Baptism: Taking the Plunge

Sunday, I addressed the issue of baptism. That particular message may have spoken to you at a personal level. If so, I am glad! If you would like to talk further with me about baptism, I would be happy to meet with you.

   The challenge with the issue of baptism is that some churches don’t give baptism the serious attention it deserves. At the same time, others give it too much attention, as if it were the most important doctrinal issue in the Bible. Neither view, I believe, is healthy. Baptism was not meant to be the end-all-be-all of Jesus’ plan for us, as if having the “right” view on baptism was more important than having a right understanding of God, Christ, or the Holy Spirit. It is always important for Christians to keep things in proper perspective, neither elevating issues that shouldn’t be elevated nor ignoring issues that should be attended to.

   In the case of baptism, we need to remember the place Jesus gave to it. His baptism marked his anointing by the Spirit and the beginning of his ministry (Matt. 3:16-17). That alone should give us pause. Moreover, in Jesus’ Great Commission in Matthew 28, he tells his disciples,

18 “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you to the very end of the age.”

Thus, Jesus thought baptism was important enough that it played a key role in making disciples. If baptism marked the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and the initiation of a disciple’s journey, that should be enough for us to be convinced of its importance to the Christian message.

   While there are other passages we could refer to, I will leave it at these for now. I realize that within the church world, Christians often debate and disagree on the issue of baptism. It’s sad because so many other matters are more pressing for the church to be concerned about! At the end of the day, our goal is to point people to Jesus. Jesus ought to be our focus: his life, death, burial, and resurrection. His love for us is what brought him to save us, and our love for him and willingness to obey him is what ought to drive us to him. And, if, in the end, we keep Jesus and his teaching in focus, we will come to see the importance of baptism while also realizing that the central message of Christianity is not baptism but a living, breathing relationship with the Creator of the universe!