Baptism: What's the big deal?

Acts 16:33 – And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family.

What was the big deal about someone getting baptized? We will look at this in a little deeper perspective

If a man was baptized, he was rejected by his Jewish family, ex-communicated by the rabbis of the synagogue, and finally, considered an apostate in Judaism. So what did a Jewish man or woman have to lose to be baptized? EVERYTHING.

So now that we see a little more enlightenment on what happens when someone gets baptized.

When he was baptized, He was now an apostate. A person who forsakes his religion, cause, party, etc. So, when we read that the scribes and the Pharisees were always trying teach him, now we understand much more about this. He was brought up in the Judaism religion, and no doubt observed it to the best of his ability.

Now we have the stage set on describing what the baptism symbolizes. We will now look at why it ties in so well with
1. repentance,
2. salvation
3. baptism.

1. Repentance, this is mentioned very, very often in the bible. A quick search showed me 75 occurrences of the word “Repent” and another search brought out 24 instances of “Repentance”. These searches are based on the KJV.
This shows the distressed need of changing your mind about God, your life and your sin. Jesus was not shy about telling people they were sinful, and likewise we cannot be shy about telling people about their sin.

Our job, as I have mentioned a few times to friends and brothers in the assembly I take part, is not to save sinners. It’s impossible for me to save anyone. Physically from a wreck, a burning house, drowning or like cases, I may help and potentially save their physical life. But for their soul, they need a much more powerful antidote.

They need Christ, plain and simple. All I can do is preach God love and judgment (for Him to be one, He must be the other as well), preach sin (what we are guilty of) and Christ on the cross ( the antidote).

From there, we MUST let God do the work. I hear too many times people from different churches are always trying to make the Gospel of Christ more appealing to bring sizeable audiences. When we start making the Gospel tickle the ears, we are taking the power of the Holy Spirit away from the Gospel.

When we preach repentance, we are trying to explain to people to look at themselves from God’s point of view. And we must NOT humanize the message. People all the time say “God is too good to send us to hell” or “I have a free will to choose God”.

Do you know what happened with our free will, look a few thousand years ago in the garden of Eden. When man fell, that was OUR free will. Complete disobedience to God. God told us not to eat, we did. He left us with our free will. Now HE has to save us.

Only when you realize that you can do nothing to be saved, and that you are a complete wreck before God. Sinful and absolutely against EVERYTHING God stands for, and you come to Him broken and naked in your sin, and you say (not specifically these words, but along these lines, I don’t believe in the sinners prayer), Oh God, how wretched am I before you, how evil all my deeds, I now see what I am truly before you. I need you do so something, because I am headed to an eternity in Hell. I don’t want to go, but I have no other choice unless YOU do something about it. And if you don’t, I don’t have any choice either.

And it’s at this point most Christians are saved. When they come to the complete acknowledgment that they CANNOT do anything to be saved.

So now we have touched repentance and salvation.

Now baptism, as we see in a couple of examples, Acts 2:41 and at the end of Acts chapter 8, when Philip baptized the treasurer.

What was baptism? You see when a person claimed to be saved in the days of Jesus ( and even a few centuries after) they were apostates of their previous religion (outcasts and forsook) their previous faith.

But here is the key, salvation is a personal thing between YOU and GOD. No one else can really say if what you claim was true. Many people then were devout in their religions and didn’t do much offense to anyone. But, when they took the waters of baptism, it as completely public and an announcement that their previous life and faith and religion was a thing of the past. They were now disowned from their family and community.

So for someone to say they were saved, it was one thing, but then the 3000 that were baptized, this obviously was public and the treasurer, no doubt had a big following, and his baptism must have been a very public one as well.

This is why when Jesus said “Be saved and baptized”, He knew well that baptism didn’t have anything to do with the salvation, but the public display of it would associate the individual with Him. That individual now forsook everyone that he knew to be baptized.

Even now, I remember one person getting baptized ( I can’t remember who it was) but I remember his/her parents came to the baptism and someone from the crowd (mother I think) almost walked out when the individual was baptized. That individual renounced their previous faith (I think it was Catholicism) and a parent was NOT impressed with it.

I hope this expressed a little bit more light on why baptism is essential in the commandments of God’s new testament covenant. It will NOT save your soul, but it will make your salvation and association to Jesus and God public.