Baptism: Remission of Sins

Baptism: Remission of Sins

“Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:37-38). In 2002, I was excited to begin my undergraduate Bible degree journey. As is customary, the first day of class was primarily about meeting the lecturer, receiving our term assignments and instructions, and getting to know the other students. That morning, I was asked to speak in chapel and duly did so, but the message I delivered was not congruent with the teaching of the Bible.

I confidently stood on the stage and told them how I was baptized with the Holy Spirit and of all the “amazing” miracles I had heard of (but never seen.) The school administration was kind enough to let me finish before gently correcting my devotional thoughts. After chapel, I met with some of the senior staff, and it was then that they discovered my background was not in the Church of Christ. One lecturer told me not to worry about it; he would address the matter in my “Introduction to the Old Testament” class. The lecturer was Dr. James Maxwell, and he had an instruction for all of us the very next class. His first words that day had nothing to do with the Old Testament. Instead, he recited Acts 17:11, “Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.”

As he scanned the class, he said, “Let’s turn to 2 Tim. 4:3-4 and read it together. ‘For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.’” Then he sat down and waited for the words to sink in. To be honest, I was not the only student who wondered if I was sitting in the correct class. I may not have been an Old Testament aficionado, but I was pretty confident that those verses were not found anywhere in the pages of Genesis thru Malachi. Of course, His exact words of my lecturer may not be with me anymore, but I remember most of them and certainly the gist thereof.

“You may be wondering why I began with those two verses?” he said. “There are two things I want you to remember. First, let no other person tell you what to believe. He may be blessed with the ability to share the oracles of God with an audience, but he is not infallible. It is your duty to receive the message with ‘all eagerness’ and then to go home and ‘<examine> the Scriptures daily to see if these things <are> so.’ The second thing is no less important and directly results from the first. If you are not careful to study for yourself, you will not know if what you are being told is true or not. Far too many people take what they hear for granted and follow it blindly, sometimes to their eternal doom. Don’t put your salvation in the hands of another person. It is far too important for that.”

“Now, I want to challenge you to do something. Leave everything you have been taught behind and read the Bible like a shepherd in a field who has seen it for the first time. Clear your mind and let it speak to you without the baggage of the past and without the influence of another.” From that moment on, we were back in the Old Testament, but I took his words to heart and, that afternoon, began to read the Bible from start to finish. Three months later, I was baptized (immersed) for the remission of my sins. Like most people, there was a certain reluctance to learn something new, but I could not deny it too long. When I was previously instructed in what to believe, I read the Bible within that context, making it difficult, if not impossible, to discern the unadulterated instructions of God. For the first time, I was not being told what to think and what to do, and that was key to my understanding of God’s Word. TBC.