In Hebrews 11:7,
it is stated: “By faith Noah,
being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear,
prepared
an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world
and
became heir of the righteousness which is according to
faith.” Then, in Genesis
6:22 it is written: “Thus Noah did;
according to all that God commanded him, so he did.” This
last passage simply
says that Noah did what God told him to do in the way God told him to
do it.
When we come to the action of baptism, we must have that same attitude.
Some
say that it doesn’t matter how one is baptized (according to
their definition
of that word). However, a question comes to mind. Who said it
doesn’t matter?
Has God said so? Did it matter the size, the instructions concerning
the
building of the ark? It must be remembered that the Scriptures say that
Noah
operated by faith, a faith that came by hearing God’s Word
(cf. Romans 10:17).
If one wants to know the meaning of a Greek word, and baptizo
is a Greek word, then he cannot go to an English dictionary to find the
correct
definition. For instance, if I should meet you on the street and say,
“Kak
Dalah,” could you know what I had said by looking it up in
Webster’s
dictionary? Obviously not, since the words are Russian, meaning,
“How are you?”
By the same logic, if we want to know the meaning of a Greek word, we
must go
to a Greek dictionary or lexicon. Let’s look at what the
recognized Greek
scholars, men who know the language, have said.
Bagster—“Baptizo:
To dip, immerse, to cleanse or purify
by washing.”
Bloomfield—“Baptizo:
To immerse or sink anything in water or other liquid.”
Greenfield—“Baptizo:
To immerse, submerge, sink.”
Liddell
and Scott—“Baptizo: To dip in or under
water.”
Robinson—“Baptizo:
To immerse or sink.”
Thayer—“Baptizo:
To dip repeatedly, to immerge, to
submerge.”
Now, having looked at what the scholars say, let us
look at what some great men of the past have said about the action of
baptism:
Martin
Luther—“Baptism is a Greek word. It may
be
rendered into the Latin by ‘mersio,’ when we
immerse anything in water, that it
may be entirely covered with water.”
John
Calvin—“It is evident that the term
baptize means to
immerse, and that this was the form used by the early church.”
John
Wesley—“We are buried with him. Alluding
to the
ancient manner of baptizing by immersion.”
Lyman
Coleman—“The primary significance of the
original
is to dip, plunge, immerse; the obvious import of the noun is
immersion.”
Last of all, let us see what the Scriptures say, for
they are the final authority. “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” (Romans 6:4). “…buried
with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through
faith in
the working of God, who raised Him from the dead” (Colossians
2:12). Since the
scholars, other great men and the Scriptures are in unison as to the
meaning of
the word, how say some that baptism is sprinkling or pouring. Why do
they
practice this when it is absolutely foreign to the Word of God? Why do
they say
that it doesn’t matter? Again, who said it doesn’t
matter? Can one, like Noah,
do “all according as God had commanded him” and
practice this substitution? Can
one truly say that he has operated by faith (doing what God said, in
the way
God said, for the purpose that God said) when he openly shows so little
respect
for what God actually has said. What about you, my friend; have you
been scripturally
baptized, that is, immersed, and for the remission of sins? If not,
please
consider what God has said, then obey Jesus Christ (Mark 16:16).
