Will Any Baptism Do?
By Clinton Hardin
In today’s religious world there is a lot of confusion concerning God’s purpose for baptism. Since “God is not the author of confusion” (1 Corinthians 14:33, NKJV) any misconceptions arise from man. Therefore, if we will listen to His word, God can clear up any misunderstanding concerning His purpose for baptism.
We sometimes hear people say that baptism is not important; it only has the purpose of granting membership into some church group. Others say that baptism has nothing to do with salvation. They say, “We are baptized to show that we have been saved.” Many groups teach baptism is not essential to salvation but is essential to obedience; meaning that after a person has been saved he should be baptized in obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ as a public testimony of his salvation. They also state that baptism is no more than a symbol of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. To say this is the sole purpose of baptism is to admit baptism is not where we meet God to have our sins removed by Him. When we study the Bible (“the truth,” John 17:17), we find that God’s ordained purpose of baptism is more dynamic than those purposes taught by traditional religious teachers.
Baptism is more than an ordinary act of obedience by man because baptism is the time God has chosen to take our sins away. God teaches us that He is at work in baptism. Man is not at work in baptism, but is in submission to God, God performs the circumcision “made without hands.” Paul put it this way, “In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 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” (Colossians 2:11-12; emphasis mine CH).
What does the Divine do in baptism? He takes our sins away and raises us up to a “new life in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:17). What then is God’s ordained purpose of baptism? To save us! Contrary to what the religious world teaches us, Peter says that “baptism saves us” (1 Peter 3:21). Why? Because this is the time God has chosen to save us by taking our sins away by the blood of Christ, for it is He “who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood” (Revelation 1:5). The same powerful God that resurrected Christ takes our sins away at baptism and raises us up in Christ, where all spiritual blessings are (Ephesians 1:3). From Romans 6:1-11 we learn in baptism that we are “crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with,” and we are resurrected with Him to walk in newness of life. In Titus 3:5 we read “He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.” Acts 22:16 records that Paul was told to “arise and be baptized and wash away your sins.” On the day of Pentecost Peter answered the question “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” with “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). Also, Isaiah 59:1-2 reveals to us that our sins separate us from the Divine. Therefore, before God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit can abide in us, God must, in baptism, first remove our sins. When our sins are removed, and the Divine abides in us, then we are a new creature. 2 Corinthians 5:17 states “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new.”
The question now becomes, “Can we obey a baptism that has a different purpose than God ordained and say we have obeyed God in baptism?” I think not! Paul teaches us that there is “one baptism just as there is one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, and one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:4-6). Just as there is only one God to obey, there is only one baptism to which we can submit. A person that obeys God in baptism to show the world he has been saved is not obeying the same baptism that a person obeys to let God save him. If a person is baptized with a baptism with the purpose being to show the world he has been saved, it is a work of man, not God. God is not there to take his sins away, to put him in Christ and confer on him all other spiritual blessings that are in Christ. Therefore, when we change the purpose ordained of God in baptism, we take God out of baptism. When we have taken God’s divine action out of baptism, we no longer have the one baptism ordained of God.
When we see baptism listed among the elite “ones” in Ephesians 4:4-6 we should realize that baptism is not just an ordinary command to be obeyed as in to feed the poor, visit the sick, pray, or teach. It is special because Divine action is working to save us. We obey the ordinary commands because Christ lives in us. We obey God in baptism to let Him shower His free gift of salvation on us by washing us clean of our sins by the blood of Christ and to have Christ, God, and the Holy Spirit, dwell in us and us in His divine kingdom. We southern farm boys would refer to baptism as “walking in high cotton.” In other words, baptism is above the commands a person obeys once he becomes a person in which Christ lives. In Matthew 28:19 Jesus makes baptism a special command to be obeyed above “all things” stated in the next verse. Baptism is involved in our becoming a disciple of Christ; but once a disciple there are things to learn and obey (verse 20). Therefore, from the great commission in Matthew 28:18-20 and Mark 16:15-16, we should realize that baptism is special because baptism is to be the expected response when Christ is preached. In Acts 2, when Jesus was preached on the day of Pentecost, the result was about three thousand people were baptized. In Acts 8:12 Jesus was preached and the result was “both men and women” were baptized. In Acts 8:35-38, when the eunuch heard Jesus preached, Philip “baptized him .” Likewise, in Acts 16:30-34, when the jailer and his family heard Jesus preached, the response was “and immediately he and all his family were baptized” (verse 33).
Some people claim any baptism will do just as long as it is to obey God. People that teach baptism is to show you have been saved also teach that we should be baptized to obey God. If we are not being baptized for the purpose God ordained, how can we say we are obeying God? Jesus said, “But why do you call Me 'Lord, Lord,’ and do not the things which I say?” and “Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven” (Luke 6:46 cf. Matthew 7:21).
To help us understand why we must stay with God’s ordained purpose for baptism, to claim we have obeyed God, let us think about the Lord’s Supper. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 11:24-25, teaches us that the appointed purpose of the Lord’s Supper is for us to remember Christ. If we, like the church at Corinth, ignore the Divine purpose of the Lord’s Supper and, instead, have as the purpose to feed the fleshly body (as the Corinthians did) would we be able to say “We have obeyed God”? No, we would have partaken of the bread and the fruit of the vine for nothing. It should be clear to us, if we obey God we must not only perform the physical action, but our heart must be set on obeying for the reason God decreed. This is what the Bible calls faith! Are we not glad that Christ shed His blood for the Divine purpose, the “remission of our sins” (Matthew 26:28)?
It is my understanding that some congregations of the Lord’s church are accepting people into their fellowship that have been baptized to show that they have been saved rather than to be saved by God at the time of their baptism. This is not the one baptism established by God in His word. The Bible teaches us that the church is to be the “pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). We, as a church, can be the “pillar and ground of the truth” by knowing truth, living truth, and teaching truth. We cannot be the “pillar and ground of the truth” if we accept baptisms that are contrary to the one baptism that God ordained. God has not authorized us to make man’s final judgment of heaven or hell, but He has authorized us to stand for, teach, and uphold the truth. There is a distinct difference between judging and standing for the truth. When we accept people into our fellowship with baptisms that have no God ordained purpose, we do them no favor. We would actually be withholding the truth from them by letting them hear what they want to hear instead of what they need to learn. In Acts 19:1-5 we read where Paul did not make final judgment of the men that had been baptized “into John’s baptism” (verse 3). Instead, he taught them the truth about God’s baptism and “they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.”
God, in His mercy, may save the honest and sincere soul who has been taught error. God knows their heart and why they haven’t been able to understand the truth. Romans 9:14-15 teaches us, in principle, that we can’t grant or deny God’s mercy. God has reserved that judgment for Himself. The consequence of accepting a person into our church fellowship, who was baptized for a purpose not ordained by God, is that we have crossed the line into God’s holy ground and granted God’s mercy. We must not do that! We who are Elders of the Lord’s church must make sure we lead our people to accept those who have obeyed the one baptism ordained by God, not the baptism that has its purpose rooted in the traditions of men.
Jesus teaches us that if we keep the traditions of men, we will reject or nullify the commandment of God (Mark 7:9; Matthew 15:6). Paul warned us not to be “cheated” by anyone according to the traditions of men (Colossians 2:8). When we seek the one faith of Ephesians 4:5 we will know the gospel which, according to Paul, includes the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). From a study of the gospel we will acquire a personal faith that will lead us to the water, knowing without a doubt that Christ will be there to take our sins away and to raise us up as new creatures in Christ through faith in the working of God (Colossians 2:11-12).
Because we have faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, we are willing to submit ourselves to God in the watery grave of baptism for its Biblical purpose – remission of our sins – that we may be raised to a new life in Christ.
Will any baptism do? No, it must be a baptism where God is doing the work and where man has the faith that God can and will perform the operation of removing his sins by washing him in the shed blood of Christ ( Titus 3:4-7; Revelation 1:5).
