What The Bible Teaches About Baptism

I just added an arti­cle about bap­tism to my repos­i­to­ry of essays and Bible stud­ies. It’s a pdf called What The Bible Teach­es About Bap­tism.

Here’s an excerpt:

Why Should I Be Baptized?

“Why should I be bap­tized?” is a rea­son­able ques­tion, but I pre­fer the ques­tion asked by the Ethiopi­an eunuch: “Look, here is water. Why should­n’t I be bap­tized?’” (Acts 8:36). Get­ting bap­tized is some­thing that Chris­tians do – it should be your default deci­sion for the fol­low­ing rea­sons:

1) I Should Be Baptized To Obey Jesus

Jesus com­mand­ed his apos­tles to bap­tize peo­ple as they pro­claimed the gospel (Matthew 28:18–20), and so we see that he expects new believ­ers to be bap­tized as part of the process of becom­ing his dis­ci­ples.

2) I Should Be Baptized To Identify With Jesus

Being bap­tized is a procla­ma­tion of our spir­i­tu­al union with Christ. Colos­sians 2:12 says that Chris­tians are “buried with [Jesus] in bap­tism” and that we are then “raised with him through our faith in the work­ing of God, who raised [Jesus] from the dead.” Anoth­er way to approach this point is to rec­og­nize that Jesus, though with­out sin, was bap­tized and there­by iden­ti­fied with us, and we com­plete the cycle when we are bap­tized and like­wise iden­ti­fy with him.

3) I Should Be Baptized To Proclaim My Devotion To Jesus

In 1 Peter 3:21, bap­tism is described as “the pledge of a clear con­science toward God” (that’s the NIV: some oth­er trans­la­tions phrase it as “an appeal to God for a good con­science”). Whichev­er is the bet­ter ren­der­ing in Eng­lish, it is clear that bap­tism is an act of for­mal­ly giv­ing our­selves to God.

And so if you name Christ as your Lord and have not been bap­tized, then seize this oppor­tu­ni­ty and be bap­tized.

Read the rest of the pdf.