He was thirty-one and the water was colder than anybody had said it would be.
There were about forty people on the sand, and his mother was there, and somebody had brought a guitar which nobody used in the end because it turned out nobody could hear it over the surf.
He went under and came up and he has never forgotten the noise of it. Not the crowd. The water in his ears and then not in his ears, which is a specific sound he could describe now, eight years later, better than he could describe most things.
The man who put him under has since fallen.
He is not going to say how, because it belongs to the people it happened to and not to a page, and it was not small, and there is no reading of it that leaves anything intact.
And a question has started arriving, and it arrives at about the same time every year, in the week when the water is that temperature.
Should he do it again.
Not because he doubts God. Not because anything about his own faith has moved, and it has not, and if anything the last three years have hardened it in the good sense.
It is that when he thinks about the day, he can only see the hands. That specific man's hands, on his back and behind his head, which is where a person's hands go, and that image now has everything else attached to it.
He has looked it up. He knows what people say about it and he knows the arguments and he finds them entirely convincing and completely useless at four in the afternoon on the anniversary.
He has told two people. Both of them said, gently, that he does not need to. Both of them were right, and neither of them touched it.
And you have a day like that. Something that happened once, that should be settled, that has somebody's hands in the picture, and you have started quietly wondering whether it needs doing again properly.
He was glad he had baptized almost nobody
There is a passage at the start of First Corinthians that reads oddly until you see what Paul is guarding against, and once you see it, it is exactly your question.
The church has split into groups named after people. Paul answers it by going through who he personally baptized, and he can barely remember, and he says he is glad about that.
so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name.1 Corinthians 1:15
That is the fear he names. Not that people would be badly baptized. That somebody, somewhere, would attach their baptism to the man who did it.
He is so serious about it that he says Christ did not send him to baptize but to preach the gospel, which is a startling sentence from an apostle and is in the text.
You were not baptized into anybody's name, and Scripture went out of its way to make sure that could never be said about anybody. It is written that no one may say that you were baptized in my name (1 Corinthians 1:15), and it is the Holy Spirit who preserved a passage that specific so that a man on a beach eight years later would have somewhere to stand.
Now the hands, because that is the actual content of your problem.
You can only see the hands. That is not a theological difficulty and no argument is going to reach it, which is why the ones you looked up were convincing and useless at the same time.
What you have is a picture, and a picture is not adjudicated by reasoning. It is a memory with a person in it, and the person has been recategorized, and everything in the frame got recategorized with them.
You are dealing with a picture rather than a doubt, and it is worth knowing which one you are actually holding. Scripture says we do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day (2 Corinthians 4:16), and it is the Holy Spirit who does that renewing, which reaches pictures in a way that argument does not.
And the other thing in the frame, which you have not looked at in three years.
Your mother was on that sand. Forty people were on that sand. A guitar was brought and never used because of the surf. The water was colder than anybody had said.
The man's hands are in the picture for about four seconds of an afternoon that lasted most of a day.
You have a whole day in that memory and one man is in four seconds of it. It is written that the Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear (Psalm 27:1), and it is His Spirit who can widen a frame that has narrowed down onto one pair of hands, which is what fear does to a memory and what He undoes.
And the question itself, which deserves a plain answer rather than a gentle one.
Nobody on this page is going to tell you what to do about the water, because that is between you and God and the people who actually know you, and a page that starts issuing directions about a man's baptism has overreached badly.
What can be said is what the day was. You went under and came up, in the ocean, in front of forty people, having decided to follow Christ. The thing that happened there was between you and God, and the man in the water was a set of hands God used, exactly as He has used every set of hands ever employed in that work.
You went under in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and that is whose name it was. It is written that Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel (1 Corinthians 1:17), which is Paul making sure nobody could ever locate the weight in the person doing it, and it is the Holy Spirit who has been the one carrying that weight since.
So next time the anniversary comes round, go and stand in the water.
Not to do anything. Just stand in it, up to about your knees, in the week when it is that temperature, and let the picture be as wide as the day actually was.
Because what happened when you were thirty-one is that a man went under in the ocean in front of his mother and forty other people and came up, and the water in his ears stopped being in his ears, and God received it.
The hands were used. They were not the thing.
You were received by God on that afternoon and nothing that has come out since has reached back into that water. It is written that no one may say that you were baptized in my name (1 Corinthians 1:15), and it is the Holy Spirit who has been the seal on you since (Ephesians 1:13), which is a work of His that no man's fall has ever been able to break.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud on the sand, or standing in the shallows, or in the kitchen on the anniversary. You have the right to speak them because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that standing was given to you rather than earned by being baptized by the right man. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is what makes them live in a person. Speak first to the question, then to the picture that has narrowed onto one pair of hands, then turn and speak to Him. However He answers about anything else, He answers in His own way.
- Question about doing it again, you are a doubt and you are not a defect in that day. The Word made sure nobody could ever say they were baptized in a man's name, so you have nothing in that water to stand on.
- Picture that has shrunk a whole afternoon down to four seconds of somebody's hands, you are widened in the name of Jesus. It is written that our inner self is being renewed day by day, and the Spirit does that renewing, and my mother was on that sand and so were forty other people.
- Lord, I went under and came up in Your name and You received it, and nothing that has come out since has reached back into that ocean. I am standing in the water on the anniversary, and the sealing of me was Yours from the first minute.
1 Corinthians 1:15
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