Coronation

In the early church, baptism was understood not merely as cleansing but as coronation. Borrowing imagery from the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles where crowns and olive branches symbolized joy and dominion the church placed a crown on the newly baptized to remind them that redemption restores mankind to his original calling: to rule under God and to bring all of life into obedience to Christ. Believers saw themselves as God’s under-lords, tasked with exercising dominion in every sphere education, politics, economics, science, and the whole of culture because “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof.” But such rule begins at home: we cannot govern the world if we do not first govern ourselves and our families. Baptism, then, announces a royal calling the commissioning of redeemed men and women to take up the crown of service, authority, and responsibility under the King of kings.