Baptism Faith Trainingنموونە

Day 1: The Word “Baptism”

Life. New birth. Washed clean. Dying to that which destroys you. These are just some of the ways the Bible describes baptism, an amazingly central part of a relationship with Christ. If you’re doing this plan, it’s probably because you’re considering getting baptized. Fantastic!

Over the next eight days, this plan will guide you through what the Bible says about baptism, some popular misconceptions people have about it, why different churches teach different things about it, and how to live out this amazing step of faith. The hope is it draws you deeper into the new birth, washing, dying, and rising the Bible promises us in Christ.

Today, we start with the simple word. What does “baptism” mean?

When people think about baptism, they often think about someone in a church getting water poured on them while a pastor says, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

But baptism is not about a church ritual, and that’s not what the word “baptize” means.

The New Testament was originally written in the Greek language. Our English word “baptize” comes from a Greek word pronounced baptidzo. As you can see, the sound of the word in Greek is just carried over into English. This is called transliteration. A transliteration is when you carry a foreign word over into a new language without translating its meaning. That’s different than a translation, where you carry over the meaning of the word. So, when the New Testament talks about baptism, English Bibles don’t translate the word. They just keep the original sound of the word without translating its meaning.

That should clue us in. There’s more going on here than meets the eye.

In New Testament times, “baptize” didn’t have to have a religious or churchy meaning. It was a common everyday word that could be used in all sorts of contexts. But at its core, it simply meant “immerse.” For a person living at the time of Jesus, plunging or immersing something into something else was what they meant by the word “baptism.” Here are some real-world examples:

• Washing something by plunging it into water
• Dying cloth by dipping it in a vat
• Sinking a ship
• Dipping bread in wine
• Plunging a sword into someone

There are figurative examples, too, like being consumed by something, being overwhelmed, or even getting drunk. (When’s the last time you heard a parent tell their kid: “Don’t you get baptized tonight with your friends”?) This means an ancient Greek could say something like, “Go baptize your hands.”

• Have you ever jumped into a cold pool on a hot summer day, walked through thick fog, or basked in a flood of sunbeams pouring in a window?
• Have you ever felt surrounded, enveloped, or plunged into the middle of something?
• Has your life ever been consumed by something—good or bad?

All of these capture the original sense of the Greek word we transliterate “baptism.”

The New Testament writers liked to take everyday words and use them to communicate deep and powerful things about God. They did this all the time. Here’s another example.

Maybe you’ve heard the word “repent.” The Bible talks about repenting and repentance. Maybe you’ve even heard some Christians say that you need to repent.

“Repent” has become a churchy word. But for those first hearers, it was an everyday word. It didn’t have to have a spiritual quotient. All it meant was “to turn” or “turn around” in some way.

As in, “Hey grandma, you’re going the wrong way! Repent that car around.”

So whatever churchy connotations get invested into this word, we have to remember that when the Bible talks about repentance, all it fundamentally means is that we’re supposed to turn back to God.

Our English word “baptize” works the same way. When the Bible talks about “baptism,” all it means is that something is being immersed. You see this a lot in the New Testament. Here are a few examples from the NIV:

• Matthew 3:11: John the Baptist says, "I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”Now, if he meant Jesus was going to come into a church service to pour burning coals over your head while saying, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” that’d be pretty weird. Instead, John is simply using an everyday word that means “immerse” to say that when Jesus comes, it will be more than water that people are getting plunged into. Jesus will immerse them into God’s own Spirit and into fire. (Bible teachers continue to debate whether that’s metaphorical, like a refiner’s fire, or a warning of future judgment.)
• In Mark 10:38, Jesus asks, “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?" Now, if Jesus is referring to what happened to him in the Jordan River, then the obvious answer is, “Well yes, Jesus.” But do you see how the context intimates that Jesus is not referring to the ceremony of baptism (or drinking from cups)? Instead, he’s asking his disciples if they really want to undergo the kind of suffering and death he’s about to undertake, because to Jesus, that’s the ticket to right and left-hand spots in his kingdom. In other words, Jesus asks his disciples if they really want to be immersed (“baptized”) in his kind of suffering and death.
• Luke 11:38: “But the Pharisee, noticing that Jesus did not first wash before the meal, was surprised.” See the word “wash”? It’s one of the few times the Bible translates “baptism” instead of transliterating it, because to keep it “baptize” makes absolutely no sense when some kind of modern-day church ritual is in mind. Even if this refers to some kind of ceremonial Jewish purity washing (which it may), the Pharisees are surprised that Jesus didn’t immerse his hands in water before eating, not that he wasn’t “baptized.”

See what’s happening? You’ll get really confused if every time the Bible talks about baptism, you jump immediately to a water ritual at a church. But if you understand the word to mean “immerse,” things start to click.

Put another way, you cannot understand what “baptism” means until you understand what “baptism” meant. When the Bible talks about baptism in connection with the gospel, it means being immersed into Christ.

Question

1. What are some things you’ve been immersed in? Or what are some things you plunge yourself into?