5 Is Baptism important?
Mark 1:1-13
Mark's gospel starts with John the Baptist baptising and then goes straight onto Jesus being baptised. So, it’s natural to talk about baptism!
Baptism is a somewhat controversial subject as different churches and denominations hold different views on baptism. It’s also a big subject. I couldn’t possibly cover all the things that one might want to say about it. So, I’m going to try to answer just a few concrete questions:
Is baptism important?
Why are we baptized?
What happens when we’re baptized?
What do we do about it?
We’ll get some of the answers from our passage in Mark, but we will also go a little further afield...
1. Is baptism important – generally?
Our passage in Mark gives us two reasons to believe that baptism is important.
We find the first in verse 9. Mark tells us: ‘In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.’
Jesus was baptised. If Jesus was baptised then it strongly suggests that baptism is important!
But let’s be careful in our argument. Something may be important for one person but not needed by someone else. Let’s imagine my brother has high blood pressure, and the doctor prescribes a beta-blocker. But I don’t have high blood pressure. I’m different to my brother. Just because my brother takes a beta-blocker doesn’t mean that I have to. Just because Jesus was baptised doesn’t mean that I need to. That’s logical.
And it is true that Jesus is different from me. He was without sin. John proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus has nothing to repent of, nothing he needed to ask forgiveness for. He doesn’t need to be baptised – and yet, he is!
It doesn’t seem to make sense! Matthew records that John the Baptist had much the same thought. He told Jesus, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ Jesus answered, ‘Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness.’
If baptism is a sign of repentance, and there was nothing for Jesus to repent of, why did he go forward? Our passage in Mark doesn’t tell us the answer to that.
Perhaps part of the answer is that Christian repentance isn’t just about being sorry for sins and turning AWAY from them. Christian repentance is also about turning TO God, committing oneself to following God wherever he leads – even through death. Baptism is a picture of death and resurrection.
So, baptism was an absolutely fitting start to Jesus’ ministry. True, he had nothing to ask forgiveness for. But he certainly could publicly declare his submission to God’s purposes – which he knew would include death.
As I said, Mark doesn’t give us the answer to why Jesus was baptised. But if baptism was important for Jesus, it’s hard to imagine that it is not all the more important for us.
The second reason for thinking that baptism must be important comes from the very fact that Mark starts his gospel with such a strong emphasis on baptism. If we look to the end of Mark’s gospel, we find that he also finishes with a powerful statement about baptism. Please look at Mark 16:16 and you’ll see what I mean. So, Mark starts and finishes with strong references to baptism. The prominence Mark gives to this theme strongly suggests that it is important.
Moving away from Mark 1, we get a further, very clear indication of how important baptism is at the end of Matthew. In Matthew 28:18-20 Jesus tells his disciples:
‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’
Jesus gave his disciples four instructions: ‘Go’, ‘Make disciples’, ‘Baptize’, and ‘Teach’. Most of us agree that going, making disciples, and teaching are very important. But many of us don’t think that baptism is very important. But if baptism is grouped with these other very important things it must be important. And if it’s part of Jesus’ final instructions to his disciples it must be important.
At this point we can wriggle. We can say, ‘We aren’t saved by baptism; we are saved by faith’. We can point to the thief on the cross. He was never baptised, and yet Jesus told him, ‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’ But he couldn’t be baptised. Most of us can be. If we’re elderly and genuinely too frail to go down into a pool, a variant can be organized - it’s called ‘baptism by affusion’. But Jesus expects us make that clear statement of commitment that the act of baptism is. He went to the cross for us. We can indicate our commitment to him by going down into some water.
2. Is baptism important – to Baptists?
Duh! Yes it is! Baptists take the view that baptism must involve repentance. Back in the 16th century a group of Christians called Anabaptists took that view. In 1527 they wrote a document called the Schleitheim Confession. Item number one was, ‘Baptism is administered to those who have consciously repented…’
That is why Baptist churches do not baptise infants. Infants cannot consciously repent.
A little later on an Englishman called John Smyth agreed with the Anabaptists. He and various friends were being persecuted in England so they fled to Amsterdam. In 1608 or 1609 they formed the first Baptist church, and John Smyth first baptised himself and then 36 others.
Baptist churches today are the successors of that movement. The Baptist Union of Great Britain doesn’t have much in its statement of principle. It has just three points. The second concerns baptism. It says:
The Basis of the Baptist Union is … That Christian Baptism is the immersion in water into the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, of those who have professed repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ …
3. Is baptism important – to me personally?
Yes, it is! I was baptised when I was 15. At the time I wasn’t clear on the theology. But I wanted to be baptised because I thought it was important.
Five months ago, I was ordained as a Baptist minister. As part of my ordination, one of the regional ministers, Joth Hunt, read the following:
The basis of this Union is that … Christian baptism is the immersion in water into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, of those who have professed repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ … Are you in whole-hearted agreement with this statement?
I answered, ‘l am’.
l am in agreement with the early Anabaptists, and John Smyth, and the Baptist Union of Great Britain. I believe Scripture shows that baptism is linked to repentance and confession, and that it should involve immersion.
So far, we have affirmed that baptism is important. But why? That’s a more difficult question, and I will only offer a brief answer.
4. Why are we baptized?
Different churches and denominations have different views. In the past some parts of the church have said that baptism saves you. Many denominations note the powerful symbolism of water washing away our sins. Some denominations consider that baptism is also a statement, like a vow. The Bible compares our relationship to Christ to a marriage. I think of Baptism like a marriage vow. At the start of a marriage we make a vow. After that, we hope our actions will match our words.
In a similar way, the early church expected that disciples would signal their commitment to follow Jesus by baptism. In baptism we 'say’ something without words. That might sound strange, but it’s quite an easy concept. If we give our girlfriend a rose or a kiss, we ‘say’ something without words. [In the service I demonstrated with my wife.] In baptism we ‘say’ we are committed to Christ. We don’t use words, but that is what the ceremony means.
On our baptistry we have the words, ‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.’ There are two ideas here: ‘in Christ’ and ‘a new creation’.
We are ‘in Christ’; we are united with him.
Christ died on the cross; we are united with him in that. Going down into the water represents our death. We continue to die as we live out our Christian lives: we offer our bodies as living sacrifices.
Christ was raised; we are united with him in that too. Coming up out of the water represents resurrection, new birth. Since we have new birth, we are ‘a new creation.’
5. What happens when we’re baptized?
I said that baptism is a way of ‘saying’ something without words. If it is just ‘saying’ something then we may imagine that it will not affect us spiritually. Actually, many people find that baptism has a real spiritual effect. That was my experience. It is also many other people’s experience. Some younger members of our congregation will now tell us about their experience.
[At this point we invited some 18-22 year olds who had been baptised to share their experience. All commented on the fact that baptism had a spiritual impact on them.]
There is one more thing to say about what happens when we’re baptized. Please look at verses 12 and 13: ‘The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan…’
It’s significant that this time of testing came immediately after Jesus was baptised. We have found that many people go through a time of testing after they are baptised. In fact, times of testing often come after moments of renewed commitment. It isn’t fun, but forewarned is forearmed.
So, now that we understand how important baptism is and why we are baptized, my final question is:
6. What do we do about it?
Let me end by quoting again Mark 16:16. Mark tells us, ‘Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.’ It could not be clearer: ‘believes and is baptized’. Baptism is important. You may not like the idea, but Jesus wants you to make a clear statement. So, press the button! Make a decision. Then talk to me after the service, and tell me that you want to be baptised.
