When Peter confessed to Jesus He was the Son of God,
our Lord made this interesting statement to Peter and the rest of the
apostles.
“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and
whatever you bind on
earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth
shall
have been loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19). The phrases
“shall have been bound”
and “shall have been loosed” are more accurate
translations of the Greek text.
The apostles didn’t have the authority to decide doctrine,
but they did have
the authority to declare doctrine, what God had bound and loosed. When
we read
God’s commands in Scripture, it isn’t human
interpretation or tradition, but
God’s will for us.
This principle is important for us to understand, as
there are those today who would have us believe the clear commands of
Scripture
are merely human tradition. Baptism is one doctrine being interpreted
this way.
“You don’t have to be immersed to be saved;
it’s just tradition.” It is tradition,
in the sense it’s been handed down to us, but Scripture makes
clear it is
divine tradition, not of human origin. Wasn’t it Jesus who
said, “He who has
believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has
disbelieved shall
be condemned” (Mark 16:16)? Further, what about His words in Matthew 28:19,
“Go therefore and make disciples of
all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son
and the
Holy Spirit.” Of course, Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit,
states it plainly
in 1 Peter 3:21:
“Baptism now
saves you—not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an
appeal to God for a
good conscience—through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ.”
If we accept Scripture as the Word of God, the only
logical conclusion one can reach is that baptism (immersion) is
essential for
the forgiveness of sin. If, for the sake of appealing to modern
culture, we can
wave our hands and use the magical word “tradition”
to eliminate the necessity
of baptism, we can also discard anything else to which others might
object.
However, that is faulty reasoning and won’t stand a genuine
inspection of
Scripture. Just saying something doesn’t make it so.
Jesus makes it clear it isn’t those who offer lip
service to Him that please Him, but those who obey His will (Matthew
7:21). The
teaching of Scripture on baptism is so clear, one well-known
denominational
commentator wrote, “From this and other references to baptism
in Paul’s
writings, it is certain that he did not regard baptism as an
‘optional extra’
in the Christian life, and that he would not have contemplated the
phenomenon
of an ‘unbaptized believer.’ We may agree or
disagree with Paul, but we must do
him the justice of letting him hold and teach his own beliefs, and not
distort
his beliefs into conformity with what we should prefer him to have
said” (F.F.
Bruce on Romans 6).
As Paul was
inspired, I will agree with what I find in the Word of God (1
Thessalonians
2:13). Can you safely choose anything else?
Baptism
and Tradition