A message for Akron Alliance Fellowship Church, Akron OH, for Sunday, November 26, 2023.
For the “Live in Church” audio of this message, select here.
Today, we will be looking at Christian Baptism. We will be looking at the reason and purpose for baptism, and add clarity to how baptisms were performed in the past and how they are to be done today with regard to our Christian faith.
Christian baptism is an ordinance that Jesus instituted for the future church after His resurrection. He made the declaration to His disciples, and anyone else listening, just before His ascension:
Matthew 28:19-20 NIV
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, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Jesus instructs His church to teach God’s Word, make disciples (or followers of Jesus) and baptize them. This is to be the practice throughout the church age. So, we can see that baptism is something that Jesus commands for us.1 He commands it for us as a public statement that believers in Jesus are making the commitment to follow Jesus and live for Him for the rest of their lives.
Baptism was a regular practice long before the founding of the church. The Jews from the distant past would baptize when a person committed to God in order to show the convert’s “cleansed” nature. John the Baptist was baptizing people as a means of getting people ready for the coming Lord and Savior, and it was a symbol of one’s repentance, but Christian baptism has a greater significance today. Christian baptism is performed in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The word “baptism” simply means “to identify,” and in this case, it is to identify with the life and actions of Jesus Christ. It is an outward symbol of the inward commitment that takes place in the heart of the believer at the time of salvation.2
I am aware that there have been infant baptisms throughout the course of church history. The Bible is silent on infant baptism, and there’s nowhere in the New Testament where a baby was baptized, but it was a practice that was taken up by Christian churches, and around the time of Augustine it was a standard practice. Today, Roman Catholics, many Orthodox churches, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Methodists practice infant baptism, but all of this was challenged during the Protestant Reformation in that baptism should have been reserved only for those persons who believe in Jesus Christ.3 Simply put, infants do not have the capacity to reason as to who Jesus Christ is. Our church practices baby dedications, which reflect a commitment for the family to bring up a child before the Lord and to “train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).
Now, I have heard of people who have gotten baptized more than once. I don’t know the circumstances surrounding the reason to do it more than once, but it may have had to do with the battle that everyone has once there is a declaration to live for Jesus Christ. When you commit to Christ, you’ve just chosen a side, and the enemy is on the other side. Baptism is a public way of telling everyone—your family, your friends and even the enemy—that you are committed to being a servant for Jesus. At the end of the day, you don’t need to do it more than once, but I no longer tell people that baptism is unnecessary. It is not a requirement for salvation under Jesus Christ, but it is a command of Jesus to go and baptize; therefore, a believer in Jesus needs to get baptized to be obedient to Jesus and His commands. Your life needs to be a reflection of the light of Jesus in today’s world.
It’s fitting to take the time to look at the importance of baptism and for us to see that it is, indeed, a public testimony of one’s faith and belief in Jesus Christ as a personal Lord and Savior. I’m deliberately using all of these words because it needs to be made clear that baptism IS NOT a substitute for the salvation that only Jesus can provide for us. Baptism affirms the testimony of the believer before others.
Let’s take a look at the moment when Jesus was making His own public testimony of the official beginning of His ministry.
Matthew 3:13-17 NIV
13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 14 But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
15 Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented.
16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
After doing a little research on this event, I learned why Jesus went through being baptized. He didn’t need to be baptized because He was sinless. He was (and is) holy. He also did not get baptized as a matter of demonstrating what it is to go through a baptism. He also didn’t do it as if it was some sort of ritual.
The first reason that Jesus was baptized, in remaining obedient to the will of His Father, was to identify with all of humanity.
Jesus noted in verse 15 that He took part for the purpose of “fulfilling all righteousness.” What Jesus did with His baptism was to identify Himself completely with a sinful mankind.
Isaiah 53:12 NIV
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
Secondly, Jesus was also baptized as a symbol of death.
Matthew 20:20-23 NKJV
20 Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Him with her sons, kneeling down and asking something from Him.
21 And He said to her, “What do you wish?”
She said to Him, “Grant that these two sons of mine may sit, one on Your right hand and the other on the left, in Your kingdom.”
22 But Jesus answered and said, “You do not know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
They said to Him, “We are able.”
23 So He said to them, “You will indeed drink My cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with; but to sit on My right hand and on My left is not Mine to give, but it is for those for whom it is prepared by My Father.”
Jesus’s baptism was an identification as to the type of death that He would experience, and He did indeed inform His disciples that they would suffer in the same manner, but we also need to consider that the lesson He was trying to teach the sons of Zebedee was that they needed to back away from the aspect of how great they were in the kingdom; instead, Jesus was teaching them that they needed to serve God with humble hearts.
Matthew 20:26-28 NKJV
26 Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. 27 And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave— 28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
When we commit to living for Jesus, we are indeed changed for the better. He wants us to live as a servant of Jesus—obedient to the Father and sensitive to His will. Baptism identifies the believer with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. In the same manner, we are called to die to self—our fleshly nature—and live for Jesus Christ.
Matthew 16:24-25 NIV
24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
We die to self in the moment we declare Jesus as Lord and Savior, and we also continually do so as we live under the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit.4
We perform baptism by immersion, which means completely dropping you into an ice cold pool of water. HA! Just kidding—I am there to assist you as I will lean you backwards into the warm, comfortable water while you are seated on a step inside the baptismal pool, and then lift you up out of the water after a few milliseconds. I do suggest that you hold your nose closed during the process. The immersion represents the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.
Thirdly, Jesus’s baptism, in kicking off His ministry, became our High Priest. The voice of God, the Father from heaven and the alighting of the Holy Spirit was visual and audible confirmation that Jesus was to be identified as the One who cleanses us from our sin and reconciles us to Himself. We are made clean by the unselfish acts of Jesus when He went to the cross for us.5
Baptism means that we are telling the world that we have a new outlook. A changed way of how we see life.
2 Corinthians 5:16-21 NIV
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
As you can see here, baptism represents living a lifestyle as an ambassador of Jesus Christ. And that makes perfect sense as you live missionally for Him. No matter where you are or where you are going, you are living missionally as you proclaim the gospel.
Before we, as a church, perform a baptism, we spend time with the person to clarify understanding as to what it is to be saved by the grace of Jesus Christ. We go over a list of verses that talk about salvation, including the crystal-clear passage in Romans 10:9-10:
Romans 10:9-10 NLT
9 If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.
I want to show you something that I just recently discovered in Scripture about how it is not a slam dunk that everyone who gets baptized is already saved, and it can be found in Acts, Chapter 8 where Philip was ministering to the people in Samaria, but Simon the Sorcerer was a big attention getter who loved flattery and human praise:
Acts 8:9-17 NIV
9 Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, 10 and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, “This man is rightly called the Great Power of God.” 11 They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his sorcery. 12 But when they believed Philip as he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. 13 Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw.
14 When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. 15 When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, 16 because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 17 Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.
I want you to see and understand that the act of baptism is to be taken very seriously in that people who are baptized (1) have declared they have a saving relationship with Jesus, and (2) that any acts outside of Christian baptism by immersion (what we do here) does NOT assure a person has complete understanding about what it is to be saved by Jesus. In this passage, Simon the Sorcerer was all about getting attention, and mostly for money and adulation. Philip, while he was proclaiming truth, may not have provided enough information for people to be clear about the role of Christ. Even when the truth is proclaimed, not everyone will readily accept it. Peter and John went to Samaria to effectively be the closers that brought a number of them to receive the Holy Spirit—even after baptism. EVERY BELIEVER must acknowledge the heartfelt need for the Holy Spirit in order to live for Jesus. The Spirit is the Seal that covers every true believer in Jesus Christ.
John 10:27-30 NIV
27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”
I trust that the words here affirm the believer in Christ who understands the sacrifice that Jesus has made for him or her, and that there is no hesitation in making a public declaration of faith in Jesus. Baptism by immersion is how it is to be done.
John 10:40-42 NIV
40 Then Jesus went back across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing in the early days. There he stayed, 41 and many people came to him. They said, “Though John never performed a sign, all that John said about this man was true.” 42 And in that place many believed in Jesus.
Believers, let’s continue to live missionally for Jesus in obedience to His Word. The indwelling Holy Spirit is our Advocate (John 14:16) and provides godly wisdom as we go forth.
Let’s tell the world about the goodness of Jesus, our new life in Him, and His love for us.
Copyright © 2023 Melvin Gaines
1 “What is the importance of Christian baptism?” (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2023 from https://www.gotquestions.org/Christian-baptism.html.
2 Fulks, D. (n.d.). Baptism. Lifepoint Church. https://www.lifepointohio.com/get-involved/baptism?
3 “What does the Bible say about infant baptism / paedobaptism?” (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2023 from https://www.gotquestions.org/infant-baptism.html.
4 “What does the Bible mean by “dying to self”? (n.d.). Retrieved November 22, 2023, from https://www.gotquestions.org/dying-to-self.html.
5 McGee, J. V. (1988). Matthew 3:13-17 Jesus is Baptized of John. In J (Ed.), Through the Bible Commentary. essay, Thomas Nelson.
Melvin Gaines 