Confessing Evangelical

Was reading Jonah 2 this morning, for the first time since becoming a Lutheran. This was always a favourite passage of mine when I was a Calvinist, because of the ringing statement at the end of verse 9, "Salvation belongs to the LORD!" (described by Spurgeon as "an epitome of Calvinism; it is the sum and substance of it. If anyone should ask me what I mean by a Calvinist, I should reply, 'He is one who says, Salvation is of the Lord.'")

But reading this morning, I realised that by zeroing in on this (admittedly wonderful) statement in v.9, I'd missed the baptismal undertones in the rest of the passage:

The waters closed in over me to take my life;
    the deep surrounded me...

Jonah loses his life when hurled into the sea, but is then brought through death to new life by the grace of God:

I went down to the land
    whose bars closed upon me forever;
yet you brought up my life from the pit,
    O LORD my God.

In response to this, he is freed to live in new obedience to God, bringing forth the fruit of good works:

But I with the voice of thanksgiving
    will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.

It is only in the light of all this - this baptismal dying to sin and rising to new life - that Jonah can declare that:

Salvation belongs to the LORD!

It's not that Jonah is perfect after this - you only need to read chapter 3 to see Jonah's "old Adam" reasserting himself - but his "baptism" is the turning point of his life. Jonah may be one of the great biblical embodiments of simil iustus et peccator - at the same time both justified and sinful - but let's not miss the fact that he is indeed iustus; and equally, let's not miss the baptismal nature of his transformation.

So too for us. As St Paul writes:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

And as Martin Luther expresses it in the Small Catechism:

What does such baptizing with water indicate?

It indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.