We do not commonly use seals these days (at least outside the legal profession and certain hobbies, and, even then, they are still rare), and so it is worth mentioning what a seal actually is. The word used here in the Greek is σφραγις — a combination of sounds that is not particularly pleasing to the English ear, but the Greeks are another people, and other peoples are, indeed, other, and have different sensibilities. At any rate, a σφραγις (I will go back to calling it a seal) has two core meanings: first, the instrument (often a ring) used to make a seal and, second, the seal itself. Figuratively, then, it may be anything that confirms or authenticates. When a man seals something, he is affirming that the contents are as he intends or he is asserting ownership. Such seals are still used by some of us who write physical letters.

Now, some may immediately think of the opening of Romans (among other parts of Scripture): Παυλος δουλος Χριστου Ιησου — Paul, a servant (or slave) of Christ Jesus. This is a good instinct, but there is a nuance here that must be highlighted: Letters, for examples, are sealed — σφραγιζω, σφραγις; slaves, for example, are branded — στιγματιζω, στιγμα. Yes, Galatians 6:17: εγο γαρ τα στιγματατου Ιησου — ”From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.“ —, but that is a topic of another time. The two — the seal and the brand — are related. We are, of course, slaves of God, for that is one of the senses of δουλος, but we are certainly more than that, for we are called sons (and daughters) of God, and so Revelation speaks of the mark on the forehead (a place where one might brand, for example, a runaway slave — a fugitivus [from which we get “fugitive”]) not as brand, but as seal. But what is this seal?

We know that a seal is a mark of ownership (this is obvious enough from the passage even without knowing anything of etymology, et cetera), and so the question is: When does God mark us as one claimed by Him in Christ? Again, the passage itself gives us (most of) the answer: “I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.“ There is only one ceremonial washing in which all Christians participate: Holy Baptism. Those who deny that Baptism is a Sacrament will simply prove incapable of exegeting this passage. The seal is placed by God, not by men. Now, some will try to contend that faith itself is the seal, but faith is the thing sealed, not the seal, for it is faith that distinguishes you as one claimed by Christ, and Baptism is the seal of that faith. It is in the waters of Baptism that you are washed in the blood of the Lamb and your dirty, sin-stained rags are transformed into white robes. Never let anyone — be it by foolishness or by malice — rob you of the truth of what Baptism is and what Baptism does: In your Baptism, God reached down from Heaven and sealed you as His child, redeemed and washed clean. There are those who will grasp at the fact that a minister did the actual sprinkling, pouring, immersing, or submersing, and say that that man baptized you and not God. Granted, the hands of a man poured the water over you or immersed you into the water. What of it? Who seals the saints in our passage from Revelation? Angels, acting on behalf and at the command of God. Would anyone deny that these saints are sealed by God Himself? Certainly no Christian would deny it. The same for Holy Baptism. What the hands of the agent do at the command of the principal is done by the hands of the principal himself. Your pastor or your father did not baptize you — God did. The same as I can say: Your sins are forgiven. In fact, I can — and certainly would — go beyond this privately. In private, I can very well say: Ego te absolvo. — I absolve you, I forgive your sins. To be absolutely clear: I am not doing so here and I will never do so publicly, for I hold to Article XIV: Niemand in der Kirche öffentlich lehren oder predigen oder Sakramente reichen soll ohne ordentlichen Beruf. — No one should publicly in the Church teach or preach or administer the Sacraments without a rightly ordered call. I am not a pastor, and, absent a rather large fish (or whatever the Appalachian equivalent is — I assume Bigfoot), I never will be one. It is your pastor’s duty to absolve you in the gathered congregation, and when he does so he speaks with the voice of God. Similarly, the man who baptized you did so with and as God’s hands.

What then of those who are never baptized? First, I must address the spirit that all too often underlies such questions. When God gives a command, it is a sinful impulse to look for exceptions. God commands us to baptize all nations (yes, including the infants — hence all), and He commands you to be baptized. Second, I will address the actual question: Is Baptism absolutely necessary to or for salvation? I am tempted to give the default attorney response: “It depends.”, but I find this one better and more accurate: “Yes, but no, but yes.” I will explain.

Yes, it is necessary to be baptized to be saved: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.” (Mark 16:16). No, it is not absolutely necessary to be baptized to be saved — Baptism is one Means of Grace and edge cases do exist (I will not insult your intelligence by commenting on the thief on the cross). Yes, you must not denigrate the Sacrament of Baptism or refuse to be baptized to be saved — denigration and rejection of Baptism are both signs of apostasy and apostasy damns. So, yes, Baptism is a necessary part of the Christian life, but it is not absolutely necessary to be baptized to be saved, but only in the sense that there exist edge-case exceptions. Perhaps similarly, there are cases in which a poison may be prescribed as part of a specific medical treatment, but that fact does not mean you should consider the poison generally good.

We can hardly think too much of Baptism, nor can we praise it too highly. Fools are they who would take the work of God and transform it into the work of men (as if such a thing could even be done). By what work of men could we ever be kept safe from the Day of Judgement, from the day of darkness and not light, from the day of gloom and not brightness? Surely the works of man cannot save: ‘We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, because by works of the Law no one will be justified.’; we are indeed saved by works — those of Christ. And yet there are those who will cry: ‘What of Sola Fide — by faith alone!?” To them we reply: Yes, certainly, we are saved by faith alone, but how does God bestow this faith that saves? We know the answer to this question, no matter how much other Christians may (to their great detriment and shame) hate the answer: the Means of Grace. Yes, of course, God the Holy Ghost kindles faith via the Word read or heard, but so, too, does He use Holy Baptism. And we must never forget what a Sacrament actually is: a physical sign plus the Word. Even in the Sacrament of Baptism, the Word is not absent, for water alone saves no one. Was Noah saved by the Flood? No. Was he saved by the Ark? No. He was saved by his faith in God. Do you believe Noah owned the only boat in the antediluvian world? And yet he alone was saved, because he believed God’s word. Similarly, it is not the water alone that saves us, for mere water only makes us wet (and, perhaps, cleans the body); no, it is the Sacrament of Holy Baptism — water and Word — that saves us by bestowing the free gift of faith. To those who would deny this truth, we can repurpose Luther’s comment on the Real Presence: “If a hundred thousand devils, together with all fanatics, should rush forward, crying, How can bread and wine be the body and blood of Christ? I know that all spirits and scholars together are not as wise as is the Divine Majesty in His little finger.” I do not care what the world says about Baptism, for I know what God says about Baptism.

And yet I would be remiss if I did not comment on ‘infant Baptism’. And so let me begin by saying there is no such thing. Is there such a thing as ‘man’s Baptism’ or ‘woman’s Baptism’ or ‘German Baptism’ or ‘French Baptism’ or ‘American Baptism’? No. And so, also, there is no such thing as infant Baptism, for the Baptism of an infant is simply a Baptism. There is a great irony inherent in the arguments of those who deny Baptism to young children — perhaps they should read what Christ said about preventing little children from coming to Him; those who argue (to be unduly charitable) against baptizing young children would take Baptism and make it the work of human hands, which is to say that they inevitably believe they they did something when they were baptized. One would think that the passive verb would tell them something. But let us, here, recall what Christ says of those who have not been converted: He says that they are dead in their sins and trespasses. In my experience, corpses do not act. In fact, infants, have an advantage, as their wicked wills do not yet resist the Spirit so actively nor so vigorously as those of adult sinners. In Baptism, the Spirit finds the infant no so much more cooperative as less uncooperative than the adult. But what of the adult convert who comes to the font having already been converted by the Word? Such a man was surely dead in his sins and trespasses prior to his conversion, but he comes to his Baptism already believing the promises of God. Does such a man do anything in his Baptism? The answer, of course, is that he does precisely as much as he did in his conversion: nothing. Now, certainly, he walks to the font and professes his faith before the congregation, but in Baptism itself he does nothing, for it is God Who meets Him in the water and marks him as one redeemed by Christ the crucified. Just as such a man undoubtedly walked (or, more likely, drove) to church to hear the Word or read it by himself, but still did nothing in the matter of his own conversion, for it was God Who met him in the Word and bestowed upon him the free gift of faith. That our hypothetical man drove himself to church or purchased (and actually read) a Bible means something — just as the good works of unbelievers are still good within a certain frame —, but nothing he did or could do justifies him, gives him the free gift of faith: God alone can and does bestow belief.

Some argue against this on grounds that more or less boil down to an objection based on a lack of ‘consent’. I would have to ask such a man if he would object to the man who uses the defibrillator to restore his cardiac rhythm or the man who performs CPR to save him from brain damage or death or the man who saves him from overdose with naloxone. You cannot save yourself from temporal death in any of these situations; you cannot save yourself from eternal death in any situation by any means — only God can save you from eternal death and He has ordained two Means by which He will do so. You did not ‘consent’ to your creation; you did not ‘consent’ to your birth; you did not ‘consent’ to your death, and nor will you; and you cannot ‘consent’ to your rebirth in the waters of Holy Baptism or your resurrection on the Last Day. Consent surely has a proper place and time and purpose, but it has nothing to do with your salvation — except in the negative, for you can certainly object, and you can certainly reject God’s free gift. So do not reject your Baptism, do not take off the white robes you were given, lest you hear the words of the Master from Matthew 22: “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?”

Man is not spirit alone (and interactions with the spirit of a man are typically mediated by the flesh — by the senses — anyway), and so God has not left us with no way for the flesh, for the body, to interact with His good promises. God has graciously provided us with the Sacraments — Holy Baptism, in which we are sealed in Christ, and the Lord’s Supper, in which the faith given to us in the waters of Baptism is strengthened — and we should esteem and cherish these gifts, for they are, respectively, our seal and confirmation that we are, indeed, invited wedding guests who belong at the glorious feast at the consummation of all things.

Amen.