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Benjamin writes, and this is a good one,

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"Who is qualified to baptize believers?

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I moved to a new town. Led someone to Christ.

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And I baptized them in the local river.

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My pastor said that because I was not ordained,

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it was invalid.

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I'm pretty sure that the Great Commission says

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to make disciples of all nations and baptize them,

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so if I was wrong to baptize the new believer,

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I guess I was wrong to lead him to Christ and make disciples.

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Please help me and others with the clarification of baptism."

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His question is three-fold:

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Who is able to be baptize, one, the mode, two?

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And who is able to perform the baptism?

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What do you guys think?

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Well, let's start with his first one.

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Who is able to be baptized? Christians.

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Believers. Can anybody prove that?

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Acts 2? Repent and be baptized.

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That's the order right. Repent and be baptized.

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In Mark 16, the order is believe and be baptized.

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Repent and be baptized.

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And every single example in the Scriptures

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is an example of someone believing and being baptized.

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Acts 18:8 Many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed,

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and were baptized.

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Acts 8:12, "But when they believed Phillip as he

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preached good news about the Kingdom of God

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and the name of Jesus Christ,

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they were baptized, both men and women."

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Acts 2:41, "Those who received his Word..."

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First, they received the Word...

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"were baptized. And there were added that day

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about 3,000 souls."

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Matthew 28, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations..."

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and then you baptize, "baptizing them in the name

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of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

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That's always the order in Scripture. Believe - be baptized.

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Repent, be baptized.

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Anybody that you find in Scripture being baptized,

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you have one of two scenarios:

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it either says that they believed and they were baptized,

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or it just tells you they were baptized,

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and the assumption is that they believed.

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Never are we told that an unbeliever was baptized.

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Never.

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Except possibly Simon, and yet it says

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he believed and was baptized.

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Now later, it turned out his profession wasn't true,

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but we see that there was at least

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a nominal profession or a nominal belief first.

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But that's always the order.

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Ok. So by example in the Scriptures,

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we have that command: the Great Commission in Matthew 28,

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we make disciples and baptize - that's the order.

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By all the examples we're given in Scripture,

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they believe and then they're baptized.

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What about mode? You know what I mean by mode?

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In other words, should we immerse them?

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Should we just pour some water on them?

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Should we just throw a little holy water on their forehead?

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What's the mode?

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(from the room: What does the word mean?)

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Folks, if you don't know this already,

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let me just give you a little bit of history.

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About 200 years ago, William Carey and his cohorts,

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they went to India.

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They translated somewhere around 42 versions of the Scriptures;

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42 different languages they translated.

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In many of those, they translated the word "baptize."

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In other words, they took the Greek: "baptizo"

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or its various forms and they translated it.

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You say so what?

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Well, listen, a faithful translation of that word is "immerse."

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Guess what? Those folks that translated the King James Bible?

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They weren't baptists, and so you know what they did?

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They didn't translate the word. They knew what it meant.

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They transliterated it. You know what that means?

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They basically took the Greek word and Anglicized it

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without translating it.

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Carey and Marshman and Ward, they came along 200 years ago

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and they did all these 42 translations, and in many of them,

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they did translate the word.

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What is the word? Immerse.

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And it fits with the imagery.

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What is the symbolism of baptism?

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Colossians 2:12, "Having been buried with him in baptism."

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The symbolism is burial.

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The symbolism is not carried out if I just splash a couple drops

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of water on your forehead, is it?

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You have the same truth in Romans 6:4.

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"We were buried therefore with Him by baptism."

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Baptism symbolizes burial.

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And the only way that is accomplished

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is when somebody is immersed.

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And that's what the word means.

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So we don't have to go much further than that.

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No, it does not have to be immersion in water.

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The word is "immerse."

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What we're immersed in has to be declared.

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When Christ said He had a baptism to be baptized with,

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He was going to be baptized by the wrath of God.

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Immersed in the sufferings of the vengeance of the Almighty.

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So yes, we can be immersed in various substances,

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so we have to look at the context to see what it is we're immersed into.

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Now here's the last part of this question,

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who is able to perform the baptism?

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I think the guy has a great point, don't you?

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Matthew 28? I mean if his pastor comes to him and says,

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you didn't have authority to do that.

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He can say, well then, so I have authority to make disciples?

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Right?

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Because they both go together in the Great Commission.

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Oh, I'm likely to get in trouble for saying that.

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But let me tell you, who do we find baptizing?

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You see, a lot of times we can look at direct commands,

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sometimes we want to look at Scripture to draw principles out.

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And sometimes we want to look at the example of the early church.

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I can tell you this, Matthew 28, yes,

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it doesn't seem to be specific.

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In fact, there is no commandment that specifically says

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a man has to be ordained to baptize.

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It's not there.

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Anybody who wants to make a case for that,

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they're making a case somehow from silence,

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or they're trying to extract principles from Scripture,

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but they don't have a direct commandment

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that says only ordained men, or only pastors,

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or only elders, or only apostles.

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There's nothing like that.

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Now, the example of the early church.

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Who do we find baptizing?

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John the Baptist;

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Christ baptized, but He didn't really baptize - His disciples did.

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But His disciples, the word disciples can be broad,

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but typically when it's used it probably means the twelve,

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who were the apostles as well.

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Did Paul baptize? Yes, we find in 1 Corinthians he did.

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Now he was glorying in the fact that he didn't baptize a whole lot,

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but he did baptize some.

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Who else baptized? Who baptized the Ethiopian eunuch?

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Phillip. Now what was Phillip?

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At best, he was probably a deacon.

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But he was ordained.

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We see that in Acts 6 that that took place.

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So, what you find is that typically the example was

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that it wasn't just indiscriminately everybody.

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You do find it typically was the ordained men.

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It tended to be the men that had been called out

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by God for the ministry.

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That seems to be the example.

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But I'm not certain we can make a steadfast...

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I know there's men that are adamant at this point,

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but I'm not certain that the Bible really gives us

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some definitive word on this.

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Men may speculate, but I think at best,

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that's what we do - it's speculation.

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So that's as far as I can go with that.

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And I would say this, I would say look,

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if you're a young man, and your pastor

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has strong convictions about this, you should submit to him in it,

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because he does have Biblical examples

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of it being ordained men.

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If he wants to go to the practice of the early church,

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you really are not going to find anybody other than

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God's ordained men doing the baptisms.

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So by practice, they may have a point.

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And I would say it's in your best interest

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to submit to your pastors on that point.

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If he's got a strong conviction there,

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definitely submit to him in it.