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NASB | Mark 16:16 "He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Mark 16:16 "He who has believed [in Me] and has been baptized will be saved [from the penalty of God's wrath and judgment]; but he who has not believed will be condemned. |
Subject: Isn't baptism needed for salvation? |
Bible Note: CDBJ, thanks for your reply. I'm trying to understand the baptism-salvation debate, and Jesus' statement to the thief on the cross (Luke 23:40-43) is one of many I'm weighing in the balance. Here are several more; each is central to my original question to you. In John 3.3 Jesus tells Nicodemus that “…unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God”, and continues in v5 with “…unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” What gets me is that immediately “After these things Jesus and His disciples came into the land of Judea, and there He was spending time with them and baptizing.” (v22). By proximity, context and the fact that our Lord is Himself immersing others as He Himself was immersed, these verses magnify the importance of baptism as an act which, if not necessary for, is at least central to our salvation. Also, in an effort to understand Jesus’ “born again” teaching, notice that Nicodemus asks how a man can “enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born…", the womb being, in essence, an earthly water from which we are born, further linking and amplifying the material necessity of water to our life in both the earthly and spiritual sense. Also, in Matthew 3.16 we read, “After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him.” Here Jesus receives the Holy Spirit post-immersion, “by grace through faith” to be sure, but through a deliberate act of water baptism. Could the act baptism be any less essential in view of these events? I really wonder. After these things I don’t see how “has been baptized” of Mark 16.16 can be divorced from its literal sense. Colin |