Last week, we considered what a person needs to know before baptism. To sum up, you must: believe in Jesus; be ready to commit to him; and understand what baptism means. That last point in particular needs to be carefully defined—it does not mean that you must understand every blessing associated with baptism for it to be valid. We must be aware that God commands it in response to the gospel, but our ignorance of every promise associated with it does not make those promises null and void. You can only obey a command, not a promise; we trust that God always does what he says he will do in light of our faithful obedience.
That leads to another question, then: is there any scenario where someone should be rebaptized? Let’s begin to answer that by looking at a story.
Apollos and the Ephesian Disciples
In Acts 18, we encounter a man named Apollos, described as eloquent and competent in the Scriptures. He was the type of preacher who captivated his listeners with his speaking ability, but it wasn’t just empty platitudes; he had an incredible degree of knowledge. Despite that, he didn’t know the entire message about Jesus. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John. (Acts 18:25)
So Apollos was preaching about Jesus. Perhaps he talked about his miracles or his teachings, perhaps he opened up the Scriptures and pointed to prophecies of his coming. It even says he taught accurately; that must mean that everything he taught was accurate…up to a point. His knowledge was deficient: Apollos only knew the baptism of John the Baptist. Now, John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance for forgiveness of sins, something it had in common with Christian baptism. But he was ignorant of baptism in the name of Jesus, proclaimed on Pentecost.
We can imagine Apollos encouraging people to be baptized, then, in John’s baptism. That would effectively commit them to be John’s disciples: to repent, have forgiveness, live holy lives, but with a view to the one who was to come. Apollos simply had yet to be taught about baptism in Jesus’ name.
Fortunately, Paul’s fellow Christians, Aquila and Priscilla, heard him preach and they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately (v. 26). To his credit, Apollos listened with an honest heart. He immediately went to Corinth and began preaching Jesus as Christ. Based on what we read later in 1 Corinthians, he made a big impression there, watering the seed that Paul planted. He was now able to teach the whole message of Christ.
The problem, however, was that many in Ephesus had heard only Apollos’ early sermons. They had evidently been baptized with the baptism of John only. What was their status?
That’s the situation we find in Acts 19. Paul came to Ephesus were he found some disciples. “Disciples” would suggest they belonged to “the Way;” elsewhere in Acts, the term always refers to Christian disciples. On the other hand, this is the only place in the book where the word is used without the article. That’s why it is translated there he found some disciples (Acts 19:1)—there is some intentional ambiguity. It seems likely that Luke has told the story from Paul’s point of view: he met some who appeared to him at first to be disciples.
But, because he had some doubts, he proceeded to examine them. Not that they WERE Christian disciples, but they appeared so at first. In light of what we know about Apollos—and what we will see in just a moment—they were probably following the teachings of John with a view to Jesus. They were imperfect.
Paul, as an apostle, wanted to lay hands on them and give them a miraculous gift. But when he was told they hadn’t heard about the gift of the Holy Spirit, he asked them an interesting question: into what, then, were you baptized? (v. 3) If they hadn’t heard, Paul knew their knowledge was deficient; they had been taught a different baptism. The men responded that they had been baptized into John’s baptism.
Notice then how Paul handled the situation: John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus. (v. 4) He explained to them that their faith and allegiance were supposed to be in Jesus—he was the one John had said was to come after So, when they heard about this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus (v. 5).
This is the only place that the Bible talks directly about what some have called rebaptism. The men had been baptized once into John’s baptism, almost certainly through the preaching of Apollos. But when Paul talked with them, he told them they needed to be baptized again. Why? And what relevance, if any, does that have for us?
We are out of space, so think about this story and those questions, especially in light of last week’s article on what one needs to know before baptism. When might one need to be baptized again? What might make that initial baptism invalid? We will conclude this discussion here next week.
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