INTRO
Why Should I Get Baptized?
To Obey Christ’s Command
Why should you get baptized? To obey Christ’s command. Which command? The one he gives us in Matthew 28:19. Let’s look at this verse in context:
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18–20 ESV)
Here Jesus addressed his eleven disciples shortly after he died for our sins and rose from the dead. He had accomplished salvation, and now he charged his disciples to proclaim news of this salvation to every nation on the earth.
In verse 18, we learn that as a result of his saving death and resurrection, Jesus possesses “all authority in heaven and on earth.” He is the supreme ruler of the universe, the sovereign of sovereigns.
Jesus then gave his disciples—and by implication all believers—one main command: “Make disciples” (v. 19). Jesus commanded his disciples to make disciples. He requires his followers, then and now, to summon others to follow him. He then gave three supporting instructions that show us how to “make disciples.”
First, we need to go. We need to go to where the nations are, whether that means crossing the street, crossing town, or crossing an ocean. Second, we baptize those who follow Christ. And finally, he tells us to instruct new disciples to obey every one of his commands.
To become Jesus’s follower is to give your whole life to trusting Jesus, following Jesus, learning and obeying Jesus’s teaching, and following Jesus’s example.
So according to Jesus, we “make disciples” by baptizing true believers and teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded. The order is important: make disciples, baptize, teach.
Are you a disciple of Jesus? Then you need to show it by baptism—that’s what Jesus said. Jesus wants those who have trusted him as Savior and submitted to him as Lord to get baptized.
As you can see, then, baptism publicly identifies someone as a disciple of Jesus. Baptism formally and publicly enrolls a disciple in the school of Christ.
God marks his people by baptism. By getting baptized, we are essentially putting on a jersey that says “Team Jesus”—we’re playing by his rules and following his commands.
By following Jesus’s command to get baptized, we’re saying we’re committed to do all that he commanded.
Now, what exactly does Jesus mean when he says “baptize”? Here is a definition of baptism I offered in another short book, called Understanding Baptism:
Baptism is a church’s act of affirming and portraying a believer’s union with Christ by immersing him or her in water, and a believer’s act of publicly committing him or herself to Christ and his people, thereby uniting a believer to the church and marking off him or her from the world.
Now that’s a bit of a mouthful. More simply, baptism is a believer’s act of publicly committing him or herself to Christ and his people by being immersed in water.
Baptism is a believer’s act of publicly committing him or herself to Christ and his people by being immersed in water.
We have already seen from Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 28:19 that baptism is how someone publicly commits to follow Christ. And we’ll see biblical support for much of this definition in the next two sections.
Here we can simply note that baptism should be performed by immersion. The Greek word baptizō, on which our word “baptize” is based, means to dip or plunge something completely into a liquid. New Testament examples of baptism imply that it was done by immersion (John 3:23; Acts 8:38–39), and immersion best fits the imagery of union with Christ in his burial and resurrection, which we will consider in the next section (Romans 6:1–4).
To summarize Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 28:19, we can say that baptism is the first item on Jesus’s list of “Everything I Have Commanded You.” Why should you get baptized?
Because if you consider yourself a follower of Jesus, then, after repenting and believing (Mark 1:15), the first formal, public act of following that Jesus requires of you is baptism. The Christian life is more than following commands, but it certainly isn’t less. So after the command to repent and believe, here’s your first “to-do” from Jesus. All you have to do is declare your faith and lean back.
To Publicly Profess Faith in Him
A second reason why you should get baptized is to publicly profess your faith in Jesus. We’ve seen that this element of baptism is implicit in Matthew 28:19. It’s more explicit in a few other places in Scripture.
For example, when those who heard Peter preach on Pentecost were convicted of their sin, they asked him what to do, and he urged them to repent and be baptized (Acts 2:37–38). And then we read, “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (v. 41 ESV).
Receiving the word and being baptized went hand in hand. All those who embraced the gospel were baptized, and only those who embraced the gospel were baptized. Baptism was how those at Pentecost publicly proclaimed their embrace of Christ, the crucified and resurrected Messiah. And baptism is how you can and should openly declare that you trust in Christ.
Similarly, consider Paul’s teaching in Colossians 2:11–12:
In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. (ESV)
Note how baptism and faith go hand in hand. Addressing a congregation of baptized Christians, Paul says that they were buried and raised with Christ in baptism. He even uses baptism as a shorthand to refer to the whole event of their conversion.
He does this because baptism is a visible, tangible, public, dramatic expression of faith in Christ. It’s obvious, memorable, datable. You get soaked, and everyone present sees you disappear under the water and reappear up out of the water. That’s why Paul singles out baptism as a sign of conversion.
But he doesn’t just refer to baptism. He says, “in which you were also raised with him through faith” (v. 12). Paul assumes that faith was present at the time of baptism, because faith was the reason for baptism.
Faith in the resurrection power of God is why those Christians presented themselves for baptism. And publicly expressing that same faith is why you should be baptized too.