Baptism isn’t something you just do because you’re a Christian. Baptism is an outward expression of an inward change. Outwardly, the person being baptized goes into the water, which represents, oddly enough, death. It is somewhat morbid, but yes, the baptismal pool represents a grave. However, when the person comes up out of the water, it represents resurrection into newness of life! It is a dying to the old self and a former pattern of living and resurrection into newness of life with the Spirit of God. This is what Paul writes in Romans 6:3-4:
“Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 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.”
The water in the pool represents the cleansing element of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection. What was Jesus' cleansing work? Well, Jesus came and lived the sinless life we could not live, and died the death we deserved. In doing so, Jesus offers an exchange with humanity, his record of rights, in exchange for our record of wrongs. We would be judged for our sin, but seen as “not guilty” instead — God sees us as good, holy, spotless, clean, and white as snow.
So when a person is baptized, they are expressing a specific belief about a historical event; that when Jesus died, he was not dying an ordinary person‘s death by way of execution. Rather, he was God himself in human flesh, come to take on the sins of humanity and die in our place.
So you say, “That’s great and all! But why should I get baptized? Why not just have a relationship with Jesus and go on my merry way?” To respond to this thought, I want to give you three reasons why you should get baptized.
Baptism is an expectation (Matthew 28:18-19).
In Matthew 28, Jesus says to his followers, “Go and make disciples of all nations,” and then he clarifies what it means to make a disciple. He says, “Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Being a disciple of Christ, by definition, means you are both baptized and obedient. To claim to be a disciple of Jesus without regarding His instruction to be baptized is to suggest there are certain teachings of His that are not worth following. But friend, He is worthy of following. And that’s one reason why you should get baptized: it's an expectation.
Baptism is a commitment (Ephesians 4:11-16; 1 Corinthians 12:13).
Baptism is not just a commitment from the person being baptized to a local church body, though this is a reality worthy of celebration. What we tend to miss, however, is that baptism is also a commitment from the Church to the person being baptized. It is a two-way agreement: person to church and church to person (Ephesians 4:11-16; 1 Corinthians 12:13). Baptism is therefore a public declaration of belonging. When you express before others, through baptism, the inward change that the Spirit of God has initiated in you, you make yourself available to both love and be loved, to serve and be served, to welcome and be welcomed by the body of Christ.
Baptism is a symbol (Colossians 2:12).
Imagine you are at a wedding. In that iconic moment, the groom pulls out a ring and places it on the bride's finger. Then the bride pulls out a ring, and just as she’s about to place it on the groom‘s finger, the groom pulls his hand away and says, “Actually, I don’t think I’m going to wear one of those. I am just going to go without it.” Everyone listens in shock as he goes on, “You know I love you!” he says. “You know I’m committed to you! I just made all these vows, so you know I’m committed!” Do you see the problem with this? This wedding ring does not make a person married. It does not make a person loving. And it certainly does not make a man a serious husband. However, a ring is an outward expression of all of those things. And it is so weighty and significant a symbol that, at least in our culture, you would never intentionally leave it behind. You see, the ring communicates to the world and to the individual that you are in a covenant relationship, committed to one person and one person only. To wear it is to communicate something; to not wear it is to communicate something else.
In a similar way, the early church understood that there was no such thing as an “unbaptized Christian.” To follow Christ was to be both baptized and obedient. It was an expectation. To go without baptism is to go without the symbol of commitment to Jesus Christ. It is to go without the outward expression of the inward change that has taken place in your life. Everyone got baptized in the early church because baptism meant affiliation with the Church. Public affiliation with the Church meant identification with Christ.
This is why we get baptized. It’s an expectation from Jesus himself. It’s a commitment between a new believer and the church, and it is a symbol, an outward expression of an inward love.
There is so much to be said about how a person should be baptized, where a person should be baptized, when they should be baptized, and how many times a person should be baptized. But I am going to spare you the deep dive into the Early Church Fathers, the Didache (the Early Church’s ecclesiastical guide for proper orthopraxy), and I am going to simplify things into this statement:
Every Christian should get baptized sincerely, once, and as soon as possible.
To be a Christ-follower is to be committed to Jesus. To be committed to Jesus is to submit to his teachings and expectations. To submit to his teaching is to commit to his body, the Church, and to publicly display his work on the cross.
Bibliography
Svigel, Michael J. RetroChristianity: Reclaiming the Forgotten Faith. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012.
