What the Bible Says About Baptism

Introduction

Throughout Church history, but more notably and rancorously within the past several hundred years, debates over Christian baptism – what the rite itself actually signifies and does, by what mode it ought to be administered, and who may qualify as its proper subjects – have continued without abatement. One notable characteristic of the question, which has doubtless served to keep an easy and obviously irrefutable answer out of reach, is that the entire biblical witness to the nature of baptism is not exhausted by the relatively few passages directly addressing, by precept or historical example, the actual administration of the New Covenant sign, but on the contrary, many broad and far-reaching biblical themes and motifs have a necessary and compelling impact on virtually every point of the debate. We will not understand what is intended by the sign of baptism until we know what it is to be in covenant with God in Christ Jesus; and we will not understand his Covenant until we go back to the beginning of his dealings with his people, and take careful note of how God has inaugurated, clarified, and expanded his covenant, to whom he has always made it firm, how he advanced it to its final state of immutable certainty in the atoning work of Christ, and what that means for us today who are heirs of the Covenants of Promise. Nor will we understand the manifold significance of the rite until we have adequately accounted for God’s saving of Noah and the children of Israel through the waters by which he destroyed the world, the washing rituals of the Old Testament priests, and many other such things. But although the question is multi-faceted and complex, and although many well-meaning persons have therefore failed to take into account certain vital and necessary pieces of information pertinent to the subject, and have thus become inadvisedly dogmatic in an opinion which cannot adequately account for great and inextricably related truths which are the most ardently and emphatically proclaimed throughout the scriptures, it is my firm belief that the scriptures alone, when laid out in due order, may cast such a brilliant and inextinguishable light upon the whole topic as to render a few much-debated conclusions firm beyond cavil. God grant that his holy scriptures may here dispel much fruitless and misdirected groping after answers through the wrong means and reconcile all true and pious Christian brothers (of whom there are doubtless many on every side of the question) in a singleminded opinion!

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4 Responses to “What the Bible Says About Baptism”

  1. Matthew says:
    September 2, 2009 at 5:41 pm

    The problems many Christians have in understanding Water Baptism (as John administered to Christ) is misinterpreting (eisegesis) and erronously associating it with the OT covenant of circumcision. The water baptism has nothing to do with and OT, which Christ fulfilled, but is an outward symbol(and practice) of an inner heart given to Christ.

    The whole counsel of God (OT through NT) emphatically equates water baptism with regeneration/purification, and never was administered to anyone who was not of the age of consent, nor a believer. Infant baptism was not administered until the days of Constantine (for Imperial tax & State run church tithe, which was a unified giving). Constantine wrote a decree requiring every infant in his Empire to be baptised and a record kept, or the penalty of death (parents as well).

    A fantastic book on the early church (250 A.D) through the Reformation (including many writings of Calvin, Luther, Augustine, Zwingli, Bullinger, Beza, and others) is The Reformers and Their Stepchildren by Verduin. Great Read and an eye-opener to any Reform Theology buff.

  2. Job says:
    September 2, 2009 at 6:15 pm

    Accepting paedobaptism because it is the circumcision of the new covenant (a tenuous proposition to begin with because only the males were circumcised and both sexes are sprinkled) means giving extrabiblical revelation the same weight as scripture. Even paedobaptists acknowledge that there is not a single Bible text that supports the practice, and resort to systematic theology to justify it. Read Westminster and the other confessions: infant baptism is supposed to cleanse infants of original sin and seal them until the time of regeneration. Where does the Bible ever say or even imply such a thing?

  3. pitchford says:
    September 2, 2009 at 9:52 pm

    Hey Matthew,

    I think your church history is a little off, and I know for sure that your statement, “water baptism has nothing to do with and [sic] OT,” is utterly false. Peter and Paul both explicitly say that baptism was in the OT, as did the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, the entire consensus of early Church fathers, etc.

  4. pitchford says:
    September 2, 2009 at 9:55 pm

    Hi Job,

    Equating baptism with circumcision is not extrabiblical at all! Read Colossians two. And I think there is much, much more than a single biblical text to support the practice, I included many of them in the list above.

    Thank you both for commenting, feel free to speak your mind. :)

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