What is baptism?
Short answer
Baptism is the rite of entry into Christian faith, performed with water and with the trinitarian formula of Matthew 28:19 — Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The New Testament links it to repentance, to the forgiveness of sins and to the death and resurrection of Christ. Churches differ on the age and the manner.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 4 min read
Baptism is the one practice that appears at practically every beginning in the New Testament: at the end of Matthew, as a command; in Acts, as the immediate response to the first preaching; and in the letters, as a reference the readers already share. No text presents it as optional, and none describes it as something a person does on their own — there is always a community that baptizes.
The meaning the letters give the rite is stronger than the image of washing suggests. Paul describes it as burial and resurrection together with Christ: whoever enters the water enters a death, and whoever comes out comes out into a different life. That is why baptism, in the New Testament, marks a turn rather than a stage.
The narratives in Acts show the rite happening in quite different situations. There is an Ethiopian official baptized at the roadside as soon as he finds water; there is a jailer baptized during the night, with his whole household, a few hours after hearing the message. That variety is precisely what feeds the discussion described below: the text records what happened, without legislating on age or on quantity of water.
It is worth separating two questions that often get treated as one. The first is who may be baptized — an infant, or only someone who professes faith. The second is how one baptizes — by full immersion, or by pouring water over the head. These are independent discussions: there are churches that baptize infants by immersion and churches that baptize adults by pouring.
What the passages say
19Therefore, go forth and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20teaching them to observe all that I have ever commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, even to the consummation of the age.”
The command that institutes the practice, with the trinitarian formula that practically every Christian church still uses. Note that baptizing and teaching appear together in the same passage, which is one of the points the two readings about age dispute.
38Yet truly, Peter said to them: “Do penance; and be baptized, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins. And you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
39For the Promise is for you and for your sons, and for all who are far away: for whomever the Lord our God will have called.”
The church’s first answer to the question of what to do, and it links turning around, baptism and remission in a single sequence. The following verse extends the promise to the hearers’ children, and it is cited by both readings, with different emphases.
3Do you not know that those of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?
4For through baptism we have been buried with him into death, so that, in the manner that Christ rose from the dead, by the glory of the Father, so may we also walk in the newness of life.
The theological meaning of the rite: union with the death and resurrection of Christ. It is also the text most used as an argument for immersion, because the image it employs is burial.
11In him also, you have been circumcised with a circumcision not made by hand, not by the despoiling of the body of flesh, but by the circumcision of Christ.
12You have been buried with him in baptism. In him also, you have risen again through faith, by the work of God, who raised him up from the dead.
It sets baptism alongside circumcision. Those who defend infant baptism start here: circumcision was applied to babies as a sign of belonging to the covenant, and the analogy would carry that logic across to baptism.
36And while they were going along the way, they arrived at a certain water source. And the eunuch said: “There is water. What would prevent me from being baptized?”
37Then Philip said, “If you believe from your whole heart, it is permitted.” And he responded by saying, “I believe the Son of God to be Jesus the Christ.”
38And he ordered the chariot to stand still. And both Philip and the eunuch descended into the water. And he baptized him.
The Ethiopian scene. The account records a profession of faith before the baptism and says both went down into the water — two details that support, respectively, the requirement of a personal profession and the practice of immersion.
31So they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and then you will be saved, with your household.”
32And they spoke the Word of the Lord to him, along with all those who were in his house.
33And he, taking them in the same hour of the night, washed their scourges. And he was baptized, and next his entire household.
The baptism of the jailer at Philippi and of his whole household, the same night. It is the main narrative support for baptising entire families; the text does not say whether there were children among them, and that gap is exactly where the disagreement settles.
16Whoever will have believed and been baptized will be saved. Yet truly, whoever will not have believed will be condemned.
It places believing and being baptized side by side, in that order. The second half of the verse, however, ties condemnation to unbelief alone — an asymmetry usually recalled when the discussion turns to what happens to someone who dies unbaptized.