Guigoz 3
C: Good morning Mike! After out last conversation I bumped into a Christian who caused me to think that neither my infant baptismal service nor your adult baptismal service are valid. According to him neither of us have been properly baptized according to the biblical precedent and believe me I’ve been seriously troubled and confused about it.
M: Can you tell me what upset you the most?
C: First of all it’s that I don’t really want to be baptized a second time and secondly because he caused me to believe that such a baptism wouldn’t be valid either.
M: I think that the most important thing we can do is to search the scriptures to see exactly what Jesus said about baptism- including both how to do it and the reason behind it.
C: What exactly did Jesus say about baptism?
M: In Matthew 28:19 he said “Go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”
C: Well if that’s all that there is to it then my baptism should already be valid since the person who baptized me did it in accordance with this verse
M: Well you should also know that the Bible says in I Peter 3:21 that Baptism is the pledge of a clear conscience towards God that saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So unless I’m wrong I would say that at two years old you were incapable of making a pledge of any kind. The Bible doesn’t say anything about someone else being able to make a pledge on your behalf because salvation is an individual choice.
C: So are you saying that the baptismal waters don’t purify us?
M: Water doesn’t purify at all. Even during the time of John the Baptist we read in Matthew 3:7-9 that when John saw the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to the river to be baptized that he told them to produce fruit in keeping with repentance and not to claim Abraham as their father. This shows us that even if they got into the waters without genuine repentance in their hearts that it would be totally meaningless.
C; Are you saying that someone can’t be a committed Christian without being baptized?
M: Corrine baptism is not a choice but a commandment of the Lord and if you refuse they are disobeying him. And baptism should be done exactly as Jesus instructed us, by that I mean total immersion in keeping with the Lord’s example. We need to follow him in all his ways.
C: Alright, but until this point in our conversation you haven’t explained to me where the confusion comes from regarding being baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and being baptized just in the name of Jesus?
M: The confusion stems from the time following Jesus’ departure. The apostles preached a different baptism from the one that John the Baptist had already implemented. People didn’t understand why it was necessary to be baptized for a second time and that’ why often when the apostles met groups of new believers they would ask: “with what baptism have you been baptized?” This is the reason the apostles spoke of the baptism of Jesus so that people would understand the difference between Jesus’ baptism and John’s.
C: So if I’m understanding you, it’s the person baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit by the means of total immersion who has really obeyed the command of the Jesus?
M: Exactly! Unless of course your Bible says something different in Matthew 28:19
C: Well if that’s the case then I need to obey the command of the Lord, but before you leave I have another question concerning the message preached at church on Sunday. They mentioned that a Christian is a new creature, but I would like to understand exactly what they mean by a “New Creature”.
M: Of course I will explain it to you in Guigoz #4.
