Baptismal Regeneration

I was asked to look at Galatians 3:27 because this verse evidently proves that water baptism is necessary for salvation. I decided to look at verse 3:26 first, because it comes before verse 27. It says, For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. I agree with this verse so I find no point of contention. This verse agrees with Romans 10:10 With the heart man believes unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. But some who wish to be legalistic and contentious want verse 27 read all by itself. It says (in context) that we who are sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus have been baptized into Christ Jesus and have clothed ourselves with Christ Himself. But the legalist has trouble believing this so he must come up with an interpretation that makes verse 27 sound like it’s talking about the rite of water baptism.

Our confession of faith is what saves us. Confessing something like: "I have been baptized properly by the proper personnel" doth save no one. This is merely confessing one’s own lack of faith in the salvation that is in Christ. No one has obtained salvation by going to the depths below or having someone to bring it down from heaven above, much less procuring it by getting wet. What does the Scripture say: The word is near you, even in your mouth, and in your heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; That if you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and will believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10).

What does that have to do with water baptism? Much. Anything we do, whether it be good works or rituals, must proceed from faith or it is sin (Romans 14:23). Everything we do is sanctified once faith enters in. A ritual of keeping a day holy to God is not condemned by God (Romans 14:6). Contrariwise, everything done apart from faith is tainted and hated by God. Keeping Sabbaths as though they are commanded by God is rightly rebuked by Paul (Galatians 4:10, Colossians 2:16). We are baptized by faith and nothing else. If we are baptized by works, then faith is no longer needed (Galatians 2:21). Baptism, the act of getting wet, is a ritual work. It isn’t even a work of the Law. Nowhere can I read does Moses command baptism for repentance or washing away of sins. Where then does this baptism come from?

The washing of water has always signified purification to the Jew under the Law of Moses. The false religious-type substituted this ritual for good works, as hypocrites are wont to do (Matthew 15, Mark 7). The subtle connection between purification and washing away of sins is not lost on the mind (John 3:25). Elishah had Naaman dunk himself in the Jordan. John definitely baptized in the Jordan and it signified repentance from sins. Jesus also baptized (not him, but his disciples) during John’s time (John 4:1). Baptism made converts to a religious sect and it signified cleansing from past sins. Baptism meant the washing away of sins to the new church (Acts 2:38, 22:16). It started a new life under a new name. However, the outward baptism of the body cannot obtain the new life necessary for salvation. The new life is obtained not by baptism by water but baptism of the Holy Spirit. How does one get baptized by the Holy Spirit? The question was asked of the Galatians: How did you receive the Spirit, by works or by the hearing with faith? Having begun in faith are you now made perfect by the flesh? Paul was speaking against circumcision in the flesh, but he could have been speaking of any ritual that replaces faith as the only way to please God.

Many churches believe that baptism of the flesh in water has replaced circumcision in the flesh. Having lost faith, they now depend on a meritorious work not commanded in the Law nor recognized as efficacious in cleansing sin (1 Peter 3:21). If it were important to understand that one must be baptized a certain way by a certain person in a certain church, the doctrine would be spread all over the Bible. Instead, we find that the necessity of faith commands first and only position in salvation. The doctrine of baptism is always in conjunction with faith, not with methodology. Water baptism represents something, and it isn’t effectual for salvation any more than eating wafers and drinking wine. Attempts to make any sacrament mean something other than what the Bible establishes leads to legalism and destruction of faith.

Peter says that water baptism doesn’t save us by putting away the filth of the flesh, but by the answer of a good conscience toward God. In context (1 Peter 3:18-22), baptism doesn’t save us at all, any more than the flood saved Noah and those aboard the ark. It is the ark that saved Noah, just as the death and resurrection of Christ saves us. If Noah hadn’t believed in the efficacy of the ark, then he wouldn’t have built it nor put those animals on it. He didn’t believe in the efficacy of the water that drowned everyone. The water was death. He believed in the word of God, that word being Christ, and Christ was life. Some would like to think water baptism saves us, just because being baptized involves no commitment to God. Let me repeat: Water baptism involves no commitment to God. Just as long as we get wet with the proper incantation, the right priestly methodology, then we are saved. No faith nor other works needed. According to incorrect doctrine, that is.

Water baptism does represent to the church that the believer has been baptized with Christ into death, but it does not baptize the believer into Christ any more than circumcision made a Jew a true Jew. A piece of paper called a marriage certificate has certain legal ramifications, but if it can be proven that the marriage was never consummated, then the marriage may be annulled with no further legal recourse. If the man and woman have never been one flesh by consummation, then they do not commit adultery if they decide to remarry having never been one flesh in the first place (it seems a remote possibility in this day of fornication). If God’s judgment stands, then there has been no misdeed, given the fact that neither person chose to carry out the necessary physical intercourse.

In Christ, the same is true of the believer being one spirit with Christ. This is a mystery that cannot be probed by human observation and testing. However, even though the Spirit cannot be directly observed, the effects of the new life must be observed, or there must be something wrong somewhere. A marriage may have a certificate and a couple may have all things in common legally, but there is no sexual union nor desire for one another, nor desire for the other’s benefit. In like manner, a person may be baptized (and even have a certificate from the Baptist denomination), but he remains unjoined to the Lord. Why? Paul says we receive the Spirit by hearing with faith, not by works of the Law. He must have surely included here works of the church legal system, didn’t he? The baptized hypocrite is merely wet; he has no desire to hear the word of God with faith. He is a legalist or licentious. He does not know the Lord by the indwelling Holy Spirit.

There are many today as yesterday who wish to be brokers of God’s Spirit, even like Simon the Sorcerer. What lesson did he learn? He has no part in the kingdom, even though he was baptized. He was baptized by better than you or I will ever be baptized, and yet lost (see Acts 8:13,21). He is no exception to a rule. He was the prime example of those who think they can barter God’s gifts by holding back the word of truth, giving instead man’s doctrines and traditions that replace the gospel and the hearing by faith. He is the rule, if anything. Many today claim to be Christians by reason of this or that, including proper water baptism. This no more means faith than the woman with the familiar spirit crying out that Paul was the spokesperson of God, even though she was right. She was demon-powered when she was saying this and under the wrath of God. Paul was grieved, not happy, that she bore the testimony. He spoke to the spirit to come out of her and it did, thus proving that false spirits can bear true testimonies if the end is not truth but a lie.

You asked me to look at Acts 19:1-5, which I did. You intimated that by this passage God sets the protocol for the church’s administration of the Holy Spirit. According to this doctrine, one must be baptized properly in water before one can receive the Holy Spirit. I also decided to look at Acts 10:44-48, which also speaks of baptism. In this passage, that precedes the one you asked me to look at, a different heavenly protocol is set up: receiving the Holy Spirit comes before water baptism (?). I use this to show that your logic does not stand one test. In other words, there is no heavenly protocol or methodology for receiving the Spirit except one: the hearing of the word of God with faith. This passage shows the superiority of Christ’s baptism. The Name of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are inseparable in God’s economy. The disciples in Acts 19:1 were like many disciples of Christ then: they had not heard about the indwelling Holy Spirit. Today, men have heard about it, but they reject it as subjectivism or experimentalism or some lesser ism.

You asked me to look at Acts 19:1-5 also keeping in mind that the Spirit came by laying on of Paul’s hands. I do not know why you asked me to keep that in mind. Once again, you seem to be reading Acts looking for heavenly protocol. But if I find in Acts just one instance where this is not the case, I need go no farther. I think that Peter’s hands were just as good at transmitting the Holy Ghost as were Paul’s; only God chose to have the Gentiles receive the Spirit by the no-touch method as given in Acts 10. You could invent some dispensational disputation unto doubt, but I suppose one could spend another ten years of wasted time proving or disproving any worthless theory.

As to your assertion that the Galatians heard from Paul the same sermon as Peter preached in Acts 2:38: there remains much proof on your part. First of all, you can only speculate that what Paul preached to the Gentiles is exactly the same as what Peter said to the Jews at Pentecost. Secondly, we do have an example of what Paul preached to Gentiles in Acts 17. I find no message of baptism. Do you? Is Paul lacking? If this were an isolated event for Paul, I could guess along with you what Paul usually preached about salvation. But we don’t have to guess about that. We can listen to Paul’s preaching today, via his letters. In one of his letters, 1 Corinthians, verse 1:17, Paul even boasts that he hardly ever baptized anyone. Having been baptized by a particular person a particular way caused divisions in the camp, same as today, evidently.

What message did the Galatians hear? According to 3:27, the baptism into Christ is tantamount to putting on Christ. Does water baptism put on Christ? Good question. Is there a baptism, not of water, that puts on Christ? Another good question. The first question, does water baptism put on Christ, we can find no proof. If our exegisis starts with the premise that everywhere baptism is mentioned it means water baptism, we find ourselves at odds with the Scripture. Any conclusions we reach will be based on a faulty assumption and therefore false. As a short note on this, John’s baptism in water is contrasted with Christ’s baptism in the Spirit as quoted in Matthew 3:11, Mark 1:8, Luke 3:16, John 1:33. When all four gospels contain the same passage, it is particularly noteworthy.

Jesus also knows that water baptism is not the end or the fulfillment of anything. Although he was baptized by John "to fulfill all righteousness," it was only the beginning of things. He had another baptism which indeed fulfilled all things. But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished! (Luke 12:50). Jesus said to his disciples when they argued who should be greatest among them, "Ye know not what ye ask: can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? And they said unto him, We can. And Jesus said unto them, Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of; and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized" (Mark 10:39-39). We know He speaks of the cross, or of a grueling death in general. But there is more to baptism than that!

Jesus rose from the dead! He underwent a terrible baptism: death on our behalf, for our sins. But death could not hold him. Neither could this world. Before he left, He promised his disciples the Holy Spirit, saying, For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence (Acts 1:5). Pentecostals have done much to harm the meaning of this. Their false doctrine concerning speaking in tongues in relation to the baptism of the Holy Spirit is heresy and condemnable. There is truly a baptism of the Spirit that is necessary for salvation, and it has almost nothing to do with speaking in tongues. It is not a second blessing. It is a baptism into the body of Jesus Christ, in which our old man dies and the Spirit lives in our fleshly bodies (Romans 6:3 & 8:11, 1 Corinthians 12:13). This is the baptism that Paul almost always refers to in his writings ("There is only one baptism" Ephesians 4:5).

We have to answer the contingent that always says, "What if?" These folks have not figured out that there are no "what ifs" with God and His plan, but they must be answered nonetheless. "What if the disciples had died before Acts 2:4? (the promised sending of the Holy Spirit). Would they be unsaved?" I do not pretend to know all things, and this question is for those who know all things, but I know that prior to Jesus coming, people were saved by the same thing people are saved by today: faith in the true God. However, things have significantly changed since Christ came. God winked at men’s sins before Christ came and did not impose such a harsh penalty for disbelief (Acts 17:30). But now that Christ has come, and sent the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, righteousness and the judgment to come, there is no excuse. So, any disciples who died before the Spirit came are off the hook; don’t worry about them.

As I mentioned before, baptism signifies conversion or adherence to a sect. This is brought out very well by Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:2. Even though the Israelites remained quite dry (like Noah in 1 Peter 3:20), they were baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea. The book of Acts records the beginning of the church. Without exception, believers were baptized by water. This is the trademark of the church recognizing (not bestowing) the salvation of a believer. They are admitted to the church, and their sins are washed away ceremonially. Now, the important question arises, If they are not admitted to the church, meaning they are not baptized correctly, are they therefore not of the body of Christ? This is the kingdom over which the Catholic Church and all of her (Protestant) daughters preside. They have the keys of the kingdom and they aren’t letting anybody in until they pay the piper.

Such are those who barter the things of God. Until you belong to my church and do things my way, then you cannot have salvation, they hint. It’s their way or hit the highway. These things have the outward form but lack the substance of faith. Jesus did away with all such, starting with the Jews. "Do you think I came to destroy the Law and the Prophets? No! But to fulfill them! Unless your righteousness surpasses the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will in no case enter the kingdom of heaven!" (I can just see the exclamation marks, Matthew 5:17-20!). Oh, they baptized their hands and their dinnerware, all right, according to their Law, but they did not honor their own fathers and mothers in the name of religious duty (Matthew 15). They traded in religion, but cut off the true aspirant to God’s kingdom (Matthew 23:13).

God is not going to judge anyone based on whether they made the right confession once in front of a priest, or got baptized correctly, or belonged to the right church. He is going to judge their secret lives. He is going to judge them based on the works they have performed. Heaven and earth will pass away before one jot or tittle disappears from the Law. Those who confidently affirmed that we must keep the Law will be just as confidently judged by it. Everyone who bore a grudge against their brother and did not love him as himself, will die under that law (Leviticus 19:18). Those that are under that law (and many profess nowadays to be under the law of love) will perish under it because they have not kept it. Those who by faith trusted in Jesus Christ to atone for their lack of love, will be saved. Their secret lives will bear witness of their faith. All will come to light on that great Day when God will judge the quick and the dead.

Trusting in water baptism is the start down a long road of trusting in works for salvation. It is very much like the circumcision demanded by the Judaizers, because those who attempted to fulfill righteousness by becoming circumcised were no longer under grace, but under the law (Galatians 5:2:4). By all means, let us be baptized by the church to fulfill all righteousness, but let us know that the real baptism, death in Christ, is not about going under the water once, but under the cross, daily.

- Chris Simonson

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