The following article was written by Don Daniels,
a member of the New Hope Christian Church. The article is
rather large, but very informative; enjoy.
Baptism: Questions
and Answers
Quotes of Scripture will mostly be from the New International
Version.
Q.
Why must Christians be baptized?
A.
Baptism is commanded by our Lord Jesus
Christ whom we have chosen to follow and obey: “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, and teaching
them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matt.
28:19-20a)
Those of us who would be Christians in truth rather than mere
pretense will obey Christ. To so-called disciples that
would continue to do things their own way, He asked, “Why do
you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say?” (Luke
6:46) He then immediately followed that statement with a
parable of the one who hears his words and obeys them in
contradistinction to the one that hears but does not put his
words into practice.
Obedience is very closely tied to love. “If you love me, you
will do what I command.” (John 14:15)
Q. What is baptism?
A. Baptism is our induction into Christ when we
obediently respond, in faith and repentance, to
God’s offer of salvation through the Lord Jesus. It is how we
are clothed in Christ. “For all of you who were baptized
into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” (Gal.
3:27) The Greek word used for to ‘clothe with’ is
enduo (pronounced en-dee-o) and means to
put on as a garment. When we wear the righteousness of our
Savior, God contemplates us not as sinners but as chosen by the
Messiah. (Our own righteousness cannot save us.)
Moreover, baptism is how we are united with Christ in His death,
burial, and resurrection. “Or don’t you know that all of us
who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his
death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into
death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead
through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If
we have been united with him in his death, we will certainly
also be united with him in his resurrection.” (Rom. 6:3-5)
There is a lovely symbolism here. The going down under the
water represents one who is dead in his sins being buried in the
ground, and coming up out again, his rising to newness of life.
But this is merely the representation of what the Holy Spirit
does on a spiritual level when He unites us with Christ in His
death, burial, and resurrection. (By the way, which comes
first, being baptized or being saved? Do we bury live
people? If being saved came first, we would be burying a live
person when we baptized him! Instead we bury those who are dead
in their sins and raise them up as reborn in Christ.)
Faith is necessary for baptism to have any validity. You no
doubt know John 3:16 by heart. “For God so loved the world
that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him
shall not perish but have eternal life.” The Greek term for
‘belief’ is pistis (pronounced pees-tees),
and the same word also means ‘faith’ and ‘trust’. Its verb form
is pisteuo (pronounced pees-teh-vo) meaning
‘to believe’ and ‘to trust’. We are to have utmost faith and
trust that Lord Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected by
God the Father. Without such faith, baptism does not take
place, for the Bible says, “Whoever believes and is baptized
will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”
(Mark
16:16)
But belief is not all there is to the matter. Simply believing
is not enough. “You believe that there is one God. Good!
Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” (James 2:19)
Repentance is also necessary. Look at Acts 2:38. “Peter
replied, ‘Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name
of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your of sins. And you
will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’” Notice that we
are not instructed to be baptized for our forgiveness any
more than we are told to repent for such forgiveness.
We are to repent and be baptized for the
forgiveness of our sins. Without repentance, baptism is nothing
more than getting wet.
Now consider this forgiveness of sins. What makes baptism
important to our salvation is that we must respond to
God’s offer with genuine commitment if we would expect Him to
forgive us. Can you go to heaven if your sins aren’t
forgiven?
Baptism is a response. Whenever God has made any kind of
covenant with mankind, the Scriptures show us that He has always
required some kind of response. You will not find any exception
to this fact in the Bible. Together with belief and repentance,
baptism is our response to God’s offer of salvation.
It is not a matter of just answering with, “Yeah, I’ll go along
with that, I guess. Go ahead and sign me up.”
Instead we are asked to make a visible commitment for our own
sakes. Baptism is like a wedding ceremony in which we become
joined to Christ in what the Bible describes as a marriage
relationship (Matt. 9:15 and II Cor. 11-2).
Today people often fail to understand the need for baptism just
as many contemporary couples often fail to appreciate the need
for the wedding ceremony. In such cases there is frequently a
lack of true commitment, but the Lord wants our full devotion
and dedication.
It might be helpful to ask yourself, “When was the Apostle Paul
saved?” Was it when he was converted on the road to Damascus
(Acts 9)? Or perhaps it was when he fulfilled the instructions
that he had been given and was cured of his blindness? Nope.
Neither one. Would you like a clue? Let me suggest that it was
when his sin problem was dealt with. Isn’t that a
sine qua non? There is no room for sin in holy God! (Heb.
4:15, I John 3:5, James 1:13-17, and many other passages) Why
else was Paul later told: “And now what are you waiting for?
Get up, be baptized, and wash your sins away, calling on
his name.” (Acts 22:16, emphasis added)
Once again, can you go to heaven if your sins aren’t forgiven?
Eh? Whatever you choose to believe about the importance of
baptism, you can be sure of one thing: The Bible shows that the
early Christians took it very seriously. Every time
these early believers persuaded someone to turn to Christ, the
scriptures show that they baptized the new convert. Go through
the book of Acts and see if you can find any exception.
Q.
What about the thief on the cross? He wasn’t
baptized, was he?
A.
How do you know that he hadn’t been baptized at some time
by John the Baptist? We aren’t told whether he had been or
not. But look at the passage in question: “One of the
criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the
Christ? Save yourself and us!’ But the other criminal rebuked
him. ‘Don’t you fear God,’ he said, ‘since you are under the
same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what
our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then
he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’
Jesus answered him, ‘I tell you the truth, today you will be
with me in paradise.’” (Luke 23:39-43) Let me ask you, do
this thief’s comments look to you like the response of a man who
had never repented? You have to at least allow for the
possibility that he had been among those that had received
John’s baptism of repentance.
Aside from that, does not our Lord and Author of Our Salvation
have the right to save people according to whatever means He
chooses? But we don’t have His prerogative. We therefore
follow the command that He gave to us, for:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the
kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father
who is in heaven.” (Matt. 7:21)
Q.
Are you saying that water saves us?
A.
We are saved by God’s grace! Physical water does not have the
power to forgive our sins, unite us with Christ, and clothe us
in His righteous-ness. “For it is by grace you have
been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is
the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”
(Eph. 2:8-9, emphasis added) We are saved by grace!!
I have had people quote I Peter 3:20-21 at me in an effort to
convince me that H2O does indeed save, but such
people miss the point entirely as we shall see by examining
these verses:
“...God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the
ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all,
were saved through water, 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.”
(I Peter 3:20-21)
Let’s take this passage piece by piece.
“God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the
ark was being built.” This sentence supplies the context
for Peter’s analogy. He is referring to the story of the Great
Flood.
“In it (i.e., the ark) only a few
people, eight in all, were saved through water...” Saved
from what? Were they saved from their sins or from the flood?
Obviously, they were spared from the flood. But in another way
of putting things, they were saved from the punishment resulting
from the sinful lifestyle that was practiced by their fellow
man. It is because of this sense that Peter was able to make
his analogy.
“...and this water symbolizes baptism that
now saves you also.” (Emphasis added.) The key word is
symbolizes. We are saved from our sins through
baptism as illustrated by the way Noah’s family was saved from
the sins of mankind.
“—not the removal of dirt from the body but the
pledge of a good conscience toward God.” We are not saved
by the way physical water washes us, but by the commitment we
make in our heart to God as we repent and obediently respond to
Him through baptism.
“It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
It saves us how? Baptism does not save us by making us wet but
rather by what Christ did!
Q.
Then why must we get in the water? What’s wrong with
sprinkling as opposed to immersion?
A.
If you have truly repented and forsaken your own way in
favor of God’s, would you not, as a matter of respect, want to
obey your Lord as carefully as you possibly could? The Greek
verb used in the Bible for ‘baptize’ was baptizo
(pronounced vahp-tee-zo),
and it meant ‘to dip’ or ‘to immerse’. We see how
baptism was practiced by studying how it was done in the New
Testament. (Look, for example, at how the eunuch was immersed
in the eighth chapter of the book of acts [verses 26-39]). We
don’t find any examples of baptism-by-sprinkling any more than
we find examples of the substitution of hamburgers and soda pop
in Holy Communion. The Lord’s Supper must be taken seriously;
so must baptism.
When we know the right way to do something, we ought not to
settle for alternatives. If you send your son to the store for
a quart of whole milk, and he returns with a package of powdered
milk, you might still be able to use the product; but what would
the incident say about your child’s obedience? What if you
asked him to take a bath and he just sprinkled a few drops of
water on himself? Now what kind of compliance do we
want to give our Lord who went to the cross for us? Obedience,
remember, is very closely tied to love.
Does this mean that a person who is sprinkled is not really
baptized? Who are we to say? Wouldn’t God be the one to make
that decision for each individual on a one-by-one basis? Only
He can search the heart and know the full degree of a person’s
repentance and desire to obey Him. What about the circumstance
of an elderly and frail person who lives in an igloo in a frigid
polar region, and totally immersing him during a savage winter
would probably kill him? For that matter, what about the one
who repents and complies to the best of his knowledge
with the command to be baptized by getting sprinkled? Is your
conception of God that of someone who would trash him for a
technicality?
On the other hand, what about the man who knows the right way to
do it and doesn’t care? Has he repented enough for his
salvation? Only God can decide.
Those of you who worry that something might not have been wholly
proper during your own baptism might want to look at the
beginning of the nineteenth chapter of Acts. Paul came upon
some people in Corinth who had been baptized by no less than
John the Baptist, himself. Upon learning about the role that
the Holy Spirit plays in baptism, they wanted to be rebaptized.
What did Paul do? He rebaptized them. (Acts 19:1-5)
After all, our relationship to God is serious business. It
takes love and devotion to put aside our own obstinacy and
respond to our Lord in the manner He instructed even when
it seems to make no sense to us. But rather than go our own
way, doesn’t it seem much wiser to do as Peter suggested and
make our calling and election sure (II Peter
1:10)?
Q.
Is baptism a work? If we are saved by grace
and not by works (Eph. 2:8-9), how can baptism be important to
our salvation?
A.
In a loose sort of way, everything we do is a ‘work’; but I
understand you to mean, “Is baptism a work that we do to
earn salvation?” The Scriptures are very clear on the point
that we cannot in any way merit our salvation. Nothing
that we can do is able to buy or deserve it. “For it is by
grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from
yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one
can boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9) The Greek word used here
for ‘gift’ is charis (pronounced khahr-rees),
and it designates something freely given without the requirement
of our being worthy of it.
Note also: “He saved us, not because of righteous things we
had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the
washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” (Titus
3:5)
If baptism were a work, it would have to be so on the
part of the one performing it. That is, it would be a work done
by the Holy Spirit—and perhaps, in some loose manner of
speaking, by the preacher or elder assisting in the ceremony.
It certainly wouldn’t be a work on the part of the person
who submits to having it done to him. If having a tumor
eliminated from the body is a work, it is a work
performed by the surgeon who removes it. In the same way, if
being forgiven could possibly be conceived as a work, it would
be a work done by the one who forgives.
Similarly, in a very loose sort of way, our Lord Jesus even
referred to belief as a ‘work’: “Then they asked him,
‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’ Jesus answered,
‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’”
(John 6:28-29)
Does this mean that the Apostle Paul was wrong? Are we really
saved by works? For without belief there is no salvation (Mark
16:16), and didn’t the Lord Jesus just say that belief was a
work? No, Paul was not wrong. Our Lord was not claiming
that we could work our way into heaven or earn our salvation as
wages for our labor. He was merely explaining to people that
they should believe in their Savior rather than make earthly
pursuits the focal point of their lives. Let’s always study
the context of such passages to understand what is really being
said.
We are not saved by good works but for
good works. This fact is shown by Ephesians 2:10, “For we
are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God prepared in advance for us to do.” We submit to
baptism, not to earn any favor, but in loving obedience to our
Lord’s command. We certainly are going to do good works,
but not to buy anything. Our deeds are just a way of saying,
“Lord God, I love you!” Of course, if we fail to produce good
works, this would be a strong indication that something was
probably faulty about our repentance—and repentance is
essential to salvation. If we sincerely believe and repent, we
will do good works. (We will also get baptized!)
Q.
What about the person who cannot be baptized?
A.
Paralyzed people and folks in wheelchairs
have been baptized. Additional men can usually be called upon
to assist. Of course, if someone is bound to an iron lung or
something and truly cannot be immersed, that’s another
story. After all, God gives His commandments to those who can
keep them. A person who honestly comes to believe and repent
but legitimately cannot enter the water will be saved by
God’s grace just as we all are. But if we can obey, we
must.
I have heard of people who claimed that if someone believes and
repents and is struck down by a car crash or a heart attack on
his way to the baptistry, it’s: “Sorry Charlie! You tried,
but too bad! You came close, but you didn’t quite make it.”
Such a foolish notion denies the grace of God!!
Concerning the person who can be baptized but refuses to,
one might wonder if he has repented enough for his salvation.
Is he truly ready to obey the Lord? Then why won’t he obey the
Lord’s command to be baptized? If he really loves Christ, won’t
he want to do what Christ commands (John 14:15)? Indeed, he
would be so extremely eager to be baptized that he would be
impatient to enter the water even were it filled with ice
cubes! Would he not?
Q.
If baptism is so important to salvation, why don’t you
baptize infants? Don’t you want them to be saved should
they not succeed in living long enough for you to get around to
them?
A.
As we have already discussed, belief and repentance are
essential to baptism. If one is too young to understand what
sin is and acknowledge his need for the Savior, he is too young
to need baptism. (People who attempt to baptize such
children do so on the basis of their own belief rather
than the child’s. Can we be saved because of somebody else’s
belief, or does our relationship with the Lord call for
personal commitment?)
We do not find any examples in the Bible of baptizing people too
young to believe. About as close as we can get is the
Philippian jailer’s family mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of
acts. After asking, “Sirs, What must I do to be saved?”
(Acts 16:30a), the jailer was told, “Believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ, and you will be saved—you and your household.”
(Emphasis added.) However, the story does not end there. The
fact that all the members of his household, whatever their ages,
were apparently at least old enough to believe can be seen from
the next verse: “Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him
and to all the others in his house.” (Acts
16:32)
Those who practice infant baptism usually do so because they
subscribe to the doctrine of original sin. They believe
that we are all guilty of an act of disobedience to God
committed by Adam. But such a position seems a bit hard to
justify in the light of some passages such as the following:
“The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not
share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the
guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will
be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be
charged against him.” (Ezekiel 18:20)
There is a verse in Psalm 51 that people often try to use to
document the idea of original sin, but they are taking
too literally what is actually a known Hebrew figure of speech.
“Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother
conceived me.” (Psalm 51:5) But all David was really saying
here was that he had sinned from an early age. This fact
becomes clear when we examine the same Hebrew hyperbole where it
is used in the book of Job: “If I have denied the desires of
the poor or let the eyes of the widow grow weary, if I have kept
my bread to myself, not sharing it with the fatherless—but from
my youth I reared him as would a father, and from my birth I
guided the widow—” (Job 31:16-18 emphasis added).
Therefore, to try to make a case from Psalm 51 that David was
factually conceived in sin is just as ridiculous as to argue
that Job guided a widow from his birth. However, when we do
sin, innocent people often suffer from the effects
of our misdeeds—even to the third and fourth generation (Exodus
20:5).
Should an infant die before reaching the age of reason, he is
saved just as we are, by God’s grace. A child too young
to obey for himself the command to be baptized is not
required to do so. But when he becomes old enough to understand
what baptism is all about, then he is expected to
comply—just as we are. And then it is still God’s grace that
saves. We grow up in a sin-polluted world like French-fries
plunked into hot rancid oil. Just as that scalding lipid soon
permeates every pore and fiber of the unfortunate spuds, we
likewise, by the time we are old enough to understand, have been
saturated with sin and find ourselves in need of the Savior.
Then it behooves us to respond.
Q.
What about people that lived before Christ walked the
earth? Are they all going to hell?
A. The command to be baptized was not given to them.
In those days people who were faithful to the teachings that
had been revealed to them were saved just as we are, by
God’s grace. Yes, the grace of God was at work even in the Old
Testament. All the sin offerings of the Mosaic Law foreshadowed
the ultimate sacrifice that would be made by the Lord Jesus
(even if nobody else on earth realized the fact at that time).
Those who lived before the crucifixion would be saved by what
the Messiah was going to do on the cross just as we are
saved by what He did on the cross. However, we
are the ones who were instructed to be baptized.
Q.
What, incidentally, is Holy Spirit baptism?
A.
Oh boy! I’m well aware of the fact that I am opening a can of
worms just by writing this paper. Now I’m about to dump them
out onto a plate and get them all nice and mad by stirring them
with a fork! Well, here goes:
It is my contention that Holy Spirit baptism is the only real
baptism. By this I mean that it is the Holy Spirit who does
the baptizing, and without His involvement, a baptism into
the body of Christ does not take place (I Cor. 12:13). We
are instructed that when we repent and submit to being baptized
in the name of Jesus Christ, we are then given the gift of the
Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38). This time the word for ‘gift’
is not charis but dorea (pronounced tho-reh-ah
),
and it refers to a gift that is received without payment.
However you understand the word’s usage here, it is the Holy
Spirit who baptizes (Titus 3:5).
One very plausible interpretation of the words ‘gift of the
Holy Spirit’ is to understand the original Greek phrase as a
genitive of identity (explained on page 32 of A Greek
Grammar of the New Testament by Vaughn and Gideon, Broadman
Press, Nashville, 1979, ISBN: 0-8054-1378-2). In this light,
“you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” could just as
well be translated: “you will receive the Holy Spirit as a
gift.”
Many people, however, prefer to see the phrase in question as a
genitive of attribution (Vaughn and Gideon, p. 31) and
understand the “gift” as something that the Holy Spirit
imparts. This interpretation is also grammatically valid.
However you choose to view the matter, there is no evidence in
the Bible supporting the idea shared by some that one must speak
in tongues or he is not saved.
The Apostles manifested miraculous gifts that had been
bestowed upon them at Pentecost. They were even able to impart
such gifts to other individuals by ‘laying on hands’. There is
no hard evidence in the Scriptures, however, that those
second-party recipients were able to grant the gifts to yet a
third party by any kind of succession. On the contrary, we see
that Philip (not the Apostle Philip, but rather
Philip-the-committee-member described in Acts 6:5), having
converted
Samaria
to Christianity (Acts 8: 6-ff.), was not able to pass on
the gifts to the Samaritans (Acts 8:15-16). Instead, Peter and
John had to interrupt their busy work for the Lord to go to
Samaria and lay hands on them before the miraculous event would
take place (Acts 8:14-17). Now why couldn’t Philip have handled
the problem? Why did Peter and John have to stop what they were
doing and go to Samaria? The answer is that this Philip
was not an apostle. Even though he had had hands laid on him
(Acts 6:6), he couldn’t impart his gifts to a third party.
Let’s just for a moment go back to Acts 2. This is the chapter
in which the Holy Spirit comes upon those who were gathered
together where they heard the rushing wind and saw the tongues
as of fire. (Christ had called the occurrence being baptized
with the Holy Spirit in Acts 1:5, and the experience was for
the apostles.) We don’t know how many people were
present for the occasion—whether just the apostles or others
too. But later, as people began devoting themselves to the
apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, the breaking of bread, and
to prayer, the Bible says in Acts 2:43, “Everyone was filled
with awe, and many wonders and miracles were done by the
apostles.” (Emphasis added.) The point is that not
everyone was running around doing miracles. Only the apostles
were given this ability. They could pass the spiritual gifts on
to others by laying on hands, but we don’t find any third-party
recipients of these powers in the New Testament.
Timothy had received the laying on of hands (I Tim. 4:14) from a
“body of elders.” Did this body include any apostles? Well, in
II Timothy 1:6 we see that it was Paul, himself who performed
this act. Later Paul cautioned him not to be hasty in his own
laying on of hands (I Tim.
5:22). So apparently Timothy was expected to
lay hands on others. But for what purpose? To heal? To enable
speaking in tongues? We aren’t told. But because there seems
to be little reason for reluctance in showing mercy or
communicating in other languages, we might fairly assume that he
was being asked to exercise caution in whom he ordained as
elders. This responsibility also involved the laying on of
hands—something Timothy could indeed perform for this
purpose, and impul-siveness in doing so would hardly be wise.
There is no evidence that even Timothy passed on the ability of
miraculous gifts to others.
If, therefore, anyone today can manifest any such gifts,
it would have to be because of a personal bestowal by the Holy
Spirit rather than by any apostolic succession. Mark 16:17-18
describes signs that will be demonstrated by such people.
Indeed there are churches in the South where snake-handling is
practiced, but to my knowledge, those people stop short of
drinking deadly poison. (Or if they ever do engage in that
activity, I have not heard of their surviving to tell of it.)
What then happened to the miraculous ‘signs’? When the need
for them (which was to authenticate the church before the New
Testament was written)
disappeared, so did evangelizing in languages without having
learned them, instantaneously healing leprosy, and raising
people from the dead. Could the Holy Spirit employ such ‘signs’
again should the need arise? Of course He could! But why would
He do so now that the church has been authenticated, and we have
everything necessary to fully equip us for the Lord’s service
(II Tim. 3:16-17)?
Any gift of the Holy Spirit given to us at baptism will be in
keeping with the purpose God has for each of us in the age we
live in. Don’t be disappointed if you can’t suddenly perform
spectacular miracles.
Q.
Explain, then, how the Holy Spirit happened to come
upon the household of Cornelius before baptism with
water.
A.
Let’s look at the passage in question:
“While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy
Spirit came upon all who had heard the message. The circumcised
believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift
of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.
For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Then
Peter said, ‘Can anyone keep these people from being baptized
with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we
have.’ So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus
Christ.” (Acts 10:44-48b)
This is the only circumstance in the Bible that unmistakably
shows people receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit before
entering the water. Nevertheless it is enough to give a tizzy
to those who believe that we are saved by H2O! Keep
in mind that it is the Holy Spirit who baptizes (Titus 3:5).
Water only symbolizes baptism (I Peter 3:21),
depicting the way that we are spiritually immersed into Christ
Jesus (Rom. 6:3).
Today we must conform in the manner taught us in the Scriptures
to the symbolic observance of baptism in obedience to Christ’s
instructions (Matt. 28:19). That means getting into the water.
But at the time of the meeting at the house of Cornelius,
Christianity was first being carried to the Gentiles. Now
remember that, back then, Jews were not even supposed to
associate with Gentiles (Acts
10:28).
If, therefore, in His wisdom, the Holy Spirit should have
decided that a miracle was called for to get the circumcised (i.e.,
Jewish) believers to accept these “unclean” people into
their fold, didn’t He have the right and authority to cause
such? After all, it took a miracle to get Peter going on the
project (Acts 10:9-15, 28-29). Consequently, Cornelius and his
house-hold began speaking in tongues, and the Jews present could
see that it was now all right for them to be baptized with water
(Acts 10:47-48), for now they were to be regarded as brothers
and sisters (Gal. 3:28).
Q.
Doesn’t the Bible also speak of ‘baptism with
fire’? How does that tie in? Should we not seek this special
outpouring of the Holy Spirit?
A.
The two places in the Scriptures where ‘baptism with fire’
is referred to (Matthew 3:11 and Luke 3:16) are regarded as
‘parallel passages’ referring to the same event. We can
therefore understand the latter in the context of the former.
“I baptize you with water for repentance. But after
me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am
not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and
with fire.”
(Matt. 3:11)
Again, “John answered them all, ‘I baptize you with water.
But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose
sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the
Holy Spirit and with fire.’” (Luke 3:16)
In these verses, John the Baptist was telling the crowds that
he, himself, was not the Christ. Let’s examine the complete
context, however, to see whether ‘baptism with fire’ is
perhaps something you would want.
In Matthew 3:7-8 the baptizer warned a sizable group of
Pharisees and Sadducees who had come to check him out that they
needed to repent because of a ‘wrath’ that was coming
up. In the next verse he cautioned them not to try to seek
refuge in the fact that they were Abraham’s children [i.e.,
Jews], for that fact would not save them. In Matt.
3:10
he told them that the axe is already at the root of the trees,
“and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut
down and thrown into the fire.” Immediately following that
strong admonition is the verse in question wherein he mentions
that Lord Jesus will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with
fire. That is, those who repent receive the Holy Spirit, and
those who don’t get the fire. To interpret the passage any
other way is to take it out of context. Indeed, the context
continues: in the very next verse, John the Baptist goes on to
describe those who refuse to repent as chaff that will be burned
up with unquenchable fire. The passages concerning ‘baptism
with fire’ support no other understanding of the term as
anything but punishment for failing to repent.
In the second chapter of Acts is described the
day-of-Pentecost phenom-enon wherein “cloven tongues
like as of fire” appeared over those gathered as “all
of them were filled with the Holy Spirit”. (See the last
paragraph of page 11 of this paper.) The recipients of the
miracle found themselves able to be understood by speakers of
other languages. The Apostle Peter then explained that what was
happening was predicted by the prophet Joel concerning
prophesies that would come to pass in the last days when God’s
Spirit would be poured out upon all people (Acts 2:17;
Joel 2:28-30). Did Peter mean that all mankind was suddenly
going to be able to speak in tongues? Or did he rather mean
that all mankind was going to be benefited by the works [i.e.,
the ‘acts’] of these disciples, and in this way, the Holy
Spirit was going to be disseminated through the Word of God
to all the world? I believe that the latter understanding is
the correct one, but regardless, we may still note the following
facts:
·
The Holy Spirit was not poured out upon all people at this time
but only upon those present for the miracle at Pentecost.
·
The miracle at Pentecost was not identified in the Scrip-tures
as the baptism with fire. Rather Christ called it
baptism with the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5).
·
There is no context to connect the miracle at Pentecost with the
baptism with fire that is mentioned in the
Scriptures.
·
The baptism with fire mentioned in the Scriptures con-cerns
punishment for refusing to repent.
·
We are not instructed either to seek the baptism with fire
or the gift of tongues but rather to “try to excel in
gifts that build up the church.” (I Cor. 14:12)
·
The Word of God, through the inspirational outpouring of the
Holy Spirit, has indeed reached every nation.
What is your conclusion? Is the ‘baptism with fire’
something you want? As they say in today’s lingo, “It’s not for
everyone!” (By the way, the fact
that baptism with fire is obviously not a ‘work’
should help us to see that neither is baptism with the Holy
Spirit.)
Q.
What is ‘baptism for the dead’ all about?
A.
Perhaps one of the most difficult ‘problem passages’ in the
Bible is that dealing with baptism for the dead:
“Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do
who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at
all, why are people baptized for them?”
(I Cor. 15:29)
If you have a study Bible, it probably will not help you much
with the understanding of this verse. The scholars who
construct such references don’t like to stick their necks out on
really hard questions. They would rather write abundantly on
what you already know! (They have their reputations to protect,
after all.)
The difficulty in interpreting the passage seems to center on
how to treat the Greek preposition hyper (pronounced
hee-pear) followed by the genitive case in the
expression ‘for the dead’ (hyper ton nekrov).
Most Bibles translate hyper with the English preposition
‘for’ in this circum-stance, but there are even a lot of
ways that ‘for’ can be taken.
The Mormons, for example, interpret ‘for’ in the sense of
‘on behalf of’ and use the verse as the basis for their
practice of baptizing themselves over and over again in
substitutionary rites for deceased unbelievers that they want to
go to heaven. The problem with this understanding is that,
although grammatically valid, it is contradicted by too
many other passages in Scripture that teach that we are not
saved by someone else’s belief but by our own faith.
(Mark 16:16 is just one example of such a refutation.) But even
if it were somehow possible to show that baptism by proxy
was what Paul had in mind when he wrote I Cor. 15:29, and even
if we were to discover that some early believers were actually
performing vicarious immersions, there is nothing in the passage
to suggest that Paul approved of their doing so.
There are many other ways that hyper + GENITIVE CASE can
be taken, however. The trick is to find one that won’t fly in
the face of all other Scripture. Almost by elimination process,
therefore, we come to a less used treatment of the construction
in question listed by the authoritative Greek-English Lexicon
of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 2nd
Edition, by Walter Bauer, William Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich
(University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1979): “to denote the
moving cause or the reason because of, for the sake
of.” The following are three examples of this causal
usage.
I Cor. 10:30 (emphasis and brackets added): “If I take part
in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of
[= hyper + GENITIVE] something I thank God for?”
II Cor. 12:8 (brackets added): “For [= because of]
this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from
me.”
– King James Version
Romans 15:9a (brackets added): “...so that the Gentiles may
glorify God for [= because of] his mercy...” – New
International Version
But how would this treatment work in the passage under
consideration? Let’s look at I Cor. 15:29 one more time.
“Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are
baptized for [= because of] the dead? If the dead are
not raised at all, why are people baptized for [= because
of] them?” (Brackets added)
Is it not conceivable that people sometimes convert to
Christianity because of the exhortations of loved ones
who have gone on before? A hypothetical scenario might be as
follows:
Mr. and Mrs. Klopschnabel tried their best to raise their son to
be a good boy. They gave him all their love, took great care of
him, and made him go to church with them regularly. They did
everything they knew to awaken in him a love for the Lord, but
for some reason, Johnny was always distracted by more worldly
pursuits. When his parents died in a car accident, Johnny
remembered how much they wanted him to show some interest in
Christianity. Now a grown man, he is going through the torment
of watching his wife succumb to cancer. One day she tells him
sweetly, “Honey-wuggins, your Tootsie is dying. But don’t be
sad, for I’m going to be with my Lord Jesus where I’ll be very
happy. It would mean so much to me, though, if you would
receive the salvation that Jesus offers so that you could
someday be with me in heaven!” Indeed, when the woman dies, her
face is so contented, peaceful, and loving that Johnny is moved
to consider her request seriously. He goes back to church,
studies his Bible, prays, and finally one day submits to being
baptized for [= because of the coaxing of] his now-deceased
loved ones.
The Apostle Paul’s point seems to be that if there were no
resurrection of the dead, if there were no hope of rejoining our
deceased loved ones, why would people like Johnny bother to be
baptized because of their desire to have him with them?
If this understanding of ‘baptism for the dead’ seems a
bit strained to you, if it appears at all far-fetched, our
suggestion is that you study your Greek very, very hard and then
come up with a better answer; for this is the best one we can
find.
Q.
Why was Jesus baptized?
A.
We can be sure it was not because He had sins to repent
of. Other than “too fulfill all righteousness,” we just
know that He insisted on baptism and set an example for us to
follow. The real question to ask is: What about you? Is there
any reason you shouldn’t be baptized into Christ Jesus
according to the Scriptures? We who would follow the Lord
Jesus should also emulate His attitude (Philippians 2:5). And
what was His attitude? “Not my will but thine be done.”
(Luke 22:42)
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