The video below will help you see the beauty of baptism—why it is such a big deal to Jesus and such a blessing to us!
“And then he says, “what I want you to do, in the making of disciples, is I want you to baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Now why is baptism so important here? Every word is really important. This is like the last thing Jesus says in the book of Matthew, right? It’s been 28 long chapters. This is the last thing he says—this is like a big deal.
So why is baptizing such a big deal here? Well, return to our definition of a disciple. A disciple is a follower of Jesus who is progressively learning to bring his or her life under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Baptism is meant to be that initial act of obedience and that primary declaration of allegiance to Jesus. So baptism is the first way in which we who put our faith in Jesus Christ and become Christians are meant to obey Jesus and to profess our allegiance to Jesus. And baptism reveals something, and baptism reclassifies someone.
It reveals outwardly, in this picture, this parable, this living metaphor, it reveals what God has done inwardly for us by grace—that we, through faith in Christ, have died with Christ. The old life is in the past and we have new life in him. And just as he was risen from the dead, we come out of the water, symbolizing that resurrection to new life, and God’s Spirit lives in us, and we have new life.
So it is meant to reveal that fact to the world—that, “look, I’ve put my faith in Jesus Christ. The old has gone. The new has come. I’m a new creation in him.”
And it reclassifies us. Right? Previously we were in the domain of darkness, the book of Colossians says, we have been transferred to the kingdom of the beloved Son (Colossians 1:13). When Jesus says, “baptize them in the name the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—the Trinity—“in the name” means this is not some routine thing that Christian ministers say, it means this is really important. We are being brought into and under the authority and the life and the character and the person of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—God himself. To be baptized is to be trinitized—to be reclassified from “rebel in the domain of darkness” to someone under the authority of the holiness of God within his kingdom, through Christ.
So disciples of Jesus—followers—are to be baptized and to obey Christ in that way.”