Following Jesus in Baptism?

What this page is asking

Many churches today describe baptism as “following Jesus”, as “obeying his example”, or as “going public with your faith”. The reasoning behind these phrases usually goes like this. Jesus was baptized as an adult, by immersion, after coming to John of his own accord; he said it was “to fulfil all righteousness”; so a believer who has already come to faith should do the same, as a step of obedience and a testimony to others. On this view baptism does not give anything. It shows something that has already happened.

This page asks whether that picture matches what the New Testament says about baptism, and what the Church said for its first fifteen hundred years. It rests on three observations anyone can check in an afternoon:

• Jesus’ baptism and ours are different in kind. John’s was “the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins” (Mark 1:4), and Jesus had nothing to repent of. John tried to refuse him: “I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?” (Matthew 3:14).
• The New Testament keeps saying that baptism does something. It is “for the remission of sins” (Acts 2:38); it joins us to Christ’s death (Romans 6:3–4); it is “the washing of regeneration” (Titus 3:5); it “doth also now save us” (1 Peter 3:21). No text calls it a public testimony.
• The view that it is only a testimony has a birthday. It first appears in the 1520s, in Zurich, and both Luther and Calvin rejected it in writing.

And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord.

Acts 22:16 (Authorised Version). Ananias to Saul of Tarsus, three days after Saul had met the risen Christ on the Damascus road.

So the question, as the page’s author put it: when a church says a believer is “following Jesus in baptism”, is it describing what the New Testament describes, or is it describing a view of baptism the Church did not hold until the sixteenth century, in words that make it sound like the Bible’s?

Two positions, labelled, and used consistently throughout

Arguments about baptism usually go wrong when each side attacks something the other does not hold. So the page labels two positions and keeps them apart from here to the end. Each is stated as a thoughtful and sincere holder would state it.

Notice what the two do not disagree about. Both hold that baptism is commanded by Christ and that a Christian should be baptized. Both hold that faith is necessary and that water without faith is not a magic rite. Both connect baptism with Romans 6. The disagreement is about direction: whether baptism is chiefly something God does to us, which faith receives, or something we do for others, which shows our faith. The phrase “following Jesus in baptism” is almost always used in the service of Position I, and that is why this page examines it.

What the page concludes, stated up front

The prompt behind this page

Everything below was produced by giving the following brief to a frontier language model with web search, which assembled and checked the sources. It is published so that you can run it yourself, change it, sharpen it, or reverse it and see what comes back. Three experiments are worth more than reading this page. First, reverse it: ask for the strongest case that baptism is a believer’s testimony, from Scripture alone, and see which texts it relies on. Second, narrow it: ask only for every New Testament sentence in which baptism is the subject of a verb, and what the verb is. Third, extend it: ask the same question of the Lord’s Supper and the phrase “we remember what he did for us”. Dossier 14 did part of that work, and the result is worth comparing with this one.

Write a detailed, source-first investigation of the following question, in
British English, for a general reader who is willing to work. Quote
scripture from the Authorised Version. Date and attribute every other
quotation: give the work, the edition or translation, the section, and the
page where possible. Where a date, authorship, text or translation is
disputed by scholars, say so at the point of use.

  TITLE. Following Jesus in Baptism?

  THE THESIS UNDER TEST. Christian baptism is not a reenactment of
  Jesus's baptism in the Jordan. His baptism sanctified the waters and
  foreshadowed his death; ours unites us to that death and resurrection
  for the remission of sins. It is not merely a public testimony to a
  conversion already complete. The New Testament consistently speaks of
  baptism as doing something: it washes away sins, unites us to Christ's
  death, gives new birth, and "now saves us" (1 Peter 3:21). Even St.
  Paul, who had already met the risen Christ, was told to "arise and be
  baptized, and wash away your sins" (Acts 22:16).

  The phrase "following Jesus in baptism" blurs this difference and
  quietly carries a particular view of what baptism is - one foreign to
  the historic church, which confessed "one baptism for the remission of
  sins," and rejected by Luther and Calvin alike, who refused to treat
  baptism as a bare sign. That view emerged in the sixteenth century with
  Zwingli and the Anabaptists - a full fifteen hundred years from the
  time of Christ.

Distinguish two positions throughout and use the labels consistently:

  U - THE UNION. Baptism unites a person to Christ's death and
  resurrection for the remission of sins; Christ's own baptism was
  unique, sanctified the waters and pointed to his death. HOLD THIS
  POSITION, stated as its best defenders state it.

  I - THE IMITATION. Baptism is the believer's act of following
  Christ's example and publicly testifying to a salvation already
  received. State it as a thoughtful, sincere holder would, from its
  own published sources.

Write a POSITIVE ARGUMENT: no separate counter-case section. Concede
plainly, at the point of use, anything the evidence does not show.

COVER, in roughly this order:

1. THE PHRASE. What "following Jesus in baptism" assumes. Is it, or
   anything like it, in the New Testament? What does "follow his
   steps" (1 Pet 2:21) refer to?
2. WHY JESUS WAS BAPTIZED. The Gospels' own reasons (Mt 3:13-17;
   Jn 1:29-34; Acts 10:38) and John's protest; the sinlessness of
   Christ; early witnesses (Justin, Dialogue 88).
3. TWO BAPTISMS. The Jordan and the "baptism" of his death (Mk 10:38;
   Lk 12:50). John's baptism and Christian baptism (Mt 3:11; Mt 28:19;
   Acts 18:25; 19:1-7), including where Christians disagree about
   Acts 19.
4. WHAT BAPTISM DOES. Every New Testament text in which baptism is
   the subject or instrument of an action. Note textual and
   interpretive disputes (Mk 16:16; Jn 3:5; the Greek of 1 Pet 3:21).
5. PAUL. Acts 9:1-19 and 22:6-16 read together, step by step; then
   Cornelius (Acts 10:44-48).
6. THE JORDAN IN THE CHURCH. Ignatius, Justin, Gregory Nazianzen,
   Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, Aquinas, the Theophany troparion, the
   Creed of 381, Luther's Flood Prayer and the Book of Common Prayer.
7. THE REFORMERS. Luther's catechisms, Augsburg IX, Calvin's
   Institutes 4.15-16, the Scots Confession, the Thirty-Nine Articles,
   Westminster 28. Be exact about the Reformed qualification of when
   and to whom baptism's grace is conferred.
8. THE 1520s. Zurich 1525, Hubmaier, Zwingli, Schleitheim; the
   argument from Christ's baptism at thirty and Calvin's reply; how the
   later Baptist confessions (1689, and a modern one) describe baptism.
9. THE RIGHT IMITATION. Romans 6 and Cyril's Mystagogical Catecheses:
   imitation of the death and burial, "in a figure", with salvation "in
   reality". Test common modern phrases against it.
10. CLOSE with an instrument the reader applies to himself.

CONSTRAINTS.
- Do not discuss the mode of baptism, and keep infant baptism and
  "born again" brief with cross-links to earlier pages.
- Name no living person. Churches and organisations may be named only
  when quoted verbatim from their own published documents. Compose all
  everyday examples and label them as composed.
- Make no claim about any individual's sincerity, salvation or standing
  before God, and do not rule on whether any body is a Christian church.
- Do not adjudicate between Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican and
  Reformed accounts of how baptism works; use what they hold in common.
- Label every evaluative conclusion as opinion.
- Where the reader is asked to decide something, ask him to commit
  before he is told the answer.

OUTPUT: a single self-contained interactive HTML page, professional and
readable, light theme by default with a dark switch, stating the
question at the top, publishing this prompt in full, and giving the
reader something to do in every major section rather than only
something to read. Also produce a plain-English quick version of about
fifteen minutes with three short exercises.

The page you are reading is the output of that brief after the sources were checked one by one against the editions listed in Part XII. Where a claim could not be verified against a published source, it was cut rather than softened. In two places the checking added a qualification to the brief. On Acts 19, Calvin read the passage differently from most interpreters, and Part III says so. On the Reformers, the Reformed confessions tie baptism’s effect to faith and to God’s timing more carefully than the Lutheran ones do, and Part VII says so.

What do you currently think?

Ten questions. Each has a determinate answer, and you can check every one of them yourself in Part XII. Answer them before reading and lock them in. They come back in Part XI with the sources beside them. The score does not matter much. The point of answering first is that it is much harder to notice you have changed your mind if you never wrote down what you thought.

What follows

The phrase and what it carries

Start with the words themselves, because they are where most people meet the question. Here are four sentences of the kind heard in many churches today. All four are composed by this page, but anyone who has attended a baptism service in a free church will recognise them:

Put the four together and a complete theory of baptism appears. (1) The model for our baptism is Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan. (2) The point of both is obedience and example. (3) What baptism conveys runs from the believer outward, to onlookers. (4) Salvation is complete before the water, so baptism adds nothing but a declaration. None of these four is stated as a doctrine. They arrive together, in the grammar of a friendly announcement, and by the time a new Christian has heard them a dozen times they feel like the plain meaning of Scripture.

The simplest test is to ask whether Scripture actually says them. The New Testament uses the language of following constantly, and it is worth seeing where. “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). And the one place where Christians are told to follow in his steps:

For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not.

1 Peter 2:21–23 (Authorised Version). Addressed to servants suffering unjustly.

That is the example Peter has in mind: patient, unjust suffering. The same letter, a chapter later, does speak about baptism, and it says something quite different. It does not say baptism follows Christ’s example. It says baptism “doth also now save us” (1 Peter 3:21). Peter uses the language of example for the cross and the language of salvation for baptism, and he does not mix them.

Try it: does the New Testament say it?

Ten claims. For each, decide whether the New Testament says it, does not say it, or says something different. Commit before you are told. Where a claim is not in the text, that does not make it false; it means it has to be argued from somewhere else, and the reader deserves to know where.

0 of 10 answered.

Why was Jesus baptized?

If our baptism is not a copy of his, the obvious question is why he was baptized at all. The Gospels raise the question themselves. They record that it puzzled the man who performed it.

Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him. But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me? And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him.

Matthew 3:13–15 (Authorised Version).

John’s protest is the key to the scene. Everyone else who came to him was “baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins” (Matthew 3:6). His was “the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins” (Mark 1:4). Jesus confessed nothing, because there was nothing to confess: he “did no sin” (1 Peter 2:22), “knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and was “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). So whatever happened in the Jordan, it was not what happened to anyone else in the Jordan that year. Of all the people John baptized, Jesus alone was not baptized for the reason the baptism existed.

What reasons do the texts give instead? There are four, and it is worth noticing that each one is about who Jesus is, not about what we should do.

The early Church read it the same way. Justin Martyr, writing in Rome around 155 and arguing with a Jewish teacher who knew the Scriptures well, faces the question head-on:

He did not go to the river because He stood in need of baptism, or of the descent of the Spirit like a dove; even as He submitted to be born and to be crucified, not because He needed such things, but because of the human race.

Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 88, c. 155. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1.

Notice what Justin puts it next to. The Jordan belongs with the birth and the crucifixion. They are things Christ underwent for us and instead of us, not things he did for us to copy. Nobody reads the nativity as an example of being born, or the crucifixion as a model for how Christians should die for the sins of the world. Justin puts the baptism in the same list.

One honest concession belongs here. The historic Church did not deny that Christ’s baptism also teaches by example. Thomas Aquinas gives three reasons for it (Summa Theologiae III, q. 39, a. 1). The first, quoting Ambrose, is that Christ “wished, not to be cleansed, but to cleanse the waters”. The second is that, although he had no sin, he took our nature and so could fittingly show us the way. The third is that he did first what he would command others to do. So “example” is not a modern invention. What is modern is making the example the whole of it, and inferring from it that what we receive in the water is what Jesus received, which was no forgiveness, because he needed none. Aquinas’s first reason, the one that matters most, is the one the phrase leaves out.

Try it: whose reason is this?

Nine reasons that have been given for Jesus’ baptism. For each, decide where it comes from: stated in the Gospels, drawn out by later Christian reflection on the Gospels, or found in neither.

0 of 9 answered.

Two baptisms: the Jordan and the cross

Here is the fact that ought to settle how the Jordan relates to us, and it is surprisingly little known. After his baptism in the Jordan, Jesus said he still had a baptism ahead of him.

But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!

Luke 12:50 (Authorised Version). Spoken on the road to Jerusalem, long after the Jordan.

Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?

Mark 10:38 (Authorised Version). To James and John, who had asked for the seats at his right and left hand.

No commentator of any tradition doubts what that baptism is. It is his passion and death, the deluge he was about to go under. So Jesus himself uses the word “baptism” for two events. There is the one in the Jordan, which is behind him, and there is the one at Golgotha, which is ahead of him and which he longs to have “accomplished”. The early Church saw the first as pointing to the second: he went down into the water as he would go down into death, and came up as he would come up from the grave. Ignatius, as Part VI shows, ties the two together in a single sentence.

Now read Paul with that in mind.

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

Romans 6:3–4 (Authorised Version).

Into which of Jesus’ two baptisms are Christians baptized? Paul’s answer is unmistakable: into his death. Not into his Jordan. Christian baptism does not put us where Jesus stood at thirty, on the riverbank, before his ministry began. It puts us where he lay after Good Friday, in the tomb, and raises us where he rose on Easter morning. That is why Christian baptism was only commanded after the resurrection: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). Until the death and resurrection had happened, there was nothing yet to be baptized into.

John’s baptism and Christ’s

A second distinction follows. The baptism Jesus received was John’s, and John himself contrasted it with what was to come: “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me … shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire” (Matthew 3:11). Acts then records two episodes in Ephesus. Apollos, “knowing only the baptism of John”, has to be taught “the way of God more perfectly” (Acts 18:25–26). And a few chapters later:

He said unto them, Unto what then were ye baptized? And they said, Unto John’s baptism. Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Acts 19:3–5 (Authorised Version).

An honest note. Christians have read this passage in two ways. Most interpreters, ancient and modern, read verse 5 as saying that these disciples, having received only John’s baptism, were now baptized with Christian baptism. The Council of Trent went further and condemned the claim that John’s baptism “had the same force as the baptism of Christ” (Session 7, On Baptism, canon 1). Calvin held the opposite: that John’s baptism and Christ’s were one and the same, and that verse 5 continues Paul’s description of what John’s hearers did (Institutes 4.15.7–8, 18). This page does not need to settle that dispute. On either reading the argument holds. What Jesus received in the Jordan was not a baptism “into his death”, because his death had not yet happened. He did not receive it for the remission of sins, because he had none. And he did not receive it to be given the Spirit as a gift he lacked, because Justin’s point stands. Whatever the relation of John’s rite to ours, the Jordan was not, for Jesus, what baptism is for us, and a phrase that invites us to do what he did there invites us into the wrong event.

Try it: which baptism is this?

Ten New Testament verses that use the word “baptism” or “baptize”. For each, decide which baptism is meant. Some are easy. Two or three will make you look at the context.

0 of 10 answered.

What the New Testament says baptism does

This is the heart of the page, and it is also the easiest part to check. Take every sentence in the New Testament in which baptism is the subject of a verb, or the means by which something is done, and write down the verb. You do not need Greek for this. An hour with any translation will do it.

Here is what comes back. Baptism is “for the remission of sins”, and those baptized “shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38). It is the means by which sins are washed away (Acts 22:16). It baptizes us into Christ’s death and buries us with him (Romans 6:3–4). By it we put on Christ (Galatians 3:27). In it we are buried with him and risen with him, and that is described as a circumcision “made without hands” (Colossians 2:11–12). It is “the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” by which God “saved us” (Titus 3:5). It “doth also now save us” (1 Peter 3:21). By one Spirit we are all baptized into one body (1 Corinthians 12:13). Christ sanctifies the Church and cleanses it “with the washing of water by the word” (Ephesians 5:26).

And here is what does not come back. There is no sentence in the New Testament in which baptism testifies, declares, announces, pictures a past event to onlookers, or goes public. The idea that baptism is “an outward sign of an inward change” may be defended from other premises. It is not something the New Testament says in any text.

Set all the disputed texts aside and five remain whose meaning nobody doubts: Acts 2:38, Acts 22:16, Romans 6:3–4, Galatians 3:27 and 1 Peter 3:21. All five speak of baptism doing something. None of them speaks of it showing something. That is the whole textual case of this page, and it can be checked in twenty minutes.

Try it: the verb audit

Ten texts. For each, pick what the text says baptism does. One of the five options is “declares the believer’s faith to others”. Watch how often you reach for it, and how often the text lets you.

0 of 10 answered.

“Why tarriest thou?”

If there is one person in the New Testament whose conversion was complete before he was baptized, by Position I’s own standards, it is Saul of Tarsus. That is what makes his baptism the test case. Acts tells the story three times (chapters 9, 22 and 26). Chapter 22 is Paul’s own account, given years later to a hostile crowd in Jerusalem, and it includes the sentence Ananias spoke to him.

Walk through the story one step at a time. At each step, commit to an answer before the page tells you what the text says.

The last step quotes Calvin, and it matters because he is the most cautious witness the page has. Calvin held that Paul’s forgiveness had begun before the water. He also held that baptism was God’s “inferior instrument” of washing and a “new confirmation” given to Paul. The page takes him at his word on both points. Even on the most careful Reformed reading, what happened in Damascus was something God did for Paul, not something Paul did for an audience. Position I needs the second, and no reader of the text before the 1520s found it there.

And Cornelius

Acts 10 is the other case people cite, usually in support of Position I, because Cornelius and his household received the Holy Spirit before they were baptized. The Spirit “fell on all them which heard the word”, and they spoke with tongues (Acts 10:44–46). What does Peter conclude? Not that baptism is now unnecessary, or merely a public confirmation of what everyone has just seen. He asks, “Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized?”, and “he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord” (10:47–48). Acts treats this sequence as a sign to Jewish believers that Gentiles were to be admitted at all (11:17). It does not treat it as the normal order, and even here baptism is commanded, not offered as an option for those who want to testify.

Paul, meanwhile, never describes his own baptism as the moment he went public. When he writes about baptism, he writes in the first person plural and in the language of what was done to him: “so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death.” The man who had seen Christ on the road still counted his baptism as the place where he was buried with him.

He sanctified the waters

So what did the Jordan do, if it was not a pattern for us to act out? The Church’s answer is one of the most consistent in its history, and it begins remarkably early. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, was being taken to Rome to die when he wrote to the Christians at Ephesus, around 107:

For our God, Jesus the Christ, was conceived in the womb by Mary according to a dispensation, of the seed of David but also of the Holy Ghost; and He was born and was baptized that by His passion He might cleanse water.

Ignatius of Antioch, To the Ephesians 18.2, c. 107. Trans. J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers (1891).

That sentence holds the whole argument of Parts II and III. Christ was baptized, but not to be cleansed: he cleansed the water. And he did it “by His passion”. The Jordan and the cross belong together. The first looks ahead to the second, and the second gives the water what it carries. The Church spent the next fifteen centuries saying the same thing in different languages.

John baptizes, Jesus comes to Him … perhaps to sanctify the Baptist himself, but certainly to bury the whole of the old Adam in the water; and before this and for the sake of this, to sanctify Jordan; for as He is Spirit and Flesh, so He consecrates us by Spirit and water.

Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 39 (On the Holy Lights) 15, Constantinople, 381. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 7.

He washed in the river Jordan, and having imparted of the fragrance of His Godhead to the waters, He came up from them.

Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses 3.1, c. 350. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 7.

In the West, Ambrose of Milan put it in a phrase the Middle Ages would repeat: Christ was baptized “not to be cleansed, but to cleanse the waters”. Thomas Aquinas made it the first of his reasons, quoting Ambrose (Summa Theologiae III, q. 39, a. 1). In the East, the feast of the Theophany on 6 January still celebrates the Jordan as the revelation of the Trinity, and its central hymn says nothing about the example it set:

When Thou, O Lord, wast baptized in the Jordan, the worship of the Trinity was made manifest; for the voice of the Father bare witness to Thee, calling Thee His beloved Son; and the Spirit in the form of a dove confirmed the truthfulness of His word.

Troparion of the Feast of the Theophany, Byzantine rite; standard English translation used in Orthodox service books.

The Reformation did not break this line. It sharpened it. When Luther wrote a German baptismal service in 1523, he composed a new prayer for it that became famous as the Flood Prayer. It stands in the service before the water is poured:

… who through the baptism of thy dear Child, our Lord Jesus Christ, hast consecrated and set apart the Jordan and all water as a salutary flood and a rich and full washing away of sins.

Martin Luther, The Order of Baptism (1523), the Flood Prayer. Luther’s Works, American edition, vol. 53, pp. 96–103.

Thomas Cranmer took Luther’s prayer into the English Prayer Book of 1549. Through its revision of 1662 it has been prayed at English-speaking fonts for more than four centuries:

Almighty and everlasting God … by the Baptism of thy well-beloved Son Jesus Christ, in the river Jordan, didst sanctify Water to the mystical washing away of sin …

The Book of Common Prayer (1662), The Ministration of Publick Baptism of Infants.

In 1541 Luther also wrote a baptismal hymn that answers the question of this page in its first verse: Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, “Christ our Lord came to the Jordan”. The verse goes on to say that there he meant “zu stiften uns ein Bad, zu waschen uns von Sünden, ersäufen auch den bittern Tod durch sein selbst Blut und Wunden”. In the page’s own translation: to found for us a bath, to wash us from our sins, and to drown bitter death as well, through his own blood and wounds. Here the Jordan, the washing and the wounds are held together, as they were in Ignatius, fourteen centuries earlier.

Finally, the Creed. At Constantinople in 381, in the same year Gregory preached the sermon quoted above, the Church wrote baptism into the confession that Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican and Reformed Christians still recite: “We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins.” The article does not say “one baptism in obedience to Christ’s example”, and it does not say “one baptism as a testimony of faith”. It says what the baptism is for, and it uses the words of Acts 2:38. Dossier 24 looks at why some churches no longer recite it.

Try it: who said it?

Ten short passages about the baptism of Christ or about ours. For each, guess where it comes from before the page tells you. If the Church had ever read the Jordan as a pattern of testimony, you would expect some of these voices to say so.

Luther and Calvin refuse a bare sign

People who say baptism “doesn’t do anything” often assume they are standing on Reformation ground, because the Reformers were suspicious of Rome’s ceremonies. The documents do not support that assumption. Luther and Calvin disagreed about a good deal, and bitterly about the Supper. On baptism they agreed on one thing, and they put it in writing: baptism is not a bare sign of something the believer has done. It is a means by which God gives what it signifies.

Start with Luther’s Small Catechism of 1529, the book Lutheran children have memorised for five centuries:

What does Baptism give or profit? It works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.

Martin Luther, Small Catechism (1529), Part IV. The Book of Concord.

And the Large Catechism, written the same year for adults and pastors: “To be baptized in God’s name is to be baptized not by men but by God himself” (Part IV). The Augsburg Confession of 1530 says baptism is “necessary to salvation” and that “through Baptism is offered the grace of God”, and it names the people it disagrees with: “They condemn the Anabaptists” (Article IX).

Calvin is, if anything, more pointed. The first section of his chapter on baptism in the Institutes describes the testimony view almost word for word and rejects it:

Hence those who have thought that baptism is nothing else than the badge and mark by which we profess our religion before men, in the same way as soldiers attest their profession by bearing the insignia of their commander, having not attended to what was the principal thing in baptism.

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), 4.15.1. Trans. Henry Beveridge (1845).

The “principal thing”, Calvin goes on, is what God gives in it: baptism “is a kind of sealed instrument by which he assures us that all our sins are so deleted, covered, and effaced” that they will not come into his sight. The soldiers’ badge he mentions is not a random comparison. It is the picture Zwingli had used, the Latin sacramentum as a soldier’s oath of loyalty. Calvin knew exactly whose view he was setting aside.

The Reformed confessions that followed say the same in their own language. The Scots Confession of 1560: “we utterly damn the vanity of those that affirm sacraments to be nothing else but naked and bare signs” (chapter 21). The Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles (1563/1571) could hardly be more direct:

Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened, but it is also a sign of Regeneration or New-Birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church; the promises of forgiveness of sin, and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost, are visibly signed and sealed.

The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, Article XXVII, “Of Baptism”.

“Not only a sign of profession.” The authors of that article knew the testimony view, granted the part of it that is true, since baptism does mark a Christian out, and refused to let it be the whole. The Westminster Confession of 1646 follows the same line: baptism is “a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins”, and in its right use “the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited, and conferred, by the Holy Ghost” (chapter 28, sections 1 and 6).

Try it: sign of profession, or something more?

Ten statements about baptism from published confessions and writings between 1525 and the present day. For each, decide what it makes baptism: only the believer’s own act of testimony or obedience; a sign of union with Christ that does not say whether God gives anything through it; or a means by which God gives something.

0 of 10 answered.

The 1520s

If the testimony view is not in the New Testament, not in the Fathers, not in the Creed and not in Luther or Calvin, where does it come from? It has a date and a place. Dossier 26 tells the story in more detail. Here the page gives only the part that bears on the phrase.

On 21 January 1525, in a house in Zurich, a group of young men who had been Zwingli’s students and had lost patience with the pace of his reforms baptized one another as believers. It was the beginning of the movement their opponents called Anabaptist, meaning “re-baptizers”. In May Zwingli published Of Baptism. He held on to infant baptism against the radicals, but he denied that any sacrament conveys what it signifies, and he was candid that this was new: “In this matter of baptism … I can only conclude that all the doctors have been in error from the time of the apostles” (Library of Christian Classics, vol. 24, p. 130). In July Balthasar Hubmaier, the most learned theologian of the early Anabaptists, finished On the Christian Baptism of Believers. In it he defined water baptism as

… but a public testimony which the person received and gives because he confesses and recognizes that he is a miserable sinner …

Balthasar Hubmaier, On the Christian Baptism of Believers, completed 11 July 1525. In H. W. Pipkin and J. H. Yoder, eds., Balthasar Hubmaier: Theologian of Anabaptism (1989).

Two years later, the Anabaptist gathering at Schleitheim put the order of events into its first article: baptism “shall be given to all those who have learned repentance and amendment of life, and who believe truly that their sins are taken away by Christ” (Schleitheim Confession, 24 February 1527, Article I). The forgiveness is already complete before the water. The water follows. That sequence, with salvation first and baptism afterwards as its public sign, is the whole of Position I, and this is the earliest date at which it can be found stated as a confession.

The argument from Jesus’ own baptism appears in the same debates. The Anabaptists pointed out that Jesus was baptized at about thirty, as an adult who knew what he was doing, and said that believers should follow his example. Calvin records the objection and answers it:

He was not baptised before his thirtieth year. This is indeed true, but the reason is obvious, because he then determined to lay the solid foundation of baptism by his preaching … Therefore, when he was pleased with his doctrine to institute baptism, that he might give the greater authority to his institution, he sanctified it in his own person, and that at the most befitting time, namely, the commencement of his ministry.

John Calvin, Institutes 4.16.29 (1559). Trans. Beveridge.

Calvin’s answer is the one this page has been giving. The Jordan is institution, not example: Christ “sanctified it in his own person” so that what he founded would have his authority. What Calvin’s opponents took as a pattern to copy, he took as the foundation of something given.

What came after

The testimony view has been refined since the 1520s, and fairness requires saying so. The Particular Baptists in England, writing in 1677 and again in 1689, deliberately borrowed Westminster’s language. Their confession calls baptism “a sign of his fellowship with him, in his death and resurrection; of his being engrafted into him; of remission of sins” (Second London Baptist Confession, 29.1). That is the language of Romans 6, not of the Jordan, although it stops at “sign” and does not say that anything is conferred. The largest Baptist body in the United States describes baptism in its current confession as follows:

Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer’s faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Saviour, the believer’s death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus. It is a testimony to his faith in the final resurrection of the dead.

The Baptist Faith and Message (Southern Baptist Convention, 2000), Article VII.

Two things are worth noticing. First, this is Position I stated with care. It speaks of “an act of obedience”, “symbolizing” and “a testimony”, and it describes baptism entirely in terms of what the believer does. Second, even this confession does not say that baptism follows Jesus’ example in the Jordan. Its symbolism points to the death, burial and resurrection, the same events Romans 6 points to. The popular phrase goes further than the confessions of the tradition that uses it most.

Try it: put them in order

Eleven moments in the history of how Christians have described baptism. Place each in its period. When you are done, look at where the testimony view first appears and how much comes before it.

0 of 11 answered.

The imitation the Church did teach

It would be too simple to say that the historic Church had no idea of imitation in baptism. It had a strong one. But the event it imitated was not the Jordan, and the imitation was never the whole of what happened. The clearest witness is Cyril of Jerusalem. Around 350 he was explaining to the newly baptized, in the week after Easter, what had been done to them at the font a few hundred yards from Christ’s tomb:

After these things, you were led to the holy pool of Divine Baptism, as Christ was carried from the Cross to the Sepulchre which is before our eyes …

Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses 2.4, c. 350.

O strange and inconceivable thing! We did not really die, we were not really buried, we were not really crucified and raised again; but our imitation was in a figure, and our salvation in reality.

Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses 2.5.

A note on authorship: some scholars attribute the Mystagogical Catecheses to Cyril’s successor, John of Jerusalem, and date them a few decades later. Either way, they record what the church of Jerusalem taught its newly baptized in the second half of the fourth century.

“Our imitation was in a figure, and our salvation in reality.” That sentence is the most exact reply the early Church ever gave to the question of this page. Yes, there is an imitation in baptism. Its object is the cross and the tomb, as in Romans 6, not the river. And it is not a mere acting-out, because beneath the figure something real is given. Cyril then warns his hearers against thinking too little of what they have received, in terms that explicitly set Christian baptism apart from John’s:

Let no one then suppose that Baptism is merely the grace of remission of sins, or further, that of adoption; as John’s was a baptism conferring only remission of sins: whereas we know full well, that as it purges our sins, and ministers to us the gift of the Holy Ghost, so also it is the counterpart of the sufferings of Christ.

Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses 2.6.

Notice how far this is from the modern phrase. Cyril’s worry was that people would think baptism was only forgiveness. Today’s worry, in many churches, is that people might think it is forgiveness at all. For Cyril, even John’s baptism conferred remission. Christian baptism conferred that and more: the Spirit, adoption, and a share in Christ’s own sufferings.

Put side by side, the two kinds of imitation look like this:

The last row matters more than it looks. When Luther was tempted to despair, he did not look back to his conversion. He wrote, and said, “I am baptized” (Baptizatus sum). A baptism that is only a testimony cannot bear that weight, because it points back to the believer’s own act, and the believer’s own act is exactly what the doubting Christian cannot trust. Dossier 23 follows that thread in detail.

Try it: which event does the phrase point to?

Eight phrases. Four are from Scripture; four are composed by this page in the style of modern church speech and labelled as such. For each, decide which event it points the hearer to.

0 of 8 answered.

Following Jesus in baptism?

Put the two positions side by side and ask each the same questions.

None of this is an argument against being baptized, or against taking baptism seriously. People who say “follow Jesus in baptism” usually take it very seriously, often more seriously than churches that baptize casually and never mention it again. The point is narrower. The phrase changes the subject. It moves the eye from the grave to the riverbank, from what God does to what the believer shows, and from “for the remission of sins” to “as an example of obedience”. Because it sounds like the Bible, the change is rarely noticed.

Try it: which event do you picture?

This is the closing instrument, and it is about you rather than about your church. Seven questions. It does not tell you whether you are right. It measures two things: how close your present picture of baptism is to Position I, and how much of it you have checked against the texts and sources on this page. It produces no verdict on your faith, and nothing you enter is stored or sent anywhere.

One closing observation, offered as opinion

Your answers, revisited

Here are the ten questions you answered before reading, with what the sources say. If you skipped the quiz, this section will be empty. Go back to the top, answer them, and return.

Check it yourself

Fourteen items. Nearly everything this page relies on is out of copyright, free online, and short. If you read only three, read the first three. Together they take under an hour, and they settle the core of the argument without any help from this page. If you do only one thing, do the last, because it tests the argument against what you were actually taught.

1. 1. Acts 9:1–19, then Acts 22:6–16. Read this first. Fifteen minutes. Read them together, mark the point at which you would say Saul was converted, and then read what Ananias tells him to do three days later.
2. 2. Every New Testament text on baptism. Read this first. Thirty minutes. Matthew 3; 28:19; Mark 1:4–11; Luke 12:50; John 1:29–34; 3:5; Acts 2:38–41; 8:12–38; 10:44–48; 16:15, 33; 18:25; 19:1–7; 22:16; Romans 6:1–11; 1 Corinthians 12:13; Galatians 3:26–27; Ephesians 4:5; 5:26; Colossians 2:11–13; Titus 3:5; Hebrews 10:22; 1 Peter 3:18–22. Write down every verb. Count how many describe baptism as a testimony.
3. 3. Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses 2 and 3. Read this first. Fifteen minutes, free (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 7; New Advent). What the Church in the city of the tomb told the newly baptized had happened to them.
4. 4. Ignatius of Antioch, To the Ephesians 18–20. Five minutes, free (Lightfoot’s translation). The earliest statement outside the New Testament about why Christ was baptized.
5. 5. Justin Martyr, First Apology 61 and Dialogue with Trypho 88. Fifteen minutes, free (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1). What baptism did, described to a pagan emperor around 155, and why Christ went to the Jordan.
6. 6. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 39, “On the Holy Lights” (381). Twenty minutes, free (NPNF 2nd series, vol. 7). A Theophany sermon on the baptism of Christ and on ours.
7. 7. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 38–39. Twenty minutes, free at New Advent. John’s baptism, and Christ’s reasons for receiving it. Note how the example-reason is placed.
8. 8. The Nicene Creed (381), the article on baptism. One minute. Then ask whether the church you attend recites it.
9. 9. Luther, Small Catechism and Large Catechism, Part IV (1529); the Flood Prayer in The Order of Baptism (1523, 1526), Luther’s Works vol. 53; the hymn Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam (1541). Thirty minutes; the catechisms are free at bookofconcord.org.
10. 10. Calvin, Institutes 4.15.1–6 and 4.16.29. Twenty minutes, free at CCEL (Beveridge). The soldiers’ badge, the “principal thing”, and the reply to the argument from Christ’s age.
11. 11. The Scots Confession (1560), chapter 21; the Thirty-Nine Articles, Article XXVII; the Westminster Confession (1646), chapter 28; the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Q. 69–74. Twenty minutes, all free. Decide whether Part VII has represented the Reformed qualification fairly.
12. 12. Hubmaier, On the Christian Baptism of Believers (1525), and the Schleitheim Confession (1527), Article I. Thirty minutes. Pipkin and Yoder’s edition of Hubmaier (1989); Schleitheim is free in several translations. The testimony view in its original form, stated honestly and at some cost by men who were prepared to die for it.
13. 13. The Second London Baptist Confession (1689), chapter 29, and the Baptist Faith and Message (2000), Article VII. Ten minutes, both free. Compare their language with Westminster 28 and with each other, and notice which event each points to.
14. 14. One question, put to whoever taught you. Do this one. If you were taught that baptism is following Jesus’ example, ask courteously, as a real question: what did Ananias mean when he told Paul to wash away his sins? And then: when the Creed says “one baptism for the remission of sins”, do we believe that? Whatever the answer, you will both have read Acts 22:16 more closely than before.

Every individual named on this page is deceased and is quoted from a dated, published source. Churches and bodies are quoted only from their own published confessions, liturgies and official documents, and characterised only by what those say. Where a text or reading is disputed, the page says so at the point of use: the longer ending of Mark, the baptismal reading of John 3:5, Titus 3:5 and Ephesians 5:26, the Greek of 1 Peter 3:21, and Calvin’s reading of Acts 19:5. The English of Luther’s 1541 hymn is the page’s own translation. Every everyday example of the manner of speaking under examination is composed by this page and labelled as composed.