Following Jesus in Baptism? (Quick version)

The question

What this is about

Many churches describe baptism as “following Jesus” or “going public with your faith”. The idea is that Jesus was baptized as an example, so a believer who has already been saved gets baptized too, to obey and to show everyone what has happened. On this view baptism doesn’t give anything. It shows something.

This page asks whether that is what the Bible says baptism is, and whether Christians believed it before the 1500s. There are two ways of seeing baptism, and it helps to keep them apart:

View one: joined to Christ

In baptism God joins a person to Jesus’ death and resurrection, and forgives sinsJesus’ own baptism was unique. He didn’t need washing. The Church has always said he made the water holy for us. Our baptism isn’t a copy of his. It is the washing he gave the Church after he rose, and faith receives what God gives in it. This is what the page holds.

View two: following his example

Baptism is the believer following Jesus’ example and telling others he has already been savedJesus was baptized to set an example. Salvation is complete before baptism, and baptism is an outward picture of it and an act of obedience. This is the view the page tests.

Both views agree that Christians should be baptized and that faith matters. The difference is about direction: is baptism mainly something God does for us, or something we do for others to see?

What this page is not doing

It doesn’t discuss whether people should be dipped or sprinkled, or at what age. Earlier dossiers cover the nearby ground: When Were You Born Again?, One Lord, One Faith, How Many Baptisms? and Does God Play Dice?. It names no living person. It says nothing about whether anyone is a Christian, and it is not advice about being baptized or changing churches.

One

The short answer

The Bible never tells anyone to be baptized because Jesus was. When Peter tells Christians to “follow his steps”, he means suffering patiently when you are treated unfairly (1 Peter 2:21). A chapter later, the same letter says baptism “doth also now save us” (3:21).
Jesus’ baptism was different from everyone else’s. John’s baptism was for people “confessing their sins”. Jesus had none, and John tried to refuse: “I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?” (Matthew 3:14). The Gospels give the reasons: to “fulfil all righteousness”, to be revealed as God’s Son, and to be anointed with the Spirit. None of them is “to show he had been saved”.
Jesus spoke of a second baptism: his death. Long after the Jordan he said, “I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50). And Paul says Christians are baptized “into his death” (Romans 6:3). Not into his river, but into his death.
The New Testament keeps saying baptism does something. It is “for the remission of sins” (Acts 2:38). It buries us with Christ (Romans 6:4). By it we “put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27). It “doth also now save us” (1 Peter 3:21). Not one verse calls it a public testimony.
Paul is the clearest case. He met the risen Jesus, called him Lord, and prayed for three days, and Jesus called him “a chosen vessel”. Then he was told: “why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins” (Acts 22:16).
The early Church said Jesus made the water holy, not that he set an example. Around 107 a bishop on his way to be executed wrote that Jesus “was born and was baptized that by His passion He might cleanse water”. The Creed of 381, still said by most Christians in the world, confesses “one baptism for the remission of sins”.
Luther and Calvin both said no to a “bare sign”. Luther: baptism “works forgiveness of sins”. Calvin wrote that people who think baptism is only a badge, “as soldiers attest their profession by bearing the insignia of their commander”, have missed “the principal thing in baptism”. The Church of England says it is “not only a sign of profession”.
The “public testimony” idea first appears in 1525, in and around Zurich. That year one writer defined water baptism as “but a public testimony”. That was about fifteen hundred years after Jesus.

Where this page standsMy own view, as opinion: “following Jesus in baptism” is a kind phrase that quietly changes the subject. It moves our eyes from the empty tomb to the riverbank, and from what God does to what we show. Jesus went into the Jordan as the only person who didn’t need its water. We aren’t following him into the river. He went ahead of us into the river, and then into the grave, and in baptism, as Paul says, he takes us with him.

Two

The first exercise: does the Bible say it?

Seven statements. For each, decide whether the New Testament says it, doesn’t say it, or says something different. Commit before you read the answer.

0 of 7 answered.

Three

Paul, three days after the road

If anyone was converted before being baptized, Paul was. On the road to Damascus he saw the risen Jesus, called him “Lord”, and asked what to do. For three days he didn’t eat or drink, and Jesus told Ananias, “behold, he prayeth” and “he is a chosen vessel unto me” (Acts 9). By the standards of many churches today, there was nothing left to happen inside him.

Then Ananias arrived and said:

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

Acts 22:16

He didn’t say “now go and tell everyone”. He spoke with urgency (“why tarriest thou?”), he spoke of Paul’s sins being washed, and he joined the washing to “calling on the name of the Lord”, which is faith at work in the baptism itself. Even Calvin, the most careful of the Reformers on this point, said that Paul received there “a new confirmation of the grace which he had gotten”, given to him by God. Nobody before the 1500s read this verse as Paul testifying to an audience.

Four

The second exercise: what does baptism do?

Six verses. For each, pick what the verse says baptism does. One of the options is “shows others the person’s faith”. See how often the text lets you choose it.

0 of 6 answered.

Five

What the Church said about the Jordan

For fifteen hundred years, when Christians thought about Jesus’ baptism, they said the same thing: he wasn’t washed by the water; he made the water holy for us.

Around 155, Justin Martyr: Jesus “did not go to the river because He stood in need of baptism”. He went for our sake, just as he was born and crucified for our sake.
In 381, Gregory of Nazianzus: he came “to bury the whole of the old Adam in the water; and … to sanctify Jordan”.
In the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas, quoting Ambrose: Christ “wished, not to be cleansed, but to cleanse the waters”.
In 1523, Luther’s baptism prayer: through his baptism Christ “consecrated and set apart the Jordan and all water as a salutary flood and a rich and full washing away of sins”.
In the English Prayer Book: “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 early Church did talk about imitation in baptism, but of a different event. Around 350, the church in Jerusalem told its newly baptized: you were led to the font “as Christ was carried from the Cross to the Sepulchre”, and “our imitation was in a figure, and our salvation in reality.” In other words, you copied his death and burial, and you really received salvation. The modern phrase copies the river and leaves out the reality.

Six

The third exercise: put them in order

Seven moments in the history of how Christians have described baptism. Put each in its period, then look at where the “testimony” view first shows up.

0 of 7 answered.

Seven

Check it yourself

Six things, all short, nearly all free.

1. Acts 9:1–19, then Acts 22:6–16. Do this one. Fifteen minutes. Mark the point where you would say Paul was converted. Then read what he was told three days later.
2. Matthew 3:13–17, Luke 12:50 and Romans 6:1–11. Ten minutes. Jesus’ baptism, the “baptism” still ahead of him, and the one we are baptized into.
3. Acts 2:38, Galatians 3:27, Colossians 2:12 and 1 Peter 3:21. Five minutes. Write down what each says baptism does.
4. Cyril of Jerusalem’s second lecture to the newly baptized (Mystagogical Catecheses 2). Ten minutes, free online. What the church in Jerusalem said had happened at the font.
5. Luther’s Small Catechism, Part IV, and Calvin’s Institutes 4.15.1. Fifteen minutes, both free. See for yourself whether the Reformers thought baptism was only a sign.
6. One question, put to whoever taught you. Do this one too. Ask politely, as a real question: what did Ananias mean when he told Paul to wash away his sins? And: when the Creed says “one baptism for the remission of sins”, do we believe that?

Want the whole thing?

The full dossier goes through every New Testament text on baptism, including the disputed ones, walks through Paul’s conversion step by step, quotes ten witnesses from the second century to the sixteenth, sets out exactly where Lutherans and Reformed differ, dates the first “testimony” statements in 1525–27, publishes the prompt that produced it, and ends with a seven-question check that shows you which event you picture when you hear the phrase.

Read the full dossier → Simple English →