Truth Be Told..

Baptism - is it necessary?

For most of my Christian life I was under the belief that baptism was not necessary for salvation. Allow me to explain what I thought baptism was and share with you my personal adventures regarding this precious declaration.

When I was a young teen my family and I were attending a charismatic church. Now, I do not have anything against the church we were attending, I thought back then and still do to this day that this church was a great place of worship and teaching. When I use the word charismatic I do not want you to get a vision of some of the nightmares we see among some of the charismatic churches of today; this church was not like that. We did not have people dancing around in a circle and chanting stuff in some unknown language, nor did we have people shaking and screaming and falling over in the aisles! This church was full of order and was mature in their teaching. With that being said, I want to continue with my story :)

It was at this time and and at this church where I really felt the urge to get baptized. I was a young Christian and was full of fire and love for my new found belief. I went through the required 3 weeks of baptism classes at the church with about 10 other people who were also looking to be baptized. On the day of our scheduled baptism we were all led up onto the stage one at a time and asked if we believe that Christ Jesus is the Son of God and that He died for our sins, upon stating "yes" and after confirming that we wanted Jesus to be the Lord of our life; the Pastor of the church then said; "I baptize you In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit" and we were submerged under the water (the church had purchased one of those round outdoor pools that are still popular today for this purpose). Anyway, we were all baptized that day and we finished up the service with celebration. Now for most of my Christian life I did not see anything wrong with this and It was only about 5 or more years ago when everything I thought I knew came crashing down...

It all started with my husband (who has been a Christian since his childhood as well). He had been feeling an urge to get baptized, and I excitedly agreed that he should. Little did I know that this calling would not only lead to discovering some false teachings I have been lugging around with me all my life, but also to some very tough challenges!

Challenge Number 1

The first challenge was a big one that took a bit of time to conquer. We do not belong to any church nor do we want to become "members" of any earthly church. There are a couple of reasons for this, but this article is not about our reasons as to why we prefer not to join; I will post an article on that topic in the future. However, I mentioned this because it was a huge stumbling block for us! And the more we tried to find a church that did as the Bible instructs (without adding to or taking away from), the more frustrated we got! Every scripture we read on baptism; not one of them required people that wanted to be baptized to be a member of some earthly church or organization.

This frustration opened a dialogue between myself and many pastors from many different factions of faith, and saving you a long drawn out "he said/I said" dialogue - some of the most frutrating answers I got back from them when I questioned why they require a membership were; 1. some churches want to make sure you believe the same things they do, 2. some churches felt they were in charge of your relationship and your growth with God, and 3. some churches even require it so that they can claim more members in their congregations! I do not think I need to point out how totally wrong these churches were in their reasoning!

Anyway, you can probably imagine that this only made my husband and I even more determined to find a church that baptizes in the Biblical manner. Now, please do not misunderstand - I do agree that you need to know some basic things before being baptized such as; who is God and who is Jesus, another thing would be understanding what Jesus did for us and why. It also would not hurt to ask why someone would like to be baptized. These things are important and should be asked before baptizing anyone.

I also understand that as a pastor or a brother/sister you would like to watch over your brothers and sisters. We want to make sure they stay on the path and are growing in not just their relationship but also in their accurate knowledge But, truth be told..baptism should NOT hinge on these things; as growth and knowledge come over time and is personal between every individual and God. I have not found any verses in our Bibles that ask us to make sure our brothers/sisters relationship with God is strong before we baptize them and in my opinion baptism can be a kick starter for a stronger relationship with God and with His Son Jesus. It is also not up to any earthly church to withhold a baptism based on non-foundational differences within the complexity of your particular sect. People of the Baptist faith believe one way, people of the Protestant faith believe in another way, the only thing we should be basing a baptism on is whether or not they believe in God, do they believe Jesus is the Son of God; that He died for our sins and that we want Him as our Lord. This is the basis of Christianity, the basis of our salvation.

When my husband kept saying "I do not just want to be baptized, I NEED to be baptized" - I really thought that he was full of desire and speaking solely from the heart. I would say all I could say in order to try to console him and continue to look for a place that offered a Biblical baptism all the more. But, one day; he told me that he would not make it into the Kingdom unless he was baptized and how he had been praying and hoping that his days would not end on earth at least until he was baptized. Welllllll...that raised a whole lot of concern! This was false as far as I was concerned and I just had to out-right state what I have been taught all of my life! "Baptism is a public declaration, it is the heart that God looks at and baptism is not a requirement; belief and faith is!"

This is where everything I thought I knew came crashing down. We got into a debate with each of us stating what we knew to be true, back and forth - round and round. Until finally, he said.."Look! I am not the one saying this! Look for yourself, where is your Bible?!"

Ahhhh...finally, I thought, a challenge! and one that I know I am right on! yay! so I happily opened the Bible on the spot! and started to go to ALL scriptures that pertained to baptism. What I found shocked me, it literally caused me to become very quiet (which is a cue to him to find out whats wrong, lol). I started reading them aloud, and with each passing one, I started to see that I have been thinking wrong all my life. How could I have not seen this? How come no one ever told me of this..oO! the word "humble" was most assuredly stamped on my forehead!

Here are some of the verses that caught my attention (not all because there are a lot) but there are enough verses presented to understand one thing, whenever the word "baptism" is addressed in the Bible, there is always a result attached to it. What do I mean by that? For example: "Be baptized FOR THE REMISSION OF SIN; be baptized AND RECEIVE THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. I cannot think of one place in the Bible where it does not attach a result to the action of baptism right off the top of my head - and believe me, I have read every verse every chapter in the bible that pertains to baptism! So here we go..

1. - NASB, Mark 16:16 "The one who has believed and has been baptized will be saved; but the one who has not believed will be condemned." I have heard the worldview on this and how people will so quickly say, "see? see? - the one who does not believe will be condemned, not the one who was not baptized!" I have this to say: This analogy is entirely false in every way. Let me start with; It is solid knowledge to understand that belief is the key to salvation and without it we have absolutely no hope of salvation, so the end of the statement above is true; "the one who has not believed will be condemned." That is a fact. However, in the very first part of the entire statement it says - "The one who has believed AND has been BAPTIZED will be saved." Question, should we disregard the first part of the salvation plan? the part that says "believed AND has been baptized? Because if we can justifiably do away with parts of the sentence we don't want to acknowledge, where does that leave us..can we then say that belief is not a requirement for baptism? Most certainly not, and we must always hold to the truth that words mean something, the word "and" means in addition to in this sentence.

another one would be:

2- NASB, Acts 2:38-39 Peter said to them, v"Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far away, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself." This is chocked full of great teaching in just a few small verses; "repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ"..for what? for the forgiveness of sins AND ? for receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. So, if we are believers of Christ and have been baptized; we are forgiven of our past sins and we will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. yay!! :) but if that isnt enough, lets take at look at what else Paul has to say - in (Acts 2:40-41), he carries on with even more important information.. "And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on urging them, saying, "Be saved from this perverse generation!" 41 So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls."

Another verse that I want to show you is:

3 - NASB, Mark 10:35-40 "James and John, the two sons of Zebedee, came up to Jesus, saying to Him, "Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask of You." 36. And He said to them, "What do you want Me to do for you?" 37. They said to Him, "Grant that we may sit, one on Your right and one on Your left, in Your glory." 38. But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?" 39. They said to Him, "We are able." And Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink you shall drink; and you shall be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized. 40 But to sit on My right or on My left is not Mine to give; but it is for those for whom it has been prepared."

Okay, so this is interesting for sure; we all know that Jesus is the Son of God, and as children of God, we try very hard to model our lives after His Son, our example. So with that being said, should we so carelessly assume that we do not have to be baptized like our Lord Jesus was? Some say that Jesus was only baptized because it was mans tradition to do so. Really? And where did man get this tradition from in the first place? I do not think that Satan would start a man made tradition of baptizing people in the name of our Lord! Another thing I would like to warn people about that are assuming this is why Jesus was baptized; Remember: Col. 2:8 "Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ." Assuming that Jesus did this because of human tradition is very dangerous. Lets not forget that after John baptized Jesus, A voice, His Fathers voice From Heaven spoke to the people, saying"This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!", The people also saw the Holy Spirit coming down out of heaven and resting upon Jesus when He came up out of the water.

There are many many more verses about the correlation between baptism and salvation and I really urge you to look up all of them, what you will find is this; Baptism is an essential part of the plan of salvation God put before us. In every verse that pertains to baptism you will find that it is either for the remission of sin or to receive the Holy Spirit. However, before I get to the next challenge we faced in our baptism adventure; I want to share with you something that was brought to my attention recently when having a discussion with another person about this topic. This person stated that they did not believe baptism was needed for salvation because the man on the cross next to Jesus when He was being crucified, was not baptized - yet Jesus told that man that He would be in paradise with Him that day.

Now, lets clear the air about something that is again going to become relevant in other discussions; Folks, this is not proof to rest your salvation on! Let me put a few things on the table for us to contemplate; 1. how do we KNOW for a fact that man was never baptized? Just because it doesn't say he was is not good enough because a lot of scriptures do not tell the whole entire story, every minute little detail! But more than this - 2. Could it be that this man was not baptized because Jesus had not ascended to His heavenly throne yet? How can a person be baptized in the name of Jesus before Jesus had died? I will leave this for your research along with a hint, take a look at 1 Corinthains 15 when you have some time because it is very deep!

Challenge Number 2

The second challenge was that the baptism must be done in the name of Jesus Christ - only. Why? Because while researching into our above topic I found out that hubby was yet again pointing something out to me that had totally escaped me my whole entire life, and yet it was so simple! Again leaving me wondering how in the heck did I never see this!!

This was really tough to do as most churches will baptize in the "name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit", as it says in Matthew 28:19 "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". I never challenged this verse and at the face I saw nothing wrong with it. But, it was quickly pointed out to me by my husband that these were all labels and not names; also, the verse says NAME (meaning in a singular name) and not NAMES.

So, why is that verse written like that? We did a little bit of research into this and it did not take long to find out that this verse in Matthew had been changed; we find the evidence of this by the same group that made the change, you can see the documentation of this here. There is another possible reason as well; that when that statement was made in Matthew, Jesus had not ascended up to His heavenly abode yet - as we still see Him appearing to His Apostles at this time.

Either way, this cleared the air for me when reading about Paul re-baptising the people of the congregation in Acts 19:2-7,"Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" And they said to him, "On the contrary, we have not even heard if there is a Holy Spirit." 3 And he said, "Into what then were you baptized?" And they said, "Into John's baptism." 4 Paul said, "John baptized with a baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was coming after him, that is, in Jesus." 5 When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 And when Paul had laid hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying. 7 There were about twelve men in all."

I also want to say that it was now when I started to realize that ALL of the Apostles say to baptize in the name of Jesus; everyone expect Matthew that is. In Acts 22:16, we see Paul urging the people to be baptized "Now why do you delay? Get up and be baptized, and wash away your sins by calling on His name."

Anyway with understanding that Jesus had not yet died when John the Baptist was baptizing early on, coupled along with every apostle saying to baptize in the name of Jesus and that the Catholic hierarchy, well that was really all the convincing I needed to understand that I was believing something that is not true. We must be baptized in the name of Jesus as that is who died for us and that is who we are going to be resurrected through, that is our King and our Lord. When He died, He said "it is finished". The old covenant was fulfilled and the new covenant was in place. Amen?

Challenge Number 3

The third requirement was that it must be a full water submersion. This is hard to do in this day and age because, while for different reasons from one church to the next; most churches today consider "sprinkling" as a proper baptism. Now, I do understand the change within some venues due to all of the new co-vid regulations; this is still not considered to be proper and even with the restrictions placed upon the places of worship, where God is involved - there is a way to do it properly! oO! I can hear "where does it say in the Bible that baptism MUST be full submersion?!! haaaa...give me just a few more minutes and I will reason with you. Promise!

Can we agree that the job of the writer is to write in such a way that an accurate picture can be envisioned in the mind of the reader of what you are trying to describe? If we can agree on that; I feel we will be hard pressed to find any verse where we can accurately envision sprinkling water on someones head as a form of baptism!

When Philip was on the road with the Eunuch, they stopped their chariot on the side of the road and went down to the river and Philip baptized the Eunuch. Our Lord, Jesus was totally submerged by John the Beaptist. The heavens were opened, and the Spirit of God descending as a dove and settling on Him, also a voice from the heavens said, "This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." He was completely submerged, no question there! Colossians 2:12 says "buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.", again depicting submerged. While there are a lot of scripture in the Old Testament that actually use the word "sprinkling" as a form of cleansing, I would say that these were cases ordained by God and/or under the Law of Moses. I would also say this was before our Lord Jesus came to us; and we have to look at what is being left for us as examples by the apostles. In all the verses and chapters I read; full submersion is described. I do not get the vision of "sprinkling" when it comes to cleaning anything!

Are we really willing to let out most special event get down to "sprinkling" some water on our heads?! Not me! look! We are filled with sin, completely covered in it and really are in need of a good submersion - some of us maybe a couple of times! loll!!..seriously; this is a special event and it really should be treated like it is. If our forefathers, disciples, prophets and apostles all baptized in this manner then I think it is safe to say that we should also do the same.

Never in all of my days would I have ever thought that I would see the Churches of God actually using water guns and shooting water across the aisle and calling it a baptism :(. This should outrage the body! This special event in life has been degraded so far down and is nothing short of mockery. This picture of the event went viral all across the internet, and according to the articles that were attached - most people thought this was funny to hilarious! I personally find it atrocious and am not only angered but offended. Why offended? Because a lot of the comments that were attached to this event were from people that do not believe in God and they were very boisterous about how ridiculous Christianity is. With that being said, don't get me wrong, I do understand the regulations that are in place with this co-vid, but still..a water gun? shooting it across the aisle?? **sigh** is that the best we can do? How do you think our God feels about this? Do you really think that Jesus is happy with this level of disobedience and mockery? I would say not a chance and would urge anyone that happens to be part of a baptism such as this to admonish your brothers and sisters for even thinking such a thing would actually be pleasing to our God and to our Lord! Shame on this priest! :(

But where does it say that baptism is REQUIRED in order to have a chance at making it into the Kingdom? In addition to Mark 16:16, which already told us "those who believe and are baptized will be saved", we have also seen it is needed in order for the remission of sins, it is needed in order to receive the Holy Spirit..but is there anywhere else it says for salvation? In John 3:3 Jesus says "I tell you the truth, unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God"

Now, it does not say "unless one has been baptized", it says you must be born again I get that. But if you ask Christians to tell you what being born again means; most, if not all will include being baptized in their description of being born again. It is safe to say that baptism is part of the salvational plan. Now since it is a "plan"; meaning there is more than one step, and if we take a look at all that we have been discussing the plan entails these steps: 1. Understanding who God is, 2. knowing who His Son is and that He, Jesus came and died for our sins, 4. giving our hearts and our will over and then?...5. Be baptized! Brothers and sisters just because the world has taken a view that it is not needed, that does not mean the children of God should also take that view; but in fact should be very weary of thinking like the world thinks!

Now, I agree with that salvation is a gift. But being "born again" means what it means, and in my opinion should not ever try to be removed from the salvational plan that God has in place. Our God has made it perfectly clear through all of the writings of the apostles that His plan for salvation needs to be done in its entirety and for us to try to do away with parts of His plan for whatever reason we may have for trying to do so is not something that I myself would want to attempt to do!

We have already discovered through multiple verses that the Holy Spirit is a gift that is given after baptism, which really uncovers another false teaching that I have fell prey too - and that is that the Holy Spirit was given upon conversion, as I now understand that we do not receive the Holy Spirit until after we have been baptized and without the Holy Spirit we would indeed be hard done by entering the Kingdom of God. I will also leave you with this verse; 1 Peter 3:21 "..and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also - not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.." So, the belief that baptism is not necessary is completely false and straight from the worldview of things.

Finishing Up

And that is my story about the challenges we faced while trying to get my husband baptized. But there is also another result that happened from all the new knowledge I found out; I myself was re-baptized along with my husband because as I stated at the beginning of the article, I was originally baptized under "The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit" formula. After all the things I found out, I really wanted to be baptized under the name of Jesus Christ and not under 3 different titles. I am so happy we started this adventure and I learned a lot through it! I now am confident in my baptism and feel very blessed! :). If you have been baptized in the formula written in Matthew 28:19 and are now feeling like it was not done properly; I researched on the topic of re-baptism in order to make sure that God would find it proper to do so and the bottom line of my research was that if your baptism was not done in the Biblical manner that was laid out for us to follow, you might want to think about getting yourself re-baptized.