As a pastor, I’m asked a few times each year how to respond to family members and friends who have joined the Church of Christ. Some are concerned that the Church of Christ is a cult, others that it’s too doctrinally amorphous, and others that Church of Christ members seem to be inordinately concerned about the ordinance of baptism.
If you haven’t heard of the Church of Christ before, it may just sound like we’re talking about churches that believe in Christ. However, the name “Church of Christ” is a formal label for a group of churches stemming from the Stone-Campbell Movement in the 1800s, also known as the Restoration Movement. Its theological family tree connects directly with groups called “Disciples of Christ” and “Christian Churches.” The names are confusing, I know.
Though widely divergent in its beliefs, the Church of Christ movement has largely been known for a handful of doctrinal and practical distinctives. (If you’re reading this and you’re in a Church of Christ congregation that doesn’t hold to these positions, praise the Lord. Sadly, many still do.) Some in the movement forbid the use of instrumental accompaniment in musical worship. Others lament the multiplication of Protestant denominations as a sign of ungodly disunity. But the most well-known and concerning theological stance held by many Church of Christ churches is that of baptismal necessity.
That is, since the days of founders Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell, the Church of Christ has widely taught that water baptism is necessary for salvation. This teaching, they would emphasize, is distinct from the Roman Catholic doctrine of baptismal regeneration, because it asserts not that baptism gives you new life but that it is a necessary condition required by God to complete faith and receive the forgiveness of sins. In the words of one Church of Christ author,
“… we see that baptism is essential to salvation because it is when one’s sins are forgiven, when one receives the Holy Spirit, when one dies to sin, when one starts a new life, and when one becomes a child of God in Christ. In other words, ‘Baptism is the time and place that God forgives and saves.’ Thus, when it comes to salvation, baptism is not the what but the when. The moment when you receive God’s saving grace is the moment you emerge from the watery tomb of baptism. That is why baptism is essential to salvation.”
Maybe you’ve had the experience of talking with an uncle, a cousin, or a close friend who has joined a Church of Christ congregation and has begun to insist that baptism is necessary for salvation. Depending on their group, they may even try to convince you that your baptism in a Bible church or Baptist church could not save you because you didn’t believe that it was necessary. Some even declare that only Church of Christ pastors can administer baptisms that are effective for the forgiveness of sins. All these views fall under the theological banner of baptismal necessity.
There are lots of different directions in which someone may err in the Church of Christ movement because the congregations are doctrinally unmoored from the help of church history and from accountability of other churches. One common saying in the movement is “No creed but Christ.” It can be hard to reach someone who has been indoctrinated to believe that their small group is the only true church because they are insulated against any criticism from the outside. It can be even harder if they’ve been taught to only listen to their one pastor, which is why some Church of Christ congregations seem like a cult.
But in the Church of Christ, members do usually have a strong emphasis on studying the Scriptures. So, if you’re looking for a wise, gentle, loving, truth-filled way to respond to your family member or friend who is in the Church of Christ and believes in baptismal necessity, here are a few Scriptural counters to this false doctrine.
“Not a Result of Works”
First, it’s important to clarify from Scripture that nobody can be saved by a work they do. My guess is that your family and friends would affirm this in a sense, but it’s important to make sure there is basic agreement there first. A couple of texts come to mind:
- Galatians 2:16 “yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.”
- Romans 4:4-5 “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness”
- Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Notice, especially, Paul’s logic in the Ephesians passage. Why does God remove works from the equation in salvation? It’s for his glory – “so that no one may boast.” God saves, from beginning to end, so that God alone gets the credit for saving his people from his own holy wrath.
If baptism is a human work (which it patently, visibly is), then it cannot be a part of the condition for salvation without stealing some of God’s glory. And whenever anything is added to the gospel as a condition for salvation – whether it be baptism, confession to a priest, clean living, or anything else – then it guts the gospel of its efficacy. Paul says of those who would add the work of circumcision as a condition for salvation:
“Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.”
Galatians 5:2-4
In other words, if you’re drowning, you can’t hold onto the cement block and the life preserver at the same time and be saved. You have to let go of all your sinking works to be buoyed to life by the righteousness of Christ alone. Ceremonial acts like circumcision and baptism, when they are accepted as a basis for your salvation, sever you from Christ and his salvation. The grace of Christ is only a gracious gift as long as it excludes human work, meaning as long as it is really grace! “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace” (Rom 11:6). So, salvation cannot come through the instruments of faith plus works, but it must be through faith alone.
If the Church of Christ convinces you to look to your baptism as a work that is essential for your salvation, then you are not saved. Christ is of no avail to those who trust in anything besides him. To trust in faith and baptism is to trust in baptism and eviscerate faith. We cannot be saved by any human work, but only by the powerful working of God within us.
“Buried With Him in Baptism”
Now, it’s at this point in the conversation that your Church of Christ family member or friend may interject, “Oh, but I agree! Nobody is saved by human works, amen! However,” they may reply,” baptism is not a human work. According to Scripture, it is a work of God, and therefore preserves the glory due to God in salvation.” The most common text I’ve heard Church of Christ advocates use to argue for understanding baptism as a work of God is Colossians 2:11-12 which says:
“In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.”
Colossians 2:11-12
According to some in the Church of Christ, this reference to baptism is necessarily talking about one’s physical water baptism, what they typically call the “true baptism” or “baptism for the remission of sins.” However, if they’re going to apply that logic to baptism in verse 12, then I would think they should also apply it to circumcision in verse 11. Meaning, if you’re going to say that baptism in verse 12 is a physical baptism that is required for one to be united with Christ in his death and resurrection, then you should be consistent and also say that one must be circumcised physically to participate in the “circumcision of Christ” which is for the removal of “the body of the flesh,” sin’s dominion in our lives. But Paul explicitly says that this circumcision is “made without hands,” that it should be understood here as a metaphor, just like in Deuteronomy 10:16. So it is with circumcision in Colossians 2, and so it is with baptism.
The baptism that Paul speaks of in this text is our immersion into Christ, our being spiritually united to Christ – being “buried with him” and “raised with him.” Undoubtedly, our union with Christ is a “powerful work of God” when he indwells us by his Spirit and unites us to himself! Amen! But that is a spiritual reality, not a physical dunking. If Paul was speaking about water baptism in this verse, then what does he mean by being “raised with him”? Is Paul just talking about our physical transfer from under the water to above the water? God got us out of the water? Or is that part of the text spiritual while the baptism is physical?
The text makes much more sense when you see that Paul is using both circumcision and baptism as metaphors for spiritual realities. Colossians 2 does not prove that water baptism is a work of God, and neither does any other text in Scripture. Spiritual regeneration in the heart of man is a work of God that produces the faith alone that saves (Titus 3:4-5). Water baptism, in contrast, is a physical human work that symbolizes the spiritual work of God in the heart. In some ways, this is just us trying to state the obvious: When a person volunteers to go underwater and come back up, the person did it. When God takes out the heart of stone and puts in the heart of flesh, God did it. Baptism is a human work, and spiritual resurrection is God’s.
“Baptism Now Saves You”
The Church of Christ has historically advocated for the necessity of baptism from other angles as well. One popular text is Mark 16:16 which reads, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” The problem with using this text, however, is that it’s not inspired, despite several translations including it in brackets at the end of Mark. The inspired words of Mark end with Mark 16:8. And even if it were in the Bible, the grammar of this text is inconclusive to determine how baptism relates to salvation. Is it a necessary pre-condition or an inevitable outflow of salvation? The Church of Christ would like to make this text say definitively more than it does, and it’s not even part of inspired Scripture.
Another popular text used to defend baptismal necessity is Acts 2:38 where Peter says to the crowd in Jerusalem, “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.” Others have duly pointed out before that the word “for” in this sentence can be legitimately taken multiple ways, but that the most likely meaning is that of a prior condition, not an intended purpose. That is, repenting and being baptized “for the forgiveness of sins” does not mean that baptism grants forgiveness, but that we are baptized having been forgiven of our sins. Also, note that several other texts link forgiveness or salvation with repentance without any mention of baptism (Luke 24:47; Acts 3:19; Acts 5:31; Acts 10:43; Acts 20:21; Romans 1:16; Romans 4:5). The mass baptism on the day of Pentecost is not what saved the 3,000, but it was their repentant faith that did.
Another text that Church of Christ advocates often cite in favor of baptismal necessity is 1 Peter 3:21:
“Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ”
1 Peter 3:21
As best as I can tell, a typical Church of Christ view on this text is that Peter intends to say that both faith and baptism are necessary for salvation, baptism being the submissive (and submersive) expression of faith and the event at which God actually promises to remit sins. They may clarify that baptism doesn’t save you like a human work (as if the physical act alone gets rid of sin like dirt in a bath) but that, accompanied with true faith, God will remove your sins through water baptism. However, to borrow John Piper’s work in this text, if we would understand this text to say that the external act of going under the water is a necessary component of a faith-filled appeal to God for a clean heart, then we would also have to say that air passing across one’s lips would also be necessary for salvation, because “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9). If one external act is necessary for salvation, then so must be another.
Peter certainly does intend to say that the Christian’s normative, initial act of faith is baptism, such that it can be directly associated with the “appeal” of faith for salvation – hence Matthew 28:19, Acts 2:38, Acts 22:16, and more. For Christ to command his disciples to make more disciples by “baptizing them” is his command to preach the gospel so that they may believe in Christ and confess that belief through baptism. Baptism is the public declaration of that saving appeal for a good conscience and should be wed to one’s conversion, which we see with the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. So, Peter is saying that insofar as one’s water baptism is equivalent to the appeal of faith, it saves, because God saves us through faith. The external act of going under the water and coming out of it, however, has absolutely no sacramental, saving value, as the Church of Christ has argued, but is simply the external expression of that internal reality. The internal reality of faith is the instrument that saves the sinner.
“Christ Did Not Send Me to Baptize”
If you’ve addressed some of the key texts that the Church of Christ often uses to support their case for baptismal necessity, it may be wise, then, to gently probe further. Some questions that may be valuable to pose to your Church of Christ family members or friends might be:
- If baptism is necessary for salvation, then why did Jesus promise the unbaptized thief on the cross that he would see him in Paradise (Luke 23:39-43)?
- Why does Peter not immediately baptize the lame man in Acts 3 and yet commend his “faith in [Jesus’] name” and call for the people not to be baptized but to “Repent, therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3:19)?
- Why does Paul, in every single one of his inspired letters, fail to mention baptism in his gospel summaries (Rom 1:1-5; 1 Cor 15:1-4; 2 Cor 5:14-21; Eph 2:1-10; Col 1:21-23, Titus 3:3-7)?
I imagine the Church of Christ response to that last question would be that Paul does mention baptism in other passages (like Romans 6:1-3 and Galatians 3:28, common texts cited by the Church of Christ), but in those texts, he demonstrably speaks about spiritual baptism into Christ, not physical water baptism.
In fact, when Paul does speak about water baptism, he seems to go out of his way to show its ineffectiveness as an instrument of salvation. Paul writes to the Corinthian church:
“I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.”
1 Corinthians 1:14-17
If baptism is truly necessary for someone to go to heaven instead of hell, then how heartless must the apostle be to say, “I thank God that I baptized none of you”? If the Church of Christ is right, then Paul ought to be praising God that he baptized some of them, because that act literally saved them from eternal torment! Notice that Paul never says, “I thank God that I preached the gospel to only some of you,” as if that would be a cure for division in the church. No, instead he says, “For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16). That’s because salvation does not come through faith+baptism, but through faith alone in the gospel that Paul faithfully preached. As Paul says, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17).
“A Zeal for God, But Not According to Knowledge”
Whenever I talk to anyone who has been deceived by a works-based system of counterfeit salvation, however they respond to the Scripture I present to them, I want to have the same attitude that Paul had toward his fellow Jews:
“Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”
Romans 10:1-4
What should you do, then, for your family and friends who have been deceived into believing in baptismal necessity by the Church of Christ? Pray for them and love them, because they’ve been lured in like countless billions to the siren song of a small, less-than-righteous God. They don’t know how gloriously holy our God is and they haven’t personally experienced his wonderful grace. They’ve been taught to establish their own righteousness through the act of baptism, and that deception can be hard to break.
But remember, brothers and sisters, that nothing is impossible for God. His Word is powerful to save even the chief of sinners. So, be clear and gentle with your loved ones in the Church of Christ as you talk through these texts with them and plead with the Lord for their souls. May God be merciful to them, to show them the end of the law, the end of human striving, the end of false confidence in the glorious person of Jesus Christ, to everyone who believes. And may they be baptized by the Spirit into Christ so that they might join you in joyful, acceptable worship of their resurrected Lord.