• The Confirming and Unifying Role of the Spirit
• Spanish Edition
• Hook's Points
• One Baptism - One Immersion
• Beyond The Sacred Page
• Who Has Higher Motives?
• Olympic Losses By Split Seconds
• What I Hear From You

In all seriousness I ask you to reconsider two traditional teachings which we continue to repeat concerning the one baptism of Ephesians 4:4.

"There is one baptism." How can we misunderstand that? There have been a number of baptisms mentioned like that of John the Baptist, Holy Spirit baptism, and the baptism of fire, but now there is only one baptism which is in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Isn’t that what Paul is teaching?

Not really! Different types or uses of baptism were not the point of his discussion. He is writing about the unity that God created and how he brought it about. Whether baptism is of water or Spirit, immersion or aspersion, literal or figurative is not being discussed. But he is referring to baptism as the means of initiation into unity in one body.

If there were different baptisms of initiation, we might better explain how some are baptized into the various Churches of Christ (instrumental, acappella, one-cup, non-institutional, etc.), some into the Christian Churches, some into the Church of God, and some into the Assemblies of God.

Since there is only one initiation into Christ and his body, how can we be divided? We are all baptized into one body (1 Cor. 12:13). In order for disciples to be divided into our various groups, we have to align ourselves with groups that distinguish themselves from the universal body. Many of my dear brothers and sisters in the Church of Christ still refuse to admit that they have joined a division or placed membership in one in addition to being added by the Lord to his universal church at the time of their baptism.

The other point for us to reconsider regards translating the passage to read "there is one immersion." Although the word baptizo may be rightly translated as immersion, that is not what Paul is emphasizing in this passage. Because of the familiarity that our generation has with the word baptism, when we read it with the emphasis on the mode, we are actually misdirecting the mind away from what Paul was teaching, that is, that we all underwent the same ceremony of initiation into unity into one body. By this, I am not denying that baptism is by immersion. I am saying that a wrong emphasis may allow persons to think they were baptized Scripturally without recognition that God put them into fellowship with all who undergo the ritual of initiation.

How can we fulfill the exhortation to maintain the unity that the Spirit initiated if we do not accept the truth that we were all initiated into it? []

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