Is Baptism necessary for salvation?
I think the problem is that when most Christians say the word "salvation," what they really mean is "justification," that is, the total forgiveness and acquittal of one's sins based solely on the finished work of Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. This has nothing to do with anything we do or can do. Justification is totally out of our hands, and, I believe, is a blanket forgiveness upon all human beings everywhere which can only be thwarted by deliberately rejecting and blowing off Jesus Christ, knowing for certain who He is and what He's done.
But baptism is necessary for that aspect of our salvation known as sanctification, that is, rendering our own natural behaviors inert and submitting to the Spirit of Christ acting and speaking through us. Baptism joins us to Jesus Christ and enables us to disengage from our own natural responses and behaviors and to engage with or be engaged by the Spirit of Christ and His responses and behaviors. Baptism enables discipleship as Jesus and Paul taught it, and is the point of no return as one is grafted to and united with Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. Without baptism, we are stuck with only our natural psychological responses and behaviors, and are cut off from the control of the Spirit of Christ. We cannot truly be disciples of Jesus Christ without the first step, the initiation of baptism into Jesus Christ. No one can be a disciple of Jesus Christ unless they are possessed of the Spirit of Christ, because being a genuine disciple is to follow Jesus Christ in His submission to the Father to where He didn’t say or do anything which the Father didn’t say or do through Him. This requires that we be joined to Him and in submission to the control of the Spirit of Christ in the same way that Christ was joined to the Father and in submission to the control of His Spirit. This is what I believe the Scriptures refer to as entering or inheriting the kingdom of God, as well as walking in the Spirit and remaining in Christ.
Can one be forgiven or justified without baptism? Absolutely. Can one begin the process of sanctification without it. Not in the slightest. That's like constantly trying to turn on your desktop computer without having it connected to the wall outlet. You can press the power button all you want, but it's not going to turn on.
All proceeding translations are mine from the Greek text.
Romans 6:3-14
“Or are you ignorant that, as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were then buried together with Him through [that] baptism into [His] death, so that just like Christ was raised from the death through the glory of the Father, in the same way we also should walk with a freshness of life. Because if we had become grown together by the likeness of His death [being baptism], on the other hand we will also be of [His] resurrection; recognizing this that our old human being was crucified together with [Him]; so that the malfunctioning body would be rendered inert, for us to not be enslaved any longer to the malfunction; because the person having died had been set right from the malfunction. Yet if we died together with Christ, we trust that will will also be alive together with Him, knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead doesn’t die any longer, death doesn’t own Him any longer. Because the person who died, died to the malfunction once for all; yet the person who is alive, is alive to God. In this same way also you figure yourselves on the one hand to be dead bodies to the malfunction yet living to God by means of Christ Jesus.
“Don’t then let the malfunction reign within your dying body with the result of obeying its drives, neither offer the parts of your body to the malfunction weapons of wrong, but offer yourselves to God like alive from the dead and the parts of your bodies to God weapons of a right state of being. Because your malfunction will not have ownership of you; because you are not subject to the Torah, but subject to [the] charity [of God.”
It’s clear in this passage that baptism is what joins the disciple to Jesus Christ according to Paul. It’s also clear as he continues on in this chapter and through chapters 7 and 8 that this joining to Him is what enables us to not be owned or enslaved by the malfunction present in our bodies.
Mark 16:16
“The person having believed and being baptized will be saved, yet the person having disbelieved will be judged against.”
Here, there’s a clear demarcation it seems. On the one hand, those who believe AND are baptized will be saved (also delivered, rescued), yet those having disbelieved will be judged against. No mention of baptism is found in the second part of the sentence. What happens to those who believe, but haven’t been baptized? There doesn’t seem to be any indication of being judged against, yet no indication that “they will be saved.” Exactly what does Mark mean by “will be saved?”
John 3:5-6
“Jesus responded, ‘Amen, Amen I say to you, if someone wasn’t born from water and Spirit, he isn’t capable of entering into the kingdom of God. The thing having been born from the flesh is flesh, and the thing having been born from the Spirit is Spirit. Don’t be shocked that I said to you, it is necessary for you to be born from above.’”
What does it mean to enter or inherit the kingdom of God? In my opinion, this is the same concept or idea as walking in the Spirit, or as John described it also, remaining in or “making your home in” Christ. According to Jesus, in order for that to happen one must be born from water (baptism or immersion, already a well established Jewish practice for initiating proselytes into Judaism) and Spirit (being possessed of the Spirit of Christ as Paul described in Romans 8:9). Jesus explains that there is a clear line between what is born from flesh and what is born from Spirit. In another place in the Gospels, He is also clear that a good tree can’t produce bad fruit, but a rotten tree can’t produce good fruit. The flesh, our natural physical biology and neurology, can’t produce behaviors of a Spiritual origin, and neither will the Spirit of Christ produce behaviors of a biological or neurological origin. In order for us, being physical and biological beings, to produce behaviors such as the fruit of the Spirit, what produces our own natural behaviors must be rendered inert and our body parts enslaved to the Spirit of Christ.
Titus 3:5
“He didn’t save us from achievements which are by means of a right state of being which we did, but down His mercy through the bath of rebirth and renewal of the Holy Spirit.”
Again, Paul connects a bath of water, that is, baptism, with salvation. And like with Jesus statement, he connects one being saved, or entering the kingdom of God, through both water and the Holy Spirit.
John 2:2
“And He is a satisfaction about our malfunctioning behaviors, yet not just about ours, but also about the whole world’s.”
Who is the “our” that John is referring to? In context, it would be the people to whom John is writing. A cursory examination of the text of the letter will reveal that He is clearly writing to fellow disciples. So then, he states that Christ is a satisfaction for not only the malfunctioning behaviors of those who are disciples, but also for the whole world’s malfunctioning behaviors. That is, His sacrifice covers not just those who have committed to be His disciples, that is, Christians, but even every human being who hasn’t. As only His disciples are baptized, it means that He is a satisfaction for all those who aren’t as well.
The Christian life, the life of Jesus Christ flowing through His disciple, is fundamentally a supernatural life. It is a life not meant to be lived with us left to our own devices as to how. It is a life meant to be lived by the Spirit of Christ through us and in cooperation with us.
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