MUST I be baptized?
Numerous people ask me if they must be baptized to be united with Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection.
I wonder who was the first to ask that? I read of a man in the NT (Acts 8:36) that wanted to know, "Why can’t I be baptized?" It wasn’t, "Do I have to be baptized?" His whole hearing of the gospel was unlike so many moderns in this respect. The moderns want to know if they must
be baptized and he wanted to know what would keep him from it. [Maybe
it has something to do with what they are being told and the way in
which they’re being told.]
I read of an astonished apostle asking, concerning a Gentile
household (Acts 10:47-48), "In light of what God has just done here,
what’s to keep these people from being baptized?" Some might have wanted
to keep it from them—Peter among them, up to that point—but now the
apostle insists it’s their right (as well as obligation). All over the
place today I read and hear of people that want to debate the matter
rather than obey. All over the place I hear people teaching that people
don’t need to be baptized or that we shouldn’t say they need to be
baptized. What am I missing? In the NT God’s credentialed ministers and
apostles are arguing for the right of non-Christians to be
baptized and today we have people who not only won’t practice the
ordinance, they insist that others don’t need to submit to it.
Why would they do that?
But why should people be baptized when they have loved and believed
Jesus Christ for years? Perhaps—and maybe this should be
sufficient—because the Lord would have it so! When God sent his Holy
Spirit on the open-hearted Cornelius you don’t hear him debating whether
he needed to be baptized into the name of Jesus Christ. You don’t hear
the crushed and penitent Saul arguing with Ananias when he was told to
arise and be baptized and wash away his sins calling on the name of the
Lord (Acts 22:16). None of this, "What? Do you know who you’re speaking
to? I have seen the risen Lord and have been called to apostleship."
None of that! Like everyone else in the NT, he rose and humbly obeyed.
No one today understands salvation by grace more clearly than Paul
did. And no one today knows the profound witnessing power of baptism as
Paul did. In three gospel saturated books (Romans, Galatians and
Ephesians) he links baptism with union with Christ, sonship and life in
Christ (see Romans 6:3-8, Galatians 3:26-27 and Acts 19:1-5 with
Ephesians 2:8).
In Galatians 3:26-28 a faith-filled baptism is not only the door to sonship by faith and clothing with Christ, it is a protest against all that divides humans!
And In Matthew 28:19 it links Jesus Christ with his "colleagues" in the
Godhead, bearing witness to his nature and person. In Romans 6:3-8 it
is a foe of sin and wickedness and a witness to the nature of the death
and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
And some dare to make it optional!