They said complimentary things about the services and my preaching, and then the wife said, “But we won’t be joining your church. I was visiting in the home of a couple who had started coming to our church. Because “Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel.” And, Paul makes a point of emphasizing that he wasn’t big into it, himself. I wonder if we have given that sentence the importance it deserves. He thinks a moment, and adds, “Except for this one….and that one…and maybe another.” But other than those, no one.Īnd then Paul left us with this memorable statement: “For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel” (I Corinthians 1:17). Another group refused to be divisive, they said, and pulled off into a separate clique which was “of Christ.” Then, Paul says, “I thank God I baptized none of you” (I Corinthians 1:14). He was not happy to learn that they had broken into divisions in his absence, with some following Peter and some Apollos and some following Paul. In the first chapter of I Corinthians, Paul sends greetings to various members of that congregation which he had birthed.
Then, when Jesus began preaching, His disciples baptized those wishing to go public in their faith. And then one day, Jesus of Nazareth walked into the water and the heavens opened and a voice from the sky shook the landscape. He listened to John preach and knew to be expecting the Christ.
But Jesus had done no miracles and singled Himself out in no way that would cause the enemy to identify Him. He knew the Lord was there somewhere, for he could read Scripture. That moment, in my thinking, was the first time Satan knew beyond a doubt who the Messiah was. When our Lord was baptized, it signaled His coming out, His going public, His announcing to the world His identity. Oddly, he was baptizing Jews, not Gentiles and not proselytes. So, when John the Baptist arrived and began calling people to wade into the Jordan for a dip (which is the literal meaning of “baptize”), while people thought he was strange, no one seems to have questioned the practice. Later, some say, the “pouring” was given to proselytes coming into the Jewish faith from the world. Where did the practice originate? Answer: Evidently from the Old Testament practice of drenching a newly ordained priest (Leviticus 8:6). “The Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John (though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples)….” (John 4:1-2)īaptism has bumfuzzled God’s people from the first.
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