May 2017 - Baptism!

“Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection”  Romans 6:3-4

Just a few weeks ago, as the sun set and the sky turned brilliant orange, we baptized twelve students in the university pool.  Most of these students had participated in our Bible studies or witnessing training and had been believers for some time, but had never sealed their faith with Baptism. It was such a great joy to see them walking in obedience through this outward expression of their faith. 

A few days before, I had led the women’s Bible study, on campus, covering the topic of baptism. We examined what the Bible has to say about why, how, when, by whom, etc.  Because Christianity has been in South Africa for over 250 years, most people are familiar with many aspects of the faith, but the truth has also been twisted into numerous distorted forms. Relating to baptism, some of the false beliefs we encountered in that study include:

•         Baptism is what saves you – to combat this we looked at Romans 10:9-10 showing that salvation comes though confessing Christ as Lord and believing in His death and resurrection. 
•         Baptism is commitment to a church – Romans 6:3-4 shows baptism in the Biblical sense is identification with Christ and His death and resurrection, not a particular church.
•         Once you are baptized you have to be a “better” Christian – there seems to be an idea that until you are baptized you can be a “Christian” and yet still worship the ancestors a little, or not have to give up certain behaviors.  Once you are baptized, then you really have to obey Him.  In contrast, John 15 says that if we love Christ, we need to obey Him (regardless of our baptism status).  It is not baptism that demands obedience, but rather our faith in Christ.
•         You have to be a “good” Christian before you can be baptized – just as we can never be good enough to earn our salvation, we don’t earn the right to baptism though our actions.  Here we looked at I John 1:6-10 to see that all Christians will still sin and need to confess those sins and that Biblically, baptism followed immediately after belief (Acts 8:25-39; 16:31-33; 22:12-16), not after a person was found to be worthy.

It is such a blessing to study the scriptures with these students and see God reveal Himself to them in new ways each week.  Please pray that false doctrines and false teachers in their lives will be exposed and the Spirit will give them discernment to see the truth that God reveals in His word.  That they will be like the Bereans and receive the word with great eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see whether the things they have been taught are true. Please also pray that those who heard the truth, but were not yet willing to make the commitment of baptism, will soon be convicted to follow Christ in this way.

Please also pray as we develop and refine a series of initial discipleship lessons, for new believers. We will be teaching these to the witnessing students to use as follow-up to sharing the gospel.