The 'Necessity' of Baptism
Can you have a BLT without the ‘T’?
I’m not a big fan of tomatoes. I’ll eat ketchup, salsa, tomato soup, and even tomato sauce, But sadly, I’m still too picky to leave giant slices of tomato on my burgers and sandwiches – even on a BLT, a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.
Asking for a BLT with no tomatoes is as silly as asking for a PB&J with no jelly.
You can’t have a banana split without bananas.
You can’t have strawberry short cake without strawberries.
You can’t have peach cobbler without peaches.
And you can’t have apple pie without ice cream.
Those are all essential, necessary ingredients.
What about baptism? Is that an essential, necessary ingredient within the ‘recipe’ of our salvation?
At first blush, it sounds non-negotiable in passages like Mark 16:16. “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved…” Or, how about what Jesus said in John 3:5? “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.”
So, is baptism like a banana in a banana split? Is baptism necessary for our salvation?
“You must be born again”
While the answer to that question lies within Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, it’s helpful to note that their conversation ultimately wasn’t about baptism per se.
Nicodemus didn’t tee off with questions about what baptism is, how baptism is to be administered, or to whom baptism has been given.
The crux of this conversation pertains to a far more foundational question.
His hang-ups aren’t about the nature of baptism, but the nature of people. What Nicodemus was failing to see wasn’t just how but why we must be born again.
There were things Nicodemus was seeing clearly: he could see the ministry of Jesus was gaining traction; he had seen many of the miracles Jesus had performed – those signs that powerfully demonstrated Jesus’ divinity; he could see that this Teacher was clearly from God! So, his words must be, too!
But despite everything Nicodemus could see, there was something fundamentally basic that he wasn’t seeing: our need to be born again.
So, one night, he brings his questions to Jesus. “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher from God, because there is no way you could perform all these signs unless you were from God.” Jesus replies, “Well, there is no way you can see or enter the kingdom of God unless you are born again.”
Born again?
“How can someone be born when they are old? Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
Jesus explains what he means in verse 5. “…No one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.”
In other words, entry into God’s heavenly, spiritual kingdom requires heavenly, spiritual rebirth. That rebirth comes about of water and the Spirit.
Well, what does Jesus mean by that?
“…of water and the Spirit.”
In John 3:5, the phrase “of water and the Spirit” is grammatically presented as a unit concept: in other words, Jesus isn’t talking about two rebirths – as if one must first be born of water and then be born of Spirit. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism – not two baptisms (Ephesians 4:5-6). This rebirth of water and the Spirit is describing one in the same thing: regeneration, the creation of faith.
The Apostle Peter reinforces this in his sermon in Acts 2. “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is for you and your children…” (Acts 2:38). Consider Paul’s words in Titus 3:5 – where, just as it is in Acts 2 and John 3:5, the waters of baptism and the regenerative working of the Holy Spirit are entwined together. Paul writes, [God] saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit… Or the Apostle Peter in 1 Peter 3:21, that baptism…now saves you also…”
Put another way, baptism is a means through which the Holy Spirit works faith in the hearts of people – a faith that lays claim of Christ and the gracious gifts he gives us through faith – that being the forgiveness of sins, newness of life, and eternal salvation. To put it simply, baptism saves.
The ‘Necessity’ of Baptism
So, if baptism saves, does that mean that baptism is absolutely necessary for salvation?
What about the thief on the cross?
You know, the man who hung on a cross next to Jesus, who said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom?” And Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” What about him?
Well, what about the thief on the cross?
Couldn’t he have been baptized by John? Sure, he could have! But that’s as much an argument from silence as it is to say that he wasn’t baptized when he died.
And even if the thief on the cross wasn’t baptized, so what? He isn’t an exception to the ‘rule’. Think of all the believers in the Old Testament – before God even instituted baptism! Were they saved apart from baptism? Absolutely! They were children of the promise just as much as we are! It was through faith in Jesus the thief on the cross both saw and entered the kingdom of God – just as it is through faith in Jesus that the baptized see and enter the kingdom of God, too.
So, is baptism necessary for salvation?
No, it’s not.
Faith in Jesus is.
Whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life, John writes just a few verses later (John 3:16).
We could say baptism is necessary in the sense that God uses it as a means through which he creates or strengthens faith, and thereby conveys and relays the forgiveness of sins. And this should not surprise [us], because the same gospel that is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes (Romans 1:16) is the same gospel that gives the waters of baptism their power.
So, while baptism does save, it is not absolutely necessary for salvation; faith in Jesus is. The point Jesus is making to Nicodemus isn’t the necessity of baptism for salvation; Jesus is stressing the necessity of spiritual rebirth – and baptism is one of the means God uses to make that happen.
“How Can This Be?”
And that’s when we might echo Nicodemus: “How can this be?”
In baptism, God pours forth his unconditional, universal, objective love for the world – young and old alike. On top of all the real blessings baptism gives, baptism paints the picture of our purely passive role in salvation: we were washed, we were sanctified, we were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God (1 Corinthians 6:11).
An adult is no more capable of turning to God and repenting on their own that a little child is. We need to be born again – not of biological descent, nor of human decision (John 1:13) – but born of God.
The thing is, our sinful flesh would deny the fact that sin gives birth to sin and insist we must play an active role in our salvation. And while our secular world evidences a failure to see both how and why we must be born again, Christians can fail to see this, too.
In the wake of the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church, during the Council of Trent, not only decreed that “faith will not justify [one before God] unless [baptism] is also present…” but went as far as saying that “[baptism] is more necessary than faith” (Council of Trent, Session VII, Canon IV). That treats baptism like we were made for it – not the other way around. Baptism no longer gives the gospel but assaults the gospel; the sole-sufficiency of Christ is discarded. Baptism becomes a work that we – not God – must do – and grace ceases to be grace.
But that’s what happens when we want to cooperate and participate in our salvation. That’s what happens when we repudiate the idea of needing to be given something from God that we don’t naturally have, or we can never possibly earn. And when we cringe at the idea of us being God’s ‘project’ or ‘charity case’, we’re downplaying our inherent need to be born again.
Our need for the unilateral, one-sided love of God was downplayed at the time of Nicodemus, too. Many of his Jewish contemporaries believed that being family with God hinged on their devoutness – that their obedience to God’s laws made them family with God. Others found comfort in their Jewish human ancestry, citing Abraham – that devout man of Israel’s past – as their father, as if being Jewish ethnically qualified them to be family with God. And it’s no different today, is it?
Why do you see and enter the kingdom of God?
Is it because you’ve been a churchgoer your entire life?
Is it because you’ve given thousands of dollars to churches and charities?
Is it because your world thinks you’re a good wife, a good husband, a good friend, or simply a ‘good’ person?
We can insist all we want that it’s by virtue of us that we see and enter the kingdom of God – that we are somehow entitled to God’s love, or are inherently deserving of being members of his family. But Jesus’ words “born again” throws all that out the window. Being family with God doesn’t correspond to your bloodline or ancestry; it isn’t a result of the good things we try and do as if to earn God’s love.
“Flesh can only give birth to flesh.” Sin gives birth to sin.
The question baptism prompts us to ask isn’t “How can babies possibly repent?” but “How can anyone possibly repent?” We needed rebirth because we were born spiritually dead in sin. And if you think ordering a BLT without tomatoes is silly, how much sillier is it for a spiritually lifeless corpse to give itself life? How much sillier is it for us – whose righteous actions are still like filthy rags – to try and reconcile ourselves to God?
The Beauty of Our Baptism
But what we couldn’t do, Jesus did.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Think about that: before the world did anything deserving of his love – God loved the world.
Before God’s love even took action, he loved us!
We had nothing to give to God, yet he gave us everything: he gave us the gift of himself, his one and only Son!
Because he loved us too much to watch his broken, fallen world stay that way for eternity. He loved you too much to let you be estranged from him by sin forever.
He knew we couldn’t fix it.
He knew we couldn’t save ourselves.
No hero but Jesus could bridge the gap between a broken world and a righteous God.
No hero but Jesus could live a blameless life in our place.
No hero but Jesus could be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
So, God took on humanity to live the perfect life we could not, and take the punishment our sins deserved.
Your Savior was lifted up on a cross and bore the sins of the world to make the world right with God. Because God so loved the world. And the same Jesus who gave himself up for you is the One who has cleansed you by the washing with water through the word (Ephesians 5:25, 26). Your baptism is proof of “Christ for you”!
That is the beauty of our baptism – whether you were baptized as an adult or as a child. Your baptism was where God personally created or strengthened your faith in Jesus. Your baptism is assurance that Christ’s righteousness is yours. Your baptism is God’s promise to you that you, in Christ, are completely and totally forgiven – that you have been washed – head to toe – by the cleansing tide of his grace – that you belong to him!
No, baptism isn’t necessary for salvation…
…but if baptism personally assures us that we, in Christ, have forgiveness, new life, and salvation – that in baptism our faith is strengthened and our adoption is sealed – where we in actuality are buried with Christ in his death – then to paraphrase the Ethiopian in Acts 8:36, “Why would we not want to be baptized?”
And that is what you are!