Over and over again in the New Testament we find the same truth declared that's stated in Ephesians , "God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can't take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. His salvation is a gift of grace alone. Can children be baptized?
Our practice is for parents to "dedicate" their children to Jesus after they're born, then for them to be baptized when they are old enough to understand what it means to make a public declaration of their faith in Jesus. There is not a particular age when all kids are ready to be baptized, but we've seen many children make this decision when they were between seven and ten years old. You'll know your child is old enough when they express a desire to be baptized and can tell you why.
It is a command of God and a public declaration of the work our Lord has already accomplished within us. Personal Note: This issue is our number one question we get often. Some folks are looking for answers, and a few want to debate the point over and over. I would encourage anyone reading this that has not got water baptized to do the command of God and make that public declaration of what Jesus has done for you.
No excuse will be acceptable of not doing it. Whether it is shyness, having no church you attend, etc. Any evangelistic pastor will make sure you get water baptized as long as you have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. A close friend and new pastor in a poor village in India used an old dirty cow trough to baptize a sister in. I honestly cannot find one excuse why you should not be baptized.
Start arranging it today to get water baptized if you need help finding a church or pastor to help you contact us here with all your information. Baptism connects us to the body of Christ, and gives us a real sense of being joined with other believers in a communal journey towards the goal of perfection in Christ Jesus. Baptism declares that you are a follower of Jesus Christ. It is a public confession of your faith in, and commitment to, Jesus Christ.
It is the next step after salvation through repentance and faith and is an important foundation for the Christian life. Water baptism is a practical demonstration of a spiritual reality that has already taken place in your life. Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like His, we will certainly also be united with Him in a resurrection like his. It is a symbol of your new life as a Christian. Baptism is like a wedding ring ; it is the outward symbol of the commitment you made in your heart, a commitment that has to be followed through and lived out on a daily basis.
We continue the practice of water baptism today as a symbol of our personal and public identification and union with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As you will see in the verses below, Jesus is definitely telling us that He wants water baptism to be included as a part of the salvation experience with Him.
In other words, it is not an actual requirement for salvation. If you are saved at a Billy Graham crusade, but do not go through an actual water baptism at the crusade, you will still go straight to heaven if you should die on the way home before you could have gone through an actual water baptism at a later date. As you will see in one of the verses listed below, we are saved by grace through our faith in Jesus — not by any type of water baptism. If you can be baptized with water at the time you are receiving your salvation in the Lord, that is great and you should always do that if at all possible.
However, there will be other times that there will be no means to actually baptize someone with water when someone is being saved in the Lord. If that should happen, then the person who has just been saved should be baptized with water as soon as they reasonably can at a later date. But if by chance they would die before they could have been baptized with water, they would still go straight to heaven. The fact that they could not be baptized with water will have no bearing or influence on them being able to enter into heaven if they should die before they could have been baptized with water.
If we are only saved by grace through our personal faith in Jesus and not by any type of works we can do, which will include any type of water baptism, then why is Jesus telling us that He still wants us to include water baptism as part of the actual salvation experience with Him?
I believe there are five main reasons as to why Jesus wants us to include water baptism as part of our salvation experience with Him. When you are being saved through your faith in Jesus, all of your past, present, and future sins are now being fully forgiven. When you are being fully immersed during the rite of water baptism, you are going through a perfect, symbolic act of having all of your personal sins completely washed away by the blood of Jesus.
The rite of water baptism perfectly symbolizes the purification and cleansing that we are receiving from the Lord during the salvation experience with Him. As you will see in the verses below, water baptism is also identifying and testifying to the death and resurrection of Jesus. When the pastor raises us up out of the full immersion, this is identifying with the full resurrection of Jesus from that grave. The rite of water baptism by way of a full immersion is thus a perfect outward symbol act of both the death and resurrection of Jesus.
The Bible tells us that once we are saved — that we have now become new creations in Christ, that our human spirits have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and that our old life and our old man have now died and been done away with. Being fully immersed in water symbolizes the death of our old life and old man and the inward regeneration of the Holy Spirit — and the pastor raising us up out of the water represents the resurrecting into a brand new life in the Lord.
When we receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we immediately receive the Holy Spirit on the inside of our human spirits. As a result of receiving the Holy Spirit on the inside of us, we now have a new, direct, spiritual union with both God and Jesus on the inside of our beings since the Holy Spirit is the One who divinely connects us to both God and Jesus in heaven.
This uniting together with the Lord now forms an actual spiritual union with Him. Being fully immersed into the water during the rite of water baptism perfectly symbolizes our new inner union with the Lord since water is one of the main symbols of the Holy Spirit in the Bible.
I believe that going through a proper water baptism is also an actual initiation rite with the Lord. Not only are we being directly joined to the Lord through the Holy Spirit as a result of being saved, but we now also get to become an actual member of the Body of Christ, which is the Church itself. Though we do not need the rite of water baptism to actually receive the gift of eternal salvation from the Lord, this rite is still very powerful before the Lord and before the world in general, as we are making a public profession of our faith to the Lord by being willing to be fully submerged in a pool of water.
As such, every Christian should make it their top priority to be baptized with water as soon as they can after receiving their salvation from the Lord. Here are some of the main verses from the Bible having to do with being baptized with water. Once again, I will break these verses down under 8 different captions so you can see exactly what the Lord is trying to show us with this powerful rite of passage.
The first thing you need to know is that there is only one official baptism. However, this one official baptism is not water baptism — it is being baptized direct with the Holy Spirit Himself.
Here are two powerful, foundational verses showing us that there is only one baptism, and that this one baptism is being baptized with the Holy Spirit. Notice that John the Baptist is saying that he was baptizing people with water, but that when Jesus would come, He would be baptizing people with the Holy Spirit.
What is actually being baptized in this one baptism is our human spirits are being baptized with the Holy Spirit, since the Holy Spirit immediately enters in and takes up residence in our human spirits at the moment of our conversions to the Lord.
I believe John the Baptist is letting us know that there is a major difference between being baptized with water like what he was doing before Jesus arrived on the scene, and then being baptized with the Holy Spirit through Jesus. Though water baptism is a powerful rite and symbolic act to make before the Lord — it is not what actually gets us saved and born again before Him.
And this will now lead us right into the next section. These next five verses will specifically tell us how we are saved in the Lord. And the rite of water baptism is still a form of works, and as a result, cannot be accepted as being an essential or required part of the salvation experience with the Lord. The second verse will then add some more meat to this revelation when it tells us exactly how we are to receive the gift of salvation — and that is by making a public confession with our mouths that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead by God the Father, and that He came down to our earth in the flesh to die on a cross for all of our sins.
In other words, we have to believe in our hearts who Jesus really is, and then be willing to confess out loud with our mouths the basics of our salvation as to who He really is, and exactly what He has personally done for us with His sacrificial death on the cross.
No way, of course I would still be married. Similarly, I can be a believer in Christ, but not baptized, and my sins are still paid for and forgiven by God. But imagine that I truly was married and I really, really loved my husband. Would I wear my wedding ring? Of course! I would love my husband and want the whole world to know it! Baptism does not make you a believer; it shows that you already are one! In baptism there is a real sense of being joined with other believers, not just participating in an individual act of our own spiritual journey.
As per the example of Jesus — by being immersed in water. Every baptism in the Bible was by immersion under water. The book of Acts shows us that this was the norm for every believer. When they came up out of the water…. Every person who has made the decision to believe in Christ. When Paul writes to the believers in Rome, he assumes that all of them have been baptized Romans 6. The one requirement for baptism is belief in Christ!
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