32. What then? Because they were
typically baptized unto Moses, is the grace of baptism therefore
small? Were it so, and if we were in each case to prejudice the
dignity of our privileges by comparing them with their types, not even
one of these privileges could be reckoned great; then not the love of
God, who gave His only begotten Son for our sins, would be great and
extraordinary, because Abraham did not spare his own son; cf.
Rom. viii.
32. then even the passion of the Lord would not
be glorious, because a sheep typified the offering instead of Isaac;
then the descent into hell was not fearful, because Jonah had
previously typified the death in three days and three nights. The
same prejudicial comparison is made also in the case of baptism by all
who judge of the reality by the shadow, and, comparing the typified
with the type, attempt by means of Moses and the sea to disparage at
once the whole dispensation of the Gospel. What remission of
sins, what renewal of life, is there in the sea? What spiritual
gift is there through Moses? What dying νέκρωσις.
A.V. in 2 Cor. iv.
10, “dying,”
Rom. iv. 19, “deadness.” of sins is there? Those men did not
die with Christ; wherefore they were not raised with Him. cf.
Rom. vi. 8. They did not “bear the image
of the heavenly;” 1 Cor. xv. 49. they did
“bear about in the body the dying of Jesus;” 2 Cor. iv. 10. they did not “put off the old
man;” they did not “put on the new man which is renewed
in knowledge after the image of Him which created
him.” Col. iii. 9, 10. Why then do
you compare baptisms which have only the name in common, while the
distinction between the things themselves is as great as might be
that of dream and reality, that of shadow and figures with
substantial existence?