What is baptism? Is it necessary? Does it do anything? Who can receive it, and when, and how?
These are just some of the questions my students carry into the classroom. I teach theology in Bible Belt, red-county West Texas. Most of my students would check “Christian” on a survey, and their brand is nondenominational: Low Church, Scripture alone, no liturgy or hierarchy, no creeds or rituals. To be a Christian, for them, means to believe in God, trust Jesus for salvation, and follow him as best one can. For the more committed among them, it entails habits of prayer, devotional reading, and Sunday morning worship.
Baptism has a marginal role in this picture. Yet baptism is central to the Christian life: commanded by Jesus, taught by the apostles, and honored, practiced, and contemplated from church fathers like Augustine of Hippo and Cyril of Jerusalem through Protestant reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin. So why does baptism rank so low among these students’ spiritual concerns? I’ve noticed at least three background assumptions they tend to share.
First, my students see baptism as purely symbolic. It does not do anything. Nothing “happens.” In terms of God’s action or presence, it is no different from any other spiritual practice. At the same time, students idealize baptism as a subjective experience. Although God isn’t “literally” washing away their sins, they earnestly hope to feel something. Like weddings with vows written by the bride and groom, baptism is curated, personalized, and documented.
Second, baptism is fundamentally an individual act for my students (if they bother to be baptized at all). It is neither communal nor ecclesial. It is unlikely to be performed by a pastor, in a church, during worship. Above all, it is active, not passive; it is something one does, not something done to oneself. It is, in this sense, a “work.” The agent of baptism is the self; if God is an actor in the drama, his action happens earlier, offstage, likely in tandem with a classic sinner’s prayer.
Third and finally, my students assume baptism is about choice. As a “work” one performs before others, baptism is thus a public display of the decision one has made to be pro Christi. It is one’s undivided, unequivocal yes to the Lord. As a result, baptism is reserved for those able to make such a decision. This is why newborns cannot be baptized—though in recent years many of these congregations have been moving the age for baptism ever downward without explaining the change.
It’s not surprising, then, that among my students, both lack of baptism and “rebaptism” are quite common. The latter happens, for some, because they just didn’t “feel” it the first time—so maybe, they worry, it didn’t “take.” Others decide in their 20s that, a decade prior, they lacked the relevant maturity or knowledge to make a genuine choice for Christ.
For still others, baptism isn’t so much a spiritual wedding, to be performed a single time, as a vow-renewal ceremony, to be repeated as often as one desires. And both the students who are unbaptized and those who go back for repeats view baptism as surplus to requirements anyway—good to do, sure, but not much more than that. For them, even the first time was a vow renewal of sorts.
Talking about baptism
It breaks my heart when I hear these stories. To be sure, I know that Christians disagree about baptism. But surely even traditions with a “low” view of baptism—those that understand it as an ordinance rather than a sacrament—cannot be happy with this sorry state of affairs. Baptists did not get their name by taking baptism lightly.
For nearly the whole of church history, it has been a given for most Christian traditions that baptism is once for all, never to be repeated; that it is a holy mystery instituted by Christ and commanded for all; that in it and through it, the Spirit of God is at work; and that by it and through it, the grace of God is communicated and the gospel of Christ proclaimed.
A supermajority of Christians today still hold to this view, whether Lutheran or Orthodox, Anglican or Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, or Church of Christ. Even Anabaptists (literally “rebaptizers,” a label first applied by their opponents) saw themselves not as re-upping a previous baptism that just didn’t feel right but as performing the first valid baptism the person in question had received. And they took baptism so seriously they were willing to die for it.
We don’t, thank God, burn or drown fellow Christians over baptism anymore. In fact, talking about baptism today—about getting it right in doctrine and practice and hence about ways of getting it wrong—feels like breaking a ceasefire. Our present ecumenical peace is hard won and fragile. Why threaten to disturb it?
My answer is simple: The truth matters, baptism matters, and too many churches handle baptism in the lackadaisical, emotive, and diminishing way I see in my classroom. So, let’s actually talk about what baptism is, what it isn’t, and what Scripture and tradition teach about it.
Cards on the table: I hold a full-blown, whole-hog “high sacramental” view of baptism. It’s a visible word of the gospel; it’s a means of grace; it’s an effective sign. By the power of God’s Word and Spirit, baptism does what baptism says: It washes you clean. It gives you Christ; it gives you his Spirit; it gives you his saving grace. “Baptism,” as the apostle Peter succinctly puts it, “saves you” (1 Pet. 3:21, RSV throughout).
To anticipate the most common objection, no, God does not need water to save you or anyone else, including the thief on the cross (Luke 23:39–43). But that’s because God is God: He can save how, when, and where he pleases. This sovereign prerogative on God’s part is distinct from the ordinary means by which he wills to save us and that he himself instituted through Jesus and his apostles. For example, no doubt God could have saved Israel apart from the Red Sea. Yet that is just how he chose to save them—by dividing the waters and guiding them through on dry land.
As Moses once delivered God’s people from bondage to Pharaoh through the waters, so Jesus delivers us from slavery to sin through the same.
This is what makes baptism so special. It brings together everything significant in the gospel: Father, Son, and Spirit; grace, adoption, and forgiveness; life, death, and resurrection; union, marriage, and faith; Israel, church, and election. Baptism is like the center of the hourglass—all the good things God means to give us come through this one point, before expanding again into the fullness of our lives.
How is this possible? “With men it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27). So with the miracle of grace in the mystery of baptism.
I want to unpack that mystery as best I can in this brief space. If you’re already with me, great. We can’t repeat these truths enough. If you’re skeptical of my view of baptism, I ask your patience and suspended judgment. Hear me out and see what you think by the end. What matters is the truth. At a minimum, I hope we can agree that my students deserve something better, richer, and fuller than what they’ve been offered up to now. When given the chance, here’s what I tell them.
Adoption by a heavenly Father
Let’s start with a popular adage: “Everyone is a child of God.” I’ve heard it on the lips of pastors and politicians in equal measure. Is it true?
No, it is not. Everyone is created by God and is his beloved creature. And we all, from conception to death, bear God’s image. This is true irrespective of whether one has ever heard the name of Jesus, and nothing can change it.
But we aren’t born children of God. Birth marks us as human, not divine. We have mothers and fathers and a Creator in heaven, but not (yet) a heavenly Father. This is why Scripture calls Jesus the “only” Son of God (John 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9). His status is unique.
The gospel is the good news that you and I may become children of God. We may receive the gift of God as our Father. And this makes sense: How could it be good news—or even news at all—if God were already our Father?
The Gospel of John puts it this way: The eternal Word came into the world yet was not received for who he was (1:1–11). “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (vv. 12–13). We are not born God’s children; rather, God became man to give us the power to become his children. This is the purpose and the effect of the Incarnation.
The idea of a transfer of parentage is not new to us. It’s called adoption, and for Paul, this one word sums up the work of Christ on our behalf (Rom. 8:15, 23; Gal. 4:5). Through Jesus, the eternal Son of God, anyone on earth may receive the grace of becoming his brothers and sisters and therefore sons and daughters of the Almighty.
But how? This is the question Nicodemus puts to Jesus (John 3:4). And Jesus gives a straight answer: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (v. 5). In short, spiritual rebirth comes through baptism.
In Jesus’s own baptism by John, we see water, Spirit, and sonship joined together. We ourselves are baptized not only in obedience to Jesus but also in imitation of him. Whereas baptism is the moment of our adoption by God, Jesus was already God’s Son. He submitted to baptism to sanctify for all time the waters that would impart his rank to others. Every subsequent baptism is thus a participation in his, a reenactment of the scene at the Jordan. God says anew, about us, what the crowds heard that day: “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22, translation mine).
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The many gifts of baptism
Adoption into God’s family is only one of baptism’s many gifts. Through this wonderful sacrament God bestows on us more gifts than I can name here, but I will mention six.
First, the gift of the Holy Spirit. When we are baptized, we join not only Jesus in the Jordan but also the 12 in the Upper Room (Acts 2:1–13). Every baptism is a personal Pentecost. As the Spirit descended on Jesus in the river and on his followers at the festival, so he descends on us.
Second, the gift of union with Christ. In baptism, what is his becomes ours; what was ours he takes into himself and there extinguishes (2 Cor. 8:9). What he is by nature we become by grace—not only children of God but also kings, priests, prophets, sages; holy, righteous, faithful, immortal; happy, blessed, spiritual, eternal. In a word, he gives us his own life, indestructible and inexhaustible because it is the life of God (Gal. 2:20; Col. 3:1–4; 1 John 5:11–12).
But not without, third, the gift of death, as Paul writes:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Rom. 6:3–5)
Baptism drowns the old self, the flesh ensnared by sin and death. We rise from the waters reborn, freed from bondage to the old tyrants that enslaved us. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17).
Fourth, the gift of adoption. Am I repeating myself? No, I speak of another adoption: not by God but by Abraham. Baptism joins us to God’s chosen people. All the promises of God are “Yes” and “Amen” in Christ (2 Cor. 1:20) because he is the offspring of Abraham (Gal. 3:16). No one can have Abraham’s son (Matt. 1:1) without Abraham himself, or Abraham’s God without Abraham’s family. Outside this family, Gentiles are hopeless and godless (Eph. 2:12). Those of us who are Gentiles, then, receive a double adoption in baptism. As Paul writes,
In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. (Gal. 3:26–29)
Fifth, the gift of membership. Baptism is not only vertical; it is horizontal too. Baptism adds us to the church, which is Christ’s body: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:12–13). Hence Paul lists “one baptism” alongside “one Lord” and “one faith” in his famous statement of Christian unity (Eph. 4:4–6).
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Finally, the gift of marriage. The bond that baptism works in us is not only filial, between Father and children. It is nuptial, between husband and wife. Our public profession of faith is like the vows we make at the altar; accordingly, baptism is the consummation of the marriage. After all, an unconsummated marriage is invalid; in a manner of speaking, so is faith apart from baptism. Baptism is the perfection of faith because it seals the union of bride (the soul) and groom (Christ).
Lest this seem like stretching a metaphor, return to Paul: “Do you not know that he who joins himself to a [woman] becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, ‘The two shall become one flesh.’ But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor. 6:16–17). Apparently the only intimacy comparable to the spiritual union between a believer and Christ is the bodily union of husband and wife—and the former transcends the latter by fulfilling it. As Paul writes elsewhere, “This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:32).
The gifts of the bridegroom range far beyond this meager list. Cyril of Jerusalem, for example, says that baptism will “give you amnesty for your past sins, plant you in the church, and enlist you in his army, putting upon you the armor of righteousness.” It is more than a spiritual bath, washing the soul clean. Types and figures of baptism fill the Old Testament: It is the primal waters of creation, tamed by the Creator (Gen. 1:1–2); it is the Red Sea, through which God’s people are delivered from bondage (Ex. 14:1–15:21); it is the Jordan, in which the Gentile Naaman is cleansed by the God of Israel (2 Kings 5:1–19).
Baptism does what nothing else can. As Martin Luther said, by baptism “we are made holy and are saved, which no other kind of life, no work upon earth, can attain.” All of God’s promises come together here, in the waters of grace.
The good news of baptism
Perhaps I’ve sold you on the meaning, gifts, and even necessity of baptism but not yet on its inner logic—what makes it intrinsic to the good news rather than an additional box to check once God has done the real work, so to speak, off camera. Why, in other words, did Jesus command his apostles to make disciples from all nations not only by “teaching” but also by “baptizing” them (Matt. 28:19–20), or as later tradition would put it, through “word and sacrament” together?
Here’s one way to put it: The good news of baptism is its objective, factual character. This is why Luther exalted baptism. When tormented by the devil, Luther was unable to rely on his faith, because that was the very thing under assault—when you can’t be sure you believe, then belief is no consolation. But he could always point to his baptism as a matter of historical fact. It is said that he would reply to Satan: “Baptizatus sum” (I am baptized).
Luther’s example helps us see the depths of God’s mercy toward us. In baptism, God has provided us a tangible, historical moment to which we can point with every confidence, even in times of doubt and anxiety. Then and there, Christ himself met us in the waters.
That confidence is possible because baptism is not, like tithing, a human work we perform. It is a divine gift we receive. We are not the agents of baptism; God is. We don’t “do” baptism; baptism is done to us. Notice the phrasing: One is baptized. The grammatical passive is also theological. I can’t baptize myself; I need another to do it for me.
And like the death of Christ on the cross, baptism is once for all, not to be repeated. In this sense, “rebaptism” is an oxymoron because baptism—washing with water in the triune name of God—always “takes.” Every “redo” is just a bath. We are already maximally forgiven, maximally redeemed, once for all, forever.
This is the startling, wonderful, incredible good news of baptism. It’s why baptism embodies the gospel. Grace is scandalous. It gives us what we don’t deserve, what was never ours to expect. It pardons thieves, liars, adulterers, and murderers. It pardons me. It pardons you.
The living Christ imparts this pardon through baptism, because it bears his effective word and, with it, God’s power to save, his grace for sinners, and his will to forgive. As Cyril instructed catechumens preparing for baptism in the fourth century, “Stop paying attention to the lips of the one speaking, but to God who is working.”
Baptism is about what God has done, can do, and will do pro me (“for me”). It’s not about my yes to God, which may be weak or wavering and at any age is sure to lack maturity and knowledge alike. That’s why I’m being baptized in the first place—my lack, my need. Baptism, instead, is ultimately about God’s yes to me. It is about his inscrutable love for godless rebels made manifest through the humblest and most common of elements: water.
In the words of Paul (2 Cor. 9:15), “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!”
Brad East is an associate professor of theology at Abilene Christian University. He is the author of four books, including The Church: A Guide to the People of God and Letters to a Future Saint.
