We want to delve a little deeper into the idea that baptism is an outward seal that the recipient has been set apart from this world, and set apart to the Lord.
We live in a day and age that trumpets freedom as an ultimate prize to be obtained at all costs and held onto with every fiber that we possess. People want to be free. They believe, perhaps, in government of the people, by the people and for the people or some such philosophy. They do not believe that they should, or that they do, belong to anyone. They are independent, masters of their destiny, captains of their fate. Their hearts resonate, perhaps, with the sentiment expressed in the lines of the poem, Invictus (by William Ernest Henley), that was so important to Nelson Mandela during his long years of imprisonment on Robin Island:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
This may seem like a strange way to begin a reflection on the subject of baptism, but it really isn't. Baptism as a seal of ownership serves to remind us how wrong the view of the world (that sometimes seeps into the church) actually is. Baptism marks out the recipient as God's property. Baptism confirms what Paul says to the Corinthians in our text above - that believers in the Lord Jesus do not belong to themselves but rather have been purchased in order to belong to God.
The stark reality is that we are all born into this world belonging to Satan and slaves of sin. While the all too common notions of "freedom" may apply in a secular society, they find no support when we turn to examine the spiritual realm. Our souls were never free - thanks to Adam they were in bondage to sin from our conception.
God gives us another picture in the Bible to help us understand this - that of adoption. We are born into this world with Satan as our father, children of wrath (see John 8:44, Ephesians 2:3). When we put our faith in Christ alone to save us, we have a change of family, being adopted out of Satan's family and into the family of God, with God Himself as our Father and Jesus as our elder brother by adoption (Romans 8:29, Ephesians 1:5).
Baptism, then, outwardly confirms those things that are promised to true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ; he or she is owned by God and has Him as his or her Father. It seals the promise that a believer is redeemed - set free from sin and Satan to be a bond-slave of God, which is true liberty of the soul. This is the highest privilege imaginable!
The question for us to answer, whether we have been baptized or not, is whether we have believed savingly in Christ, so that we are truly in possession of the things promised and sealed in baptism.