Why Should I Be Immersed?

All the evidence suggests that Christ was immersed at His baptism; He was not sprinkled with water, nor was water simply poured over His head. One reason John baptized Him in the Jordan River was “because there was PLENTY OF WATER” (John 3:23). When Jesus came to John for baptism, He went down into the water, and “as soon as Jesus was baptized [immersed], he went UP OUT OF THE WATER” (Matthew 3:16).

When we understand the true meaning of baptism, we have little difficulty recognizing the authentic form of baptism. The very word “baptize” comes from the Greek word baptizo, and means to dip or immerse (put under).

During John Wesley’s visit to America in 1737, a church jury of thirty-four men tried him on the strange charge of “refusing to baptize Mr. Parker’s child, except by dipping.” (The record of the trial appears in the court proceedings of the state of Georgia.) It’s evident that the father of Methodism baptized his converts by immersion.

The history of the early church makes clear that baptism meant immersion to them. Statements by the Ante-Nicene Fathers (Vol. VII, p. 379; and Vol. III, p. 94.) show that the church immersed baptismal candidates in the second and third centuries. Baptistries for immersing converts appear in many of the churches which were built between the fourth and fourteenth centuries in Europe and Asia. The reformer John Calvin stated: “The very word baptize, however, signifies to immerse; and it is certain that immersion was the practice of the ancient Church.”—Institutes of the Christian Religion, Bk. 4, Chap. 15, Sec. 19.

Dean Stanley, one of the most scholarly writers of the Church of England, declared that “for the first thirteen centuries, the almost universal practice of baptism was that of which we read in the New Testament, and which is the very meaning of the word ‘baptize’—that those who were baptized were plunged, submerged, immersed into the water.”—Christian Institutions, p. 21.