In
the second chapter of Acts, Peter had convicted the people there
of having killed the Son of God. In verse 37 their question was, "Men
and brethren what shall we do?" In verse 38 (KJV), "Then
Peter said unto them, repent and be baptized everyone of you
in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins." Here
people were told to repent and be baptized for the remission
of their sins. Only when we submit to baptism as the Lord has
commanded, that is for the remission of sins to be saved, do
we show our faith in the Lord. Only then will He save us.
Man today has a sin problem. God says in Isaiah 59:2 "But
your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your
sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear." It
is our sins that separate us from God. We are to repent and
be baptized for the remission of our sins. This is God's instruction
on how we solve our sin problem. In the above verse, when Peter
told them to "Repent and be baptized for the remission
of sins," whatever repentance is for in that verse, baptism
is for the same reason. Repent and be baptized are joined by
the coordinating conjunction and, which joins words of equal
grammatical importance. Certainly Acts 2:38 does not teach
that lost people are to repent because they have already received
forgiveness of their sins. Neither does it teach that lost
people are to be baptized because their sins are already forgiven.
Satan would like you to believe that baptism has nothing to
do with the forgiveness of your sins. Have you been baptized
for the remission of your sins? Again, the choice is yours;
either believe what God has said and be saved, or believe what
men say and you will continue to be lost. We only have two
choices, and the choice that we make will have eternal consequences.
But please make the right choice so you can go to Heaven.
In the book of Acts we have the account of the conversion
of the Apostle Paul. In Acts chapter 9, Paul is traveling on
the road up to Damascus to persecute Christians. The Lord appears
to Paul on the road and strikes him blind. In verse 5 he tells
Paul, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting." In verse
6 Paul asks, "Lord what do you want me to do? Then the
Lord said to him (Paul), Arise and go into the city, and you
will be told what you must do." The Lord did not tell
Paul what he must do, but that someone in the city would tell
him what he must do. In Acts 9:9, after Paul went into the
city, "And he was three days without sight, and neither
ate nor drank." Paul was worried sick and very upset.
He had just found out that all the years in his zeal, while
persecuting the Lord's church, he had actually been persecuting
the Lord. Paul was devastated and broken-hearted in finding
out that he had been wrong all these years.
Let's see now what Paul was told what he must do. In Acts
chapter 22, a man named Ananias, who was sent by the Lord,
came to Paul and miraculously restored Paul's eyesight. Notice
what Paul was told by Ananias what he must do. Acts 22:16, "And
now why are you waiting? Arise, and be baptized and wash away
your sins, calling on the name of the Lord." Paul was
not saved three days earlier while on the road to Damascus,
as some people would like for us to believe. Paul up to this
point was still lost, because he still had all his sins that
needed to be washed away. Paul still had a sin problem. Obedience
to the Lord's command to be baptized was necessary to wash
away Paul's sins.
At the point of baptism every sin that we have ever committed
will be taken away, if it is done for that purpose. Many people
today have been baptized in order to be added to some denomination,
but not for the remission of their sins. Have you been baptized
for the purpose of having your sins washed away? If you have
not, then you still have a sin problem. You are still lost.
Paul was not told "to pray the sinners prayer and ask
Jesus to come into his heart in order to be saved." This
is completely foreign to the scripture. You cannot find anywhere
in the Bible where anyone was ever told to do this. Since God
in the Bible has never told anyone "To pray and ask Jesus
to come into your heart in order to be saved", who else
but men could have come up with such an idea? Forgiveness occurs
in the mind of God and not on the basis of man's feeling in
his heart. Only when we have done what God has said that we
MUST do, will God forgive our sins. We cannot devise our own
plan as to how our sins are to be forgiven.
Do not misunderstand. We do not "earn" our salvation
by being baptized. Salvation is a gift from God. Even though
salvation is a free gift from God, he has laid down certain
conditions upon which he will give it. One condition to receive
his gift is faith: Hebrews 11:6, "But without faith it
is impossible to please Him." Another condition of his
free gift is repentance: Luke 13:3, "Unless you repent
you will all likewise perish." Another condition is baptism:
Mark 16:16, "He who believes and is baptized will be saved." Still
another condition is living a faithful Christian life: Revelation
2:10, "Be faithful until death, and I will give you the
crown of life." The conditions include doing all "the
will of the Father," Matthew 7:21. These are God's conditions.
Believing in God and Christ with all our heart, repenting of
all our sins, confessing Christ and being baptized are all
equally important to our salvation. If any of these are lacking,
then we will not be saved. You can't have one without the others.
There is nothing that we can do to merit salvation. Whether
it be believing in Jesus or being baptized, we can never "earn
our salvation". Our salvation is free, but it is not cheap.
It cost God's Son his very own life. The only way we can show
our faith in Christ is if we are willing to accept and obey
what He says. But it is in baptism that God has chosen to impart
his wonderful grace of salvation to us as a willing believer.
God's gift of salvation must be accepted on His terms, not
ours.
According to the Bible, it is at the point of baptism, that
we pass from an unsaved state into a saved state. In other
words, at the time of baptism, we go from being unsaved to
being saved. We read in I Peter 3:21 (KJV), "The like
figure whereunto even baptism does also now save us." The
Bible says that "baptism does now also save us," but
men say that "baptism does not save us." This is
very similar to the situation of Adam and Eve in the Garden
of Eden. God in Genesis 2:17 told them not to eat of the tree
of knowledge of good and evil, "For in the day that you
eat of it you shall surely die." But Satan told Eve in
Genesis 3:4, "Then the serpent said to the woman, you
will not surely die." Satan only added the one word "not" to
what God had said and completely changed the meaning. That
is what men are doing to God's commands today. Who are you
going to accept, the word of men or the Word of God? We are
told in Acts 5:29, "We ought to obey God rather than men." On
the Day of Judgment, the Bible will still say that "baptism
does also now save us." Again the choice is yours, but
it is very serious. We dare not make the wrong choice which
will have eternal consequences.