why i am a dippest

This Sunday I will be teaching out of John 1:19-34, a study of John the Baptizer. There's an interesting prophet with a short career! Of course, a guy wearing animal skins, existing on a diet of bugs and sugar while screaming the need for repentance and baptism probably will not have a long life expectancy.

So let's ask the question, "What did his baptism mean?"

The issue of how to baptize has been a matter of debate for hundreds of years. One thing not debated, however, is the meaning of the word “baptizo”. All reputable biblical scholars agree that the word means “to immerse under”, or “to dip under” as a cloth maker would completely submerge cloth into dye. John the Baptist didn't sprinkle. You can just tell from his personality that the guy was a full submerger. He didn't drag people to the Jordan just to give em a little dab.

T.J. Conant states simply, “The Greek word ‘baptizein’ expresses nothing more than the act of immersion, the religious significance of which is derived from the circumstances connected with it”. W.A. Jarrel offers: “Greek literature shows that ‘baptizo‘ is used to indicate being put within and under, whatever the mode by which it is done—whether by an overflowing flood, by a sinking ship, or otherwise. But, whatever the mode by which the immersion is accomplished—always an immersion”. Interestingly, Wesley, Luther, Calvin all agreed on this meaning, in spite of the teachings of the churches they represent.

Another interesting side note of history is that the word “baptize” was not an English word until the 17th century. The translators of the King James Bible wanted to use the word “dip” when it came to translate the word “bapitzo”. But King James himself intervened and demanded that they create a new word, making the point that the word “dip” was not distinguished enough. My dad used to tell me, “we Baptists have a debt of gratitude to pay old King James, if it had not been for him, we would be called ‘dippests’”.

Some do not realize that the practice began long before John the Baptist. To understand this history one needs to trace Christianity to it's Jewish roots, as many of the early church practices came directly from Hebrew tradition. The early church sprang out of the culture of the synagogue just as the stage was set for the coming of the Messiah by the witness of the Old Testament prophets, the Davidic Kingdom and the teachings of the Torah. The early Hebraic traditions, in other words, were precursers to the worship and practices of the church.

David Dockery points out that “the noun form, baptisma, is not found outside the New Testament and is only found in the singular. The term implies not only the external act of baptism, but also denotes the inner meaning and force of the act” God is more interested in what is going on on the inside of a man than he is by what is happening on the outside. Baptism, a physical act, is a outward symbol of an inner reality.

So Baptism did not originate with John, it was practiced for centuries by the Jew in ritual cleansing. William Lumpkin states: “Some of the antecedents of the rite can be found in the Jewish religion. All of the Oriental religions seemed to have used ablutions, but in Judaism, this washing and dipping in water occupied an important place”. The most familiar and historically significant use of this practice was in “proselyte baptism.”

Lumpkin notes, “Before the Christian era, the Jews…employed solitary lustrations (purifications) to mark individual transition from one state of life to another, from pagan to true worship”.

So it is important to remember that in Jewish history, especially in the first century, it would have been very common for people who had experienced a conversion and repentance to be completely immersed in a ritual procelyte baptism.

So how is it that total immersion in Baptism soon became confused with the practice of sprinkling? The likely answer is that the further the church got from it’s Jewish roots, the less inclined the church was to remember her history embedded in Jewish tradition. Referring to the Church’s Jewish origin, G. R. Beasley-Murray explains, “So also ritual cleansing in water was practiced from immemorial antiquity, and if their history has been largely forgotten, their associations have shown an extraordinary tenacity for life”.

Reverand William Adams in an article for “Bridges for Peace” points out that even contemporary orthodox are familiar with the practice:

“Some very Orthodox men still follow an old practice of immersing themselves in a mikva [ritual immersion or place of ritual immersion] prior to the Sabbath and holidays. Scribes engaged in writing a Torah [Genesis–Deuteronomy] scroll immerse themselves before beginning the process. One must only go to Leviticus and Numbers to find ritual cleansing by immersion, which the most Torah–observant Jews practice to this day."

Dockery puts it this way, “The purification rituals of Judaism stressed cleanliness and worthiness to serve the Lord (Leviticus 13–17; Numbers 19)”. The New Testament writers, in Mark 7:1–5 and Hebrews 9:19–20, referenced the importance of this cleansing in the temple sacrifices.

Jesus asked the elders and leaders in the temple where John the Baptists baptism came from (cf. Matthew 21:23–27), was it from man or was it from God? Jesus did not give his opinion, but left it up to the hearer. Where did it come from? Of course, the answer is that it was in God’s plan. But how did that plan come about in Jewish history? The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls reveals that there was community at Qumran, connected to the Essene sect of Judaism, that practiced a form of baptism for ritual cleansing outside of the temple courts. You can see the ruins of the those ritual baths to this very day. There is much speculation that John came from this group or was at least heavily influenced by them.

A connection to the Essene, who believed that Herod's temple was currupt, would be especially ironic for John, given his father Zecharia's association with the Temple (Luke 1). But what is certain is that God led John, the last Old Testament prophet, into the wilderness to demand repentance and to baptize people in preperation for the coming of Christ. People came from miles around to hear the prophet and to be bapitzed by him. It was to the baptizer's great surprise, therefore, that Jesus Himself stepped forward for this baptism.

John's baptism of Jesus sealed the practice into the hearts of his followers, and established the ordinance of the church. A practice that had a rich heritage within ancient Judaism, became in that moment the place where heaven and earth joined together and the Trinity was revealed; and Jesus, submitting Himself to baptism as He would submit Himself to death began His public ministry culminating in the cross.

Suffice it to say that when the early church emerged at Pentecost and the early disciples called on the new believers to be baptized, the practice was already familiar to all of those participating. Marvin Wilson explains a proselyte’s self-baptism: “The [naked] candidate…immersed himself in the waters, symbolically cleansing himself from the antecedent defilement. His past behind him, he emerged to take his stand with the people of Israel”. It was not an unusual leap for the early Jewish follower of Jesus to identify with the death, burial and resurrection and to the cleansing of their sin to the ritual baptism by immersion, taken from Jewish history and later modeled by John the Baptist and Jesus Himself.

It is not hard to envision that first baptism, since the mikvot (ritual pools) stood close by at the entrance to the temple mount. The difference in this new form of cleansing, however, was that the disciples entered the pools with them, baptizing them into the new Kingdom in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. William Lumpkin observed that “immersion was the proper mode of baptism the Church never doubted in the first thousand years and more of its history.”

This is why we Dippests can say with confidence that immersion is the most historically accurate and God honoring mode of baptism, and stands its ground in biblical study and Jewish heritage as the practice that best proclaims the transforming and cleansing power of the Redeemer as a symbol of His death, burial and resurrection; a covenant sign of a new reality, and entry into a new life as the first step of obedience and discipleship.