What I believe those Christian artists and speakers are trying to communicate is just one of the Biblical based steps to becoming a Christian - the step of Confessing Jesus as Lord, master, and boss of the rest of your life. That's wonderful and necessary. However, if we are simply asking people to recite a couple phrases and leading them to understand they have committed to a sacrificial Christian life, we are being highly deceptive.
"Salvation," "Getting Saved," "Coming to Christ," "Becoming a Christian" or whatever term you chose to use MUST include four non-negotionable steps: Faith (John 3:16), Repentance (Acts 3:19), Confession (Romans 10:9-10), and Baptism (Mark 16:16). Biblical teachers do a good job talking about the need for belief or faith in order to accept Christ. They occasionally teach on repentance of our sins prior to knowing Jesus. And of course, confession, normally spoken in the form of a prayer, is included. Sadly, however, Christian baptism has become the forgotten step to salvation. If practiced at all, it is often an afterthought to the salvation process.
How did this happen? How did we lose the importance of baptism in Christianity? Everett Ferguson in Early Christians Speak: Faith and Life in the First Three Centuries writes that baptism began to be forgotten "in the early second century when certain influential Christians taught that baptism must be presided by a period of instruction, prayer, and fasting." This trend grew worse in the third century as Believers were being forced to wait 3 years to be baptized! Today, churches may forget altogether to even require a new convert to be baptized!
The Bible is very clear that baptism is the moment our sins are forgiven (Acts 2:38; Acts 10:48; Acts 22:16), depicting our separation from the world (1 Cor. 10:1-2), a death to the old man of sin (Romans 6:1-4), a cutting off of the sinful body of flesh (Colossians 2:11-12), clothing ourselves with Christ (Galatians 3:27), and saving us (1 Peter 3:20-21)! We dare not leave out this vital key to our salvation in Christ.
The upcoming TV series event, A.D. - The Bible Continues, will be depicting stories from the first 10 chapters of Acts. If executive producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey stay true to scripture, it should be an eye-opening program for many believers. Why? Because every salvation story in the book of Acts includes baptism!
Just flipping through Acts, where the early church started, we find 3000 baptized on the day of Pentecost (2:38-42), 2000 were baptized at Solomon's Porch (3:1-4:4), the Samaritans were baptized (8:4-25), and the Ethiopian Eunuch (8:26-40) was baptized as soon as he spied water!
The only conversion in the book of Acts that scholars confuse on baptism is Saul of Tarsus. That confusion stems from the understanding of when Saul, later called Paul, was converted. Many will claim he was converted on the road to Damascus when he saw the light and heard the voice of Jesus (yet none will say we are converted this way today). However, they leave the account too early. On the road to Damascus, Saul is instructed to enter into the city and there he would be instructed on what to do. It was there that Ananias healed him of his temporary blindness and baptized him (9:17-18; 22:16) for the forgiveness of his sins.
As we share our faith with others, may we leave behind the traditions of man, and include that which was part of those salvations in the first church - including baptism.
