And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves; and he was transfigured before them, and his garments became glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses; and they were talking to Jesus. And Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah." For he did not know what to say, for they were exceedingly afraid. And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, "This is my beloved Son; listen to him." And suddenly looking around they no longer saw any one with them but Jesus only. Mark 9:2–8 (RSV)
"Jesus only." I will confess it now, the thoughts that follow are not original to me. Bishop Bo Giertz of Sweden used it as the heading of the second part of his book, "The Hammer of God." In this part of the novel, a young Lutheran pastor struggles with his confidence in infant baptism. His growing doubt is encouraged by a prayer group in which he participates. The leader of the group is a Baptist who has challenged his trust in the Sacrament.
This is nothing new in the Church. One of the by-products of the Reformation was the Anabaptist movement. These are Christians who have rejected infant baptism in favor of believer baptism. Their thinking goes thus, one must first receive the Holy Spirit and then make your choice for Jesus before one could be baptized. They could not see how an infant could seek this. Nor could they see how an infant could sin since they are not aware of such matters.
The wavering pastor was on the verge of rejecting infant baptism. That night he was to tell all in his prayer group his decision on baptism. Before Sunday worship, he is called to a parishioner's home, where death was near for one of the parish saints. The pastor arrives to find the man unconscious near the end. The pastor assures the man's family that the man has lived a Christian life, been a faithful servant of the Church, and will undoubtedly have a good death.
They all hear it. The old man swears as he must have done on the battlefields when he was a young man. He goes on to say terrible things about his neighbors, envious and judgmental. The old man falls silent, then breathes his last, and dies. His family distraught, their loved one sinned up to the moment of his death. How could he be saved?
The pastor is late for Sunday worship. He races to church, barely prepared to preach as he grabs a book of sermons, desperately looks up the sermon for that day, deciding to use this message since he had no time to prepare.
He has not read the sermon until he begins to preach. It is titled, 'Jesus Only'. It describes the sinner seeking Christ. They wish to be saved. They want to come to the Lord and be worthy of His grace. Thus the sinner begins to drive sin from their heart. The sinner discovers, to his horror, beneath the small surface sins lie more sins, more wretched than the first. The sinner prays night and day. He is like a farmer removing stones from a rocky field. Stone after stone is found, taken out only to reveal more, larger stones. He digs and digs until all the stones are gone, only to find solid rock, stretching in all directions. Like stones, his sins have no end. At the very core of his being is nothing but sin.
In hopelessness, the sinner dares to look to Jesus on the cross. There he sees all his sin laid on Jesus only. There he sees every sin that torments his soul forgiven by the dying and rising Jesus only. He sees the water and blood that flows from Jesus' wounded side. He sees that his baptism is not a matter of his choosing. It is a work of God accomplished in Jesus only.
We will always be sinners. We come to the Lord with nothing. We can ask for nothing, for we deserve nothing. He covers us with the waters of baptism, not just for the hour we are baptized, but for the whole of our lives. If in our last hour we, like a newborn, cannot think of Christ, He still looks on us as one for whom His death has drowned our sin. He sees the redeemed Child of God washed clean. It is Jesus only who saves and redeems.
The Hammer of God would be well worth your time to read.