What Did Jesus Say, Do and Teach About Baptism

 

The Baptism of Jesus

Jesus himself thought He needed to be baptised even though John thought that Jesus should baptise him. He walked over sixty miles from Galilee to the river Jordan which indicates how important and necessary Jesus thought His baptism was. When John saw Him and realised who He was and the fact that he did not need repentance John told Jesus that he should be the one getting baptised by Jesus. Jesus didn’t deny this fact but said that to fulfil all righteousness John had to baptise Him. (Matt 3:13-17).

 

 

Jesus’ Teaching on Baptism

Jesus taught Nicodemus about the New Birth and told him that without water baptism a person will not “enter the kingdom of God” (Joh 3:5)

 

Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 

John 3:5  

 

I’ve just read a commentary on this very subject that claims when Jesus said “born of water” He didn’t mean water? The writer has said that Jesus couldn’t have meant you need to be baptised to enter heaven because the bible teaches that salvation is by faith alone.

 

Here we go again with the saved by faith alone subject, you see if you misunderstand this subject it can mean you miss out on heaven. I’m not going to go back over this but let’s examine what the writer says Jesus meant when He said “water”.

See my blog faith vs baptism Here:

 

So what the writer has done is looked through the bible to where water was used as a symbol for something else and said “it could mean this or that”, how confusing!

 

Ok so the writers say that water could mean “word” and a scripture from the book of Ephesians (5:25-26) “…cleansing her by the washing of water by the word” is used, where I agree that the “word” of God can cleanse us if we meditate on it and apply it to our lives, I refute and reject that this is what Jesus meant when he was speaking to Nicodemus in the book of John. Firstly the word water was translated from the Greek word “hudor” which means actual water, this Greek word was derived from another Greek word “huetos” which means to rain or shower.

 

And Jesus and His disciples deemed it necessary to baptise sinners themselves as you can read in the book of John. (Joh 3:22,26)

 

Joh 3:22 After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judaea; and there he tarried with them, and baptized.

Joh 3:23 And John also was baptizing in Aenon near to Salim, because there was much water there: and they came, and were baptized.

Joh 3:24 For John was not yet cast into prison.

Joh 3:25 Then there arose a question between some of John’s disciples and the Jews about purifying.

Joh 3:26 And they came unto John, and said unto him, Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou barest witness, behold, the same baptizeth, and all men come to him.

 

One other thing to note here is that this has happened just after Jesus had finished teaching Nicodemus about the need to be born of the water, Jesus had just finished talking in verse twenty one then in verse twenty two it says “After this, Jesus and His disciples went to the Judean countryside, where He spent time with them and baptised”.

 

(Although from chapter four verse two it would appear that Jesus oversaw the baptism and didn’t do them himself)

 

Note verse twenty three says John was also baptising there because there was plenty of water there and people were coming to be baptised.

 

I wonder how the writer would explain this portion of the verse because he only talks about the fact that Jesus didn’t do the baptising himself and doesn’t relate it to his point about the word “water” meaning “word”, are we talking about real water here or does this mean there was plenty of words there and both Jesus and John stood in a river full of words?

 

Alright, so I’m just being facetious but I’m sure you can see my point, why some people insist on trying to deny the obvious because it doesn’t fit in with what they originally believed and then end up spreading false doctrine is beyond me.

 

The fact is that for some people the truth will be right before their eyes but they can’t see it, the bible tells us in 2 Timothy 3:7 that “in the last days there will be people who are ever learning but unable to come to the knowledge of the truth” so some will come so close to the truth but still end up believing a lie. Anyway I am straying from my point.

 

When Jesus was preparing to ascend to heaven He told his disciples that all power (authority) was given to Him and that they should go to all nations teaching and baptising. (Matt 28:19) This is a clear instruction given to Jesus’ trainees, now for those that would argue that Jesus wasn’t telling them to baptise everyone they could in water I would remind them about John 3:22 and 4:2 as we’ve just discussed where the disciples were baptising people under the instruction of Jesus.

 

I would also urge you to read the book of Acts which describes what the apostles did, here you will read about them going into all nations preaching, teaching and baptising as they were instructed to do in Matthew 28:19.

 

Mark’s account of Jesus’ last address to His disciples sounds very much the same but he goes on to record the words of Jesus as saying “he that believes and is baptised shall be saved” (This echoes the words that Jesus said to Nicodemus when He taught him about the New Birth.) (Mark 16:16)

 

Written By

Donovan Benjamin