Ask the Pastor 12

What is baptism and why bother?

In our last article we looked at what is the Church? For some baptism is the way in which you get into the Church, but what is it in the Bible? The word baptize is a transliteration of the Greek word, baptizw, which literally means to submerge. The word was used of cloth that was submerged into a vat of dye to give the cloth that color. In the Bible the word is used in a religious sense in that we have John’s baptism that was a baptism of repentance, it was a testimony that the members of Israel were repenting and were prepared for the coming of the Messiah (Matthew 3:1-12). When our Lord gave the gospel esp. in the gospel of John, He never added baptism to believing. We know that in the book of Acts that those who believed were baptized immediately. Our Lord did command that we baptize as a part of the great commission (Mt. 28:19). We have a great teaching in Romans 6:1-10 about how we have been submerged into His death that we might be raised up in His resurrection. Our old life is dead and now we live a new life in Christ. This is the testimony and picture of water baptism and why it is important. It is a beautiful illustration and physical testimony of the inward reality of our great salvation. Therefore, we believe, which is inward and then are baptized as an outward testimony of that spiritual reality.