Is Baptism Necessary for Salvation?

We start with the premise that God, through His Word and His Spirit, is our only source of truth about the things of God. The question before us, then, is not what a tradition holds or what seems reasonable to the mind, but what the biblical perspective is: does the Bible itself draw any connection between water baptism and eternal life? To answer it, we rely on what Scripture says and on what is a reasonable interpretation of what it says.

We must also guard against a common error, which is to wrap the Word of God around a doctrine already held, or around what seems rational. Israel's march around Jericho, once a day for six days and seven times on the seventh, can hardly have seemed a rational way to take a walled city.¹ It was nevertheless what God instructed, and through obedience the walls fell. Scripture describes its own authority this way.

The Word of God examines the heart, identifies its motives, judges it, and prescribes the remedy for a corrupted nature.² The evidence indicates that such a book is the product of a single Author, and that it stands above any doctrine or collective insight compiled by men.³ This is what we should expect, since God is the Creator of man and no part of man is hidden from Him.

Man, by contrast, cannot perform that examination on himself, still less heal the nature he finds. The depths of his own sinful impulses lie beyond his full comprehension. He is nonetheless aware of the darkness within, even when he cannot name its source,⁴ and those who do acknowledge sin as the root of the problem still cannot remedy a corrupt nature by means of a corrupt nature.⁵ The remedy requires an uncorrupted agent with power greater than the power of sin, and that is found only in the power of God.

Only the Word of God can direct us to the source of power over sin. The doctrines of men, however, often arise from the same impulse that moves a young child to prove he can do a task without his parent's help: a desire to be free of God's control, and to be righteous apart from Him, on man's terms and in line with man's desires. This is impossible, because righteousness is obtained only by a declaration from God Himself.⁶

It is His Word that corrects and directs us in righteousness. We therefore affirm that the doctrine of God is not the property of any denomination; the only true doctrine is the message of the Bible itself, unfiltered. Through the Spirit, and through submission to the Spirit's leading, we are enabled to receive the Word rightly divided.⁷

We return now to water baptism and its relation to salvation. We know from Scripture that only God can forgive sin,⁸ which is what we should expect, since every transgression is finally a transgression against God. God set the order of this life and the standard by which men ought to relate to Him and to one another.⁹ Since He alone determines what is acceptable and what is sin,¹⁰ He alone determines how sin is to be remedied. He has devised the means, and Scripture names the primary component of that remedy: blood.¹¹

Under the Old Testament, both the sins of the nation¹² and the sins of individuals required the blood of an animal for atonement (in Hebrew usage, a covering of sin).¹³ With the coming of Jesus Christ, God made remission of sin available universally through His own blood, shed in His death on the cross.

We must now state a distinction on which the rest of this series depends. Eternal life and the forgiveness of sins are not imposed on a man against his will to be forgiven.¹⁴ Two passages make the point.

The promise of John 3:16 is conditional ("whosoever believeth"), and 2 Peter 3:9 states what God desires, not what every man will do. Taken together, these passages divide salvation into what God has provided and what man must receive. The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ gave man the opportunity to obtain forgiveness of sins and power over sin;¹⁵ they did not cancel the sins of the unrepentant.¹⁶

If the shed blood of Jesus does not produce a man's repentance for him, or secure eternal life apart from his will, then some further factor is involved in the pardon of sin and the obtaining of eternal life. We take up that division of salvation in Part 3. For the present we establish something narrower: that water baptism bears on eternal life at least because it is compulsory. Baptism is both the will and the command of God.¹⁷

We offer two lines of evidence that baptism is required and not optional, and then answer the claim that it is merely symbolic.

First, the command to baptize, and to teach baptism, came directly from Jesus Christ.

To "observe" what He commanded is to practice it, and baptism is among the things commanded.

Second, Jesus Himself was baptized. Baptism in the name of Jesus was not practiced until after His death and resurrection, but the act served the same essential function in the ministry of John the Baptist.

John saw the apparent contradiction at once. As we stated in Part 1, baptism has its application in relation to sin.¹⁸ John resisted because he knew who Jesus was, and knew that Jesus was without sin and had no need of repentance. He drew the contrast himself: "I have need to be baptized of thee." John had been filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb,¹⁹ yet that did not change the fact that he was a man, bearing a sinful nature and as much in need of forgiveness as anyone of his generation.

Jesus answered, "Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." The Son submitted to baptism as our example, much as a dance instructor performs the steps for the student to copy rather than lecturing from behind a lectern. He submitted to baptism as a man and not as God; yet the flesh in which God was veiled had no sin, and that fact is the proof that baptism is not only connected with sin but obligatory. If Jesus, who had no cause to repent and no need of forgiveness, was baptized, then no reasonable argument remains by which man, who has need of both, can deny the role of baptism in the remission of sins or reduce its place on the path to eternal life. There is no path to eternal life without the forgiveness of sins.

Finally, we answer the objection that baptism is symbolic. Some hold that baptism is a symbolic or ceremonial act and nothing more. Scripture, however, treats baptism as a required step for the believer, much as circumcision was required under the Old Covenant. In the New Testament, Peter joins baptism directly to the remission of sins,²⁰ and Paul describes it as burial with Christ and resurrection to newness of life.²¹ In the Old Testament, circumcision was not optional either. The uncircumcised man was to be cut off from his people,²² and when Moses neglected to circumcise his son, the LORD met him and sought to kill him,²³ though Moses was one "whom the LORD knew face to face."²⁴

If God enforced circumcision so strictly, we cannot reasonably claim that neglecting water baptism, which Scripture says washes away sin,²⁵ carries no consequence. Both are commanded by God, and both mark entrance into covenant life. To neglect either is to set aside a plain divine requirement.