What Constitutes a True Baptism?

Doing membership interviews is one of my favorite parts of being a pastor. It’s a privilege to hear prospective members tell me their stories of conversion. These stories of grace inspire my confidence in God’s love, Christ’s forgiveness, and the Spirit’s redeeming power. As part of the interview, we ask folks to tell us about their baptism so we can make sure they’ve truly been baptized. Of course, most baptism stories are pretty ordinary: “I heard the gospel, believed, and was baptized by a local church.”

But some stories are bizarre or even baffling.

“So you were baptized in the Jordan River and the person performing the baptism was a ‘Holy Land tour guide’ dressed up like John the Baptist, do I have that right? . . . And it was a mass baptism of 300 people at the same time? I see.”

“So you were baptized at five because the baptismal looked like a fire truck and shot confetti? OK, well, do you think you were a Christian at the time?”

“You baptized yourself? What does that even mean?!”

In these circumstances, determining whether a baptism was true, even if irregular, can be complicated. In my own ministry, I’ve used the following four questions as a grid for determining true baptisms. If you can answer each of the following four questions affirmatively then I think you’re looking at a true baptism.

1. Was the Person Regenerate at the Time of the Baptism?

The only proper subjects of baptism are those who have already placed their faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As a Baptist, and with deepest respect for my paedobaptist brothers, I think the Bible is plain on this issue. In the Great Commission, baptism is applied to “disciples” (Matt. 28:19). In Acts, those “who received [the] word were baptized” (Acts 2:41). And most significantly, Scripture teaches that all the members of the new covenant “know the Lord” (Jer. 31:34), so only those who know the Lord should receive the covenant sign of baptism.

The most common issue I’ve faced on this point is when people are unclear on whether they were genuinely converted at the time of their baptism. This is especially the case if they were baptized as a child (which, in my estimation, provides another good reason to delay baptism until something approximating functional adulthood). In such circumstances, it’s best to teach prospective members a biblical doctrine of conversion and let them decide whether they understand themselves to have been regenerate at the time of their baptism. Pastors aren’t private investigators, nor can we travel back in time to talk to the seven-year-old version of the prospective member. So, help prospective members interpret their past biblically, and then trust their judgment of when God worked the miracle of conversion in their life.

2. Was the Baptism Interpreted in a Manner Consistent with the Gospel?

Ritual acts are not self-interpreting. Just as in Scripture God’s redemptive acts are accompanied by an interpretive word, so too the ordinances must be accompanied by an interpretive word which endows the act with its theological meaning. As many Reformed theologians have noted, what keeps the ordinances from becoming superstitious ritualism or ex opere operato sacramentalism is the fact that the ordinances are appended to the Word.

The Word of the gospel endows the act of baptism with its meaning. Therefore, an anti-gospel interpretation given to the act changes the act itself. Baptizing into the name of a god who requires sinners to work for their justification is not baptism. Suggesting that baptism washes someone of the stain of original sin or regenerates a sinner turns the act into something other than an expression of the biblical gospel. A “gospel interpretation” is therefore an essential element that constitutes the act as Christian baptism.

3. Did the Person Go into and out of Water?

Throughout redemptive history, God employs water as a central symbol in creation and redemption. The old world emerges from water (Gen. 1:2). The new world is born from a watery grave (Gen. 6–9). Israel is delivered out of Egypt and into Canaan only by passing through waters of judgment. In Scripture, emerging from water is a picture of new creation, participation in a new exodus, and resurrection life. United to Christ by faith, we die with him under the waters of judgment only to be raised with him to newness of life.

For these reasons and many others, I’m convinced the proper mode of baptism is immersion in water. At the same time, a number of Christian traditions deviate from this norm by sprinkling or effusion. Given that baptism’s meaning lies principally in its interpretation and not in the act itself, I’m convinced a non-immersive baptism ought to be considered true, though irregular. I know many Baptists disagree with me on that point, and I’m the first to admit that they might be right. But at the end of the day, some form of water washing is necessary for a baptism to occur since the interpretation of the symbol—death in the waters of judgment, resurrection to new life in Christ—demands the actual symbol of water be present.

This point may seem like a given: after all, how could a baptism not include water? But I’ve known some pastors who have counseled prospective members who said they didn’t need water baptism since they were baptized in the Spirit. Years ago, I even heard reports of a rural church a few hours from me baptizing people in beer! So as strange as it may seem, it’s worth clarifying: true baptisms happen in actual water.

4. Was the Baptism Administered by a Representative of the Church or a Gospel-Affirming Community?

Baptism isn’t just something we do, but something done to us. Despite the way evangelicals often individualize baptism as though it’s a public expression of an otherwise private faith, we don’t baptize ourselves. Someone, or a group of someones, has to actually hear a person’s profession of faith, understand it to be in accord with the gospel, and then dunk them in water.

That verdict about whether someone should receive baptism should happen in a church. I won’t rehearse all the arguments from Matthew 16, 18, and 28 to make that case. Pick up any 9Marks book at random and you’ll find someone putting those puzzle pieces together. Ultimately, Christ authorized local churches, two or three or three hundred, who agree on the gospel (Matt. 18:19) to mark out kingdom citizens by baptism. So, as Bobby Jamieson argues in Understanding Baptism, baptism isn’t just a believer’s act, it’s also a “church’s act.”^{11 .} Bobby Jamieson, Understanding Baptism (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2016), 6.

Ordinarily, then, the local church administers baptism. I say ordinarily because there are exceptions. Sometimes the gospel outpaces the church such as in frontier missions. We see one example of this type of “frontier missions” baptism in Acts 8:26–40 and the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch. In that instance, Philip, a representative of the church performed the act.

So, the New Testament gives us examples of local church baptisms and frontier missions baptisms by a recognized Christian. But what about something in between, like a baptism at a Christian camp? On the one hand, I’d urge camps not to baptize professing Christians. Let the local church do the work Jesus gave it to do. At the same time, I’m convinced Acts 8 opens the door to recognizing such baptisms as true so long as those administering the baptism at that time affirmed the true gospel.

These diagnostic questions don’t deal with every conceivable issue, but they’re a useful place to start. Assessing true but irregular baptisms is a complicated business and I certainly don’t claim to corner the market on how to think through this issue. I’d gladly welcome a better set of diagnostic questions. But I offer the above as a grid I’ve found helpful in hopes that it serves fellow pastors as we shepherd sheep to obey everything Jesus commanded.