Water Baptism

Why water Baptism is good

As Christians, one of the first rites I believe every born-again believer should observe, either at the moment of being saved in the Lord or sometime shortly thereafter, is to be baptized with water. You can either be baptized with water at the moment you are receiving your gift of eternal salvation from the Lord or you can be baptized with water at a later date. Jesus is definitely telling us that He wants water baptism to be included as a part of the salvation experience with Him. However, I do not believe that water baptism is an actual "essential" for a true salvation experience to occur with the Lord. In other words, it is not an actual requirement for salvation. If you are saved at a Billy Graham crusade, but do not go through an actual water baptism at the crusade, you will still go straight to heaven if you should die on the way home before you could have gone through an actual water baptism at a later date. As you will see in one of the verses listed below, we are saved by grace through our faith in Jesus - not by any type of water baptism. Water baptism is still a rite of "works," and the verse I will give you below will definitely tell us that we are not saved by any type of works, but only by grace through our faith in Jesus. There are some who believe in what is called "baptismal regeneration." This is a belief that we cannot be saved and regenerated by the Holy Spirit unless we go through an actual water baptism. However, when you look very closely at the verses I will list below, and exactly what water baptism is really signifying and symbolizing with the Lord, I believe these verses are telling us that water baptism should be included as an actual "part" of the salvation experience with the Lord, but that it is not an actual "essential" or necessary requirement of it. As you all know, people can receive the Lord's free gift of salvation anywhere and at anytime. If you can be baptized with water at the time you are receiving your salvation in the Lord, that is great and you should always do that if at all possible. However, there will be other times that there will be no water or any means to actually baptize someone with water when someone is being saved in the Lord. If that should happen, then the person who has just been saved should be baptized with water as soon as he reasonably can at a later date. But if by chance he would die before he could have been baptized with water, he would still go straight to heaven. The fact that he could not be baptized with water will have no bearing or influence on him being able to enter into heaven if he should die before he could have been baptized with water. If we are only saved by grace through our personal faith in Jesus and not by any type of works we can do, which will include any type of water baptism, then why is Jesus telling us that He still wants us to include water baptism as part of the actual salvation experience with Him? I believe there are five main reasons as to why Jesus wants us to include water baptism as part of our salvation experience with Him.
  by Michael Bradley