Water Baptism · Core Doctrine
Water Baptism
Jesus told His followers to go and baptize. Christians who love Him and love the Bible have read that command in more than one way: how much water, who goes into it, and what is happening when they do. This page shows what the text says, the positions, and who holds each one.
Masaccio, Baptism of the Neophytes, c. 1425. Public domain.
THE ARTWORKAlmost every famous baptism painting is Christ’s own. Masaccio paints the ordinary kind: Peter, a bowl, and a queue of converts on a cold morning. The man kneeling in the stream is soaked, and the man behind him shivers with his arms wrapped round himself.
Summary
Jesus commanded baptism, and Christians have read that command in more than one way. This page lays out the whole record, the Greek words, and every position with the people who hold it.
- Three questions get argued as one: how the water is applied, who is baptized, and what the act does. The chart on this page separates them.
- The narratives never describe the physical act. First-century practice is known by inference and from later writers.
- John Gill and John Wesley read the same sentence in Acts 8 and reach different conclusions. Both are honoured here.
- The verb for “buried with” occurs exactly twice in the Bible, Romans 6:4 and Colossians 2:12, and both times it is about baptism.
- Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a different subject with its own page. John the Baptist separates the two himself.
Every Place It Happens
The whole record, in the order it comes.
The record is short, mostly narrative, and it moves fast: a man in the desert putting crowds under the Jordan, then Jesus Himself going in, then a command to the eleven, then three thousand people in one afternoon, then a treasurer in a chariot, then twelve men in Ephesus who had never heard that the Holy Spirit had come.
John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. People went out to him from all of Jerusalem and the countryside of Judea. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.Where it starts: John, in the desert, baptizing people who were confessing what they had done.
People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region around the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.Matthew counts the crowd: a whole region walking out to a river.
At that time Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to prevent Him, saying, “I need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?” “Let it be so now,” Jesus replied. “It is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness in this way.” Then John permitted Him. As soon as Jesus was baptized, He went up out of the water. Suddenly the heavens were opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and resting on Him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!”Jesus insists on being baptized by John, and heaven answers before He is dry.
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”The command itself, and the name it is done in.
Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise belongs to you and your children and to all who are far off—to all whom the Lord our God will call to Himself.” With many other words he testified, and he urged them, “Be saved from this corrupt generation.” Those who embraced his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to the believers that day.Pentecost: Peter's answer to 'what shall we do?', and three thousand people took it.
Then Philip began with this very Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus. As they traveled along the road and came to some water, the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is there to prevent me from being baptized?” And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, but went on his way rejoicing.A chariot stops at water, and the Ethiopian asks what is to prevent him being baptized.
While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the interior and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” “No,” they answered, “we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” “Into what, then, were you baptized?” Paul asked. “The baptism of John,” they replied. Paul explained: “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the One coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” On hearing this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.Twelve men in Ephesus who had only ever had John's baptism, and what Paul did about it.
Two things the narratives never dothe physical act, and the timing
They never describe the physical act. Not once does a writer tell us how deep the water was, how the person was held, or what words were said over them. Everything we know about first-century practice we know by inference, from customs, from architecture, and from writers a generation or two later.
And they never separate baptism from belief by very long. In Acts the gap between hearing and being baptized is measured in hours, and usually in minutes. Whatever else is disputed, nobody in Acts treats it as optional or as something to get round to.
What the Word Carries
Six Greek words, each a door to its full word study.
The New Testament did not invent a word for this. It borrowed an ordinary verb for dipping, plunging and washing, and used it so often that it became a name. The word’s ordinary range is wider than either side of the oldest argument would like.
baptizō
“to baptize”
The working verb. Outside the Bible it covers dipping, plunging and washing, which is why the argument about how much water is an old one.
baptisma
“baptism”
The noun for the act itself. It turns up only nineteen times in the whole New Testament, so every occurrence is worth reading.
sunthaptō
“buried together with”
Occurs exactly twice in the entire Bible, Romans 6:4 and Colossians 2:12, and both times it is about baptism.
loutron
“washing”
Only twice in the New Testament. Titus 3:5 is one of them, and it is the verse the strongest reading of baptism leans on hardest.
suneidēsis
“conscience”
The word in Peter's own definition of what baptism is. Not washing dirt off a body; a conscience answering God.
metanoeō
“to repent”
A change of mind that changes direction. It is what John preached before he baptized anyone, and the first word out of Peter's mouth at Pentecost.
Were baptized - In what form baptism was originally administered, has been deemed a subject worthy of serious dispute. Were the people dipped or sprinkled? for it is certain βαπτω and βαπτιζω mean both. They were all dipped, say some. Can any man suppose that it was possible for John to dip all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judea, and of all the country round about the Jordan? Were both men and women dipped, for certainly both came to his baptism? This could never have comported either with safety or with decency. Were they dipped in their clothes?
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Matthew 3:6
Clarke, in 1832, stating the difficulty on his own side.
Two Questions, Not One
The mode question and the meaning question, laid across each other.
Two questions, not one
Across the top: how the water is applied. Down the side: what the act is understood to be doing. Read across a row: the same meaning, held by churches that use different amounts of water. Read down a column: the same amount of water, carrying different meanings. They are separate arguments.
A sign and a seal
The forgiveness was already given. Baptism is God putting a visible mark on it, the way a seal is pressed into wax.
Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Acts 2:38Immersion
Reformed Baptist churches: the same seal, applied by immersion. John Gill argues the mode at length from Acts 8:39.
Pouring
Presbyterian and Reformed churches, where pouring rather than sprinkling is the local custom. The meaning does not change with the quantity of water.
Sprinkling
The Presbyterian and Reformed churches broadly; John Calvin sets the covenant argument out in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV, chapter xvi. Jamieson, Fausset & Brown read Acts 2:38 exactly this way: a visible seal on a remission already granted.
A means of grace
God does not merely picture something here. He gives something, and the giving is His, not the water's.
And this water symbolizes the baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
1 Peter 3:21Immersion
John Chrysostom, preaching in a church that immersed, presses the point pastorally: if baptism conveys remission, why is anyone waiting?
Pouring
The Anglican and Methodist churches, where pouring is the ordinary practice and immersion is permitted.
Sprinkling
John Wesley, on this very verse: the thing that saves is not the outward sign but the inward grace it carries. The Anglican and Lutheran traditions read it the same way.
An act of obedience and public testimony
A believer's own answer to a command: the visible moment of saying out loud whose side he is on.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
Matthew 28:19Immersion
The Baptist and free churches, and classical Pentecostal churches. Adam Clarke reads Peter's command at Pentecost as exactly this: a public profession of the religion of Christ, made by being baptized in His name.
Pouring
The oldest church manual outside the New Testament, the Didache (about AD 100), tells believers to immerse in running water where they can, and where they cannot, to pour water three times over the head. Same act, less water.
Sprinkling
No tradition sits here.
The washing itself gives new birth
The strongest reading: what happens in the water is the new birth, not a picture of it.
He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.
Titus 3:5Immersion
The Eastern Orthodox churches, which immerse three times; the Churches of Christ. Ambrose of Milan preaches it to the newly baptized in his own city.
Pouring
The Roman Catholic Church, where pouring became the ordinary form.
Sprinkling
The Lutheran churches.
How Much Water
The first question. Acts 8 is where it is argued.
Acts 8 is the one baptism the Bible describes in any physical detail: they went down into the water, and they came up out of it. Two men this site honours read that same sentence and land in different places.
Then Philip began with this very Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus. As they traveled along the road and came to some water, the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is there to prevent me from being baptized?” And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, but went on his way rejoicing.The chariot stops, they both go down into the water, and they both come back up.
John Gill reads the going-down and coming-up as the description of the act itself, and brings in how Jewish washings were performed to show what the words would have meant to the people who wrote them:
And when they were come up out of the water,.... Which is another circumstance, showing that baptism was then performed by immersion; with this compare Mat 3:16 and so it is said of the high priest, when he washed himself on the day of atonement, ירד וטבל עלה, "he went down and dipped, and came up" (m); and so any other person that was obliged to dipping on any account, ירד וטבל ועלה, "went down and dipped, and came up" (n).
John Gill · Exposition of the New Testament, 1746-1748Particular Baptist
Acts 8:39
And they went down - They alighted from the chariot into the water. While Philip was instructing him, and he professed his faith in Christ, he probably plunged himself under the water, as this was the plan which appears to have been generally followed among the Jews in their baptisms; but the person who had received has confession of faith was he to whom the baptism was attributed, as it was administered by his authority.
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Acts 8:38
John Wesley points out that going down to the water and going under it are not the same sentence, and declines to settle it from this text:
And they both went down - Out of the chariot. It does not follow that he was baptized by immersion. The text neither affirms nor intimates any thing concerning it.
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
Acts 8:38
Out of the water - This shows that he had descended to the river. It literally means, “he went up directly from the water.” The original does not imply that they had descended into the river, and it cannot be proved, therefore, from this passage, that his baptism was by immersion; nor can it be proved that even, if his baptism was by immersion, that therefore the same mode is binding on people now.
Albert Barnes · Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1832-1869Reformed
Matthew 3:16
Four chapters later, in the same set of notes, Wesley writes this:
We are buried with him - Alluding to the ancient manner of baptizing by immersion. That as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory - Glorious power.
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
Romans 6:4
What the Eastern churches have done since the beginningthree immersions, one for each Person
In the Christian East the practice is not one immersion but three: one at the name of the Father, one at the Son, one at the Holy Spirit. Theophylact of Ohrid describes it in the eleventh century while explaining Colossians 2:12, and treats it as simply what everyone does.
What he called circumcision, he now calls a grave, presenting in comparison something greater than circumcision. For what was circumcised was not simply cast off, but perished and decayed. Thus, the one who is baptized is buried together with Christ, by the threefold immersion depicting …
Theophylact of Ohrid · Commentary on Colossians, 1107Eastern Orthodox
Colossians 2:12
Who Is Baptized
Believers only, or believers and their children.
This is the question that actually separates churches. One answer: baptism follows a personal, spoken faith, so it belongs to people old enough to have one. The other: the promise was made to believers and to their children, so the children of believing households receive the sign of the covenant they were born inside, as they did in circumcision.
Baptism follows a confession of faith
Teach first, then baptize: the order of the command itself, and of every baptism narrated in Acts. Held across the Baptist and free churches, and by classical Pentecostal churches, including much of the tradition this site stands in.
(Verse 19.) Therefore, go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. First they teach all nations, then they immerse the instructed ones in water. For it cannot be that the body receives the sacrament of baptism unless the soul has first embraced the truth with faith. But they are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, so that there may be one divinity among them, one bestowal: and the name of the Trinity is one God.
Jerome · Commentary on Matthew, 420Church Father
Matthew 28:19
The children of believers are baptized on the promise
Peter’s promise at Pentecost is made to his hearers and to their children; the household baptisms of Acts are baptisms of whole houses; and Colossians 2 sets baptism beside the sign given to eight-day-old boys. Held in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed and Presbyterian churches, and by John Calvin (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV, chapter xvi) and John Wesley alike.
He next gives a persuasive turn to his address, adding, "For the promise is unto you": for he had spoken of a promise above. "And to your children," he says: the gift is greater, when these are to be heirs of the blessings. "And to all," he continues, "that are afar off:" if to those that are afar off, much more to you that are near: "even as many as the Lord our God shall call." Observe the time he takes for saying, "To those that are afar off." It is when he finds them conciliated and self-accusing. For when the soul pronounces sentence against itself, no longer can it feel envy.
John Chrysostom · Homily on Acts 7, 407Church Father
Acts 2:39
Adam Clarke grants the first side its strongest point before he answers it. The earliest baptisms really were of adults, and he says so:
But, certainly, no argument can be drawn from this concession against the baptism of children. When the Gentiles and Jews had received the faith and blessings of the Gospel, it is natural enough to suppose they should wish to get their children incorporated with the visible Church of Christ; especially if, as many pious and learned men have believed, baptism succeeded to circumcision, which I think has never yet been disproved. The apostles knew well that the Jews not only circumcised the children of proselytes, but also baptized them; and as they now received a commission to teach and proselyte all the nations, and baptize them in the name of the holy Trinity, they must necessarily understand that infants were included: nor could they, the custom of their country being considered, have understood our Lord differently, unless he had, in the most express terms, said that they were not to baptize children, which neither he nor his apostles ever did.
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Matthew 28:19
In Him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of your sinful nature, with the circumcision performed by Christ and not by human hands. And having been buried with Him in baptism, you were raised with Him through your faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead.The circumcision made without hands, and burial with Him in baptism. The covenant argument's home verse.
No longer, he saith, is the circumcision with the knife, but in Christ Himself; for no hand imparts this circumcision, as is the case there, but the Spirit. It circumciseth not a part, but the whole man. It is the body both in the one and the other case, but in the one it is carnally, in the other it is spiritually circumcised; but not as the Jews, for ye have not put off flesh, but sins. When and where? In Baptism. And what he calls circumcision, he again calls burial.
John Chrysostom · Homily on Colossians 6, 407Church Father
Colossians 2:11
So likewise in baptism, since it is a likeness of death, without a doubt, when you are immersed and rise again, it becomes a likeness of resurrection. Therefore, according to the interpretation of the apostle Peter, just as that resurrection was a regeneration, so is this resurrection a regeneration.
Ambrose of Milan · On the Sacraments, Book 3, Chapter 1, 397Church Father
Romans 6:4
What Is Actually Happening
Four readings, each at full strength.
Here the letters take over from the narratives. Paul calls it a burial and a resurrection. Peter calls it an answer of a good conscience toward God, and says it saves. Paul writes to Titus about a washing of new birth. Christians have arranged those sentences four ways, and each arrangement has honourable people in it.
Or aren’t you aware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him like this in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection.Buried with Him, raised with Him. The picture Paul reaches for first.
who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In the ark a few people, only eight souls, were saved through water. And this water symbolizes the baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,Eight people carried through water. Peter says the water saves, then immediately says what he means.
A sign and a seal
The remission is already granted; baptism is the visible seal put on it. Held across the Reformed and Presbyterian churches.
Repent--The word denotes change of mind, and here includes the reception of the Gospel as the proper issue of that revolution of mind which they were then undergoing. baptized . . . for the remission of sins--as the visible seal of that remission.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Acts 2:38
A means God really uses
Something is genuinely given here, and it is God who gives it. Held in the Anglican and Lutheran traditions, and in Wesley’s own reading of 1 Peter 3.
The antitype whereof - The thing typified by the ark, even baptism, now saveth us - That is, through the water of baptism we are saved from the sin which overwhelms the world as a flood: not, indeed, the bare outward sign, but the inward grace; a divine consciousness that both our persons and our actions are accepted through him who died and rose again for us.
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
1 Peter 3:21
Here again Peter, though the question is put to all, is the man to answer. "Repent," says he, "and be baptized every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ." He does not yet say, Believe, but, "Be baptized every one of you." For this they received in baptism. Then he speaks of the gain; "For the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." If you are to receive a gift, if baptism conveys remission, why delay?
John Chrysostom · Homily on Acts 7, 407Church Father
Acts 2:38
An act of obedience, and a public testimony
Baptism is commanded, and it is done in public on purpose. It conveys nothing by itself; it declares something. Held across the Baptist, free-church and classical Pentecostal traditions.
Peter said unto them, Repent - Μετανοησατε; Humble yourselves before God, and deeply deplore the sins you have committed; pray earnestly for mercy, and deprecate the displeasure of incensed justice. For a definition of repentance, see on Mat 3:2 (note). And be baptized every one of you - Take on you the public profession of the religion of Christ, by being baptized in his name; and thus acknowledge yourselves to be his disciples and servants.
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Acts 2:38
Noah believed in God; walked uprightly before him, and found grace in his sight; he obeyed him in building the ark, and God made it the means of his salvation from the waters of the deluge. Baptism implies a consecration and dedication of the soul and body to God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
1 Peter 3:21
The washing itself gives new birth
The strongest reading of Titus 3:5 and John 3:5: what happens in the water is the new birth. This is the historic teaching of the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Lutheran churches, and of the Churches of Christ. Ambrose already calls the rising out of the water a regeneration in the fourth century, and Bede reads 1 Peter 3 the same way in the eighth.
He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.The washing of regeneration. The verse this reading rests most of its weight on.
Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, etc. For just as He, rising from the dead, ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God, so also has He, through baptism, marked the way of salvation and the entrance to the heavenly kingdom open …
Bede · Commentary on the Catholic Epistles, 735Church Father
1 Peter 3:21
Where the burial picture comes fromRomans 6:4 · Colossians 2:12
The verb Paul uses for “buried with” occurs twice in the whole Bible, and both times it is about baptism. Adam Clarke describes the picture vividly.
We are buried with him by baptism into death - It is probable that the apostle here alludes to the mode of administering baptism by immersion, the whole body being put under the water, which seemed to say, the man is drowned, is dead; and, when he came up out of the water, he seemed to have a resurrection to life; the man is risen again; he is alive!
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Romans 6:4
Where This Site Stands
The site's own tradition, stated as history.
MannaFest’s own tradition is Wesleyan-Pentecostal. In practice that heritage baptizes believers, by immersion, after a spoken confession of faith. It inherited that practice from a movement whose founder, John Wesley, was an Anglican priest who baptized infants and defended doing so.
The four men who carry most of this page (Wesley, Clarke, Gill and Barnes) did not all hold the same answer to the three questions above. They read the same text carefully and arrived in different places, and every one of them is honoured on this site.
The Other Baptism
John the Baptist separates the two baptisms himself.
There are two baptisms in the New Testament, and John the Baptist separates them. He puts people in water; the One coming after him will baptize in the Holy Spirit. That is a different subject with its own page.
I baptize you with water for repentance, but after me will come One more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.John's own line between the two: I baptize with water; He will baptize with the Holy Spirit.
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.And yet Paul can say 'one baptism', which is part of why the two are so easily run together.
I administer but the outward symbol of purification; His it is, as His sole prerogative, to dispense the inward reality." Beautiful spirit, distinguishing this servant of Christ throughout! and with fire--To take this as a distinct baptism from that of the Spirit--a baptism of the impenitent with hell-fire--is exceedingly unnatural.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Matthew 3:11
He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire - He shall fill you with the Holy Ghost, inflaming your hearts with that fire of love, which many waters cannot quench. And this was done, even with a visible appearance as of fire, on the day of pentecost.
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
Matthew 3:11
Acts 19 is where the difference gets awkward in practice: twelve men who had received John’s baptism and had not heard of the Holy Spirit. What Paul does about it is the one clear case in the New Testament of somebody being baptized twice.
Paul only laid his hands upon them. They were baptized - They were baptized twice; but not with the same baptism. John did not administer that baptism which Christ afterward commanded, that is, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
Acts 19:5
The point of contrast is not between John and Christ personally, but between the water baptism of John unto repentance, and the promised baptism of the Spirit from the hands of his coming Master unto new life.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Acts 19:4
THE ARTWORK
Poussin painted the seven sacraments twice; this is the baptism panel from the second set. It is crowded and undramatic: figures dressing, undressing, waiting their turn, one man still pulling a sleeve off. Baptism as a normal thing that ordinary people queue for, which is how the book of Acts reports it.
Nicolas Poussin, The Sacrament of Baptism (1646) — public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Where It Points
Under the water is a grave, and it is His.
Underneath all four positions the same thing is standing. Baptism is not, at its centre, about water. It is about a death that has already happened and a resurrection that has already happened, and about a person being publicly attached to both. Buried with Him. Raised with Him. Christians who cannot agree about the water agree entirely about that.
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