Baptism
Baptism
is kind of like a wedding.
When
you love someone and want to spend the rest of your life committed to them
exclusively, you have a wedding ceremony. It’s a public statement which
declares your love for each other before God and to all your friends.
When
you love/follow Jesus and want to spend the rest of your life committed to him
exclusively (in the spiritual sense), you have a baptism. It’s a public
statement which declares your love for him before God and to all your friends.
It’s
a way of saying publicly that you are a Christian and you take that seriously,
and you intend to keep doing so for the rest of your life.
How you
“do” baptism isn’t really important. It’s a symbolic thing. It’s the public
statement that is important.
But in
the Bible, it does seem that baptism usually involved someone being physically
immersed (completely under) some water like a river or lake, and then being
brought up again.
That
makes sense because this symbol of baptism represents how you also died with
Christ on the cross and were buried and resurrected with him.
This bit
may be hard to comprehend right now as a young Christian, but in some way you
died 2000 years ago! You (in fact all Christians) were in Jesus when he went to
the cross and so, when he died, you died.
So of
course, when he rose again, you rose again. You were effectively born again.
Don’t
worry if you don’t get that bit right now. You will in time. Until then, just
think of baptism as a way of publically declaring your decision to follow
Jesus.
In Bible
times, if you stood up publicly and said, “Hey everyone, I’m a Christian now.”
Then you may well lose your job, or even your life.
It was a
big deal to declare that you were a Christian in those days. So people wouldn’t
doubt anyone that said they wanted to be baptised, and they were usually baptised
that very day.
These
days it’s not such a social and political risk to declare that you are a
Christian, and some people who are not Christians still want to be baptised.
(Usually they don’t realise what it’s really about and just want to fit in)
Because
of this, most churches ask you to do a short Bible study course before they
baptise you. This is not really necessary from a Biblical point of view, but
it’s just their way of feeling like they made sure you were really a Christian
before they baptise you (and basically publicly declare that they think you are
too). It’s not necessary, but if that’s what your church wants then go along
with it. You might learn something anyway, and at least you’ll meet the pastor
and some other Christians.
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