Jews. Peter is now saying, “Therefore, let all the house of
Israel know with assurance that God has made this same Jesus, the one
you crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36) and our North African
Jew is blissfully ignorant. A multitude of his fellow-Jews, convicted of
sin cry out, “Men and brethren what shall we do?” and Peter tells them
to repent and be baptized in the name of that Jesus for the remission of
their sins. And more than three thousand men and women eagerly do it.
Our Jew in Alexandria is oblivious to it all and is quietly praising the
name of the God of his fathers. What is his state before God now?
A
little before nine, Jerusalem time, he was right with God. What
happened to his relationship with God when Peter proclaimed the
forgiveness of sins and the reception of the Holy Spirit through
repentance and baptism in the name of the now glorified Christ? It’s 10
a.m. and is he now lost? Peter preached the gospel and a saved man
automatically became lost? Whatever we say we believe, for fear
of opening doors that should be kept closed, we know in our bones that
our friend can’t be doomed. It’s true he hasn’t yet trusted in Christ
and so been baptized and taken on the name of Jesus Christ. But his
ignorance isn’t chosen and his heart has embraced and loved the truth he
knows of God and he is a saved man. (And although he isn’t aware of it
he is saved by the grace Yahweh has extended to him in Jesus Christ.)
Now,
looked what has happened here. I sketched an imaginary situation and
immediately questions are generated because the situation is complex.
But what difference does it make to the people in Jerusalem under
Peter’s preaching? What difference does the disabled Alexandrian’s
ignorance make to the Jerusalem multitude? No one in the three thousand
plus (Acts 2:41) jumped up and asked, “So what does this mean for my
sick parents who couldn’t make it here today to hear this?” It’s only
modern people that raise such questions. Peter must have known there
were absent God-loving Jews but what had that to do with his
Spirit-inspired message?
To claim that genuinely ignorant and
godly people are exempt from having to believe or be baptized into
Christ because they don’t know they’re called to and therefore
can’t—that’s one thing. To shape our message so as to keep them ignorant
or to shape our message to excuse those who know but won’t humbly
submit to God in the matter is something else. Those people that reject
God’s call are in trouble and those who help them to continue their
refusal are in trouble as well (compare Matthew 5:19 and Luke 7:29-30).
It
doesn’t matter how popular or eloquent the preacher or how thriving the
church that does it, don’t permit anyone to keep you from submitting
your heart and mind to Christ in this matter. Think noble things of God
because he will work out the whole matter of "what if?" You know you can
trust him to do that, don’t you? Well, commit yourself in trust to him
and if you haven’t already done so, have yourself baptized into the
Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as he and his apostolic servants
have called us to do.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, theabidingword.com.