Baptism Under Water
Life is war. While we’re on this side of heaven, and Satan has not yet been cast into the Abyss, the world is under the power of the Deceiver. But the good news is that, God has made a way for us to cleansed of every vestige of sin by trusting in the sacrifice of God’s Son as he hung on the cross to fully take our penalty of our mistakes and wrongs done against him and others. God’s blood is the most powerful cleansing and purifying agent in the cosmos. When we believe in what Christ has done for us and receive the free gift of His blood upon our lives, there is nothing, no even Hell can stop you from being forgiven.
In the holistic Hebrew mind, along with having a change of mind, one must show the fruit of their repentance. A practice that carried over from Judaism that Jesus instituted in the New covenant era was baptism under water. Baptism is not a ritual, its a burial. Just as one must be buried physically under the dirt to transition into heaven. Being buried under water in the Spirit Realm, is burying one’s soul that was dead in its trespasses in the water, being dead to sin and coming out of that water - alive in Christ. It’s more than just some representation or symbol of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. In the natural, it looks much like a religious ceremony. However, from heaven’s perspective, it’s salvation. It’s the moment when a person trusts in the finished work of Jesus for one’s salvation to the point that they would willingly bury their old life that was riddled with guilt, shame and every vice of the enemy, so that they can detach from the life under Satan and come alive in God’s Kingdom.
There are several stories of people who went under the water with a devil tattoo and he came up out of the water not only to have his sins removed, but also his tattoo! The demonic realm also recognizes that when people convert to faith in Jesus and are regeneration, that they are dead to world of Satan. There’s a story of two men who were college roommates. After graduating they both went their separate paths - one became a pastor after having a radical conversion experience with God. The other friend since they lost touch wanted to reconnect with his old friend, so went to a medium to find out his whereabouts. He was told that his friend had died and also gave a specific date of his death. Unconvinced that his friend was dead, he went out looking for his friend and when he finally found his house, he found him to alive! As they were chatting and catching up, the friend who found his old college room mate told him the whole story of him contacting a medium to find him. The friend turned pastor told him, “that’s fascinating, because that’s the date when I got baptized.”
We must be careful not to turn God’s words into a human tradition. Because of traditions, we make void the power of God. Whenever people are baptized under water we are fulfilling the requirements of the New Birth. Jesus said, “unless you are born of water and the Spirit, you cannot enter into the Kingdom of heaven.” If that’s still too cryptic, when we fastforward to the Book of Acts chapter 2, Peter says, “repent and be baptized..” Mark 16:16 says “whoever believes and is baptized, will be saved.” Peter says, “Baptism now saves you.”
We have to remember that the Born Again Experience is very holistic in nature. To see someone fully converted and regenerated, we must throw out every bit of tradition and get right into the text. The way people were born again in the early church was through four ways: repent, believe, baptism and receiving of the Holy Spirit. Baptism without faith in Jesus Christ and his all-sufficient sacrifice is simply a bath to wash off dirt off the body. When one goes down with faith in the Son of God who died for them and rose again from the dead, the physical act invokes a spiritual outcome. Obedience leads to the promises associated with the command to be released over comes life.
In the Hebrew understanding, physical things had spiritual impact. Take a look at prayer, laying hands on the sick, the tree in the Garden. They are physical realities, but can produce spiritual outcomes. In the same way, when we obey Christ and get baptized, it serves as a powerful time of deliverance and transformation. Once their old life has been buried, new life in Christ can spring up from their lives.