Baptism At Bridgeport

This past Sunday I had the privilege of helping baptize eight people at Bridgeport Lake. During the 33 years that I have been a pastor in Sidney, I have been blessed to help baptize over three hundred people at Bridgeport. It is always a wonderful experience for those being baptized and for those witnessing it.

However, before we baptize children, young people, or adults, we always make sure they first understand the significance of this event in their lives. We focus on three basic baptism truths which we believe the Scriptures teach:

First – we do it in obedience to the command of Jesus just before he returned to heaven. In the Gospel of Matthew, Christ said to his followers: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

And that is what those first followers of Jesus did. In the New Testament book of Acts we read about the very first baptism service which included approximately three thousand people who had just accepted the message about Christ. So whenever someone becomes his follower in our day, we encourage them to be baptized, too. We do it because Jesus said we should.

Second – when people are baptized, it is a public statement of their faith in Jesus Christ. It is a somewhat formal profession of their personal faith in Christ whom they have received as their Savior. It is their public announcement that they are Christians, that they are followers of Christ, they are his people, God’s children, for eternity. It is also a statement that they identify with and are members of Jesus’ one and only Church, to which all of his people belong.

And third – baptism is like a visual aid which illustrates how believers personally identify with the death and resurrection of Christ. Going under the water and coming up again is a picture of the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord. It is also a reminder that we have new life because of our faith in him. Spiritually speaking, our old life is dead and buried, and we are new people in Christ. It’s like the Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:17 - “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

So I thank God for people who obey Jesus by being baptized. I thank the Lord for those men, women, boys and girls who make that public profession of their faith in Christ. I thank him for the new life we can all have because of his death, burial and resurrection, which baptism symbolizes. I thank God for saving me from my sin and giving me eternal life through my faith in Jesus Christ.