Baptism And Misunderstanding

It is written:

For He taught His disciples and said to them, “The Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him. And after He is killed, He will rise the third day.” 32  But they did not understand this saying, and were afraid to ask Him. (Mark 9:31-32)

Isn’t it interesting that the majority of passages in the New Testament about baptism were written to Christians who had either not been taught fully about baptism or who had somehow misunderstood some important element of baptism?

The Romans didn’t fully understand the connection between baptism and repentance (Romans 6:3-4);

The Corinthians had misunderstood the connection between baptism and the leadership of Christ and its’ foreshadowing by the people’s baptism into Moses (1 Corinthians 10:1-4), as well as between our baptism and our unity in Christ (1 Christ 12:13);

The Galatians misunderstood the connection between our baptism into Christ and our becoming the seed of Abraham (Galatians 3:26-29);

The Colossians had misunderstood the connection between the foreshadowing of circumcision and baptism (Colossians 2:11-14), etc.

Despite the misunderstanding of these brethren, God never recognized them as anything but His children. Yes, they needed to learn about elements of baptism and correct their misunderstandings as they grew, yet they weren’t counseled to be rebaptized because they had misunderstood some elements (even extremely important elements) of baptism. The minimum knowledge factor seems to be in Acts 8:37, where the confession of the eunuch demonstrates his faith in Who Jesus is and his repentance from sin.

Have you been baptized into Christ? If not why not turn to Him today?

Leave a Reply

Powered by WordPress.com.

Up ↑

%d