Mission/Vision

KING’S CROSS CHURCH exists to glorify God and enlarge His Kingdom by gathering regularly to proclaim and celebrate the Gospel of Jesus Christ, yielding to the authority of God’s Word as illuminated by the Holy Spirit and summarized in the historic Christian Creeds and Reformed Confessions, partaking together of Christ’s presence in the Sacraments, providing opportunities to love and serve one another in Community, equipping the saints for Ministry to those who are lost and hurting, both locally and globally, and preparing them to cultivate Shalom (peace and well-being) wherever God calls them to serve.

Sunday, October 29, 2017

The Testimony of Baptism

(Mark 1:11) And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
(Matthew 3:17) and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Most Christians believe that there is a testimony in baptism. But not all agree on the source and the meaning of that testimony.

There is actually only one recorded testimony in the Bible associated with a baptism. We have two slightly different accounts of that one testimony given at Jesus’ baptism. And the Who, What and When of that testimony is jam-packed with glorious meaning and import.
Who: At Jesus’ baptism, it was not Jesus, but rather the Father who bore testimony as Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River.
What: In Mark’s account, the Father affirmed his love for, and relation to, Jesus. In Matthew’s account, the Father addressed those witnessing Jesus’ baptism and declared to them his love for, and relation to Jesus.
When: The Father’s testimony regarding his love for Jesus, and Jesus’ sonship, was given to Jesus, not after Jesus successfully completed his testing in the wilderness, but rather before he had done anything to prove himself, to merit the Father’s love, or earn the Father’s favor. As in all of Scripture, identity preceded duty; grace went before performance, and love ran before obligation.
And so, once again, as we put the water on little Blake and Faith this morning, God will thunder His glorious, “I love you, and you belong to me.”

And like Jesus, the forerunner of their salvation, the water and the testimony will be given to them before they have proved or deserved anything. And just like every other recipient of baptism, they will be responsible to believe and receive what God has declared to them: that He loves them and is pleased to receive them as His own. And then, resting on this declaration by faith, they are to make that glorious testimony, given to them in baptism and declared to them from God’s Word, the foundation and motivation for everything that they think, say and do in the temptations of their wildernesses and the trials that invariably accompany those who live in a fallen world.
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