JESUS IN MY PLACE
In baptism we portray what happens spiritually when, by faith, we receive Christ: His death becomes our death and his resurrection counts as our resurrection. Baptism is the immersion of a believer in water whereby a believer is publicly identified with Christ and his Church. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer’s faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Savior, the believer’s death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus.
How to Be Baptized at Grace
1. Meet with a pastor:
Whether you or your children have questions about what baptism is or you are ready to be baptized, we want to come alongside you in your desire to be faithful. To express interest in meeting with someone about being baptized, click the link below.
2. Be baptized and share your story:
Let your new Grace family celebrate with you! Tell us how Jesus changed your life.
Four Things We Believe About Baptism
1. Baptism Publicly Declares Your Repentance
There are many people in the South who get baptized but never repent. Maybe someone convinced you that you could accept Jesus as Savior without surrendering to him as Lord—like he was a salad bar, where you can take the parts you want and leave the ones you don’t. But all throughout Scripture, we see that to be baptized is to repent. Baptism symbolizes us walking out of the wilderness of our sin and into the new life of faith and obedience.
If your life did not change when you got baptized, then it was not a baptism of repentance. You just got wet in front of a bunch of people.
2. Baptism is by Immersion
There are two reasons why we submerge people.
First, that’s what we see in the Bible. When we see John the Baptist in the gospels, he wasn’t standing on the shore of the Jordan River with a cup, sprinkling water on people’s heads; he brought them into the river. He was submerging them in the water.
The Greek word for “baptism” literally meant to plunge, soak, or dip. The English translators didn’t know exactly how to translate that word, so they just transliterated it. The Greek baptizo simply became “baptize.”
“Baptism” wasn’t actually a religious word at all. Sometimes they used it for people who drowned or ships that went down at sea. We even have a recipe for pickles recorded by a Greek physician named Nicander. He says, literally, “bapto (as in, dip quickly) the cucumber in water, and then baptizo (as in, immerse and let it soak) in vinegar.”
Second, we submerge people because of what it symbolizes. When you bury people, you don’t sprinkle dirt on them. You put them into the ground. In baptism, we are being buried with Jesus “by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).
3. Baptism is not a condition of, but evidence of salvation
Many people think that Scripture presents baptism as a necessary condition of salvation. However, that can be disproven by one story: Jesus told the thief on the cross next to him, “Today you’ll be with me in paradise.” If baptism were necessary, Jesus was lying to the thief.
Romans 10:9-10 says, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (emphasis added). Confess and believe. That’s it.
Baptism is like a wedding ring. Wearing a wedding ring does not make you legally married. It demonstrates that you have a covenant with your spouse. I am no more married when I wear my ring than when I don’t. In the same way, baptism demonstrates my conversion; it’s not a pre-condition of that conversion.
This is why we only baptize after people come to faith in Christ. If you get baptized before you are converted (say, as an infant), that is not an evidence of your faith. It’s evidence of your parents’ faith. Baptism is the evidence of repentance.
4. Baptism is Incredibly Important
When people ask, “What’s the big deal about baptism? It’s just a ritual. It doesn’t change anything,” we simply point them to Jesus’ baptism.
When Jesus was baptized, he heard the affirmation of God and was filled by the Holy Spirit. That seems pretty significant. Jesus is about to go into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. This affirmation of the Father will become the core of his resistance against Satan. He can say, “The Father has declared over me his love, and that love is going to give me the strength to withstand Satan.” His body may be in the wilderness, but God is his home.
Your baptism functions like that, too. Your baptism is like a flag you put in the ground that signifies for you and to everyone else that you have left the wilderness of sin where Satan rules and entered the promised land of obedience where God rules.