At twelve years old, I was baptized into membership of a church. I didn’t believe that Jesus was God, that he rose from the dead, or that he was coming again. For me at the time is was a ritual which I went through in order to join my family’s church. Three years later, I came to the realization that Jesus was God, that I was sinful in his eyes and deserving of death, and that he died in my place and rose from the dead. I committed my life to be His follower. Following that experience, I was again baptized, but this time it was no longer a ritual, but rather it was my acting out his death and resurrection for me in a meaningful manner.
Baptism originates from the Jewish rite of purification as given to Moses in the law. Hebrews were to purify themselves after certain events and priests were to dip their hands in a bronze laver in the tabernacle to be ceremonially clean. By the time of Jesus, it had largely become no more than a ritual which had lost its meaning. The religious leaders had added myriads of rules regarding baptism. Jews baptized their hands prior to eating (Mark 7:4) as well as baptize the dishes. Men were to immerse themselves in a mikveh (baptismal) every time they entered the temple. Mikvehs were common throughout Israel in those days; one dating to Jesus’ time was unearthed last year in Jerusalem underneath the floor of a home undergoing renovation. [Note that “baptism” is a Greek word meaning “to immerse” and not the term which is used in Judaism.]
There are numerous Jewish rules for a mikveh today, including the amount of water it is to hold, its depth, drainage, type of water, etc. as well as extensive rules for when a person is to use a mikveh. Among some ultra-orthodox communities, men immerse in the mikveh on a weekly, if not a daily, basis. Baptism, or washing in a mikveh, is a heated subject in Israel today. The government recently passed a controversial “mikveh bill” which effectively prohibits people from converting to any branch of Judaism except Orthodox, who compose only 15% of the population.
When John “the Baptist” came on the scene just prior to Jesus, he began baptizing in the Jordan River with a “baptism of repentance” as opposed to one of ritual. He brought back the original meaning of baptism, that it should entail a change of heart and life in the one being baptized. But Jesus needed no such change in his life and was still baptized. Jesus redefined baptism to symbolize his death, burial and resurrection. At that point, baptism became a “baptism of resurrection” in which the one being baptized acknowledges that it is only through this action of Jesus that they have forgiveness of sins. Thus is was that when Paul met twelve disciples of John the Baptist who had fled to Ephesus (in modern Turkey) to escape persecution, and they stated that they had been baptized by John, that Paul baptized them again in the name of Jesus (Acts 19:1-7). Baptist churches retain this “resurrection” baptism, which is why they don’t baptize individuals who are either too young to understand the meaning or who have not chosen to acknowledge Jesus death for their sins and resurrection (thus they don’t baptize infants).
Baptists also retain the original mode of baptism: immersion under water. Most every Christian denomination began by baptizing in this manner (for instance, note that the Catholic Catechism, article 1239, states that baptism is “performed in the most expressive way by triple immersion in the baptismal water” but that the church has for a long time instead poured water three times over a person’s head). Baptist churches have retained this biblical mode as practiced in mikvehs since Jesus day. As Jewish writer Maurice Lamb writes in Becoming a Jew, “In a sense, it is nothing short of the spiritual drama of death and rebirth cast onto the canvas of the convert’s soul. Submerging into waters over her head, she enters into an environment in which she cannot breathe and cannot live for more than moments. It is the death of all that has gone before. As she emerges from the gagging waters into the clear air, she begins to breathe anew and live anew.” In a Christian immersion, it pictures not simply the rebirth of the convert (as Jesus said you shall be born again), but the death and resurrection of Jesus Himself, as we are “buried with Christ by baptism unto death” that “we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).
When we baptize, we seek to move beyond ritual and repentance and baptize with a “resurrection” baptism. We use a type of “mikveh” (though not adhering to the many regulations added by Judaism) and immerse an individual into the waters and out again to picture the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus as a witness to others of the source of salvation.