Picture two people being baptized on the same Sunday, one in a Baptist church and one here at Christians In Honesdale. Both go all the way under the water. Both are believers who chose it for themselves. The difference is what each one is taught is happening. In most Baptist churches, you’d hear that a person is saved the instant he believes, with baptism following later as an outward sign. We teach that baptism is where God forgives a believer’s sins and joins him to Christ. Most of the other differences grow from that one.
Same Water, Different Meaning
It comes down to timing. When is a person saved, and what is baptism for?
We believe the New Testament answers it plainly. On the day of Pentecost the crowd asked what to do, and Peter told them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).
A note on the Greek: “For the forgiveness of your sins” is eis aphesin tōn hamartiōn hymōn. Some Baptist scholars have argued that eis here means “because of,” so that people were baptized because they had already been forgiven. But Jesus used the same phrase at the Last Supper: “this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28, eis aphesin hamartiōn). Nobody reads that as blood shed because sins were already forgiven. The phrase points forward, toward forgiveness, in both places.
Paul’s own conversion shows the same order. On the road to Damascus he saw the risen Jesus and called Him “Lord,” and then spent three days blind, fasting, and praying (Acts 9:9, 11; 22:10). By most Baptist definitions he was saved on that road. Yet when Ananias came, he said, “And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name” (Acts 22:16).
A note on the Greek: “Be baptized” (baptisai) and “wash away” (apolousai) are both aorist middle imperatives, joined by “and.” The middle voice gives the sense “get yourself baptized, and have your sins washed away.” After three days of believing and praying, Saul’s sins were still there to be washed.
Years later Peter wrote, “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 3:21). Paul said we are “baptized into Christ Jesus” and “baptized into his death” (Romans 6:3-4; Galatians 3:27). That’s why, to us, baptism isn’t a picture of a salvation someone already has. It’s the moment God said He’d wash a believer’s sins away.
A note on the Greek: Peter’s sentence is ho kai hymas antitypon nyn sōzei baptisma, “which also, as an antitype, now saves you: baptism.” The verb sōzei is present tense: baptism saves. The phrase Baptists often point to, “not as a removal of dirt,” doesn’t cancel that. It says what kind of washing this is. Baptism isn’t a bath for the body. It’s an eperōtēma, an appeal or pledge to God, and its power comes “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” not from the water.
Most Baptist churches see it the other way around. A person is saved at the point of faith, often while praying to receive Christ, and later he’s baptized to show publicly what already happened. The Southern Baptist confession, the Baptist Faith and Message, defines baptism as “the immersion of a believer in water” and describes it as an act of obedience that symbolizes the believer’s faith and new life. In that view the water pictures forgiveness. It doesn’t bring it.
Where Baptists and We Stand Together
We don’t want to leave you thinking it’s all disagreement. Baptists and Christians In Honesdale both take the Bible seriously and believe Jesus is the crucified and risen Son of God. We both immerse, and we both baptize believers rather than infants. We both want to follow the New Testament. Plenty of friendships cross this line, and naming a difference honestly isn’t the same as doubting anybody’s sincerity.
No two Baptist churches are exactly alike. Many aren’t Southern Baptist at all, and the confession quoted above binds none of them. Independent congregations like ours differ from one another too. Nobody sits above us to set a position for a whole group of churches, so we can only tell you what we believe and practice in Honesdale.
Why We Just Call Ourselves Christians
Baptist churches value local independence too, though most of them work together in conventions and associations and hold to written confessions of faith. We don’t belong to any denomination, convention, or association, and we don’t keep a doctrinal manual. Our congregation governs itself under Christ as its only head, with the Bible alone as our rule (Ephesians 1:22-23; 2 Timothy 3:16-17).
Names work the same way for us. We try to wear only what the New Testament calls God’s people. Near the end of Romans, Paul wrote, “All the churches of Christ greet you” (Romans 16:16). Paul wasn’t handing out a name to paint on a sign there; he was saying whose those congregations were. The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch (Acts 11:26), and Peter used the same word for believers (1 Peter 4:16). So that’s the name we use. Simply Christians.
Grace Does the Saving
A fair Baptist question comes next: doesn’t this turn baptism into a work that earns salvation? No. We believe people are saved by God’s grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Think about what baptism actually looks like, because the picture answers the objection better than an argument can: you stand in the water, someone else lowers you under and lifts you back up, and what you bring is faith that God will keep His word. Nobody boasts about that. A believer who’s baptized isn’t paying for anything. He’s receiving a gift, at the time and place God promised to give it.
Scripture describes it that way. Paul says that in baptism you were “raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God” (Colossians 2:12). The working is God’s, and the faith is yours. The same Paul who wrote that God saved us “not because of works done by us in righteousness” says, in the same sentence, that He saved us “by the washing of regeneration” (Titus 3:5). Paul didn’t count that washing as a work.
A note on the Hebrew: When the prophet Elisha told the Syrian general Naaman to “wash in the Jordan seven times” to be healed of leprosy, Naaman was insulted. The rivers of Damascus were better water (2 Kings 5:10-12). When he finally obeyed, “he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God” (5:14). The Hebrew verb is ṭāḇal, “to dip,” and the Greek Old Testament translates it ebaptisato, “he baptized himself.” Naaman didn’t earn his cleansing, and the Jordan didn’t heal anybody. God healed him when his faith did what God said, kiḏḇar ʾîš hāʾĕlōhîm, “according to the word.”
Someone will ask about the thief on the cross, who was promised paradise without being baptized (Luke 23:43). While Jesus was on earth, He had authority to forgive anyone He chose (Mark 2:5, 10). The command to baptize all nations came after His resurrection (Matthew 28:18-20), and baptism “into his death” (Romans 6:3) wasn’t possible before that death happened. A will takes effect only after the one who made it dies (Hebrews 9:16-17). The thief died under the old arrangement. We live under the new one.
Can Someone Who’s Saved Be Lost?
You’ll hear “once saved, always saved” in many Baptist churches, the belief that a genuine Christian can’t ever end up lost. The Baptist Faith and Message puts it this way: believers “will never fall away from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end.” We can’t square that with the New Testament. A Christian who turns his back on God can be lost, and that’s why the apostles kept warning believers to stay faithful. Paul wrote to Christians in Galatia, “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace” (Galatians 5:4). Nobody falls from grace he was never standing in.
Hebrews says the same thing to believers: “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God…. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end” (Hebrews 3:12, 14; see also 1 Corinthians 10:12; 2 Peter 2:20-21).
A note on the Greek: “Severed from Christ” in Galatians 5:4 is katērgēthēte apo Christou. It comes from katargeō, “to nullify” or “to cut off,” so the connection to Christ has been made void. “Fallen away” is exepesate, from ekpiptō, “to fall out of” something. In Hebrews 3:12, “fall away” is apostēnai, the root of our word “apostasy.” Paul calls these readers “brothers” (Galatians 4:28, 31) and writes, “Christ has set us free” (5:1). He writes to them as Christians, and warns them as Christians.
We don’t say that to shake anyone’s confidence. We say it because God’s warnings deserve to be taken as seriously as His promises. A Christian who keeps walking in the light has every reason for confidence (1 John 1:7; 5:13).
What You’d Notice on a Sunday Morning
If you grew up Baptist and visited us, a few things would stand out before anyone said a word about baptism. We take the Lord’s Supper every Sunday, because the first Christians gathered “on the first day of the week… to break bread” (Acts 20:7). Many Baptist churches observe it monthly or quarterly. We sing without instruments, the way the New Testament describes Christians “singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart” (Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16). You won’t see a choir, a praise band, or an organ.
Leadership works differently too. Most Baptist churches have a senior pastor who leads the congregation. In the New Testament, “pastors” (shepherds), “elders,” and “overseers” are three names for the same role, and the goal was a group of them in each congregation, never one man over the rest (Acts 14:23; 20:17, 28; 1 Peter 5:1-2).
That role also comes with qualifications, and Paul spells them out carefully (1 Timothy 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9). We’re a small congregation of fewer than twenty members, and right now none of our men meet those qualifications. So we don’t have elders yet, and we won’t appoint anyone just to fill the title. That’s not unusual in the New Testament. Paul and Barnabas planted churches and came back later to appoint elders (Acts 14:21-23). Paul left Titus in Crete to “put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town” (Titus 1:5), so those congregations already existed and met before they had elders. Until the Lord raises up qualified men among us, we work together as a congregation under Christ and His word. We’re also teaching toward the day we can appoint elders the way Scripture describes.
Five Passages to Read Tonight
Don’t decide this by which tradition feels familiar. Decide it by the text. Open Acts 2, then Acts 22:16, then Romans 6:3-4, then Colossians 2:11-13, then 1 Peter 3:21, and ask two things: what does the New Testament say baptism is for, and when is a person saved? Luke called the Bereans noble for doing just that, “examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11).
Take your time with it. Compare what you read against what you’ve been taught, and follow the text wherever it goes.
Talk It Over With Us
If you were raised Baptist and this has you thinking, we’d be glad to sit down and read these passages with you, one question at a time and in no hurry. You can book a Bible study, read who we are, or reach out with a question.
When we meet:
Head for 416 Main Street, Suite D, Honesdale, PA 18431. Our door and the parking are both at the rear of the building.