Few issues confuse and divide the church like baptism. We may disagree about eschatology or predestination, but these doctrines have little immediate effect on us. Baptism is a public act which is central to the life of the church, which makes it important that we clear up confusion which has arisen over this practice. This short paper is not a treatise on baptism. It just provides some guidelines on how to think biblically about this topic and addresses some of the most common misunderstandings about it.
Do the Greek words baptizo and bapto always mean “to immerse”?
No. This is a simple question with an unambiguous answer. A survey of Greek literature shows that the Greek words baptizo and bapto are used in a variety of ways. They are used for actions of immersing, dipping, pouring, wiping, and sprinkling. Duane Spencer, in his book Holy Baptism, records a wide range of actions these words represent. “Baptizo was also used, however, of the act of brushing or combing dye onto hair…”1 Homer used this word to describe what happened when a wounded frog leapt over a lake and “baptized” it with its blood. He also thus described the blood of a soldier seeping onto the ground. Of course none of these incidents involve immersion.
The central meaning of baptizo and bapto is not the act of immersing, but causing a change of appearance or identity. A white cloth becomes a red one, whether you immerse, dip it, or paint it. A lake becomes red because of the blood of the frog which was sprinkled on it. A soldier changes from a recruit to a veteran when he is “baptized” by live action. An Old Covenant person becomes clean (ceremonially holy) when he is washed with water. Likewise, in the New Covenant a person becomes a Christian when he is baptized with water – however the water is applied.
However, Christians should be more focused on how these Greek words are used in the Bible. Here the case is even more firmly established that baptism is accomplished by a variety of actions. The ancient Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, translates Hebrew words for washing by bapto. The New Testament book of Hebrews uses the word baptismos to refer to Old Testament practices of wiping. Again, the key idea is not the process used, but a change of appearance or identity brought about by that process.
Why, then, is it so widely taught with virtually no opposition that baptizo and bapto mean “to immerse”? Many people spread this idea because they heard it from someone they trust, and never check it out for themselves. This is a classic case in which an idea gains respectability by constant repetition. Furthermore, it is supported by a misuse of certain biblical texts, such as Romans chapter 6.
What does Romans 6 teach about baptism?
Romans 6:1-6 is commonly referenced to support the notion that immersion is the way people should be baptized. This passage, so it is said, teaches that when a person believes in Jesus, he dies and is resurrected. This passage also teaches that baptism is the sign that the new believer descended into death and rose up to new life. Immersion is the only form of baptism which demonstrates this death and resurrection, so it is the biblical method of baptism. The problem with this view is that both points this passage supposedly teaches are not taught here. These verses do not teach that we die and rise when we believe, nor do they teach that baptism shows our death and resurrection. Rather, this passage teaches that we are united to Christ, and that baptism is the act that joins us to Him.
In this passage Paul answers the question, “If God saves us apart from our success in keeping the law, shall we sin freely so that God may glorify Himself even more in forgiving us for a greater number of sins?” (6:1) Paul answers, “No! Your former life consisted of sinful acts. That life is dead. Now you are joined to Christ – a change brought about by baptism – and now you live like Christ lived.” Before we believed, we lived under the power of sin (6:12). After Jesus had lived a sinless life, He took sin upon Himself and died. When Christ died, the power of sin died also. When Christ rose from the dead, sin no longer had power to rule people. Now we are joined to Christ. Since we are joined to Him, sin has no power over us, and it makes no sense for us to return to our old, evil habits. As Paul said in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
The death and resurrection this passage speaks of is the death and resurrection of Christ. We did not die and rise – Christ did. What happened to us is that we were joined to Christ – after He rose to life again. This is clearer in Greek, where the words used convey this tight bond. In verse 4 we were “buried together”, in verse 5 we were “planted together”, and in verse 6 we were “crucified together”. In each case an ordinary Greek word has been modified with the prefix sun, meaning “with”. It is difficult to convey the full force of this in English. We might try by saying we were jointly buried, mutually planted, and inextricably crucified with Christ. If we had been literally, physically present – attached to Christ’s body as He died and rose again, we would be no better off than we are now by being joined to Him in baptism. Since we are joined to Him, we get the benefit of His death and resurrection. Baptism is the event that creates this bond between us. Baptism is the act that conveys to us the benefit of Christ’s death and resurrection.
One of the features of many mystery religions of the ancient world was their initiation ceremonies. These religions taught that their god performed some act of salvation, and the initiation rite re-enacted the saving act of the god. Ritual re-enactment is not part of Christian worship. We are not saved by re-enacting the work of Christ. We are saved when Christ gives us the blessings of His work of salvation. Christianity is a religion of grace, not of works. Christ did the work of salvation and He gives us the benefits of His work. We do not perform works of salvation, nor do we re-enact those works. That is an essentially pagan idea. Baptism is the act that gives us the blessings of Christ’s work.
There are two further reasons why Romans 6 cannot be teaching that we die and rise when we are baptized by immersion. First, in ancient times bodies were not buried by lowering them into the ground. They were buried by lifting them up onto a shelf in a tomb. Second, burial was never in water – except when God buried His enemies in water (e.g. Pharaoh in the Red Sea). So baptism by immersion fails to re-enact the very thing it is supposed to show.
Salvation is all of God. God did it all. Romans 6 teaches that Christ died and rose for us. Baptism joins us to Christ and conveys to us the blessings of the salvation that Christ accomplished.
Is there one correct way to baptize people?
Nowhere does scripture explicitly prescribe a specific method of baptism. I take this to mean that the method of baptism is not at the top of God’s priority list. This does not mean that the matter is trivial, however. Since there is no direct command, the preferred method of baptism will be found in the meaning of baptism itself.
What is baptism, and what does it accomplish?
Here again the scripture does not give us a definition or a theological explanation of baptism. Scripture simply tells us to do it. If we wish to inquire about the nature of baptism and what it accomplishes, we will need to draw conclusions from the whole Bible.
Some wise and godly theologians have defined baptism as “a sacrament, wherein the washing with water in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, doth signify and seal our ingrafting into Christ, and partaking of the benefits of the covenant of grace, and our engagement to be the Lord’s.”2 A sacrament is a special ritual that Christ instituted as part of the New Covenant. What makes a sacrament different from other rituals is Christ’s presence. When someone is baptized, Christ is present in spirit and does something special to that person. He makes that person part of the New Covenant. Just as a wedding actually changes the status of the man and woman involved, so baptism actually changes the status of the person being baptized. He is no longer outside of Christ, but part of the New Covenant. This does not necessarily mean that He is born from above at that moment. We cannot tell when God regenerates a person. Baptism is not a sign that a person has been regenerated already. It is simply a sign that one is part of the New Covenant in Christ.
It is important to note that in the sacraments Christ is actually present and actually performs some work. Baptism is not an act of man. The pastor applies the water, but he does so in the name of Christ. Christ is there acting through the pastor, and making that covenantal link as the water is applied. Baptism is not essentially a testimony of commitment to Christ, although this does happen when the person being baptized is an adult who has just confessed the faith. Consider a wedding. The purpose of a wedding is to join a man and woman, not to provide public entertainment. Of course the guests may have a good time at the wedding, but that is a side benefit. Likewise, the purpose of baptism is to join Christ and some person. If it also shows his friends that he has made a commitment to Christ, that is a side benefit. To say that baptism is a testimony of commitment to Christ is to make it a work of man, not a sign of God’s grace, and robs God of glory in salvation. All believers ought to confess their faith publicly, but they should not call attention to themselves while Christ is blessing them by joining them to Himself in baptism.
Scripture teaches that baptism symbolizes several aspects of salvation, and these help us to understand how it should be applied. Baptism symbolizes that we are cleansed from sin, so water is used. Cleansing from sin is ordinarily accomplished in the Bible by sprinkling (Leviticus 4:1-6), so it is appropriate to baptize by sprinkling water. Baptism also symbolizes the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as promised in Joel 2:28-29, so pouring is appropriate. Washing and immersion could also be used. The disadvantage of immersion is that immersion is how God dealt with His enemies in the flood and the Red Sea. Baptism is a mark of ownership, and in the Bible the mark of ownership is placed on the forehead. This is where sweat appears, signifying Adam’s slavery to sin. (Genesis 3:19) In Revelation the mark of the beast and the mark of God are both placed on the forehead. (Revelation 13:16-17; 22:4) Therefore it would seem that the forehead is the best place to apply the water of baptism. This points to sprinkling or pouring on the head as the means of baptism which best conveys the sense of what God is doing in the sacrament.
What makes a baptism invalid?
When water is applied to someone by a minister of the gospel in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, a valid baptism has been performed. It would be invalid if something other than water were used, or if some other name than the triune name of God were used. The supposed spiritual condition of the minister or the parents are irrelevant in making a baptism valid.
This matter was the cause of much dispute in the third and fourth centuries. During the course of persecutions some ministers recanted their faith, making their people wonder if the baptism they had received from these ministers was valid. The church debated this question with great vigor, and finally decided that it would be impossible to make the validity of baptism contingent upon the spiritual state of the minister. First, no man is capable of discerning the heart of another. Second, baptism is a work of Christ, not man. Christ is present and active when the church baptizes at His command, even if the individual representing Christ at that moment was spiritually deficient. Virtually all churches since then have taken this position.
Who should be baptized?
Scripture is clear that people hearing the gospel for the first time should be baptized when they believe in Christ. They must be able to give a credible profession of faith to the elders of the church. The point that is disputed is what to do about children.
Everyone must honestly admit that there is no scripture declaring, “Thou shalt baptize children” or “Thou shalt not baptize children.” There is a sense in which everyone is arguing from silence on this issue. Those who assert that only professing believers may be baptized typically point out that the only baptisms recorded in the Bible are adult believers. This assertion cannot be entirely supported. There are several cases where whole households were baptized, and even if there were no children involved, the text does not state this. But the nature of the New Testament is such that the only cases to come up would be of adults. The book of Acts is the primary source for these cases, and that book is the story of the spread of the gospel into new territories. Of course there were no adults who had been baptized previously as infants, and of course the whole focus is on the conversion of the adults in those communities. To complain that there are no infant baptisms in the New Testament is like observing that there are no Lafayette College fans in Lehigh University’s Goodman stadium on a September afternoon, and then to conclude that Lafayette College football has no fans! But later in the season, at the Lehigh-Lafayette game, an abundance of fans of both teams will be cheering. Likewise, later in the life of the church as believers had children, they brought their children for baptism.
It is obvious in most cultures outside the modern west that children are part of a family unit, and they participate in the benefits and liabilities of the family. This was certainly the view of the Jews in New Testament times. They knew that their children were part of the covenant with God, and they circumcised their babies to enter them into this covenant. There is no reason to expect them suddenly to keep their children out of the New Covenant – at least not without some clear command. This would have been such an obvious conclusion, the practice of withholding their children from baptism would surely have been recorded in scripture. The reason this is so difficult for modern westerners to accept is the militant individualism endemic to our culture. We measure all things by the individual – and families, communities, and governments are arrangements of convenience for those individuals.
The idea that baptism must not be given to children of believers made no sense to people prior to the Enlightenment. The central idea of the Enlightenment was to base our culture on the individual instead of scripture. Truth was evaluated by human reason instead of God’s word. Applied to religion, Christian doctrine was judged invalid unless it made sense to the individual. This made Christian doctrine captive to the prejudices of each generation. Under this mentality, baptism ceased to be a sign of God’s grace, and instead became a sign of individual human virtue. No one could possibly have thought this way until the 18th century.
Baptism is a sacrament of the New Covenant. Covenants are not private matters. A contract may be an agreement between two people that applies only to them, perhaps for a specified time. But a covenant, by its nature, includes the children of each party. One can claim to believe in Jesus and do what he wants. But it is not possible to be part of the New Covenant and legitimately refuse baptism to your children.
Is it wrong for someone once baptized to be rebaptized?
Scripture does not state that it is a sin to be rebaptized, so we ought to refrain from heated rhetoric about this. I do not think that God will reject a person who presents himself for baptism more than once, or a minister who performs such a baptism. The problem is that such an action shows a disrespectful attitude toward the blessing God gave the first time. A man whose wife asks to be married to him again would naturally wonder what is wrong with her. Rebaptism despises God’s grace imparted in baptism and makes His sacrament a human spectacle. Rebaptism is inappropriate, and should never be approved.
These few thoughts only touch on the complex doctrine of baptism. I hope they will clear away some of the misunderstandings on the topic and point us to a better grasp of what the scripture teaches.
1. Duane Spencer, Holy Baptism (Tyler, Texas: Geneva Ministries, 1984) p. 69. 2. Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 94.
Reverend C. David Green
Pentecost 2005
David Green 