BAPTISM: A FEW COMMENTS

Baptism as a Public Witness

This is undoubtedly one useful fallout of baptism (for both the witnesses and the one getting baptized) but attempts to over-emphasize this aspect of the act are, I believe, counterproductive. And it is taught nowhere in the New Testament.

As one example, at the Bible church we attended for years, a candidate for baptism was expected to first give a speech explaining to the congregation how his/her life had been changed in the years/months since they first became a believer. Thus, they saved up the baptisms for a only a couple of special occasions a year and effectively discouraged brand new Christians from participating since they would not have a good enough witness to share.

Some people put off being baptized even though they know it is taught in the Bible. I believe that one major factor is the fear of being in front of a crowd. My reading of Acts indicates that most of the baptisms recorded (outside of Pentacost) were rather private, often family, affairs (the Ethiopian eunuch, the jailer and his family, etc.). By insisting that this act take place in front of hundreds in a congregation, we practically exclude a large number of shy people from ever taking that step unless special provisions are made.

Baptism to Join a Local Church Body

Some teach that this is the major purpose of baptism. It may, in fact, be a requirement in several denominations for full church membership. However, I am only aware of one passage in the New Testament that might hint at that purpose (I Corinthians 1:13) and it is obvious that it has nothing to do with local church membership, but entrance into the universal church body.

Baptism as a Work

One false accusation leveled at the churches of Christ is that they believe in salvation by works since they feel that baptism is necessary to be saved. In the first place, although some of these churches may indeed be works-oriented, baptism itself should not be counted in the category of works. In the New Testament, baptism is always mentioned in the passive voice. One submits to be baptized by someone else, unlike the Jewish ritual immersions which one performed on oneself. In one instance in Acts (10:44-48), Paul doesn't even seem to give the new believers the choice of whether they want to be baptized or not; he commands it after asking if anyone else objects! Contrast this to Acts 21:26, where Paul “purified himself” according to one of the ritual baptisms carried out by the Jews on special occasions.

Baptism and Salvation

In the longer ending to Mark (16:16), note the close association of belief and baptism with the positive result of salvation. The following sentence would have been an ideal time to say “he who is not baptized will be damned” if baptism were absolutely necessary for salvation. Its absence there emphasizes the primacy of faith as the deciding factor in salvation. The authenticity of the longer ending is, of course, in great doubt by textual scholars, doubts strengthened by my own structural analysis. This verse, however, is an interesting witness to early Christian beliefs.

Having said that, I have a minor bone to pick with denominations and preachers who go out of their way to completely divorce baptism from salvation as if there were absolutely no connection between the two. This is especially dangerous since the close association of baptism with salvation appears enough times in the New Testament to seemingly establish it as one of the firmest Biblical doctrines.

Mark 16:16 (early addition to text)

John 3:5 (possible allusion to baptism)

Acts 2:38

Acts 8:12 association of baptism with the Gospel

Acts 8:35-36 association of baptism with the Gospel

Acts 16:30-33 immediate baptism upon believing for salvation

Acts 18:8 association of belief and baptism

Acts 22:16

Romans 6:3-5

I Corinthians 6:11 (probable allusion to water baptism)

Galatians 3:27

Ephesians 4:4-6 close association of faith and baptism

Ephesians 5:25-27 (probable allusion to water baptism)

Colossians 2:11-14

Titus 3:4-5

Hebrews 6:1-2 close association of faith and baptism

Hebrews 10:22 (possible allusion to baptism)

I Peter 3:21

Revelation 1:5-6 (alternative reading; possible allusion to baptism)

This is in addition to those passages closely associating baptism with receiving the Holy Spirit. (Mark 1:8 and parallels; Acts 8:15-16; 9:17-18; 19:2-6; I Corinthians 12:13).

The two approaches I have heard such preachers take are to (a) explain “baptism” in most of these passages as referring to “spiritual” baptism rather than water baptism (an unlikely interpretation according to most commentators) or (b) totally ignore those problem passages and hope that the members of their congregation never discover them on their own.

My own explanation of these passages is the same as that of Beasley-Murray (Those interested in this subject should read his exhaustive and fair-minded study Baptism in the New Testament): the clear example and probable normal pattern in the early church was to become baptized immediately after a profession of faith. Thus, the New Testament writers naturally lump the two events together as one saving act. Today's church has effectively destroyed this link by performing baptism much earlier or much later than the profession of faith. This has complicated the situation envisioned by the 1st century church and led to confusion among those reading the New Testament today.

I wonder if you have ever felt the disconnect while seeing someone being baptized who has been a believer for some time, when the pastor says, “Buried with Christ and raised to walk in newness of life”?

Mode of Baptism

I realize that the giving and receiving of the Holy Spirit is sometimes described using the metaphor of “pouring,” but other metaphors are utilized elsewhere for this event (“sprinkling” in Ezekiel 36:25-26, “drinking” in (I Corinthians 12:13b) and “living within a temple” in I Corinthians 6:19). Walvoord associates baptism of the Holy Spirit in the passages above with the idea of uniting with the Holy Spirit such as the use of baptism in I Corinthians 10:1-2; C. S. Mann and Leon Morris both state that cleansing is the main meaning of baptism in Mark 1:8, and Borchert feels that John's Gospel refers to the life-giving properties of water. Several commentators recognize the possible allusion to the Joel 2:28ff passage, but only as an indirect one and certainly not to establish the definition of baptism as "pouring" in these parallel passages.

Neither Vine's word study or The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology even hint that baptizo can ever refer, literally or metaphorically, to pouring or sprinkling. It means dipping or immersing. This was, of course, why the translators of the King James Version were given explicit instructions not to translate this Greek word into English, but only to transliterate it.

The preposition en which follows “baptism” in all the parallel passages is universally translated as “in,” “by” or “with.” If baptism means “immersion” in these passages, then it makes perfect sense to say that believers are immersed with the Holy Spirit, or even by the Holy Spirit. We could possibly be sprinkled with/by the Holy Spirit (as an allusion to the Ezekiel passage above), but it is hard to see, from a simple grammatical point of view how we can possibly be poured in/with/by the Holy Spirit. In any case, commentators are in agreement that the meaning of baptism in these passages must be the same for John's mode of literal baptism and the Holy Spirit's figurative baptism. Thus, if baptism means sprinkling or pouring in regard to the Holy Spirit, then that was also the method used by John to baptize Christ.

It has been asked how the practice of immersion could have been readily accepted by followers of John, and later of Jesus. In fact, there already was the practice of water immersion for converts to Judaism. In addition, there have been excavated literally hundreds of ritual immersion baths in Israel, especially in Jerusalem, built to accommodate the large number of pilgrims during feast times who used them for purification rites. This totally invalidates the argument I have actually heard from those who practice sprinkling that for the large number of converts on the Day of Pentacost to be immersed, it would have been necessary for the officials in Jerusalem to turn over the entire water supply of the city