Food for thought…

No one in the first century ever argued the essentiality of baptism. You won’t find it anywhere in the New Testament*. You can find people accepting and rejecting the preaching of the Gospel, but nowhere can you find someone arguing whether or not baptism was a command to obey.

Instead, what you find are people arguing essentiality of Jesus. Once they accepted that, they were baptized without hesitation.

And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, “I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man?” Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus. And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, “See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?” And Philip said, “If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him. 

(Acts 8:34-38)

That’s it. That’s the devo.

~Matthew

*before someone mentions it, the closest you can find to an argument about the essentiality of baptism is in Acts 10, when the Jews questioned if Gentiles should be baptized (to that point, Christianity was a Jewish religion), but they weren’t arguing the essentiality of baptism; they were arguing who had the right to obey it (once they understood the Gentiles had the right, they all said “we cannot forbid them”–Acts 10:47)