What Is Baptism?
Baptism is an immersion in water, and is the point at which a repentant believer is forgiven of his sins.
The Mode
The act of baptism is to immerse the person fully under water, and then raise them up again. Immersion is the only method we have in the New Testament, and is the meaning of baptizo, the original Greek word underneath our English word baptize.
The Result
The result of baptism is our salvation. This is not because of the washing of the body, 1Peter 3:21, but because it is the point at which we are washed in the blood of Christ, which is what saves us.
Revelation 1:5 states, “To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood,” and again, Hebrews 13:12 says, “Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood...” It is the blood of Christ which saves us; but in order for us to be saved, there has to be a point at which we are washed in it, for it is evident that not all are saved, but only those who are in Christ. And this point we are shown in the baptism of Paul, “And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord,” Acts 22:16. It is in baptism that we are washed in the blood of Christ.
The Word
Our English word baptism is a transliteration of the Greek word baptizo, which means to immerse (a transliteration is where the sound of a word in one language is carried over into a second language (in our case, from Greek into English), creating a new word). Why was this done, and the word not translated? The practice dates back at least as far as Jerome’s Latin translation, the Vulgate (390 - 405 AD), where he transliterated the Greek into the Latin. The reason he did this, or whether the practice preceded him, is not known to me. It is easy to see that the act of baptism carries with it a far greater significance than simply the immersion itself, and that this may be the reason Jerome transliterated the word instead of translating it. Whatever the reason may have been, the practice of transliterating 'baptizo' persists to this day.
The definition of the Greek word baptizo is:
Arndt & Gingrich - “…dip, immerse, dip oneself, wash”[1]
Thayer - “To dip repeatedly, to immerge, submerge”[2]
Liddell & Scott - “to dip in or under water”[3]
Abbot-Smith - “…to dip, immerse, sink”[4]
Bullinger - “…to make a thing dipped or dyed. To immerse…"[5]
This definition of baptizo correlates with the examples we have in the New Testament. Mark 1:9-10a states, “It came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And immediately, coming up from the water…,” and likewise, Acts 8:38-39a states, “So he commanded the chariot to stand still. And both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him. Now when they came up out of the water…” In both examples, they were in a body of water when the baptism took place, and they came up out of it when they were through. If we were to translate the passage from Acts instead of transliterating it, the meaning is very clear, “So he commanded the chariot to stand still. And both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he immersed him. Now when they came up out of the water……” To baptize, is to immerse.
This definition also correlates with the figure it stands for, a burial with Christ. Romans 6:3-5 states, “Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
”For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection…” We are buried with him when we are baptized, and are raised to a new life. As a body is put under the ground when it is buried, so we are put under the water when we are baptized.
Endnotes
[1] Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 131, translated by William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, revised and augmented by F. Wilbur Gingrich and Frederick W. Danker
[2] Joseph Henry Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon Of The New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1995), pg. 94. This edition was prepared using the fourth edition published by T. and T. Clark in 1901
[3] Liddell & Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1975), pg. 146
[4] G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1973), pg. 74
[5] E. W. Bullinger, A Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1999), pg. 80