This paper on baptism as calling on the name of the Lord to be saved was originally delivered to the Reformation Society of Western New York on March 12, 2026. For readability, it has been converted into a series of articles. A PDF version is available.
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Baptism in the Gospels
Part 3: Baptism in the Book of Acts
Part 4: Baptism in the Epistles
Part 5: Conclusion
When were you saved? Usually, when this question is asked, the term “saved” means “became a Christian.” So, when did you become a Christian? Many would simply say that it was when they believed the gospel and put their faith in Jesus. Others might tell the story of how they cried out to God in desperation, asking him to forgive their sins and give them new life. Some of us cannot remember a time when we first believed, and so we try to think back to some particular moment in time when we started to take our faith seriously. The point is that most Christians would accept that there was a time when we called on the name of the Lord to be saved. We prayed the so-called “sinner’s prayer”—whether kneeling at our bedside, weeping in our car, or after raising our hand and coming down the aisle—and it is often these conversion experiences that are deemed the decisive moment of saving faith, the occasion when we were born again.
What is commendable about such answers is the recognition that the good news of Jesus does demand a response of faith. Salvation is a gift that we do not deserve and cannot earn, yet it is a gift from God we can and must receive (Eph. 2:8-9). However, there is one answer to this question that is conspicuously absent. It is a response not given in many Protestant churches today despite the fact that it is the premiere response of repentance and faith found throughout the New Testament. That missing answer is baptism. For a variety of reasons, baptism has been divorced from the biblical concept of conversion. In some traditions, it has become a rite that serves as a channel of God’s grace apart from saving faith; God has graciously promised to work in the waters and therefore the faith of the recipient becomes virtually irrelevant. In the majority of Protestant traditions, baptism has largely been severed from the moment of saving faith, coming either before one’s conversion (as in churches that practice the covenant baptism of infants) or after it (as in churches that practice the baptism of believers only). To state it plainly, there are those who hold that we are either saved by baptism apart from faith, or that we are saved by faith apart from baptism. Either the grace of God or the response of the sinner is emphasized at the expense of the other. And for the majority of evangelicals, it is often the personal decision or the inward response that matters most. It is the sinner’s prayer, not baptism, where “faith comes to focus . . . and God is asked to provide the benefits of salvation.”1Stanley K. Fowler, More Than a Symbol: The British Baptist Recovery of Baptismal Sacramentalism, Studies in Baptist History and Thought, Vol. 2 (Eugene, OR; Wipf and Stock, 2006), 202.
But the witness of the New Testament is that baptism is neither a mechanical process nor a mere symbol. It is not just about what God has promised to do, nor is it solely about what we must do (or have already done). Rather, baptism is included in the complex of conversion as a vital part in the process of how someone actually becomes a Christian. Every sinner must accept the truth of the gospel, turn from sin and self to God as he has been revealed in Christ, confess Jesus as the risen Lord, and receive his grace to be saved.2George R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 1962), 268. We must be born again to enter the kingdom of God (John 3:3). And I would argue that this is precisely what baptism is all about. This is what God does in baptism by grace through faith. The prayer for salvation “inheres in the event of baptism.”3Fowler, More Than a Symbol, 202. It is a better sinner’s prayer.
Thesis
This paper will seek to demonstrate that the New Testament presents baptism as an act of faith in the promises of God whereby the penitent sinner calls upon the name of the risen Lord Jesus to be saved.4This paper essentially argues for the view of baptism presented in George R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 1962); Anthony R. Cross, Recovering the Evangelical Sacrament: Baptisma Semper Reformandum (Eugene, OR; Pickwick Publications, 2013); Everett Ferguson, The Church of Christ: A Biblical Ecclesiology for Today (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1996), 179-203; and Stanley K. Fowler, More Than a Symbol: The British Baptist Recovery of Baptismal Sacramentalism, Studies in Baptist History and Thought, Vol. 2 (Eugene, OR; Wipf and Stock, 2006). It is a dimension of the divine-human encounter of conversion that gathers up the other elements in a profound and demonstrative way. From the human perspective, it is the dramatic expression of our repentance and faith in Christ. But from the divine perspective, it is the supreme occasion of our union with Christ and welcome into his church. Better than a private prayer or a raised hand, baptism is the divinely appointed meeting place for the grace of the Savior and the faith of the sinner, where all of the blessings of salvation are found.
Many evangelicals balk at the idea of baptism functioning in this way, insisting that our justification is by faith alone. Yet we know that saving faith is inherent in the commands to repent (Acts 3:19), call on the name of the Lord (Acts 22:16), confess Christ (Rom. 10:9-10), and obey the gospel (Rom. 10:16). We have no problem telling the sinner to do these things in order to be saved. We understand that turning to God, kissing the Son (Ps. 2:12), and asking for his forgiveness are not “works of the law” that merit our justification. These responses are simply how one believes the promises of God and appropriates his gracious offer of salvation. The same is true of baptism. Stanley Fowler explains that “‘faith alone’ for Paul means faith as opposed to meritorious works, not faith as opposed to baptism.”5Fowler, More Than a Symbol, 205. While Paul frequently draws a contrast between faith and works, he never does so with baptism, since it is “the normal, though not invariable (and certainly not absolutely necessary), vehicle by which faith in Christ comes to tangible expression and God meets the penitent sinner in grace”; it is “no more an extra ‘condition’ for salvation than is the prayer for salvation” we ask of converts.6Ibid. What I am suggesting is that we should likewise have no trouble speaking of baptism like this. We should be able to insist on the ordinance in the same way that we insist on these other responses to the gospel. As an act of saving faith, the Christ-ordained means of calling on his name, it is how one comes to receive God’s gifts of grace.
A study of the New Testament will reveal that all the blessings of salvation are associated with both faith and baptism.7Cross, Recovering the Evangelical Sacrament, 76, Kindle edition: “God’s gift to faith and baptism is one, namely, salvation in Christ.” In his comprehensive survey of Christian literature across the first five centuries, Everett Ferguson notes that the early church is “virtually unanimous in ascribing a saving significance to baptism.”8Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 854. They had no problem speaking highly of baptism because they heard the New Testament authors speaking in this way. Peter Leithart asserts that “the Bible speaks of baptism as an effective rite,” noting the following:
Baptism brands us with the Triune name (Matt 28:18-20); washes sin (Acts 2:38a); confers the Spirit (Acts 2:39b); grafts us into Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection (Rom 6:1-14); justifies (Rom 6:7); sanctifies (1 Cor 6:11); joins us with the Spirit-filled body (1 Cor 12:12-13); clothes us with Christ (Gal 3:27-29); regenerates (Titus 3:5); and saves (1 Pet 3:21). By baptism, we are anointed as priests and kings and join the Pentecostal company of prophets (Acts 2:15-21, 37-42). Baptized into one name, we become members of one another (1 Cor 1:10-18; Eph 4:4-6). The Bible never portrays baptism as a picture of some more important event that happens without baptism. What baptism pictures happens—at baptism. Baptism works.”9Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide from Life to Death, Christian Essentials (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2021), 3-4 (emphasis original).
The reason baptism works, I would add, is because it is a divine-human encounter, the meeting place of God’s grace and the sinner’s faith. As it will hopefully be shown, the New Testament writers “think of baptism in terms of grace and faith—always grace, always faith.”10Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament, 278. Therefore my intention is to briefly survey texts on baptism in order to highlight the vital connection with faith and clarify my thesis that it is a calling on the name of the Lord to be saved.
Clarifications
Some important clarifications need to be made up front. First, my purpose is quite obviously not to try and say all that can be said, or answer all that can be questioned, about baptism.11For example, I do not intend to discuss whether “sacramental” language is good or helpful. Although it should be noted that just because baptism, as the physical and outward response to the gospel, is the most visible element in the complex of conversion, that does not mean that it is any less important than the other more “spiritual” elements. With all my emphasis on the sinner’s response to the gospel, it must not be overlooked that baptism is also the church’s responsibility to carry out in obedience to Christ’s command. In other words, baptism is not only something we must do, but also something done to us—and not just by the powerful working of God but by the authorized, key-wielding citizens of the kingdom of heaven. However, the focus here will be on retrieving a more biblical understanding of baptism as the God-given means for a penitent sinner to call on the name of the Lord, be united with Christ, and welcomed into the new covenant community.
Second, my purpose is not to enter the waters of the debate between paedobaptism and credobaptism. Addressing the relationship between the old and new covenants, and crucial questions of continuity and discontinuity, is beyond the scope of this paper. That being said, the following observations are relevant to that conversation (in particular as it concerns the connection of the gift of the Holy Spirit with baptism), and how one responds to the evidence marshalled below will certainly impact one’s position. But the goal of this paper is to provide a better definition of baptism, gain a more robust understanding of conversion, and recover “the baptismal imagination of earlier generations.”12Leithart, Baptism, 2
Finally, my purpose is also not to address all the intricacies of the ordo salutis (order of salvation), and the tensions raised there between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. While affirming the truth that God alone is ultimately responsible for the new birth, when one looks at the way baptism is described in the New Testament, the overwhelming impression is that baptism is not something done after someone becomes a Christian, but something done to become a Christian. Bobby Jamieson articulates this well:
As a matter of systematic-theological description, it is appropriate to identify regeneration as a discrete moment which should precede baptism. When we zoom all the way in like this, we can speak of “becoming a Christian” before being baptized. Yet for all these necessary refinements we need to make sure we can still speak like the Bible speaks. And the New Testament tends to keep the lens pulled back. As a result, it can look at the process of conversion as a unified whole, baptism included. . . . In order to align our vocabulary with the New Testament, we shouldn’t think of becoming a Christian as merely an invisible, private transaction that is attested after the fact by the visible act of baptism. Instead, becoming a Christian in a comprehensive, biblical sense involves the public act of baptism.13 Bobby Jamieson, Going Public: Why Baptism Is Required for Church Membership (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2015), 40–41 (emphasis added).
We can indeed affirm that the Spirit’s work of regeneration and illumination occurs before baptism; we would never have come to the waters if the eyes of our heart had not been opened to see the beauty of Jesus in the first place (e.g., John 10:26). But, as we will see, the Bible also seems to describe the Spirit’s work of regenerating and baptizing a person into the body of Christ along with the act of water baptism. Summarizing the evidence, Ferguson writes: “The Spirit through the word of God leads one to conversion, works in baptism in imparting the new life, and is received as an indwelling gift.”14 Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church, 165. We must not be too preoccupied with the precise timing of the elements of conversion (see John 3:8). The ingredients for a cake may be added to the mixing bowl in a slightly different order, but they all need to go in. We must not make too much or too little of baptism; we should make as much of it as the Bible makes of it.
