BAPTISM, What is it?

Water baptism is NOT part of today's Gospel of Grace, as erroneously taught by:

• The Church of Christ - Campbellite
• The Disciples of Christ - Campbellite
• The Christian Church - Campbellite
• and several Baptist and Pentecostal/charismatic churches

Confusion regarding the topics of water and Spirit baptism is most often due to non-dispensational interpretations of Scripture--in particular the Gospels and the Book of Acts.

Water baptism is meant to be our practical, public testimony to, a picture of, our spiritual baptism into the Lord Jesus Christ.

Exposition below by Christian author, Miles J. Stanford:

Dr. Kenneth Wuest stated:

The Greek word for 'baptism' speak of the introduction or placing of a person or thing into a new environment or into union with something else, so as to alter its condition or its relationship to its previous environment or condition.

When we believed [the Apostle Paul's Gospel of Grace], the Holy Spirit baptized us into the Lord Jesus.

By one Spirit were we all baptized into one body (2 Corinthians 12:13). Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed; behold, all things are become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).

By this spiritual act of baptism the Holy Spirit places us in union with the Lord Jesus. We were taken out of our old environment and position in the first Adam, and placed in the new environment and position in the last Adam. By that means our position is changed from that of a lost sinner with a depraved nature to that of a righteous saint with the divine nature. And our relationship to the Law is changed from that of a guilty sinner to that of a justified saint.  This spiritual baptism occurs once, at the new birth, and is forever.

1) The act of water baptism is meant to be our practical, public testimony to, a picture of, our spiritual baptism into the Lord Jesus.

Positionally, judicially, each believer was positioned in, identified with, the Lord Jesus on the Cross. From that point on, in that judicial oneness, what happened to the Lord Jesus, happened to us.

I have been crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20).

That crucifixion involved His and our death unto sin.

Know ye not that, as many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? (Romans 6:3).

As we are submerged in the waters of baptism, we are testifying and depicting the fact that the Spirit has baptized us into Christ's death. Our identification in His death includes a number of blessed factors:

1. In Christ we died to the penal consequences of sin. For he that hath died is freed from sin (Romans 6:7). (Romans 6:7).
2. In Christ we died to the power and reign of sin. Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed [rendered inoperative], that henceforth we should not serve sin (Romans 6:6).
3. In Christ we died to the world. God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world (Galatians 6:14). (Galatians 6:14). Here, by the "world" is meant all that in which God is left out.

Hence, we are to love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world (1 John 2:15,16).

4. In Christ we died to the self-centered life. He died for all, that they which live, should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again (2 Corinthians 5:14,15).
5. In Christ the believer died to the claim of the law, as well as the principle of law in general. Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ (Romans 7:4).

Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth (Romans 10: 4). Our death with Christ, as symbolized in our water baptism, has satisfied the demands of the law. There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8: 1).

6. In Christ we died to the dominion of Satan. Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself took part of the same; that, through death, He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the Devil, and deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage (Hebrews 2:14,15).

2) Our water baptism pictures our burial with Christ in His death.

Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death (Romans 6:4).

As we allow ourselves to be submerged below the surface of the baptismal waters, we are enabled, in some small measure, to appreciate what our Lord passed through in order to save us from the penalty of our sins and the power of our sin.

We are henceforth better able to understand and comply with His statement to us,

Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin (Romans 6: 11).

Now we can know something more of His bitter anguish and cry on our behalf:

The waters are come into My soul. I sink in deep mire where there is no standing. I am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me. Reproach hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. I looked for some to take pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink (Psalms 69:1-3; 20,21). Again He cried, Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with Thy waves (Psalms 88:6,7).

In this new position of life from the dead, the Word says to us,