Preaching Too Much On Baptism

No doubt we should preach on the importance of baptism, and its relation to salvation (Mark 16:16, John 3:5, Acts 2:38, Acts 22:16, I Peter 3:21). But there can be problems with preaching too much on baptism.

Declaring All The Counsel

If we preach too much on any one subject, we can’t help but violate the teaching in Acts 20:27 that we are to preach the whole counsel of God. What if I were to spend time in the last five minutes of every lesson on the "blasphemy against the Holy Ghost" (Matt 12:31-32)? I might justify it by reasoning that this is the most important subject because it is the only sin that a person cannot be forgiven of. But my human reasoning notwithstanding, the Bible only deals with that sin in three or four places, it wouldn’t be right to include it in every sermon. If I did that, I couldn’t help but neglect other Bible topics. As a general rule, we probably should preach on every Bible subject in an amount in direct proportion to the amount of time the New Testament spends on it. Modifying that, I agree we should probably spend more time on subjects like baptism to counteract the extra amount of false teaching that is being done in the denominational world on the subject, but we can grossly overdo that. The following is speculation, but if we had emphasized Matt 19:9 a tenth as much as Mark 16:16 through the years, maybe we wouldn’t have all the false views on divorce and remarriage (MDR) as we have today. There is probably an equal number of verses on MDR as there is on the necessity of baptism, and probably more people who claim to follow the Bible take a false view on MDR (e.g., stay in whatever marriage you are in) than on baptism. In the case of MDR, a majority of members of churches of Christ take the false view, while in the case of baptism, almost all members of churches of Christ take the correct view. Yet I am guessing we preach on baptism about fifty times as much as we preach against divorce and remarriage. Does this show we hate the sin of leaving off baptism more than we hate the sin of divorce? As far as I can tell, God hates the sin of divorce just as much as he hates the sin of leaving off baptism. To God, all His commands are essential. Any disobedience is disrespectful to our divine/supreme authority.

To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice

I Samuel 15:22 (“obey is better than sacrifice”) shows it is possible to emphasize the conditions of forgiveness to the point of neglecting actual obedience. That is what King Saul did. As Christians, perhaps we need to learn the lesson that it is better to obey God in the first place, so that we won’t need forgiveness. When we are preaching to non-Christians, maybe if we stopped over emphasizing baptism, and started emphasizing commitment and obedience to God’s other commands a little more, perhaps we would get better follow-through on the part of the average Christian after he is baptized.

The Milk And The Meat

Hebrews 5:12-6:3 teaches that over the course of time Christians need to leave the “first principles” / “milk” (but not completely), and move on to the “strong meat” in order to mature properly. But a lot of Christians keep demanding milk, and want as little meat as possible. Possible reasons for this are:

• they don’t want to work to grow II Timothy 2:15

• they don’t want to be made to feel guilty, challenged for sins they are involved in II Timothy 4:3

• instead, they want to hear about things they have already done, not what they need to do I Peter 2:2

• they want to avoid controversial subjects, which are demanded to be studied by the requirement to preach the whole counsel Acts 20:27

• they don’t want others to be offended Acts 7:51-60

On the other hand, others want meat (they are hungry to learn), but are being starved by so much preaching on the first principles, like if you kept feeding an adult milk only.

Problems With Too Much Emphasis On Baptism

To some, baptism does more than become the occasion for remission of all past sins. It magically provides a license to sin, that is, to be excused for future sins. The position is that a sincere non-Christian is never excused for ignorance, but once he goes through scriptural baptism, his sins of ignorance will be overlooked by God as long as he is sincere. I think this idea has been helped along by preaching so much on baptism that it is elevated to a point that it becomes a semi-automatic way to get to heaven. It helps with future sins somehow, not just past sins. It becomes that magical act that allows Christians more leeway than non-Christians in how they live. But passages like Proverbs 14:12 ("There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death") and Matt 15:14 ("if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch"), which are used by all to show non-Christians will be responsible for their religious ignorance, apply equally to Christians as well. Baptism is elevated so high in some people’s minds that all other commands from God are unconsciously viewed unimportant enough that God will overlook them so long as one has been scripturally baptized. James 2:10 flatly denies this position when it asserts that if you violate one command, you are guilty of all.

I am confident you have heard Christians say, in effect, "A non-Christian’s sins don’t matter, after all they are not saved anyway." This is not what the Bible teaches, and leads to many false conclusions. I might retort – "what difference does it make if they get baptized unless they are willing to correct their sinful lives?" This approach confuses why people are lost. In actuality, it is their sin that has caused them to be lost. Their lack of baptism is not the cause of them being lost, but is simply their failure to accept the cure. I Cor 6:9-11 teaches that even before becoming a Christian, idolatry was still idolatry, adultery was still adultery, etc. Acts 2:23 shows murder was still murder, even when committed by non-Christians. In Mark 6:17-18,27, John the Baptist was beheaded for telling people who were not saved children of God (as far as we know) that they were in an unscriptural marriage. As an example of how this view leads to false practices, consider that many Christians would not go to the wedding of two Christians getting married (if the couple had no right to each other), but they would think nothing of going to a wedding of two non-Christians who clearly had no scriptural right to each other. Brethren, either case is being a partaker in other men’s sins (II John v.11)! This idea (a non-Christians sins do not matter) is also helped along by preaching on baptism so much that it is elevated to a point that people aren’t even really sinning before they are baptized. this thinking has also helped lead to people accepting Homer Hailey’s doctrine that couples can stay in their unscriptural marriage when they are baptized. Baptism has become so important that it has taken on the role of making adulterous marriages legitimate. Of course, Jesus’ teaching in Matt 19:3-9 goes back to the very beginning before there was such a thing as a Christian. It applies to all married people ("whosoever"), whether Christian or non-Christian.

Conclusion

All of us men, let’s start thinking about preaching more to the people who are actually in our audience. Let’s don’t spend all of our time preaching to the Baptists and etc. when ninety-nine times out of a hundred, there is not a single Baptist in the house. In the vast majority of assemblies of a church of Christ, every person in the audience is firmly convinced baptism is necessary to salvation, yet we it seems spend time on it in every public lesson anyway. The Bible certainly teaches we need to review the first principles on occasion, but when I was in calculus class in college, we didn’t spend five minutes in every class reviewing simple addition and subtraction. Brethren, let’s don’t spend so much time preaching the necessity of baptism to folks who are already scripturally baptized, that we leave off preaching many things our audience is actually off on and in desperate need of!

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