Matthew Repentance & Baptism

In using this term, he’s expanding on the previous verse, verse 2 which says that we’ve “died to sin.”

Here’s the verse, verse 2,

Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? 

 

You see, what Paul’s speaking of here has nothing to do with an external ritual. When we receive Jesus by faith, we die to sin.

At that very moment, we’re sealed with the Holy Spirit as we see in Ephesians 1:13-14,

In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory. 

 

We hear the word, we believe, we’re sealed by the Holy Spirit. He’s our guarantee. If it were possible to lose our salvation thru something we ourselves did or did not do obviously it wasn’t a guarantee! It nullifies the word guarantee. If it were remotely possible for us to lose our salvation by some act we performed, nobody could possibly be saved. That’s the whole point in Christ dying for our sin. There are a couple of verses that if taken out of context seem to infer we can lose our salvation, but they don’t say that at all. We’ll look at them soon.

 

An incredible, miraculous change takes place; we die to sin and we’re “baptised into Christ Jesus.”

We were, as Paul explains, “baptised into His death.”

 

This is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It’s a once and for all action.

Being filled with the Spirit is something that can happen over and over again as the Lord wills it in our lives., but the baptism of the Holy Spirit is the regeneration of the spiritually dead soul to eternal life, and it happens only once.

Paul shows us this in other places, such as in Galatians 3:26-27,

For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 

For as many of you as were baptised into Christ have put on Christ. 

The term “Putting on Christ” is to be imputed or to be credited with His righteousness. We don’t become righteous ourselves, we receive His righteousness. It’s credited to us.

We’re now covered, or clothed, in Christ.

When God looks at us, He no longer sees our sins, but instead He sees Christ’s righteousness.

In these verses in Galatians, Paul ties this “faith in Christ Jesus” directly with being “baptised into Christ.” See, faith and baptised into Christ.

They’re one single act. Paul defines this new relationship further in 1 Corinthians 12:13,

For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. 

This is the glory and wonder of the death and resurrection of Jesus for us.

What was dead is made alive by a mere act of faith.

In 1 Corinthians 10:1-5 we’re shown that this was actually pictured in Israel’s exodus through the Red Sea. Let’s see that,

Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers (that’s the people of Israel) were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. 

But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. 

 

It’s very evident that water baptism is not involved in the process.

 

Faith is exercised, Righteousness is granted, the Spirit is given, and then – only then – is the sign received; that of water baptism.

This is the exact same pattern as what occurred with Abraham.

Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

The relationship was restored, and only then did he receive the sign of circumcision.

This process is very clear and, of course, makes “infant baptism” an unscriptural ritual which in no way replaces the baptism with the Holy Spirit.

 

Coming to Christ is an individual act of faith. Only after this act does water baptism serve any purpose. It’s an outward demonstration of the inward change.

Water baptism has nothing to do with salvation, but it has everything to do with obedience to the Lord.

When a person’s saved, they then make a public demonstration of their new life. We go to the water just as Jesus went to the cross where we’re fully submerged.

The Greek word for baptism indicates full submersion as a picture of going into the grave, just as Jesus’ body was laid in the tomb. And finally, we’re raised out of the water as a picture of being raised to newness of life through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is both the intent and the purpose of water baptism.

 

If we’ve received Jesus, that is, if we’ve believed that He died for our sin, according to the scriptures, was buried and rose again the third day according to scripture, and we’ve accepted that and received it as being a gift to us personally, we’re saved, and we must never let people try to tell us that because we’re not doing this or that or because we’ve done this or that we’re no longer saved.

 

Water baptism has nothing to do with our salvation.

However, Jesus gave two instructions to His followers. The first is water baptism and the second is the Lord’s Supper. In obedience to Him, don’t you think we should be properly baptised as an open profession of our inward change?

 

Romans 6:4,

Therefore (that’s because of what was stated in verse 1 to 3 as we’ve just read,) we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

 

Again, as we’ve already seen, this refers to the baptism of the Holy Spirit – the total immersion of the old man into Christ’s death, being completely covered by His righteousness and thus resulting in us being “in” Christ.

The sealing of the Spirit is the baptism of the Spirit; it is a one-time act which moves us from Adam to Christ, from sin to righteousness, from rejected by God to accepted by God.

In acknowledgement of this, we’re expected to follow this inward change with an outward demonstration of that change which is full immersion baptism in water.

How can we be certain that water baptism isn’t specifically being spoken of here and that it really is some type of requirement for salvation? How can we know that?

After all verses such as Acts 2:38 and Mark 16:16 seem to indicate that water baptism is a requirement for salvation. Books have been written about this, but here’s a short summary of those two verses.

Before we read these verse let’s look again at what we’ve just seen in the last episode regarding three words that we should know about in order to get the Book of Acts, and in fact the first three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke in the correct context. The Gospel of John is a little bit different.

We need to understand these three words.

Normative, Prescriptive and Descriptive and they’re very important.

Normative is relating to or determining norms or standards. What’s the normal way, the normal standard that’s used.

Prescriptive is that which is prescribed, something that a person is to do because it’s been prescribed.

Descriptive means describing something that actually happened but not necessarily the prescribed thing. It’s not describing something that a person MUST do but what they DID do.

 

Whenever we go into the book of Acts we should be aware that this book is Descriptive, Not Prescriptive.

In other words, it shows us things that actually happened but not necessarily the prescribed thing. It’s not describing something that MUST happen but what DID happen.

 

Into the bargain many of the things that happened as recorded in the book of Acts were not normative. That’s to say that just because something happened in the book of Acts doesn’t mean it’s the normal standard or the normal way of doing things. Acts is descriptive. It doesn’t prescribe anything; it simply tells what happened.

It’s the epistles that set doctrine for the body of Christ and explain what’s normative for this dispensation of grace.

Knowing these things will help us get things into the correct context.

 

So now here’s the first passage that seems to indicate that water baptism is a requirement for salvation Acts 2:38,

Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

 

The first thing to note is that this is Peter speaking to the people, the Jews, of Israel who had previously rejected Christ.

Therefore, Peter instructs them to “repent” or to turn from this mindset. Why?

Because of their rejection of Jesus. They’d just crucified their Messiah. They didn’t believe that He was Who He said He was.

They had to repent or to change their minds about Who they believed the Jesus was or there was no possible way that they could receive remission of sins. It’s Christ and Christ alone Who gives remission of sins.  Don’t believe in Christ? No remission of sins. This is all it means.

If we have not accepted the salvation and the redemption from sin that s available through faith in Christ, repenting of sin isn’t going to do us any good is it? Why?

Because we’ve not received remission or redemption from that sin. There’s no way to handle that sin. We certainly can’t do it ourselves no matter how much we might hate the sin in our life.

If we say to, “I’m going to repent of my sin and not commit sin anymore,” what do you think’s going to happen 5 minutes later? We’ll sin!

We’re putting the cart before the horse aren’t we?

It’s like having an illness that’s curable but we choose to cure it ourselves before we visit the doctor. That doesn’t make any sense. We go to the doctor to get the cure for the sickness and our sickness is sin and there’s The Great Physician just waiting for us to come to him for the cure.

Now, what we do need to repent of before we receive God’s salvation through Christ is this. If we’ve heard the Word of Salvation, The Gospel preached to us and we’ve rejected it, we’ve rejected Who Jesus really is, then just like the Jews in Acts we would need to repent or to change our minds about this.

Say you’re a Jehovah’s Witness, who’d believed and preached for years that Jesus is a created being whose life began in heaven as the Archangel Michael, salvation would not be possible. Why? Because you don’t believe in Jesus Christ but a false idol who simply doesn’t exist. You would need to repent, to change your mindset from believing in the Jehovah’s Witnesses non-existent, created Jesus to the real Jesus, Who Isaiah 9:6 shows us is,

For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 

You see you’d need to change, to turn around, from not believing Who Christ is Who He says He is to believing that Christ is Who He says He is.

This is a must do! But we can’t repent of our sins until we first have that covering of righteousness from that very One who’s name is called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

We can’t receive salvation if we don’t believe in the One doing the saving!

However, if we’ve heard the Gospel preached and accepted and believed it, there’s nothing to change our mind, to repent, about.

After we’re saved or baptised into Christ, then we repent. Then we change from the person who loved sin to the person who hates it within ourselves. We can do this now because we’ve received the covering, the righteousness of God through Christ Jesus.

 

Now, Peter expected these Jews to be baptised before they would receive the Holy Spirit.

We must remember that the gentiles were not even a thought at this point and there certainly was no book of doctrine to follow as we have in the full collection of the scriptures today. You see the “norm” the “prescribed process” didn’t even exist yet and wouldn’t exist until Peter had formally defined the keys which Jesus entrusted to him to ratify as we saw in Matthew 16 verse 19 in the last episode.

 

Comparing the order of the events in Acts 2 with the events involving the Samaritans in Acts 8 and Cornelius and his household, the gentiles, in Acts 10, we can easily see that Acts 2 was a unique requirement and a one-time event for the people of Israel. They’d just crucified the King, The Messiah!

They must repent of that. They simply had to turn their mindset from Who they thought Jesus was then to Who they think He is now in order to receive remission from sins and as a result, salvation.

Acts 2 describes what occurred at Pentecost and what was expected of the Israelites, but, and this is important, it doesn’t prescribe what’s the norm.

 

The next passage that seems to indicate that water baptism is a requirement for salvation is Mark 16:16,

“He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.”

 

On the surface this verse may appear to be saying that a person must be water baptised in order to be saved. But this isn’t the case at all. Jesus is tying belief to baptism; “He who believes and is baptised will be saved.”

However, we need to notice here that baptism’s not mentioned in connection with condemnation. “…he who does not believe will be condemned.”

Belief and baptism happen at the same time. It’s speaking of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, not water baptism.

This simply confirms what John the Baptist taught just prior to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in Luke 3:16,

“I indeed baptize you with water; but One mightier than I is coming, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

The baptism which comes by faith in Christ is this baptism referred to by John and which is spoken of in Mark 16:16 which says,

He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. 

 

This baptism of the Holy Spirit is where we’re “buried with Him through baptism into death,” as we’ve seen in Romans 6:4.

We’ve died to sin and been born again by the Spirit of God.

Paul then continues in that verse by stating “that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”

 

Just as we died to sin through Christ, we are also raised from the dead in Christ. This is being born again.

Christ’s coming out of the grave was “by the glory of the Father.”

Because we’re united with Him in this marvellous new way, “we also should walk in newness of life.”

 

The ultimate goal of our salvation isn’t the prospect of walking on streets of gold for all eternity. The ultimate goal is to bring glory to God. God’s glory is the reason why Christ came, why He died, and why He was raised again. These actions were done for us so that we could bring His Father glory.

We’ve died to sin and been raised to newness of life through Jesus.

Because this is a fact, let’s also walk in that newness of life, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him (Jesus Christ), that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin and in that may we bring glory to God.