No doubt may people today would say: “Why are you bothering with baptism? It’s only a ceremony, isn’t it? Having a few drops of holy water sprinkled on the head of an infant by a clergy man in church, or just having a bath? What real difference can it make? You’re wasting your time.”
The short answer is that the New Testament has a great deal to say about baptism, from the lips of Jesus himself as well as through his apostles. Now the plain fact is that the Bible is all we have. If we want to know who Jesus was, what he taught and what he commanded his followers to do, we must go to the Bible for the answers. To look elsewhere is to rely on the opinions of men, whether of individuals or of bodies of men in Synods or Councils. What the Bible has to says about baptism must be vital for us. If Christ and his chosen apostles have declared certain things about baptism, then we ought to want to know what they are.
The really important question must therefore surely be: What did Jesus command and teach and what did his apostles do as a result?
“Born of Water”
To Nicodemus, the Jewish leader who came to him by night, Jesus …