What God demands from people: baptism, right attitude towards blood, right attitude towards the poor

Baptism

In the Bible John the Baptist is the first person who was commanded by JHWH to baptize people. John called upon his listeners to repent of their bad attitude and bad actions towards God and to decide to change their behavior radically. They could demonstrate their repentance and their decision to start a better way of life by immersing themselves completely in water and then rising up from the water again. This action symbolized the desire to be dead as regards their former life and to be alive as regards their future life.

As we have written before the baptism of Jesus had a different function. Jesus had Himself baptized by John to show His Father that He was prepared to sacrifice His perfect human life to His Father as a sin offering for mankind. On the occasion of Jesus’ baptism His Father anointed Him with holy spirit and spoke the well-known words: you are my beloved Son, whom I have approved of.

At the end of His life Jesus commanded His followers: make disciples of people of all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit.

The Bible makes it clear that it is not so that anyone can just be baptized. According to the Bible only those people can be baptized who know God and acknowledge Him as their creator, repent of the sins they have committed and are determined to obey God’s commandments to the best of their ability.

It is good to know that the Bible teaches that baptism as such cannot forgive sins that people have committed prior to being baptized. The sins of people are forgiven them through the peace offering of Jesus. Baptism can be no more than a symbolical act through which people express that they believe in Jesus’ sin offering and want to make use of it.

The Bible only mentions the baptism of adults and not of children. All Christian denominations admit that the baptism of children was only practiced sporadically from the third century A.D. onward.

Another thing to be aware of is that the Bible only writes about baptism through complete immersion. Also as regards this matter all Christian denominations agree with each other: until the thirteenth century all Christians only practiced complete immersion as the symbolic act they used for baptism.

The right attitude towards blood.

In the case of animals and humans blood takes food and oxygen to the body-cells and removes waste materials from the body-cells so that they remain clean and functioning. Because blood plays such a crucial role in the lives of humans and animals the Bible often says that the soul (the life force) of humans and animals is in their blood. Because the Bible considers all life as holy, the Bible also considers blood to be holy.

The theme of the holiness of blood runs like a continuous thread throughout the Bible and it is frequently repeated and emphasized.

When after the Flood Noah and his offspring got permission to eat the meat of animals, JHWH added emphatically and repeatedly that, before they could eat them, they first had to let all the blood of the killed animals get out of the bodies. By doing this the meat-eating man acknowledges that blood and life are gifts from God and are therefore holy and something that humans should abstain from.

The law covenant, which was in force for the Israelites, commanded God’s people to be extremely careful when dealing with blood. The penalty for the eating of blood was death. During the days of her menstruation a woman was considered unclean. The penalty for sexual intercourse during a woman’s menstruation was death, both for the woman and for the man.

The only use of blood that was permitted by the Law of Moses was offering the blood of animals to God to bring about atonement with Him (a foreshadowing of the sin offering of His own blood by Jesus many centuries later)

The peace offering of Christ has put an end to the validity of all Mosaic laws. This means, among other things, that Christians do not have to sacrifice animals to God and offer Him their blood. In fact for Christians there is only one law that they must obey: you must love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, your whole mind, your whole intellect, and all your strength … and you must treat your neighbor as you want to be treated yourself. Besides this first and foremost commandment the Greek Scriptures only mention three things which are of universal validity for Christians all over the world. These three things are to be found in Acts 15: 28 and 29. These two verses prohibit the following three things: idolatry, adultery and the consuming of blood. It is important to notice that in the verses mentioned the consuming of blood is presented as equally horrible as idolatry or adultery.

The Greek Scriptures label the three prohibitions mentioned (concerning idolatry, adultery and blood) as the only three laws of the hundreds of laws of the law covenant which remained in force after the abolition of this covenant.

In our 21st century the Biblical commandment regarding the consuming of blood is often discussed in connection with blood transfusions. This website does not dare to take up a position in this difficult matter. On the other hand this website does not hesitate to emphasize that the Bible so strongly and repeatedly condemns the consuming of blood that there can be no doubt about it that Christians who have great doubts about blood transfusion, have their scruples on excellent Biblical grounds.

The right attitude towards people who are poor and have a hard life.

In our entire human history there have always been many more poor people than rich people. In the Bible there are a lot of indications that this situation will remain so. Think of the well-known words of Jesus: you will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have Me with you.

This does not mean the Bible pleads for an attitude in which people turn their backs to the problem of poverty and allow a situation in which a small number of people have everything and the masses pauperize. Thus the law of Moses had a number of prescriptions which made sure that every family owned land which it could consider its hereditary property and which (in normal circumstances) it could not lose to other families. If, as a result of abnormal circumstances and extreme bad luck, it still happened that a family had to sell its hereditary property, it was entitled to get it back for free in the Jubilee year (which was celebrated once every fifty years)

In spite of this very righteous regulation there were always people in Israel who were very poor. For instance as a result of illness or when women and children lost their breadwinners. The laws of Moses made sure that this kind of people, who had no source of income, did not starve and were not forced to steal or beg. A number of Mosaic laws stipulated that when people were harvesting fields, orchards or vineyards they were not allowed to harvest the edges of the fields: whatever grew there was for the widows, the orphans, the disabled. There was also a law which told the people that all the grain, all the fruits and all the other parts of crops which accidentally fell on the ground had to remain there so that the poor and the disabled could pick them up.

In addition to all this the Bible often calls on people who have a good life to offer voluntary gifts to the people who are less fortunate.

It is clear from the gospels that Jesus felt a lot of sympathy for the poor and when He was spreading the good news He certainly did not forget them. On the contrary: most of His followers were poor people and the Bible leaves no doubt about it that as a group the poor reacted much more positively to His message than the Jewish religious leaders.

It is also a fact that Jesus and His disciples always had a special purse with them from which they gave alms to the poor.

In short: though the Bible states that poverty is a problem that will continue to exist on our earth until the establishment of God’s Kingdom, it is obvious that the Scriptures encourage all the followers of Christ to lighten the burden of the poor.