Baptism of Repentance
It was a custom in Israel to be baptized by being fully submerged under the water, as a sign of repentance: It was a physical demonstration stating that you were turning from sin.
In those days there appeared John the Baptist, preaching in the Wilderness (Desert) of Judea And saying, “Repent (think differently; change your mind, regretting your sins and changing your conduct), for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
This is he who was mentioned by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness (shouting in the desert), Prepare the road for the Lord, make His highways straight (level, direct).” This same John’s garments were made of camel’s hair, and he wore a leather girdle about his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the country round about the Jordan went out to him; And they were baptized in the Jordan by him, confessing their sins. (Matthew 3:1-5 AMPC)
A necessary part of baptism is confessing that you have sinned. This is how Jesus’ cousin John, got the name John the Baptist because he would baptize those who were confessing and turning from their sin. The appearance of John was prophesied and necessary to prepare God’s people for the appearance of Jesus because Israel’s leaders had stopped teaching God’s ways and the people were in sin. God had a solution. He sent someone to get His children ready for the prophesied Messiah, Jesus: John the Baptist.
Israel had a lamb they sacrifice every year for sin and they didn’t stop being God’s people because of their sin. We have Jesus as our Lamb, and we don’t stop being God’s children because of sin. We are still Christians, even if we have been taught wrong and/or are still committing sin. However, many Christians need to be taught about sin and the need to turn from it because it separates us from Jesus and keeps us from receiving all that He has for us.
And I did not know Him and did not recognize Him [myself]; but it is in order that He should be made manifest and be revealed to Israel [be brought out where we can see Him] that I came baptizing in (with) water. (John 1:31 AMPC)
John was baptizing people so that they could recognize and accept Jesus. The baptism of repentance cleared away the sin that would keep them from turning to Jesus. Even though Jesus is no longer walking on this Earth, He still wishes to make Himself known to you. John confirmed this when he received a prophecy from Jesus about His second coming.
The Laodicea church is “lukewarm:” not on fire for God, but not completely cold either. Jesus tells them that if they will turn from this and learn God’s ways, apply them and recover their zeal for the Lord there are fabulous benefits.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:20 ESV)
In ancient Israel, a meal was a time of fellowship and of sharing. Do you desire Jesus to be as real to you as if He is joining you for dinner? Then an action is required. A baptism of repentance may be necessary. This applies to all God’s children, not only the Laodicea type of Christian.
Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. (John 17:24 ESV)
In the longest prayer Jesus prayed, He asked God to let us be where He is to see His glory. This is a face-to-face visit with Jesus where He is: in Heaven. To learn more about that, see the class “The Secret Place” in the Narrow Path: The Secret Place.
After becoming a Christian, another reason for a baptism of repentance is to make a declaration that you are turning from sin. Confessing individual sin or a general acknowledgment that you know you have sinned is up to you. The prophet Isaiah showed us separation from God is a consequence of sin:
Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened at all, that it cannot save, nor His ear dull with deafness, that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue mutters wickedness. None sues or calls in righteousness [but for the sake of doing injury to others—to take some undue advantage]; no one goes to law honestly and pleads [his case] in truth; they trust in emptiness, worthlessness and futility, and speaking lies! They conceive mischief and bring forth evil!
Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; desolation and destruction are in their paths and highways. The way of peace they know not, and there is no justice or right in their goings. They have made them into crooked paths; whoever goes in them does not know peace. Therefore are justice and right far from us, and righteousness and salvation do not overtake us. We expectantly wait for light, but [only] see darkness; for brightness, but we walk in obscurity and gloom. (Isaiah 59:1-4,7-9 AMPC)
God is all-powerful, and nothing is to hard for Him. The reason our prayers are not answered is not because God is unable to help us. Continued and repeated sin keeps God from hearing our prayers and is seems like they go unanswered. Jesus is Light and our sin can keep us from seeing and connecting with Him and all that He has for us. The New Testament confirms this:
And I will do [I Myself will grant] whatever you ask in My Name [as presenting all that I Am], so that the Father may be glorified and extolled in (through) the Son. [Yes] I will grant [I Myself will do for you] whatever you shall ask in My Name [as presenting all that I Am]. If you [really] love Me, you will keep (obey) My commands. (John 14:13-15 AMPC)
To receive from Jesus we must love Him. Loving Him means trying our best to obey Him. If we purposefully continue in behavior we know He has told us not to do, then we are not really submitted to Him. In fact, in biblical terms, to purposefully disobey God and Jesus is to hate Them.
The [basis of the] judgment (indictment, the test by which men are judged, the ground for the sentence) lies in this: the Light has come into the world, and people have loved the darkness rather than and more than the Light, for their works (deeds) were evil. For every wrongdoer hates (loathes, detests) the Light, and will not come out into the Light but shrinks from it, lest his works (his deeds, his activities, his conduct) be exposed and reproved. But he who practices truth [who does what is right] comes out into the Light; so that his works may be plainly shown to be what they are—wrought with God [divinely prompted, done with God’s help, in dependence upon Him]. (John 3:19-21 AMPC)
As we learn God’s ways, we should practice them. When we continue in sin, we are agreeing with God’s enemy, Satan. This is why continued disobedience is considered hating Him. When we side with God’s enemy, we should not expect help from Him. If we are willing to turn from our sin (repent), then there are some awesome benefits:
The person who has My commands and keeps them is the one who [really] loves Me; and whoever [really] loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I [too] will love him and will show (reveal, manifest) Myself to him. [I will let Myself be clearly seen by him and make Myself real to him.]
Judas, not Iscariot, asked Him, “Lord, how is it that You will reveal Yourself [make Yourself real] to us and not to the world?”
Jesus answered, “If a person [really] loves Me, he will keep My word [obey My teaching]; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home (abode, special dwelling place) with him. Anyone who does not [really] love Me does not observe and obey My teaching. And the teaching which you hear and heed is not Mine, but [comes] from the Father Who sent Me.” (John 14:21-24 AMPC)
This is one of the ways we know if we need a baptism of repentance: If the Father and Son have not some and made Their home with you, revealing Themselves fully to you. You can learn about the different ways God will do this in the free book: The Secret Place: How to Visit Jesus.
Paul makes it clear that we are expected to learn and apply the basic principles of God’s ways before we can receive some of the benefits of our salvation.
Concerning this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain since you have become dull and sluggish in [your spiritual] hearing and disinclined to listen. For though by this time you ought to be teachers [because of the time you have had to learn these truths], you actually need someone to teach you again the elementary principles of God’s word [from the beginning], and you have come to be continually in need of milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is [doctrinally inexperienced and] unskilled in the word of righteousness since he is a spiritual infant. (Hebrews 5:11-13 ESV)
We are considered “spiritual infants” until we spend the time and energy learning and applying God’s principles to our lives. Also consider, if we are not willing to learn about Jesus as our Lord, then have we really accepted Him as our Lord?
The word lord means owner, master: we are considered bondservants to Jesus. A bondservant was someone who sold themselves into slavery to someone else who paid a debt for them. Jesus paid the price we couldn’t and when we receive Him as Lord, we are saying we are willing to serve Him because He paid the price for us to be able to go to Heaven.
The Lord has said that it is time for those who are really His people to turn from that which is sin. It is the time of the fiery serpents. Let’s look at that in scripture to see what God is doing:
And they journeyed from Mount Hor by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom, and the people became impatient (depressed, much discouraged), because [of the trials] of the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, neither is there any water, and we loathe this light (contemptible, unsubstantial) manna.” (Numbers 21:4:5 AMPC)
There are many direct correlations between these scriptures and the body of Christ:
Life for many Christians is no different than the rest of the world: it is full of struggles.
God miraculously provided manna for His people, yet after some time they thought little of it.
God has sent His Son, yet many do not take their dedication to His seriously.
In the desert, the Israelites began to long for Egypt which is symbolic of the sinful ways of the world.
Most Christians no longer feel the need to be different from the world around them. They have forgotten that we are to be Holy as the Lord is Holy.
This is the state of the Body of Christ. What God did then, Jesus is doing now.
Then the Lord sent fiery (burning) serpents among the people; and they bit the people, and many Israelites died. (Numbers 21:6 AMPC)
God remains the same. He loosed the fiery serpents among His people because of sin and now that time has come for those who follow Jesus. Christians may find themselves “bitten” meaning afflicted even to the point of possible death. What should you do if this happens to you?
And the people came to Moses, and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord, that He may take away the serpents from us.”
So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, Make a fiery serpent [of bronze] and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.” And Moses made a serpent of bronze and put it on a pole, and if a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked to the serpent of bronze [attentively, expectantly, with a steady and absorbing gaze], he lived. (Numbers 21:7:9 AMPC)
The bronze snake represented their sin. They had to know what that sin was before the deliverance came. Once they confessed their sin to Moses, then a symbol of that sin (the bronze snake) was nailed to a pole. In order to be free of affliction, they had to go to the pole and not just look quickly and go on. Absorbing means intensely interested, engrossed in it. They had to be attentive to it. John, the one whom Jesus loved, not the Baptist, showed that this serpent upon a pole was a foreshadowing of Jesus.
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:14-15 AKJV)
For our sake He made Christ [virtually] to be sin Who knew no sin, so that in and through Him we might become [endued with, viewed as being in, and examples of] the righteousness of God [what we ought to be, approved and acceptable and in right relationship with Him, by His goodness]. (2 Corinthians 5:21 AMPC)
Jesus was without sin but took our sin upon Himself at the cross. He was nailed to the cross once for all sin that would ever occur. If you are afflicted in any way, then you must begin looking to Jesus, intently, and steadily, and be willing to absorb it into your life.
IN THE beginning [before all time] was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, Himself. (John 1:1 AMPC)
Jesus is the Word. We must be willing to run to the Word of God and learn where we have missed it. We must run to Jesus and seek help. You must be willing to do this if you are being baptized for repentance. There are free courses of study at the Online Christian Church which will help you learn and grow in the Word of God.
Another reason for a baptism of repentance can be seen in the life of our Lord. Before Jesus entered into His ministry, He was baptized by John.
Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him. 14 But John protested strenuously, having in mind to prevent Him, saying, “It is I who have need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?”
But Jesus replied to him, “Permit it just now; for this is the fitting way for [both of] us to fulfill all righteousness” [that is, to perform completely whatever is right]. Then he permitted Him.
And when Jesus was baptized, He went up at once out of the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he [John] saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on Him. 17 And behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is My Son, My Beloved, in Whom I delight!” (Matthew 3:13-17 AMPC)
Jesus was without sin, so why was it necessary for Him to be baptized? Jesus was born in Israel, circumcised and dedicated to God at the Temple in Jerusalem. This would have placed Him under the religious leaders: the Sadducees and Pharisees who were very corrupt. The baptism was His declaration that He was turning from the corrupt teachers of Isreal.
We see that throughout the Gospels, the first four books of the New Testament, both Jesus and John referred to these leaders as “vipers.”
Then a blind and dumb man under the power of a demon was brought to Jesus, and He cured him, so that the blind and dumb man both spoke and saw. And all the [crowds of] people were stunned with bewildered wonder and said, This cannot be the Son of David, can it? But the Pharisees, hearing it, said, This Man drives out demons only by and with the help of Beelzebub, the prince of demons… You offspring of vipers! How can you speak good things when you are evil (wicked)? For out of the fullness (the overflow, the superabundance) of the heart the mouth speaks. (Matthew 12:22-24, 34 AKJV)
When Jesus appeared on the Earth, Israel had fallen far from God’s ways. The spiritual leaders were not holding to God’s ways. When Jesus healed people on the Sabbath, instead of rejoicing that someone had been set free, they accused Him of doing it with the help of Satan.
Like Jesus, you may want to receive a baptism of repentance even though you are already a Christian, if you came under spiritual leadership who are not walking in God’s ways. You won’t have to name every leader or action, only confess that you have come under wrong leadership. It is your heart that matters. In your heart, be ready to learn more of God’s ways according to His word. If you see it in scripture, be willing to quickly turn from any teachings, traditions, and even prayers and prophecies that you discover are not lined up with God’s ways and His word.
These are the instructions the Lord gave concerning the baptism:
Have the people confess their sins, so that I may be revealed to them in whatever way I choose. I hold the Key of David, I will decide, not them.
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