When someone that I know is baptized into the body of Christ, usually (but not always) as a young adult, it is customary for me to give them a warm embrace and tell them, “Welcome to the family.” Of course, the family I am referring to here is the family of God, filled with the younger brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ and the children of the Most High who are having their impurities removed in the refiner’s fire and being recast and remade in the image and likeness of our heavenly Father Himself. Quite often, hearing about or witnessing the baptism of such friends and acquaintances and brethren reminds me often of the process of my own baptism.

I began baptism counseling at the age of seventeen while I was still a senior in high school and shortly before I moved out to Southern California. My local church pastor at the time was definitely not a man who relished baptizing younger people, and he wanted to know if I was serious about the commitment of baptism. Whatever my quirks and foibles, and there are many of them, I have in general been a very serious person, and I was no less serious here. As my introductory assignment after our lengthy initial baptism counseling session, I was assigned to read and complete the lengthy correspondence course from Worldwide Church of God days (I believe the particular version I looked at was about eight years older than I was, having been made in the early 1970’s and being of considerable length) as well as the old booklet “The Plain Truth About Water Baptism.” These I did without any great difficulty, as even at that young age I was sufficiently alert and aware and knowledgeable about my beliefs that knowledge was not really the question at hand.

When I moved to college in Los Angeles, about 3000 miles away from home, on the other side of the country from where I grew up, my commitment to baptism only increased. The reasons for this are fairly straightforward but worthy of comment. For one, whatever lingering doubts I had about my own personal commitment to the biblical way of life were eradicated when I followed the same path far away from parental supervision as I did when I was at home. Since my walk with God was not dependent on parental supervision and authority but had rather been internalized, I knew that there was no question about my beliefs being a matter of coercion but rather they were a matter of my own personal commitment. It was pleasing, in a way, to know this at the very dawn of my adulthood. Additionally, the obvious moral corruption and decay all around me, and my knowledge of my own vulnerabilities (including, it must be noted, a rather precocious awareness of my vulnerability to alcohol), convinced me that I needed the presence and assistance of God within my life if I was to survive my time in Los Angeles at least somewhat unscathed and without becoming entirely corrupted myself. Both my increased urgency as well as my confidence that I had chosen this way of life for myself led me to continue my baptism counseling as a college freshman and to be baptized on February 26, 2000.

My baptism experience, as might be imagined, was a somewhat atypical one. The church building where the Eagle Rock congregation of my particular church meets has within it a baptismal font that acts somewhat like a hot tub, and the day of my baptism (which was a weekly Sabbath) I brought a change of clothes that was water-appropriate, so that after services were over I could discreetly change and make my public commitment to God’s ways. I don’t know how long I was under the water, but it seemed like quite a while as I reflected upon the death of the “old man” under that water and the commitment to a new life, and the forgiveness of sin and the release from burdens, all of which have been rather serious concerns of mine from the earliest youth. What was striking to me, though, was that after being under the water I was unable to get a footing on the floor of the baptismal font to get up from the water, and I had to be dragged up out of the water so that my symbolic death did not become a literal one. I have long remembered, and pondered over the meaning, of that particular aspect of my baptism experience, as unusual as it is.

When one examines the baptism accounts told rather laconically in the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, and epistles of Paul, this aspect of baptism as being a welcoming of people (whether individually or by household) into the Family of God is very clear. The baptism of John, for example, included the baptism of such outcasts as the poor people of the land, tax collectors, and Roman soldiers, all of whom were despised by the religious elites of their time, all of whom were baptized with practical advice on how to live their lives even as their baptism symbolized their commitment to God’s way and their identity as part of His people (see Luke 3:7-14). Similarly, the large mass baptisms at the beginning of Acts deal with both the repentance of those people over their sins and the recognition that their calling is not only for themselves but also for their children and those who are afar off whom God would call and who would have to choose for themselves to follow upon receiving that call (see Acts 2: 37-39). This calling included such unlikely people as a God-fearing Italian centurion named Cornelius (Acts 10), a Nubian eunuch and the hated Samaritans (Acts 8), a wealthy female merchant from Thyatira of the Tyrian purple dye made from unclean mollusks as well as a jailer who himself only hours before had beaten Paul with stripes for his preaching the way of God on the order of the city magistrates. All of these people, and generally their households, were baptized whole into the family of God.

It is the baptism of households that I find rather striking as well. There are basically two ways that someone was baptized into the Family of God. Women, slaves, and young people who converted to God’s way on their own while still under the authority of others did so as individuals, and received much of the advice in the various “household codes” concerning their ultimate obligation to God but also their earthly obligations to respect the human authorities in their lives as a testimony of their faith and not as an excuse for rebelliousness. It was, of course, the motive of the apostles to avoid having dishonor brought on the name of God through the unrighteous and ungodly behavior of converts. However, besides this form of individual baptism that remains common for us, there was also another form of baptism that is far more rare, but that is discussed several times (Acts 10:44-48, 16:15, 25-34, and so on). This type of baptism is a baptism by household, where the belief of the pater familias (or, in the case of Lydia the merchant, the mater familias) led the entire household under his (or her) jurisdiction to be baptized as well as being called through the conversion of the leader of the family and under the jurisdiction of God’s laws as a result of that conversion.

Even in our present day and age families tend to take a certain amount of responsibility for those who are a part of their extended household. Last night, for example, as I was eating dinner with my customary group (two deacons and deaconesses in our local congregation) and one of the deacons made a half-joke (or perhaps not even a joke at all) about feeling responsible for helping four men find wives. Being somewhat curious about this, I asked him which four men he had in mind, and he said William, Sean, Chris, and myself (three of whom are his sons, as opposed to the William who is his grandson and is young enough not to be bothered about such things yet). I was intrigued and amused by his placing me within his household for the purposes of that unpleasant responsibility, though I don’t know what sort of action he had in mind about helping along that desired end. It felt gratifying, but also a little odd, to be thought of as a member of that family for that particular purpose, given the complexities of my own life situation.

Nevertheless, for those of us who are wanderers and vagabonds on the face of this earth, it is a matter of great personal importance to feel the love and belonging that comes from a nurturing family. There are certainly many people on the earth who take this sort of nurturing for granted, but there are all too many people, sadly, who have an unquenchable and unsatisfied longing for this care as well. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why God has long made it His effort to call the vagabonds, the slaves, the weak and base things, those who are despised and mistreated and abused and exploited of the world into His family. For who better to help the world heal from its own brokenness and the self-inflicted wounds of thousands of years of sin and folly than those who have borne its burden the heaviest, and whose heart is overflowing with compassion and empathy and concern for others who suffer likewise, so that they too may welcome others into God’s family with open arms and tender hearts.