BAPTISM
Someone
says, “I can be saved without being baptized.” So you will do nothing that
Christ commands, if you can be saved without doing it? You are hardly worth
saving at all! A man whose idea of religion is that he
will do what is essential to his own salvation, only cares to save his own
skin. Clearly, you are no servant of Christ’s. Baptism, if not essential to
your salvation, is essential to your obedience to Christ.
A
man who knows that he is saved by believing in Christ does not, when he is
baptized, lift his baptism into a saving ordinance. In fact, he is the very
best protester against that mistake, because he holds that he has no right to
be baptized until he is saved.
C.H. Spurgeon
Baptismal Regeneration, sermon 10.326.
[Baptism
by immersion is] the usual form of the original meaning of the Greek baptidzein and baptismos;
from the analogy of John’s baptism in the Jordan; from the apostle’s comparison
of the sacred rite with the miraculous passage of the Red Sea, with the escape
of the ark from the flood, with a cleansing and refreshing bath, and with
burial and resurrection; finally, from the general custom of the ancient
church, which prevails in the East to this day.
Philip Schaff
History of the Christian Church, Quoted in
Morris, Baptism: How Important is It? p. 15-16.
Several
factors all demonstrate with clarity and strength that baptism, as a church
ordinance, must be conducted by the immersion of a believing Christian in water
upon confession of his faith and evidence of his repentance for the purpose of
signifying to all the world his identification with Christ in His death, burial
and resurrection.
Henry Morris
Baptism: How Important is It? p. 126.
A man may go
to hell with baptismal water upon his face.
John Trapp
A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 201.
I do not
elevate the time or mode of baptism to a primary doctrine.
John Piper
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, 2002, p.
128. www.DesiringGod.org. Used by
Permission
Every baptism
recorded in the Bible was the baptism of a person who had professed faith in
Christ. Nowhere in Scripture is there any instance of an infant being baptized.
The “household baptisms” (Ac. 16:15, 33; 1 Cor. 1:16) are exceptions to this
only if one assumes that the “household” included infants. But, in fact,
Luke steers us away from this assumption, for example in the case of the Philippian jailer (Ac. 16:32) by saying that Paul first
“spoke the word of the Lord…to all who were in his (the jailor’s) house,” and
then baptized them. This looks like Luke’s way of showing that a person needs
to hear and believe “the word of the Lord” in order to be baptized… I also
noticed – as every Baptist schoolboy knows – that the order of Peter’s command
was, “Repent and be baptized” (Ac. 2:38). I saw no reason to reverse the
order.
John Piper
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, 2002, p.
130. www.DesiringGod.org. Used by
Permission
[In
Colossians 2:12 and 1 Peter 3:21] baptism is an expression of the faith of the
person being baptized. I [do] not see how an infant could properly receive this
ordinance as an expression of his or her faith.
John Piper
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, 2002, p.
131. www.DesiringGod.org. Used by
Permission
The visible
people of God are no longer formed through the natural birth but through new
birth and its expression through faith in Christ. With the coming of John the
Baptist and Jesus and the apostles, the emphasis now is that the spiritual
status of our parents does not determine our membership in the covenant
community. The beneficiaries of the blessings of Abraham are those who have the
faith of Abraham. These are the ones who belong to the covenant community.
John Piper
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, 2002, p.
134-135. www.DesiringGod.org. Used by
Permission
John's
baptism...was a radical act of individual commitment to belong to the true
people of God, based on personal confession and repentance… This is one of the
main reasons that I do not believe in baptizing infants, who cannot make this
personal commitment or confession or repentance. John's baptism was an assault
on the very assumptions that give rise to much infant baptism.
Sermon: I Baptize You With
Water, Matthew 3, May 4, 1997, By Permission of www.DesiringGod.org.
In...the New Testament, and indeed in all
the first two centuries of the Christian era until A.D. 200 when Tertullian
mentions infant baptism for the first time in any historical document...all
baptism was the baptism of believers, not infants. And the reason was that
baptism was the sign of belonging to the new people of God who are constituted
not by birth or ethnic identity, but by repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.
Sermon: I Baptize You With
Water, Matthew 3, May 4, 1997, By Permission of www.DesiringGod.org.
Most American
evangelicals are familiar with what Billy Graham does at the end of his
preaching, calling people to walk to the front. Sometimes these are called
"invitations." Sometimes "altar calls."
When you look for something like this in the Bible there is no clear example…
If you ask what the decisive, public way of taking a Christian stand was in the
New Testament, the answer is, baptism. The message
Peter gave in Acts 2 ended with the words, "Repent and be baptized in the
name of Jesus Christ" (Acts 2:38). Our renewed conviction is that we need
to regularly offer baptism as the decisive public way for people to respond
publicly to the gospel.
Sermon: I Baptize You With
Water, Matthew 3, May 4, 1997, By Permission of www.DesiringGod.org.
The Bible
indicates that a person must understand the gospel, repent of his or her sin,
and savingly trust in Christ before being baptized.
If water baptism is an external sign of genuine conversion, then genuine
conversion must take place first.
Matt Weymeyer
Pulpit Magazine, April 18, 2008.
The
temptation for many parents is to rush their child’s baptism. Our elders here
at Grace Church believe it is better to wait, and be absolutely convinced of a
child’s conversion, than to baptize the child prematurely — and thereby
potentially give an unsaved child a false sense of assurance.
Matt Weymeyer
Pulpit Magazine, April 18, 2008.
Baptism
signifies that the old Adam in us is to be drowned by daily sorrow and repentance,
and perish with all sins and evil lusts; and that the new man should daily come
forth again and rise, who shall live before God in righteousness and purity
forever.
Martin Luther
We have not a
single command in the Scriptures that infants are baptized, or that the
apostles practiced it. Therefore we confess with good sense that infant baptism
is nothing but human invention and notion.
Menno Simons
Why get
baptized?
1. Imitate
and identify with Christ's example (Mt. 3:13-15).
2. Follow
Christ's command found in Scripture (Mt. 28:19; cf. Ac. 2:38).
3. Declare an
oath of allegiance to Christ - "in the name" (Mt. 28:19).
4. Symbolize
the purification from sin through Christ (Ac. 22:16; cf. 1 Cor. 6:11; Tit.
3:5).
5. Symbolize
the union with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection (Ac. 6:3-5).
Matthew, Judson Press, 1886, p. 59.
Baptism with
water is the sign and seal of baptism with the Spirit, as much as it is of the
forgiveness of sins. Water-baptism is the initiatory Christian rite, because
Spirit-baptism is the initiatory Christian experience.
John Stott
The Baptism and Fullness of the Holy Spirit, Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1964, p. 28.
Disciples are
not made going forward to an altar, but by being baptized (Mt. 28:19)! This is
the biblical way in which repentant sinners…publicly declare their faith in
Jesus Christ (Ac. 2:41; 16:15, 31-33).
Kim Riddlebarger
The Word and Sacrament in Worship, Table Talk, Jan. 2005, p. 12. Used by Permission.
Probably in
our own, modern substitutes for (immediate baptism upon profession) – raising
hands, coming forward, etc. – are the result of a felt need to do something for
those who believe. It seems certain that those who believed were distinguished
from those who did not. There is no evidence that the New Testament
evangelistic preachers asked them to come forward, but there is every
indication that they did invite those who believed to be baptized (Ac. 2:38).
And it seems that this was the way in which new converts professed their faith
in Christ and came under the care and discipline of the church.
Jay Adams
Preaching with a Purpose, Zondervan, 1984, p. 74.
It is the job
of the church to baptize every true convert as “an outward symbol of an inward
reality” and we must do that as soon as possible. But we must emphasize in the
case of children and really every professing believer that it is valid
converts we baptize, not just anyone who says he has believed. We find that
knowing this is more difficult with children because they cannot express
themselves as an adult would and because their experiences in life have not as
clearly demonstrated that they have life from God. But we still cannot baptize
those we only hope are Christians. So we must wait until we know, and
then we will baptize as immediately as possible.
Jim Elliff
Reading
Our Children: Is There Somebody Alive in There? Christian Communicators
Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org.
Used by Permission.
Throughout
the book of Acts, baptism is always the first act that follows conversion. The
three-thousand at Pentecost, the eunuch in chapter 8, Saul in chapter 9,
Cornelius in chapter 10, Lydia and the Philippian
jailer in chapter 16 – all of these were baptized following
conversion.
Jim Elliff
The
Communion of the Body of Christ,
Christian
Communicators Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org. Used by Permission.
When the church baptizes a child, that action
concerns me, for that child is thereby connected to that which is my head too,
and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member.
John Donne
We may never be martyrs but we can die to self, to sin, to the
world, to our plans and ambitions. That is the significance of baptism; we died
with Christ and rose to new life.
Vance Havner
[We ought to]
regard the sacrament of baptism with reverence. An ordinance
of which the Lord Jesus Himself partook, is not to be lightly esteemed. An ordinance to which the great Head of the Church submitted, ought
to be ever honorable in the eyes of professing Christians.
Commentary: Matthew 3.
Paul alludes to a component of baptism that is often
overlooked. He says that from this moment forward, we are to “walk in newness
of life” (Romans 6:4). Baptism represents our death to the self-ruled life and
our submission to the rule of God, our willing embrace of His mission for us.
Robert Lewis
Raising a Modern-Day
Knight by Robert Lewis, Copyright © 2007 by Robert Lewis, p. 143. Used by
permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.
We are
baptized into (not merely in) the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit. When faith grasps the significance of baptism it dawns on us that we
have been given the privilege of all privileges – fellowship with God. We are
His, and He is ours – forever! His grace does not cleanse us from sin simply
for its own sake, but to fit us for His company
throughout the whole of our lives. So baptism announces to us the
overwhelmingly great privilege of fellowship with the triune covenant-making
and covenant-keeping God. And because baptism symbolizes this, it calls us to a
new life-style marked by ongoing repentance and faith.
Sinclair B. Ferguson
Healthy Christian Growth, by Permission of the Banner of
Truth Trust, Carlisle, PA. 1991, p. 14.
According to
the Bible, baptism is fundamentally a physical sign of a spiritual reality.
Matthew 28:18-20 indicates that it is for believers only, the initial step of
obedience in our new life of discipleship to Christ. Romans 6:1-4
is even more specific, indicating that baptism symbolizes our death and
burial with Christ as our representative head, and our spiritual resurrection
with Him from the symbolic grave. Colossians 2:11-13 indicates even more
specifically still that baptism is the physical representation of the spiritual
circumcision of our hearts.
Mark Dever and Paul
Alexander
The
Role of the Ordinances, taken from The Deliberate Church, © 2005, Crossway
Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, p. 105, www.crosswaybooks.org.
[Baptism] is
simply a testimony – the first profession of faith that the believer makes. The
rite shows the community that the individual is now identified with Christ. It
is a symbol of an inward reality.
H. Wayne House
Charts of Christian Theology and Doctrine, Zondervan, 1992, p. 123.