POST OVERVIEW. This article is the first in a series of articles on Romans 6:1-14. This section of Scripture is packed with theological truths, and in this series, we hope to explore many of these doctrines and to understand what Paul is teaching in this powerful section of Scripture.

This first article is focused mostly on Romans 6:3-4 where Paul teaches about the meaning and the form of baptism.

³ Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? ⁴ Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. – Romans 6:3-4 (NASB)

As we move through the book of Romans, we must keep in mind that, as God’s chosen instrument (Acts 9:15-16), Paul the apostle is communicating divine truth. In other words, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul is teaching unchanging doctrine. And in Romans 6:3-4, it is clear that the doctrine in view is baptism. In these verses, the apostle Paul gives his clearest teaching on the meaning of baptism and, by implication, its form. So, what does the apostle teach about the form?

THEN. From the pages of the New Testament, it is clear that the apostle Paul knew only one form of baptism, and that was the form which was inaugurated by John the Baptist and received by the Lord Jesus in His own baptism (Matthew 3:16), the form that, upon profession of faith, immerses the subject in water and then raises them up out of the water. This was certainly the baptism that Paul himself received (Acts 9:18). The point here is that, to Paul’s original audience in Rome or to any other professing believer who lived at that time, the only known baptism was the immersing in water of the believer upon the believer’s profession of faith. That’s what the apostles taught and that’s what the apostles did, so that was baptism. This baptism was the common experience of all believers. There simply was no other baptism in existence.

NOW. And there is no reason that baptism should be different for us today. Baptism is still the immersing in water of the believer upon the believer’s profession of faith in Jesus. This is the apostolic, God-given form of Christian baptism and is therefore the only acceptable form. Any “baptism” that deviates from this is meaningless and man-made and is done, whether knowingly or ignorantly, in disobedience to the one God-given ordinance. Only this baptism illustrates the theological truths about salvation taught in Romans 6 and in the rest of the New Testament. Therefore, the form cannot be changed. Anything else is simply not baptism.

What, then, are the theological truths taught in Romans 6 that are so well illustrated by immersion into water and being raised from the water? Discovering these theological truths will be the subject of the next several posts as we explore Romans 6:1-7.

Soli Deo gloria            rmb                 9/25/2023                   #673