Baptism: Definition

I thought I would try to do something that most folks don’t. That is, to discover what baptism is before talking about who should be baptized, who should be doing the baptizing, and how it should be done.

Sometimes, looking a word up in the dictionary is a good way to begin one of these kinds of studies. This is one of those times.

I did a web search to see what everyone thinks and basically, everyone starts with something like, “Baptism (from the Greek baptizma), is a Christian sacrament of admission and adoption almost invariably with the use of water, into Christianity. And/or the ceremony or occasion at which baptism takes place. This is helpful but it assumes some things.

If you’ll look further down, you’ll see a little used definition that I think sheds more light on the whole topic. “A person’s initiation into a particular activity or role, typically one perceived as difficult.” An example of a sentence using this meaning is, “this event constituted his baptism as a politician.”

This meaning says that a baptism is an event that brings a person or people together and binds them into a particular kind of people or group. It’s the kind of use that the army uses when a soldier joins his group in war and experiences enemy fire for the first time. I remember as a child hearing about WWII bomber crews meeting together every year and referring to their time together as a baptism of fire.

When I was in the Navy, I remember loading nuclear weapons in the middle of the winter. The only place where there wasn’t three inches of snow was on the section of the ship where the nuclear reactor was smoking away. It was cold, windy, and extremely dangerous. There were guards all over the place with machine guns and helmets. The way we lowered the torpedoes into the ship involved ropes and pulleys. Did I mention that the torpedoes were nukes?

That experience bound the sailors who participated in the event together in a way that nothing else did. Being on the submarine in the first place did this but loading weapons in the snow only exaggerated the comradery we all experienced.

To use the baptism terminology, the event of loading weapons in the snow was a baptism by cold, snow, and danger. We were nuclear weapon loaders. An official group. From then on, we had a relationship with one another that we didn’t have with anyone else. And when we met in other places, we gave each other a knowing wink or smile or special howdy because we weren’t just acquaintances, we were nuclear weapon loaders.

And to bring it all back to the point of this little article. The event that brought us together, gave us a shared identity and it made us friends in a different way, was a baptism. An event that was an “initiation into a particular activity or role, typically one perceived as difficult.” And, if there had been a more obvious leader, we would have been baptized into that leader.

Well then, how does all this fit with the Bible and the uses of the word and experience in the Bible?

Well, if we start right at the beginning of the Bible, we see various earth-shattering events that bind the people together into specific groups. For example, we see Noah and his family going through the flood, which is a pretty big event. And we see Moses taking the people of Israel through the Red Sea. There are lots of other big events, but these seem to be the most major for the people groups involved. But are they baptisms? The OT doesn’t call them that.

Ah, but the New Testament refers to both of these as baptisms and ties them directly to Christian baptism. Here’s what I mean:

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him (1 Pe 3:18–22 ESV).

And,

Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized 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. (1 Co 10:1–5). 

A few things should be pointed out about these events. First, as I said before, both Paul and Peter called the events baptisms. Second, while they both involve water, no one got wet. Third, both events are tied to Christian baptism. Fourth, both events involve serving Jesus Christ. Fifth, both events involved belief in God’s word about what was happening. Noah and his family got into the ark and survived. The Nation of Israel went with Moses across the Red Sea.

So, both of these involve pretty intense events in which people who participated were bound together. And because they were obedient by participating in the events, they were saved, in and through those events. And Jesus was involved in both events. And both had water involved, but in neither case was water the important thing. The shared experience was the thing.

Another reference to baptism in the OT by the NT is found in Hebrews 9:6-10,

Now when these things had been thus prepared, the priests always went into the first part of the tabernacle, performing the services. But into the second part the high priest went alone once a year, not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the people’s sins committed in ignorance; the Holy Spirit indicating this, that the way into the Holiest of All was not yet made manifest while the first tabernacle was still standing. It was symbolic for the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make him who performed the service perfect in regard to the conscience—concerned only with foods and drinks, various washings, and fleshly ordinances imposed until the time of reformation. (Heb 9:6–10). 

The word, “washings” here is baptisms in Greek. So, the writer to the Hebrews was saying that the various washings being carried out in the OT sacrificial setting were a kind of baptism. It was a process that the priest did that signified actions that the people had gone through. The people repented, offered a bull or goat, and the priest did the official actions whereby God could/would accept the sacrifices. Again, the various washings that the priests did for the people bound them together as a people and as a nation.

This would be an area where the idea of an event that binds people together is obviously both a symbolic action and an actual action at the same time. In other words, the people repented and received the gift of the washings. Both of which identified them as members of the nation of Israel, God’s people.

There’s one more important thing to point to make before moving along. That is that baptisms not only bind people together, but they also bind the people into the leader of the group. What I mean is that when people undergo a baptism, they are baptized by the event into the group headed by whoever the leader of the group is. For example, notice in the passage I quoted above from 1 Corinthians, that they were “all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” When talking about John the Baptist baptizing, the Bible says it was John’s baptism. Jesus said, “The baptism of John—was it from heaven or from men? Answer Me.” (Mk 11:30). Then in Romans, Paul referred to our being baptized into Jesus when he said, “Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?” (Ro 6:3). Here we get the added bonus of knowing that we are not only baptized into Jesus but also into his death. We are bound into Jesus, and into his death. But Paul didn’t leave us there. He added, “Therefore 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” (Ro 6:4). 

Conclusion:

From all of this, we see that the actual meaning of the word, baptism, is that a baptism is an event that binds people together. Sometimes it is a symbol of having been bound together by a momentous or meaningful event. And it binds people together in the leader of the group.

Image by Ahstubbs from Pixabay