Luke 3
15Everyone was expecting the Messiah to come soon, and they were eager to know whether John might be the Messiah. 16John answered their questions by saying, “I baptize with water; but someone is coming soon who is greater than I am—so much greater that I am not even worthy to be his slave. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 17He is ready to separate the chaff from the grain with his winnowing fork. Then he will clean up the threshing area, storing the grain in his barn but burning the chaff with never-ending fire.” 18John used many such warnings as he announced the Good News to the people.
19John also publicly criticized Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee, for marrying Herodias, his brother’s wife, and for many other wrongs he had done. 20So Herod put John in prison, adding this sin to his many others.
21One day when the crowds were being baptized, Jesus himself was baptized. As he was praying, the heavens opened, 22and the Holy Spirit descended on him in the form of a dove. And a voice from heaven said, “You are my beloved Son, and I am fully pleased with you.” (Luke 3:15-22, NLT)
Acts 1
1Dear Theophilus:
In my first book I told you about everything Jesus began to do and teach 2until the day he ascended to heaven after giving his chosen apostles further instructions from the Holy Spirit. 3During the forty days after his crucifixion, he appeared to the apostles from time to time and proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive. On these occasions he talked to them about the Kingdom of God.
4In one of these meetings as he was eating a meal with them, he told them, “Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you what he promised. Remember, I have told you about this before. 5John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 1:1-6, NLT)
The Daily DAVEotional
Is baptism necessary for salvation?
Some Christians will whole-heartedly say “YES”, while many Catholics might also agree.
I’ve engaged with others over this question many times before but was recently re-introduced to this debate from an unexpected source.
You may recall that around the beginning of June (2026) there was some controversy surrounding the government and the Mormon church. I’ve shared some details about that in my blog post “Should People Take the Mormon Challenge?” but the summary is that the Department of Defense, in an effort to simplify the job of military chaplains, decided to reduce the number of codes that identify the different religious affiliations that troop members might align with from over 200 down to about 30.
These codes included a number of different “Christian” affiliations, such as “Christian-Baptist” and “Christian-Presbyterian”. However, when identifying the Mormon church, the code was listed simply as “Latter Day Saint”.
This had a number of Mormons objecting that the government did not identify the Mormon church as a subset of Christianity.
In the ensuing online debate, I ended up engaging with a Mormon who was attempting to explain the legitimacy of the Mormon church to those who were suggesting that Mormons aren’t Christians.
One of the points this person made was that the Mormon church had re-established the priesthood, which Mormonism claims had been lost by the church for nearly 1800 years, and that this “restored” priesthood now allowed for legitimate baptisms. This is important, according to Mormons, because since baptism is necessary for salvation (in their view), the church needs a legitimate priesthood in order to administer baptisms and thus “save” people.
There’s a lot of Mormon theology that could be debated here but for this post, I want to look strictly at the assertion this Mormon made that baptism is necessary for salvation.
As luck would have it, that next day, two of the chapters in my daily Bible reading were the two chapters listed above, both of which talk about baptism.
An exhaustive discussion of whether baptism is necessary for salvation would likely take more room to unpack than just this blog post but these two passages do give us some insight into the issue.
First of all, if water baptism is necessary for salvation, one has to wonder why Jesus was baptized. Did Jesus need to be saved?
Clearly, Jesus didn’t need to be saved so there must be a different reason for His baptism. This alone tells us that baptism is not always associated with salvation. I wrote about this issue in my blog post “Why Was Jesus Baptized?”
A second observation from these passages is the fact that there are clearly different kinds of baptism mentioned.
Click here to see a A Comprehensive List of Blog Posts Based on Bible Passage Reference
Note that John the Baptist himself said that he baptized with water but someone would come after Him (Jesus) who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. John makes a point to say that this person who would come after him (Jesus) was greater than he was. This implies also that the baptism of Jesus was greater, better and more important than the baptism of John.
Jesus confirms this in the Acts passage when he reminds his disciples what they had been taught before, that John would baptize with water but He (Jesus) would baptize with the Holy Spirit.
Jesus then told them that this baptism with the Holy Spirit would take place “in just a few days”.
It’s clear from Scripture that Jesus was referencing the events of Pentecost in Acts 2, when the Holy Spirit descended upon these early believers and came to indwell them. It’s at this moment that the church was born.
So for the person who believes that water baptism is essential for salvation, the question they must ask is: why does Jesus emphasize His baptism of the Spirit over the water baptism that John the Baptist performed?
One thing is absolutely clear from these two passages: Jesus’ baptism is different from the baptism of John the Baptist. While John the Baptist baptized people with water, Jesus would baptize people with the Holy Spirit.
If we’re going to have any chance of resolving the question of whether baptism is necessary for salvation, we have to come to an understanding of what it means when Jesus said he would baptize with the Holy Spirit.
The problem that too many people experience when they’re faced with this issue is one of familiarity.
What I mean by that is that most people, when they hear the word “baptize”, immediately conjure up an image in their mind based on their own understanding of the word, which is primarily shaped by their own experience with baptism.
For most people, their only association with the word is that they’ve seen many people who have been baptized with water, either by sprinkling in the Catholic church and various Protestant traditions or by immersion in many evangelical traditions.
If your only exposure to the word “baptize” is seeing someone who has been baptized with water, then you naturally will assume that whenever you see the word, it must refer to being sprinkled or immersed with water.
But as these two texts above demonstrate, baptism is not always associated with water. Therefore, the idea that one must be sprinkled or immersed in water as a part of the salvation process is already in doubt. And since both John the Baptist and Jesus affirm that the baptism Jesus would bring was NOT water baptism, then there is virtually no reason to believe that being baptized with water is anything more than symbolism.
A more careful study of the word “baptize” reveals that this is exactly the case.
The more broad meaning of the word “baptize” is “to identify with.”
Hence, people who were baptized by John the Baptist were identifying with him. As a way to demonstrate publicly that they agreed with John’s preaching, they took the step to be baptized by him, thus identifying themselves with his core message of repentance. One might think of it as an initiation.
Jesus’ baptism is not one that is associated with water but the Holy Spirit. Being baptized in the Spirit means that the person now identifies with the Holy Spirit and thus is now a member of God’s family.
The apostles were all first identified with the Holy Spirit in Acts 2. They were “baptized” by the Spirit and “initiated” into the body of Christ, the family of God.
The question for us is when is the believer first associated with the Holy Spirit? Is it at the moment of being baptized with water, as Mormons and some Protestants claim? If that is the case, then we can affirm that water baptism is indeed necessary for salvation.
But Scripture tells us otherwise. Most notably, Paul, in Ephesians 1:13, says that the Holy Spirit is given to the Christian as a seal at the moment of belief, NOT at the moment of being immersed in water. I wrote about this aspect of the Holy Spirit in my blog post, “The Holy Spirit as a Seal.”
So then, if water baptism is not essential for savlation, what is the purpose? Why do it?
Like a lot of things in Scripture, water baptism is a physical representation of a spiritual reality.
In Scripture, water is often a symbol of the Holy Spirit. In John 7:37-39, Jesus addresses the crowds and tells them that if anyone is thirsty, they should come to Him and drink and streams of living water would flow from within them. The text follows by explaining that Jesus was talking about the Holy Spirit.
So the act of being baptized with water is simply an act whereby the believer is attesting to the fact that they now identify with Jesus and are a part of His family. The qualifying characteristic of being a part of the family of Jesus is that you must have the Holy Spirit. The believer, in being baptized with water, is making a declaration of faith – that they now have placed their trust in Christ and as a result, they have received the promised Holy Spirit and have been placed into the family of God.
So let’s circle back to our original question: “Is baptism necessary for salvation?” The answer is that it depends on what you’re referring to when you talk about baptism.
If you are asking whether a person needs to be baptized with water in order to be saved, the answer from Scripture is clearly NO.
But if you understand baptism to be an identification and union with the Holy Spirit, then the answer is YES, you absolutely must be SPIRITUALLY baptized in order to be saved, for one cannot be saved unless they become a member of the family of God and the prerequisite to becoming a member of the family of God IS receiving the Holy Spirit, which, according to Scripture, occurs the moment a person puts their faith in Jesus.
Did you enjoy this post? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Feel free to like, leave a comment below, and share it with your friends or on social media if you found it helpful or interesting. Your support keeps the conversation going!
Reflection
What has been your experience with baptism? What comes to your mind when you hear the word “baptize”?
What do you think is the purpose of baptism? If you have been baptized, how did you interpret that experience in terms of its meaning?
Would you agree that Jesus’ baptism is greater than and more important than John’s baptism?
If Jesus’ baptism is more important that John’s baptism, then they must be different in some way. What do you think are the differences between these two kinds of baptism?
If the purpose of water baptism is to save people, then why do you think Jesus was baptized by John? Clearly Jesus didn’t need to be saved.
Photo by Paul Ndayambaje: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-man-in-a-blue-dress-is-in-the-water-28181227/
The Lowedown 