“Are You Saying I HAVE to Get Baptized?”

To speak of holy Baptism primarily as a legal necessity is to speak of it in a way largely foreign to the biblical witness. It certainly misses the register of New Testament narrative, anyhow.

Baptism is commanded, certainly (Matthew 28:19, NRSV). Water Baptism is the normative, obedient, biblical response of faith to the gospel. Peter tells his hearers, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven” (Acts 2:38, NRSV). And that’s what people do throughout Acts when they receive the gospel: they’re baptized (Acts 2:41; 8:12–13; 8:36–38; 9:18; 10:47–48; 16:15, 33; 18:8; 19:5; 22:16).

In that sense, Baptism for the forgiveness of sins is the New Testament’s “sinner’s prayer”—except, of course, the sinner’s prayer isn’t actually in the New Testament.

That’s true.

But Scripture still doesn’t ordinarily talk about Baptism as a hoop to be jumped through, a burden reluctantly endured, or a legal necessity like waiting in line at the DMV.

Someone will immediately point to Mark 16:16: “The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16, NRSV).

Fair enough. But Mark 16:9–20 has a well-known textual problem. The longer ending is missing from our two earliest complete Greek manuscripts containing the end of Mark, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, and modern critical editions mark the passage as disputed. Whatever one concludes about its antiquity or canonical use, I wouldn’t make a disputed ending carry more theological freight than it needs to—especially when the undisputed New Testament texts have plenty to say about Baptism already.

And they do.

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“Scripture still doesn’t ordinarily talk about Baptism as a hoop to be jumped through, a burden reluctantly endured, or a legal necessity like waiting in line at the DMV.”

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So, do we throw Baptism out with the baptistery and make it a nice optional add-on?

Not remotely.

Just listen to the language Scripture uses.

Ananias tells Saul, “Get up, be baptized, and have your sins washed away, calling on his name” (Acts 22:16, NRSV).

Paul says we’re “buried” with Christ in Baptism and raised so that “we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4, NRSV; cf. Col. 2:12). Elsewhere, the baptized have “clothed yourselves with Christ” (Galatians 3:27, NRSV), and in 1 Corinthians they’ve been baptized “into one body” (1 Corinthians 12:13, NRSV).

Peter goes so far as to reach back to Noah and say, astonishingly, “Baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you,” then immediately makes clear that he’s not talking about mechanically washing dirt off the body, but “an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 3:20–21, NRSV).

That’s the biblical register: washing, burial, resurrection, putting on Christ, being gathered into his body.

It doesn’t sound much like paperwork.

And perhaps nowhere is that clearer than in the story of the Ethiopian eunuch.

Luke tells us he’d gone to Jerusalem “to worship” (Acts 8:27, NRSV). But Luke also tells us two things about this man that matter: he’s a foreigner, and he’s a eunuch.

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“Luke also tells us two things about this man that matter: he’s a foreigner, and he’s a eunuch.”

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The Torah had a hard word for a man like him: “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 23:1, NRSV).

Whatever precisely “enter the assembly” entailed in Israel’s covenantal life, this is a man who knows something about disappointment.

He’s traveled hundreds of miles to prostrate himself before Israel’s God at the Temple.

And there are places he can’t go because of who he is.

Now he’s riding home in his chariot, reading Isaiah.

And of all places, he’s in Isaiah 53:

“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,
and like a lamb silent before its shearer,
so he does not open his mouth.” (Acts 8:32, NRSV; cf. Isaiah 53:7)

Philip climbs into the chariot and, “starting with this scripture,” tells him the good news about Jesus (Acts 8:35).

Apparently, telling someone the good news about Jesus included telling him about Baptism.

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“Apparently, telling someone the good news about Jesus included telling him about Baptism.”

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That shouldn’t surprise us. Jesus had said to make disciples of all nations, “baptizing them” (Matthew 28:19, NRSV). Peter joined repentance, forgiveness, the gift of the Spirit, and Baptism at Pentecost (Acts 2:38, NRSV). Again and again in Acts, people hear the gospel, believe it, and water enters the story.

And so it does here.

They come upon some water and the eunuch says:

“Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” (Acts 8:36, NRSV)

There’s the question.

He doesn’t ask:

“Wait—are you saying I HAVE to be baptized?”

He asks:

“What prevents me?”

And I don’t think we should hear that question apart from the story Luke has just told us—or from the scroll lying open in the man’s lap.

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“What prevents me?”

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Because only three chapters beyond the passage of Scripture he’s reading, Isaiah speaks to men exactly like him:

“Do not let the foreigner joined to the LORD say,
‘The LORD will surely separate me from his people’;
and do not let the eunuch say,
‘I am just a dry tree’” (Isaiah 56:3, NRSV).

Think about that.

A eunuch can’t have descendants. Yet God promises him something “better than sons and daughters,” an everlasting name that “shall not be cut off” (Isaiah 56:5, NRSV).

The foreigner, meanwhile—the man born outside Israel, a stranger to the covenant—is told:

“These I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer.” (Isaiah 56:7, NRSV)

And then:

“Thus says the Lord GOD,
who gathers the outcasts of Israel,
I will gather others to them
besides those already gathered” (Isaiah 56:8, NRSV).

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“God promises him something ‘better than sons and daughters,’ an everlasting name that ‘shall not be cut off.'”

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That’s sitting just three chapters down the road from Isaiah 53.

And here sits a foreign eunuch, reading Isaiah 53, when a messenger of Jesus comes running alongside his chariot.

Then he sees water.

“What prevents me?”

I love that question.

This is a man who’s had reason to ask what prevents him. He knows what it is to come toward the presence of God and discover a boundary.

But Isaiah had promised that the day was coming when the eunuch wouldn’t have to say, “I am a dry tree.” The foreigner wouldn’t have to say, “The LORD will surely separate me from his people.” God himself would gather the outsiders in.

And now Philip has told him about Jesus.

So:

“What prevents me?”

Nothing.

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“What prevents me?” Nothing.

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“Both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him” (Acts 8:38, NRSV).

Then Luke gives us this wonderful little detail:

“He went on his way rejoicing.” (Acts 8:39, NRSV)

Of course he did.

That’s a much nobler—and I think much more biblical—way to talk about Baptism.

Yes, Christ commands it (Matthew 28:19). Peter commands it for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38). Ananias tells Saul, “Get up, be baptized, and have your sins washed away” (Acts 22:16, NRSV). We’ve no need whatsoever to diminish the necessity, urgency, or saving significance Scripture attaches to Baptism.

But something has gone wrong when the first thing Baptism brings to mind is the line separating the saved from the lost.

That’s not how the eunuch encounters it.

For him, the water isn’t another boundary.

It’s where the boundary finally disappears.

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“The water isn’t another boundary. It’s where the boundary finally disappears.”

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So, if you’ve not yet been baptized into Christ, perhaps the better question isn’t:

“Do I have to?”

It’s the eunuch’s question:

“What’s preventing me?”

Certainly not God.