Baptism and Becoming a Christian in the New Testament

The purpose of this article is to investigate how baptism is related to the experience of conversion in the New Testament. As a result I shall not deal with the following important subjects: the meaning of the term “to baptize” (baptidzein is generally conceded to mean “to dip or immerse”); the origin of Christian baptism (it is probably not dependent upon Jewish proselyte baptism since there is no evidence of this practice before A.D. 70 and proselyte baptism was self-administered; it is unlikely that it has any direct relationship to Qumran’s lustrations [1 QS 3:4-9, 6:14-23]; it is probably dependent upon the baptism of John the Baptist [Jn 3:22, 4:1-3] but the origin of John’s baptism is unknown); the relationship of “laying on hands” to receiving the Spirit; etc. In order to facilitate the discussion, I shall state a general thesis of how baptism in the New Testament is related to the experience of conversion. Although this thesis, like any thesis, cannot be “proven,” I shall seek to demonstrate that it is able to explain the majority of the New Testament evidence quite well. The thesis is as follows: