The past few weeks, we have been looking at the conditions of discipleship. These conditions are the prerequisites for baptism. Going back to the great commission found in Matthew 28:19, Jesus said, "Once you make them disciples, you need to baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."
In other words, before we baptize a person, we must present to them the claims of discipleship, and say, "When you come to Christ, we're not inviting you just to go to heaven when you die. We're not inviting you just to come to have your sins forgiven. We're inviting you to make Jesus Lord of your life. Not someone whom you occasionally visit once a week, but One who's going to be your Husband.”
When a woman marries, she even gives up her parent's name, and she becomes completely one with her husband. That's the way she should be, and this is the relationship that Christ wants to have with each of us. This is what it means to be a disciple. A woman should not enter into marriage thinking, "I've only got to spend one day a week with my husband," or, "I can continue to live my own life and visit him once in a while." She must be made aware of the fact that, in marriage, it's a total commitment to this man whom she's going to marry .
Even in the preaching of the gospel, there must be a clarity in the way we explain to the people to whom we preach, that the Christian life requires total commitment. It means discipleship. It means following the Lord. Those who are ready for that, are ready to be baptized. We don't wait till a person becomes perfect, but we do say that a person must be presented with the claims of discipleship. When he accepts these claims of Christ as Savior and Lord, then we baptize him in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That's why we like to wait in our churches to see whether a person is willing to follow the Lord before we baptize him.
In countries where there's persecution, or where it's not popular to be a Christian, we may not need to wait so long. In the early days, for a Jewish person to become a Christian was a tremendous sacrifice (as it is even today), and that's why they could baptize a person almost immediately (as we see in the Acts of the Apostles). For an idol worshipper to give up their idolatry and become a Christian meant being cut off by their relatives completely. Thus it was easy to know that they were willing to be disciples, and so they could be baptized very soon. But nowadays, in countries where there's no persecution, it's not so easy to know whether a person has understood the claims of discipleship. He may have just accepted Christ because he wants to go to heaven. The claims of discipleship may not have been presented to him, or he may not have understood them, or even if he understood them, he may not be willing to fulfill the conditions of discipleship. We have no right to baptize such people.
A person can backslide after they are baptized -- that's another issue -- but the claims of discipleship must be made clear to people right at the outset. Jesus always proclaimed the truth like that. When a rich young ruler came to Him and asked Him, "What must I do to inherit eternal life," He virtually told the rich young ruler to forsake all that he had. When he was not willing to do that and walked away, the Lord never went after him. The Lord never sought to reduce the conditions in order to make it convenient. He didn't even ask him to come step-by-step. He said, "It's absolute. If you want to follow Me, you've got to give up all.”
Baptism is significant because, as we read in Romans 6, it is symbolic of the burial of that old self: my old way of life, which is basically doing my own will, doing what pleased me, seeking to please myself or seeking to please other human beings. That person, that Adamic person living inside me, has died. I have taken my place with Christ on the cross and that person has died. When I accept that, then I can be baptized. Coming out of the waters of baptism, I'm testifying that I'm a new person now. So that's the meaning of being baptized or immersed. If that is not true of a convert, then baptism becomes meaningless.
You can't bury a man who has not died, and a lot of people who are baptized, are not dead because they have not chosen to die to themselves. Instead, they go into the waters as a ritual. Many parents want to urge their children to be baptized for their own honor. Or parents think that baptism will somehow protect their children from the world. It doesn't.
Baptism is only a symbol of a choice that a person has already made - to die to doing his own will. If he hasn't made that choice, then it's a meaningless ritual.
