Baptism @ CCF

     Jesus introduced water baptism in connection with His Great Commission (Matthew 28:19). He said that new disciples were to be baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
     We believe Jesus meant this to be a permanent practice in the church and we encourage all believers to be baptized in water!

     In New Testament times, baptism followed repentance and faith. Peter invited his listeners on the day of Pentecost to “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38). Three thousand people responded to the invitation, and “those who accepted his message were baptized” (Acts 2:41).
     At Christian City Fellowship, we follow the same practice of water baptism. We believe that those who have repented of sin and put their faith in Jesus for eternal life are to take this step of obedience.

     In early times baptisms were held in public places where family and friends could gather. This public witness marked the believer as a follower of Christ. Today, baptisms often take place in church buildings for the sake of convenience, but a public statement still is a part of the meaning. The person who is baptized identifies with Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
     The apostle Paul explained that baptism also symbolizes the believer’s union with Christ: “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father; we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:3-4).
     Immersion in the baptismal waters symbolizes the end of the old way of life. Coming up out of the baptismal waters pictures the new life found in Christ. The person who was previously dead in sin has been made spiritually alive by the same power that raised Jesus from the grave. Water baptism identifies a person as a disciple of Christ and celebrates the passage from an old life into a new life in Christ. It is an outward sign of an inward change.

     The word used in the Bible for “baptize” means to “immerse, douse, or saturate.” In the two full descriptions of baptism found in the New Testament, individuals were immersed in water. Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River to identify Himself as God’s Son: “As soon as he was baptized, [he] went up out of the water” (Matthew 3:16).
     The apostle Philip baptized the Ethiopian by going down into a body of water and coming up with him (Acts 8:38-39). In both of these examples, a large enough quantity of water was required to immerse the person.
     Because of the meaning of the word baptize and the mode of the first baptisms, we practice baptism by immersion.