Why Do We Practice Baptism By Immersion?

Romans 6:4

Were it not for the insistence of both papists and protestants that infants be "baptized", there would be no question about the mode of baptism. The only reason for perverting the ordinance of Christ into the sprinkling or pouring of water is to accommodate the practice of infant "baptism". Our practice of immersing believers is not a Baptist peculiarity. It is a biblical necessity for the following reasons.

1. THE MEANING OF THE WORD BAPTIZE - The word "baptize" means "to dip, plunge, or immerse." The word never means, and can never with honesty be translated "sprinkle" or "pour". Immersion is not a mode of baptism. Immersion is baptism. Without immersion, baptism has not taken place.

2. THE METHOD OF BAPTISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT - How was baptism practiced in the New Testament? That really should settle the issue for all who wish to honor and obey the Word of God. Wherever John the Baptist baptized men he required "much water" (John 3:23), because he could not baptize anyone with a teacup. When the Lord Jesus was baptized he went into the river Jordan. The water was not brought from the river to him. He was immersed in the water. Otherwise, he could not have come "up straightway out of the water" (Matt. 3:16). When Philip baptized the Ethiopian "they went down both into the water" and then came "up out of the water" (Acts 8:38-39). That would hardly have been necessary if only a few drops of water had been needed to do the work! In the New Testament baptism is always spoken of as a burial (Rom. 6:4; Col. 2:12). When you bury a corpse in the earth, you do not throw a few grains of sand in his face. You put him beneath the ground. And a person cannot be buried with Christ in baptism except by immersion.

3. THE MESSAGE OF THIS GOSPEL ORDINANCE - Baptism is not a picture of regeneration and spiritual renewal. It is a picture of substitutionary redemption and spiritual resurrection (Rom. 6:36). In baptism we confess our faith in Christ's death as our Substitute, our resurrection with him by the power of his Spirit, and our hope of the resurrection to come. The only way the picture can be given is by immersion.

Don Fortner