The Necessity of Baptism
March 1, 2026 • The Second Sunday in Lent • Year A
Genesis 12:1-4a • Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 • John 3:1-17 • Psalm 121
I was saved on October 24, 1993.
I remember that day well. Everyone was there: two of my three living grandparents, all my aunts and uncles, my one and only first cousin, and many more members of my extended family and family friends. Not only that, but there was an entire church community present too, many of whom I’m still in touch with today. All of those people witnessed and participated as I was born again by water and the Holy Spirit—as I undertook what we call the Sacrament of Baptism.
I have a few mementos of that day: a handful of photographs, a certificate, a candle, and a service bulletin. But I don’t have any memories of my own. I was less than three months old when my parents and godparents made the promises of baptism on my behalf, knitting me into the Body of Christ and committing me to God’s love and care through the guidance of the Holy Spirit as I grew into the full stature of Christ.
That’s a powerful event for a three-month-old to experience, yet it’s a regular practice for us here at St. Paul’s. Some might argue that children are too young to understand what’s happening in baptism. Nicodemus, in our gospel reading today, might help us realize that adults, even theological experts, may also be too young to understand it.
Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Depending on the translation you read, you might see “born again.” It’s sort of a pun, which Nicodemus misunderstands. Jesus isn’t referring to a second, physical birth. Rather, this second birth is spiritual: “from above.” The new birth which he proclaims takes place on a different plane, by a different medium.
And indeed, “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” Perhaps Jesus is thinking back to his own baptism, where he descended into the River Jordan and as he came up, the very Spirit of God opened the heavens and proclaimed him the Son, the Beloved. But here Jesus suggests that that same experience is possible for each of us. When we descended and ascended from the baptismal waters, having been reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, we too were proclaimed as children of God, and anointed as members of Christ’s royal priesthood.
Jesus goes on to say that “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” At baptism, we don’t become purely spiritual beings. We are still born of flesh, still subject to its limitations. The words of Job [xiv.1-2] are still true: “Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.” But being born of flesh means that we also inhabit this created realm that God called “very good,” and the same world that God reënters in a new way in the Incarnation—the person of Jesus.
What we gain in baptism, then, is not a complete rejection of our enfleshed nature, but a clothing with the new life of the Spirit. What is born of the Spirit is spirit, and that includes all of us who have entered the baptismal waters. It is through those waters—and only through them—that we obtain the promises of Christ, that all who look to him will be saved.
What does it mean to be saved? It depends who you ask, I suppose. In his conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus equates salvation with dwelling in the kingdom of God. To be saved implies being saved from something, but that seems secondary in this passage. One reason it might be unspoken is that it can be readily observed. Nicodemus and Jesus are having their conversation in an unjust and difficult world, one where military occupation and government-sponsored persecution were regular facts of life. Jesus himself will be the victim of the structures of society when he is unjustly condemned and put to death. A world in which this sort of cruelty is not only a possibility, but a reality, is not a world in which we ought to put our final trust. Pharisee and publican alike believed and hoped for a new reality, and I think we do too.
But Jesus offers a response to this desire, not simply a verbal response but a deeper and eternal reality. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
God saves us, regardless of the condemnation we deserve but because of his infinite love. Even in Lent, when we turn to self-examination and repentance; prayer, fasting, and self-denial, we do these things not out of a sense of God’s condemnation of us but so that we can better accept his love.
We admit that by our fleshly nature, we are destined for death and decay, just as everything else in this world is. We recognize that by our human tendency towards sin, we face an uphill battle in staying close to God. We accept that by our mortality, we are subject to weakness, fear, temptation—all those things that hold us back from enjoying the fullness of life God intends for us.
But in baptism, when we are reborn, born from above, born again in the Holy Spirit, we begin to anticipate that deeper reality of eternal life that awaits us. Because we are justified by faith, St. Paul says, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” [Rom. v.1]. That peace, that assurance of our standing with God, allows us to do powerful things, though we are still in the flesh.
But we don’t do any of those things alone. There’s a reason so many of my family made the trip to be present at my baptism. There’s a reason baptism requires another person to administer the water and the Trinitarian formula. There’s a reason we usually only perform baptisms on the great feast of the church. Baptism is a corporate activity—one that we undertake as the entire Church. And the Church needs us—each one of us—to dwell together, to pray and study together, to disagree together, to eat and drink together, to be together. It’s in that togetherness that the Church begins to look like the kingdom of God—the very realm that we are promised.
When we walk together as those reborn of water and the Spirit, our lives are transformed. And not just our own lives but the life of the world around us. When we live fully into our vocation as baptized people, we live into the grace given to us—not from man, but from God—to resist sin, to work for justice and peace, to proclaim Christ’s death until he comes.
That’s what it means to be born of water and the Spirit. That’s what it means to be knit together in the mystical body of Christ. That’s what it means to be saved.
~The Rev. Charles Martin
