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Is Baptism a Work that Earns Heaven?
Is Baptism a Work that Earns Heaven?
“Our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea; and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” (1 Cor. 10:1-2). Picture it. After 430 years and 10 plagues, the Israelites are hemmed in with the furious Egyptian captors behind them and the Red Sea in front (Exodus 14:9-10). Miraculously, God parts the Red Sea when an Israelite shouts, “Wait! Nobody move! If we cross over on dry ground it means we’ll be earning our salvation! If we do the work of walking the ocean floor, we won’t be saved by faith in God, we’ll be saved by our own power and works! In fact, we’re already saved and don’t even need to cross over! We should still cross over as an act of obedience, but it’s not required for salvation.”
As crazy as that sounds, this is the argument mainstream Christianity makes about baptism verbatim. “Teaching baptism for salvation is works-based salvation! It’s good to do, but not required.” How absurd! Crossing the sea wasn’t just good to do; their lives depended on it! Today, our spiritual lives depend on baptism to be saved (Matt. 28:19; Mark 16:16; Acts 2:38; 22:16; Gal. 3:27; Col. 2:12; 1 Pet. 3:21; etc.), but it doesn’t earn our salvation any more than the Israelites earned it by crossing the Red Sea. The Sea saved them only by the grace and power of God. Likewise, baptism saves us “through faith in the working of God,” not our own. (Col. 2:12).
