Is Baptism Necessary for Salvation?

We start with the premise that Jesus Christ has provided everything we need to be reconciled to Him. He became humanity's atonement, removing the penalty of sin.¹ He has given us baptism to remove personal sin.² He has given us His Spirit to lead us in righteousness and keep us on the path of holiness.³ We have prayer, by which we speak with God; fasting, which strengthens His hold on us and weakens the power of the flesh;⁴ and His Word, for instruction and inspiration.⁵

For all He has given, God asks one thing of us: faith.

Our purpose in this final part is to define that faith carefully, because the whole question of baptism turns on it. We proceed in four steps. First, we state what biblical faith is. Second, we trace the basis of faith through evidence, belief, and action. Third, we examine Ephesians 2:8–9 phrase by phrase. Fourth, we answer the case of Cornelius. We are not arguing that man earns salvation; we are arguing that the faith by which he receives it is never inactive.

Faith is not merely a cognitive acknowledgement of God, of His greatness, of His holy nature, or even of His work in redeeming man. Biblical faith expresses itself in action. It testifies to who God is, and it shows belief and trust in Him as a settled fact. That expression is not contrived but spontaneous. Trust in God sets the power of God to work in our lives and circumstances, and unbelief hinders it.⁶ Our response to God's will is itself an expression of faith; at the least, it testifies that we believe God exists, that He sees and hears, and that we expect Him to answer.

What we do expresses what we think and believe in our hearts, and our conduct will either confirm or deny our trust in God. It follows that the expression of faith is essential to salvation. Salvation is not the product of recitation and assertion, that is, of repeating a prayer and then declaring oneself saved. The penitent heart that expresses remorse for sin and desire for God's forgiveness will always receive a reply from Him, a kind of divine RSVP: God answers sincere repentance with the gift of the Holy Ghost, and that gift is the new birth.⁷ There is no salvation apart from the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Faith does not arise in a vacuum. It always has a basis, a reason why one believes and why one acts, and we may trace that basis in three stages.

Evidence. Evidence, or the perception of evidence, is the basis of all belief; it is the fuel that powers it. We place our confidence in things shown to be true, or in things we expect to be true on the strength of some evidence. Scripture calls Jesus "the author and finisher of our faith,"⁸ and the point is that we cannot know God exists, or that He is present, unless He makes Himself known. Since no man has seen God directly,⁹ we depend on God to supply the proof. He is both the source of our ability to believe in Him and the justification for believing.

Belief. Belief is the product of evidence, or of the perception of evidence; it is the acceptance that something is true. We must add a qualification here: belief does not necessarily reflect truth. It reflects only the basis, real or perceived, on which a thing is held to be true. Where God is concerned, truth is never in question,¹⁰ only our acceptance of it.

Action. Action is the manifestation of belief; it confirms that we trust someone or something. True belief shows itself in some act that testifies to a settled conviction. An illustration will help. Most of us who drive give little thought to whether the car will stop when we need it to; our attention is on reaching our destination. If we doubted the brakes, we would probably not drive at all. Starting the car, putting it in gear, and pressing the accelerator therefore confirm our trust that it will stop. Brakes do fail on rare occasions, and in that case our trust rested on perception rather than truth; but the act of driving still shows what we believed.

Applied to God, the principle is stated by Jesus Himself.

Jesus joins love for Him to keeping His commandments, so that keeping them is the evidence that we love Him. What we do confirms what we believe; love for God must go beyond a state of mind and come to fruition in action. Recalling the prophecy of Esaias, Jesus said to the scribes and Pharisees:¹¹

The words of Jesus leave no doubt that what came from their mouths was not reflected in their conduct. And He measured love itself by an act.

The heart's convictions are made manifest in our actions.

Faith, as it bears on salvation, operates within a definite framework. Since God has made a way for man to be saved, and since He leaves man the choice to accept it, man is now responsible for securing his eternal existence in God.¹² If he is to receive the gift of eternal life, he must do something: he must consider his eternal destiny and submit to the will of God. That is the basis of biblical faith, namely action motivated by the acknowledgement of who God is, what He can do, and what He wills.

From God's choice to redeem man and man's opportunity to secure eternal life, we can see the twofold structure within salvation that separates the work of God from what is required of man. We call this the availability-acquisition model of salvation:

1. Availability applies to God, as the architect of salvation (John 3:16).
2. Acquisition applies to man, as the beneficiary of God's sacrificial provision (Acts 2:38).

The scriptural basis for this model is Ephesians 2:8–9, which marks the boundary between the work of God and man's response to it.

The passage shows God as the one who built the road back to eternal life, by His own prerogative, and man as the beneficiary of eternal life under a condition God has named: faith. By faith we do not mean a cognitive acknowledgement of God, or an assertion of His ways, but a living and active response to God in obedience.¹³ When we take the verse apart phrase by phrase, we find that faith is not separate from our response to God; our response is the very evidence of faith.

"For by grace are ye saved." Grace is unmerited favor. Despite man's rebellion, and though God would have been entirely just in judging him, God chose to give man a second opportunity for a restored relationship and therefore for eternal life. He did so solely out of His goodness and His love for man.¹⁴

"Through faith." Salvation comes through faith, and faith is the active manifestation of belief in God. God provided the path to eternal life, but man must walk it. This does not remove God from the path; He equips man to walk it and is present at every step. Hebrews 11 describes biblical faith, and in each example belief, as confident trust in God, shows itself in some action from man and some response from God. Faith is not cognitive acknowledgement alone; it is acknowledgement together with a response. Hebrews 11:6 shows both: "he that cometh to God" describes an action, and "a rewarder of them that diligently seek him" describes God's response. Trust in God must go beyond acknowledgement and issue in some discernible act, or it remains only an idea. As James puts it, "as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also."¹⁵

"And that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God." The opportunity for a restored relationship with God, and for eternal life, came purely by divine prerogative. A second chance at the existence man forfeited is truly the gift of gifts, and like any gift it must be accepted. Acceptance of God's gift is shown through action, not through cognition alone.

"Not of works, lest any man should boast." We have established that the second chance to live eternally in harmony with God was God's prerogative alone; there was nothing man could devise as reparation for his rebellion. However, the provision of eternal life is not imparted to man by default. If man is to be granted eternal life,¹⁶ he must act within the framework of salvation God has set up, and that is what the exercise of faith means. Acknowledgement by recitation, followed by an assertion of salvation, is neither salvation nor faith. It does not, will not, and cannot save anyone.

We turn finally to the case most often raised against the necessity of baptism, the household of Cornelius, and we state it fairly before answering it. Cornelius believed in God, so much so that God sent an angel to him.¹⁷ We know he believed because he did not dismiss the angel as a dream or a hallucination, and because he acted on the instruction God gave through the angel. His faith was real and his heart was sincere. Yet his belief left him incomplete, for sincerity and belief in God are not enough: Jesus said, "Ye must be born again."¹⁸

God therefore sent Peter to Cornelius, to preach the gospel to him and to tell him what he ought to do.¹⁹ The response Peter required was the same he had given the crowd at Pentecost in Acts 2:38: repent, and be baptized. Cornelius received forgiveness of sins through water baptism, and the new birth through the infilling of the Holy Ghost, evidenced by speaking in tongues.²⁰ Peter later confirmed that what Cornelius received was the new birth.

We grant that, according to the text, Cornelius received the Holy Ghost first and water baptism afterward. We hold that the order does not affect the requirement, for the Holy Ghost is given to those who obey.

God filled Cornelius because He knew that Cornelius would submit to the command of Jesus Christ concerning water baptism.²¹

We may now state the conclusion of this series. Faith is as vital to a relationship with God as the new birth itself. But Scripture does not treat repentance or water baptism as works of man performed to earn salvation; neither does it treat them as things apart from faith, or as additions attached to it. They are the very substance of faith, belief, and trust in God.