Sellers’s Baptismology, Part 3: Him, with Whom I Am Identified, I Confess

Otis Q. Sellers’s house in Fort Thomas, Newport, Kentucky 11.12.1928

For most Christians, baptism’s the ceremony performed in their churches, one involving being dipped into or sprinkled with water. That, however, puts a ritual on par with believing in Jesus Christ. This implication bothered Otis Q. Sellers, who claimed to be complete in Christ (Colossians 2:10) and therefore not in need of a water ceremony. He understood Mark 16:16 to mean “He that believeth and is identified shall be saved.” The Lord then said:

And these signs shall follow them that believe; in My name shall they cast our devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover (Mark 16:17-18).

These abilities were the result of being identified with Jesus in the Acts period, not of the ritual that may or may not accompany the identification. During the divine administration which the book of Acts chronicles, a believer was required to personally and publicly identify with Jesus.

Since God-commissioned men were speaking divinely inspired messages and their words were confirmed by signs following, those who heard and believed were expected to make it public. So, men believed, they identified themselves with Jesus Christ, and God identified Himself with them by causing certain signs to follow those that believed.

These signs came to an end with the dispensational change that Paul announced at Acts 28:28, but the divine imperative to identify has not changed. Today it is needed, not in order to be saved, but to develop the new life in Christ Jesus.

We’re familiar with this KJV translation of Matthew 10:32: “Whosoever therefore shall confess (ὁμολογήσει, homologēsei) Me before men, him will I confess also before My Father which is in heaven.” As the Lutheran commentator R. C. H. Lenski paraphrased it: “Whoever thus confesses and identifies Himself with Christ, with him Christ will identify Himself, him Christ will confess.” Lenski rendered it that way, Sellers surmised, because “confess” doesn’t do justice to homologeo (ὁμολογέω) which literally

. . . means “to say the same thing as another” and it implies some sort of pressure that leads to so doing. Our word “avow” would be a much better rendering, since it implies an open or bold declaration, also assertion in the face of hostility.

Sellers discloses what this has meant for his Christian life:

I have earnestly sought to identify myself with the Lord Jesus Christ every time the opportunity has opened up to me. . . . [When asked] “What church do you belong to?” . . . and I have answered with the avowal: “I do not belong to any church. I am a believer in and a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, and my allegiance is to Him and not to any church.” . . . [M]any times I have gone through the process of the questioner trying to identify me with some denomination and I steadfastly refus[ed] to be identified with anything or anyone save the Lord Jesus Christ.

One can be identified with someone other than the Lord Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 10:2, Paul wrote that the Israelites who came out of Egypt were “baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” That is, as slaves they had been identified with Pharoah and Egypt, but are now severed from them by cloud and sea. “They are now identified with Moses. He will be their sovereign, their law giver, their judge.”

In 1 Peter 3:20-21 we’re told that Noah’s family of eight were brought through the flood by means of water, which is true to Genesis 6-8.

The very same water that brought death to the earth’s inhabitants became a means of deliverance as the ark was supported by the waters as it rode upon them. However, the real reason for the safekeeping of seven of these was their relationship to Noah . . . .

In Galatians 3:26-27 Paul declares:

For ye are all the sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

Not a word about water. Rather, “as many as are identified with Christ have put on Christ. This blessed state cannot be the result of one going out and finding someone who will dip him into water.”

John’s Gospel overflows with material on baptism as identification.[1] “The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men?” Jesus put this question to the chief priests and the scribes after they questioned His authority to teach (Luke 20:4). If they would answer Him, He’d tell them by what authority He taught.

But they evaded the force of His question. Were they to answer “from Heaven,” He would have asked them why they didn’t believe John; if they said “of men,” they could have sparked a riot, for most of those who heard John took him to be a prophet (Matthew 21:24-27). “We cannot tell,” was their lame answer.

By the word “Heaven” Jesus meant “God,” so if John’s baptism was from God, then it originated in God’s will. His authority to baptize was divine. But if it was human in origin, something John chose to practice, merely one of the “divers washings” (διαφόροις βαπτισμοῖς, diaphorois baptismois; Hebrews 9:10) that were practiced in Israel, then any Israelite could take it or leave.

To be continued.

NOTE

[1] “The Baptism of John,” Seed & Bread, No. 137, March 10, 1981.

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