UNTO WHAT WERE YOU BAPTIZED?

This is a very insightful explanation of Acts 19.1f - ed.

Christian baptism is not an unmeaning ordinance to be mechanically performed simply as a religious right without signification. But when properly understood, it is one of the most expressive and significant ordinances which God has enjoined upon those who are quickened by His Spirit and made to believe in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. As a command of Christ, binding on all who love Him, it has great importance. Like all the commandments of the King of Saints, its importance is to be estimated by the high authority of him by whom it is enjoined.

It is also immensely important as a divinely authorized emblem of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. End of the regeneration of his body, the Church, from a legal to a gospel state, from guilt, condemnation, and death to righteousness and justification and resurrection. Life through him that has destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

It also emblematically Represents the personal experience of all the Saints. As slain by the law, and quickened from the dead, and raised up in a newness of life, in their spiritual birth. And it very strikingly represents the death and burial of the saints and their final resurrection in the image of Christ. When these mortals shall put on immortality, death shall be swallowed up in victory.

It has a preeminence and a priority among all sacred commands of Christ. Enjoined on all who loved him, as the first act of obedience required of them, after having passed from death unto life. It being the act of publicly acknowledging their allegiance to Christ as their king by taking his yoke and becoming his disciple.

But our design at this time is to call attention to the transition. By baptism from one state, connection, or condition to another. Which is always implied.

Baptism has been regarded by some, and even by some of our brethren, as but an act of obedience, which, if only administered and received by immersion in water in due form in ceremony, matters not by whom it is administered, or to what the subject of it becomes allied by it. And many have been involved in great perplexity by having been immersed by one unauthorized to administer Christian baptism, fearing that to discard what they had done, even when under the wrong impression, and although this satisfied with an irregular baptism. Such as they would not, with their present light and understanding, submit to, yet having in their ignorance, once opposed it. Good and sufficient. Now feel a fear to cast it off by being regularly baptized according to the law of Christ. The interrogative at the head of this article, suggesting implies that transit by baptism from one place, state, or condition to another. As from the law to the Gospel, from the world to the Church, or from the Jewish to the Christian religion. Goes to disciples whom Paul met at emphasis who had not heard of the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Or of the descent of the Holy Ghost, which Christ had promised to send after his ascension, and of which John had predicted, with which the Saints would be baptized by him who was to come after John. Yet they had been baptized in their John's baptism. Their baptism under John's baptism implied a passing from some other state or condition. As it coming unto necessarily implies a coming from something else, and that transition was affected by baptism, what were they before John baptized them? They were Jews brought up under the law, who had been looking for salvation by the works of the Law. But God had prepared them for the coming and ministry of John by his quickening power and grace and had given them faith and repentance, the latter qualifying them to turn away from Judaism and to abandon all their former hopes of justification by their legal works. To abandon their reliance upon a fleshly relationship to Abraham, and to bring forth such fruits as John could recognize as meat for repentance, and by a profession of faith in him that was soon to come, they were baptized by John with the baptism of repentance. 

That is, with the baptism of transit, of change, of separation from their former state and condition by that baptism which pledged them to believe in him which should come after John and to look to him and not to Moses for salvation. As John's baptism was to make ready a people prepared for the Lord, Luke 1.17. In Judah, Jerusalem, and in all the regions round about Jordan, there was a people prepared for the Lord. Prepared, as we understand, by the quickening power of God, for the reception of the Lord Jesus Christ, who was about to be revealed to them as their Prince and Savior. This people were prepared for him according to his own declaration Psalm 46.6. As expanded by an inspired Witness Hebrews 10.5. "Wherefore, when he comes into the world, he says, sacrifice and offering. You would not but a body hast thou prepared for me." Here we are unmistakably being formed. When, by whom, and for what purpose this people whom John came to make ready was prepared for our Lord when He comes into the world was the time. This answers to the time of the coming of John the Baptist in the Spirit And power of Elijah. As it is written in the prophets, behold, "I send my messenger before your face, which shall prepare the way before you." As Christ was to be manifested in a legal identity with His people, He the head and they His body, it was expedient that both head and body should be simultaneously prepared. He the head, by being made flesh, made of a woman, made under the law, made a little lower than the angels for the sufferings of death, by taking on him the seed of Abraham, that he might bear their sins in his own body on the tree, bear their grief, carry their sorrow, die their death, and meet and cancel every demand of law and justice. In such identity of head and body that their sins could be laid on him, and his righteousness imputed to them. These people were prepared, having their hearts turned by the Spirit and power of Elijah, and being thus prepared, John's ministry and baptism were to make them ready. The baptism of repentance was to signify a change from the works of the law as a ground of hope for acceptance with God, to the righteousness of faith in Christ, confessing their sins by relinquishing all hope of justification by the deeds of the law, and by professing faith in Him who was to come suddenly to his temple. On this profession of faith in Christ, attested by fruits, meet for repentance, they were baptized by John in the river Jordan for the remission of their sins. Not that baptism in water, even administered by John, could wash away their sins, or that their sins were remitted for and in consideration of their being baptized. But baptism in a figure showed their death by and to the law, and their resurrection and regeneration from a legal state to participate in the resurrection, righteousness, and immortality to be brought to light by the resurrection of the body with the head of the Church, when he should be delivered up for their offenses and raised from the dead for their justification. Their baptism was therefore from law to gospel, from Moses to Christ, from dead works to serve the living God.

Now we appeal to those who contend that immersion is a valid baptism by whomsoever it may be administered. Was it a matter of indifference whether those were baptized by John who came from God with authority to preach and baptize, or by Nicodemus or some other Jewish rabbi? A Jewish official could only baptize unto Judaism or legalism. A Catholic priest or Bishop could only baptize to Catholicism. Even were they to administer the ordinance in mode and form as we do.

 John's baptism, without prior and preparatory to the ascension of Christ to his mediatorial throne in the organization of his Kingdom, was nevertheless under the gospel dispensation. And at the beginning of it. Quote The beginning of the gospel Mark 1.1. Was the time of John's ministry. The Law and the prophets were until John. Since that time the Kingdom of Christ has preached. Luke. 16.16. His baptism, therefore, is a gospel ordinance or an ordinance. Under the gospel dispensation. Still, it differed in one or two particulars from that embrace to the Apostles Commission. First, it was in anticipation of what it figuratively signified and setting forth to death, burial, and resurrection of Christ and the redemption of the Church. While baptism now sets forth the same things as already accomplished. But the more important difference is that John was sent from God with divine authority to preach and baptize while Christ was in the flesh and under the law with his people. Whereas the Apostles, after his resurrection and ascension, and after they were endued with power from above, baptized in the name, that is, by the authority and special command of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, in obedience to the now risen, crowned, and reigning king. Into whose hands as the one mediator all the power of heaven and earth is vested. Now therefore, to constitute valid baptism, it must be administered by one duly recognized by the Church of Christ, as commissioned to preach and baptize by the special command of our Lord Jesus Christ. To recognize baptism administered by anyone who, at the time of administering it is not in the fellowship of the Church and the Kingdom of Christ is a virtual rejection of the laws of Christ.

"Unto what, then were you baptized?" From what and to what were you baptized? "Know, you not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death, Romans 6.3. Baptism into Jesus is into his body, the Church. But what does baptism avail us if it does not separate us from our former standing and religious connection and identifies with the Church of Christ?

The first baptism administered in obedience to the command of the risen and ascended Savior after His coronation was by the Apostles on the day of Pentecost. Those on whom the Spirit had descended, who were pricked in the heart, and made to cry out under deep conviction and in contrition of spirit, "What shall we do?" When the Way of Life installation was preached to them by Peter, and set home to their hearts by the Holy Ghost when they had gladly received the Word, were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus "And they continued steadfastly in the apostle's doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of bread and in prayers," Acts 2.42. Thus their baptism plainly set forth a change from death to life, from sin to holiness, from law to gospel, from Jewish traditions to the apostle's doctrine, from a deep sense of guilt and despair to a perfect acquittal through the remission of their sins and to a good hope through grace. "For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ" Galatians 3.27.

Even those who are born of God are required to be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus as an indispensable prerequisite to the fellowship of the Apostles. For faith in and obedience to Christ are the characteristic marks by which the apostles in their Commission were authorized to recognize the saved people of our Lord. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." Baptism is the ordinance by which they who love the Lord and gladly received His Word, turned their back upon the world, and enter the organized Kingdom of Christ. "Blessed are they that do His commandments That they may have right to the tree of life and may enter into the gates into the city. For without our dogs and sorcerers, and poor mongers and murderers, and idolaters, and whatsoever loveth and makes a lie. I, Jesus, have sent my Angel to testify unto youth these things in the churches." Revelations 22.14-16.

Those who are baptized into the Body or Church, which is the body of Christ, have thereby put on Christ. Are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God. No more associated with dogs and sorcerers, idolaters, murderers, or lovers and vendors of lies. For they are sanctified or set apart from the world and from Antichrist, and have a right to all the privileges of the Church of God. The baptism of the children of Israel unto Moses in the cloud as in the sea did not lessen the necessity of their being baptized onto and into the name of the body of Jesus Christ. When called to be his disciples, any more than there, having once been married unto Moses or the law, could wed them to Christ, when they had become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that they should be married to him who has risen from the dead, that they should bring forth fruits unto God. Romans 7.4.

In conclusion. Permit us to inquire of those who have been immersed by some irregular administrator and into the fellowship of some religious organization, which at the time they honestly believed to be the Church of Christ, but with whom they cannot now walk in fellowship, who feel perplexed and sorely embarrassed in deciding whether such irregular baptism is valid or not. "Unto what, then, were you baptized?" Did it baptize you into the body, the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ? Or, did it introduce and join you to organizations over which Christ does not preside, over which He has not honored as to head over all things? If you and your mistaken zeal or misguided love have done what with your present light, you would not do now, should that deter you from doing what is clearly right? If your baptism baptizes you into the Body or Church of Christ, it cannot be annulled. You have no right to leave the connection you are baptized into if it is truly the Church of Christ, the city of God, for all that is not embraced in her sacred precincts, is classified with dogs and sorcerers. But if your baptism did not bring you into the Church of Christ, you are still in the world, or in the Antichrist and among the dogs and other characters mentioned in Revelation 22.14. And the word of admonition for you is found in II Corinthians 517-18. "Therefore come out, and be separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you, and will be a father unto you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, said the Lord Almighty."