Sanctification
Via Pieper’s Church Dogmatics Volume 3
Masaccio, "The Baptism of the Neophytes" (1425)
Also sanctification, the death of the old man and the resurrection to a new life, is not only typified by Baptism, but actually effected. In Rom. 6:1-11 Paul teaches that the Christians are dead unto sin, but alive unto God. This, however, is an effect of Baptism (dia tou baptismatos). Sanctification according to both its negative (dead unto sin) and its positive side (alive unto God in Christ Jesus) is a status quo created through Baptism. Amazing is Boehl’s notion that in Baptism the old man is mortified only symbollically, “in effegie” (Dogm. p.556 ff.), although this statement agrees with Boehl’s teaching that Baptism also remits sins only in effegie. Baptism, he says, is only signum absolutionis peccatorum. However, Holy Writ says that Baptism is not merely an image, effegies, but a means of forgiving sin. Likewise the mortification of the old man and the resurrection of the new, holy man is not only typified, but effected by Baptism. The Bible certainly teaches no other means of mortifying the old man or of causing the Christian to die to sin than the remission of sins, or the Gospel. By the Law sin is not mortified, but moblized. (Rom. 7:5-6). But believers in the Gospel, or the forgiveness of sins, are told: “Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the Law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). Now, just as surely as Baptism belongs to the Gospel, that is, is a means of forgiving sins, of washing away sins, of cleansing sin, etc., the old man himself is put to death in Baptism, not merely an effigy of him. And that is the very thing Paul asserts when he says that we are “buried with Christ by Baptism [dia tou baptismatos] into death” (Rom. 6:3ff.).
