Baptism

My little story on humiliation last week brought some interesting comments - it seems lots of people whom consider themselves Christian, have not been baptized ...

One argument presented is that our salvation is bought at the price of Jesus' blood, not blood plus anything!  And there is a point there.

So where does blood plus anything come in?  Think of Acts 2, we are told, commanded, to baptize once converted.  We are obviously not anything by the act of baptism, other than being obedient.  And obedience is one thing God does demand from us.  And we are shown that the Holy Spirit comes with our faith and obedience ...

And then there are the arguments as to what form baptism must take!  Don't worry, I sincerely doubt you were baptized in the "correct" manner!  What we have are the traditions of the Catholic Church - sprinkle, dunk, semi-dunk, etc.  In reality, Jesus more than likely squatted in the water and had more water poured more over him.

The problem is that the Greek word used is related to the dyeing of materiel (luckily not tie-dying!).  So, by what ever manner you transfer dye to cloth, yup, that is the method!  Argue if you want, but you have nothing in history or Greek to support your argument.

Oh, and obviously, from the Baptist camp came the argument that since a "pastor" did not do the dunking, I was still un-baptized!  And let us not forget the all important "magic" words of Christianity!  Really?  Exactly how superstitious as Christianity become!?!  There are magic words in Christianity, if you think there are, then in what language?  Yeah, that is the problem ...

What I did was done in faith to show obedience to Acts 2 ... and nothing was ever normal again for me ...