Baptism – Essential to Obedience

This sermon was first preached on October 13, 1889, by Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The text for this evening comes from the book of Mark, Mark 16, verse 16. Listen as I read.

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.

If our congregations were what they ought to be, it would be a very simple matter to preach. For a sermon would then only need to be like the orders given by a commanding officer to his troops – short, sharp, plain, clear and distinct. Our listeners would not want illustrations and metaphors. They would simply ask to be told what they must do to be saved. and the more plainly they could be told, the better pleased they would be.

I am going to try this evening to preach that kind of a sermon, seeking to preach the good news, clearly speaking of how to be saved. If you want to be saved, listen to my message. If you don't care about salvation, listen anyway, for perhaps While you are listening, God may bless you by planting the desire to be saved in your heart.

My text is preceded and followed by other important words.

Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

The gospel then is for all creation, every creature. Wherever there is a man, a woman, or a child, any intelligent creature, the gospel is to be preached to such a person. You who are gathered here tonight are clearly within that description, and therefore the gospel is to be preached to you.

But if we are commanded to preach it, It is implied that you are commanded to listen to it. To listen to it without paying attention, to listen to it without resolving to obey it, will be useless work. Therefore, listen to it as I preach it, remembering that Christ is also standing here listening to me preach and observing how you accept the message, the message from Him that I am delivering.

The gospel is sent to every creature because every creature needs it. The gospel is sent to every creature because every creature needs it. Whether the creature knows it or not, he is lost. Lost by nature and lost by practice too. So lost that he cannot save himself. He needs to be saved.

Will you believe that? If you have not believed in Christ, you are lost and you cannot save yourself. Begin by believing that fact, but then rejoice, rejoice that there is sent to you a gospel, a gospel which can save you, a gospel which is adapted and meant for the salvation of just such a person as you are. For to you God says, Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.

My fellow Christians, you who have believed in Christ, it is time for us to wake up, for we have not preached the gospel to every creature yet by any stretch of the imagination. Some persons have never preached it to anybody. Some, I mean of the very persons who are commanded to preach it to every creature. An old-fashioned preacher once said that if some of God's people were paid $10 an hour for all they have done for their Lord, they have not yet earned enough money to buy a cake of gingerbread. And I am afraid that statement is true.

Some persons have done so very little for the spread of the gospel that the world is no better for their being in it. Do I speak too harshly? If I do, you can easily ignore what I say. But if not, if it is true that there are some of you here tonight that have never yet honestly and directly shared the gospel of Jesus Christ, then begin at once. When you get home tonight, share the gospel with your nearest relative and tomorrow go to your next door neighbor or to the friend whom you can most easily reach and share the good news that your Lord has revealed to you and therefore help to preach the gospel to every creature.

An army chaplain once said to the Duke of Wellington, Do you think that it is of any use for us to be taking the gospel to the hill tribes in India? Will they ever accept it?" The Duke replied, "'What are your marching orders?' That was the only answer the Duke gave. Stern, disciplinarian as that great soldier was, he only needed marching orders, and he obeyed. What he meant was that every soldier of the cross must obey the marching orders of Christ, his great commander. Go as far as your position and capabilities allow you and tell every creature the word of the gospel as is recorded in my text.

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.

I want to do my part tonight, as far as my feeble voice will permit me, and I will speak a few words, first concerning belief, secondly concerning baptism, and thirdly concerning being saved. We will understand the whole text clearly in considering those three points.

Concerning believing, this is the main point. This is the hinge of salvation. For whoever believes in Christ is not condemned. Whoever believes in Christ has eternal life. Now concerning believing, let me ask first, what is it that we must believe? What is it that we must believe? Well, you are to believe that you have broken the law of God. You are to believe that you have broken the law of God and that as a consequence you are condemned. But that God in His infinite mercy has sent His Son Jesus Christ into the world that you might live through Him.

His divine Son, His only begotten Son, was born of Mary. as a man of the substance of his mother, feeling as we do, and was, in all respects, most truly a man. Being here, he obeyed his Heavenly Father's will, and when the time came, he gave himself up as a sacrifice for guilty men and women. Jesus died, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God. Jesus Himself had no sin, yet He took on Himself the sin of His people. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross. Being found with human sin imputed to Him, He suffered in the place of those whose sins He bore. His blood was shed on the cross, for without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. But by that shedding of blood, he wiped out the iniquity of all those who put their trust in him.

This is what you have to believe, that he bore, that you might never bear, his father's righteous fury. Jesus was laid in the grave and on the third day he came out of the tomb. rising again for the justification of his people since he was crucified for their offenses. After a while he went up into the highest heaven and he is now enthroned there as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He sits at the right hand of God the Father and there he pleads and makes intercession for sinners.

Believe this, Through this man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins. Jesus is exalted on high, a Prince and a Savior, to give repentance and remission of sins. That is what is to be believed. I might go into a great many details, but I will not do so tonight. The essence of what we must believe is that Jesus Christ is given to us by God the Father that by his death he would pay for our sin, and we would be reconciled to God, and that everyone who believes in Jesus will not perish, but will have eternal life.

That I may better answer this question, let me correct it, or turn it into another question and then answer that. The question is not so much what we need to believe as who we are to believe in. The question is not so much what we need to believe as who we are to believe in.

In practice, just believing that a certain thing is true, though that may be helpful, will not save anyone. I can believe something to be true and even trust myself to that truth. There is faith, the act of trust, but still I would not be saved. For if we want to be saved, we must trust a person. We must trust the Lord Jesus Christ.

You are not saved by believing a doctrine. Rather, you are saved by believing, trusting in a person. You must believe the doctrine or you will not trust the person. But believing the doctrine, you then come and put your trust in the person about whom that doctrine is taught. If you want to be saved, trust your life to Jesus Christ, the one who died and always lives, for he is able to save completely those who come to God through him.

Saving faith is trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ, trusting Him completely, solely, constantly, trusting Him now and for the future. Look at Him, the Son of God, enthroned in glory. Lay your soul and all its sins at His dear feet and trust Him to save you and He will do it.

Many will ask a third question. Can he be trusted? Can he be trusted? I would like to answer that by another question. Why can't he be trusted? Why can't Jesus be trusted? When someone said to me the other day, I cannot trust Jesus Christ, I asked, can you trust me? And when the quick reply was, as it ought to be from a member of the church to the pastor, oh yes sir, I do trust you. I said, well then, you certainly can trust the Lord Jesus Christ, for he is infinitely more worthy of being trusted than I can ever be.

Cannot trust Christ? That is a piece of satanic delusion. I can say tonight, that not only can I trust my soul to Christ, but that if I had as many souls as there are grains of sands on the seashore, I could implicitly trust all of them to Him. Why shouldn't I? He is God over all, forever praised, and He is man, tender and gentle. Therefore, He ought to be trusted.

Oh, my friends, can you look the crucified Christ in the face and say that you cannot trust him? Can you see the bloody sweat in the garden? Can you gaze on the nailed hands and feet and pierce side of this suffering man who is at the same time the very God of the universe? And can you then say that it is hard to trust him? Oh no, He is so true, so noble, so generous, so faithful that I beg you to trust Him and to trust Him now.

That raises another question. When is Christ to be trusted? When is Christ to be trusted? And the answer is now. He was never more worthy to be trusted than he is tonight, and you never needed a Savior more than you do tonight. You are, perhaps, talking about trusting Christ at some time in the future. You tell me that you do not trust Mr. So-and-so, but that you hope to trust him one of these days. I will not give you a penny for such a hope as that. No, my friend. If at any future time you should deem Christ worthy of your confidence, He is worthy of your trust tonight, for He is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Just as you are sitting in that pew, Christ deserves your confidence, and I pray that you will give it to Him. Cast your guilty soul on Him this very moment. Do not live another second in unbelief, for that unbelief is a slander on my Lord, a grievous injury to His dear faithful love. Now, while the word has just left my lip, as it reaches your ear, say and mean it, I do believe. I will trust Jesus. I yield myself to Christ and take him to be my Savior."

Someone says, if I do that, when will the blessing come? If I do that, when will the blessing come? The text says, whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. And the blessing will come immediately. Swift as the lightning flash is the act which saves the soul. One moment a man may be covered with the filth of accumulated sin. The next moment he may be as pure as the driven snow. It takes no time at all for God to remove our iniquity. We pass in an instant from death to life, from darkness into marvelous light.

I am praying that while I speak to you in feebleness, God may work with His almighty power with the same right hand that opened the Red Sea so that the ransom of the Lord could cross over on dry land. May He come and save the people prepared by His grace for this night of His glorious power, leading them immediately to believe and giving them at once, as the result of their faith, Reconciliation to God and justification by Jesus Christ.

Here let me correct a mistake, a mistake in which some people fall. They say, Do you exhort us to believe? I do indeed with all my heart. But, sir, faith is the work of the Spirit of God. Yes, did I ever say that it was not? I insist on it continually, that wherever there is any faith, it is produced in us by the Spirit of God. But listen, did I ever tell you the Spirit of God believed for us? Or did you ever read anything in scripture similar to that statement? No, the Spirit of God leads us to believe But we distinctly believe and it is our faith that saves us. It is not that the Holy Spirit believes for us and we lie still like a man under a surgeon's knife. Oh no, every faculty is awakened and aroused by the Spirit of God. We see that Christ can save and we believe it. We believe that he will save and we trust him to save us. It is our own act indeed. It cannot be anybody else's act indeed. You cannot believe for another. There can be no proxies here. And even the Holy Spirit himself cannot believe for you. It is not written, let the Holy Spirit believe for you. That would be absurd. But what is written is believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. With your own right mind and heart you must believe in Jesus Christ if you are to be saved.

I don't know that I need to say anything more concerning believing. I have often tried to explain it. I am afraid that I have not always made it as clear as I have intended. Only let me warn you not to say, not to say, sir, I clearly understand the plan of salvation. I don't need it explained to me again. I understand it perfectly. My dear friend, it is one thing to understand the plan of salvation and quite another thing to believe in Jesus Christ to the salvation of your soul. It is a harsh evening. The rain is pouring down, and here is a man, sitting at the edge of the street, exposed to the foul weather. And he has plans for his newly built house, laying there on the wet pavement. And he says, I am all right. I understand the plan of the house perfectly well. You see, he is looking at the plans. He has a view of the front of the house. He knows where the windows and doors are. He can see where the kitchen is and the passageway to the kitchen. And he knows the arrangement of all the rooms. But my dear fellow, you are getting soaking wet. The storm is raging. Why don't you go into the house for shelter? Don't talk to me, he says. I perfectly understand the plans of the house. Man is a fool if he talks like that. Everyone will conclude that he is out of his mind. Likewise, what kind of a man is he who is satisfied with understanding the plan of salvation, but who does not come to Christ and put his trust in him? Come to Jesus now, I beg you. You who don't know much about the plan of salvation, come to Jesus. Come and trust him. Trust him now.

2. A little concerning baptism. A little concerning baptism. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. I did not write this text. Perhaps if I had written it, I would have left out that part about baptism, but I have had no hand in writing the Bible. I am obliged to take God's word as I find it. And here I read these words of our Lord Jesus Christ. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. Do not dwell on baptism, someone says. Leave that out. That is what you say, my dear sir. I can't see your face, but I do not believe that you are my master. My master is the Lord who led holy men to write this Bible, and I can only go by the Bible. The Bible has in this verse the word baptism in it, so I must stick to the truth as it is in the Bible. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.

Let me remind you that our Savior's words teach us that baptism follows faith, whoever believes and is baptized. Let me remind you that our Savior's words teach us that baptism follows faith, whoever believes and is baptized. Never neglect the order of things in the Bible. If God puts them 1, 2, 3, don't you put them 3, 2, 1? Hopefully you've never had a servant who twisted your orders out of order. Did you ever say to your servant, Mary, now go and sweep the parlor and afterwards take the duster and dust the table and the shelves and the books? Did she come to you sometime later and say, Madam, I have done as you commanded me. I dusted the table and the shelves and the books and then I swept the room. Every good housewife knows what would happen from turning her orders upside down in that fashion. Today a great many in the Christian Church have put it this way, whoever is baptized and believes I am not one of those maidservants. I dare not turn my master's orders upside down. You have no right to baptize people until they have believed in Christ as their Savior."

Remember how Philip put it to the Ethiopian eunuch when that worthy man said, Look, here is water. Why shouldn't I be baptized? Philip answered, If you believe with all your heart, you may. And if you don't believe with all your heart, you shouldn't be baptized. You have no right to this ordinance of Christ unless you are a Christian. Whoever believes and is baptized, that is the scriptural order. Read the New Testament without bias and you will always find that those who were baptized were believers. They believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and then they were baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Next, I want you to notice that this matter of baptism is often linked with faith. I want you to notice that this matter of baptism is often linked with faith. We see this over and over again in the New Testament. And there are passages, which I will not quote tonight, in which baptism has a distinctive prominence given to it in connection with the work of salvation. It might have been said, whoever believes and comes to the communion table will be saved, but it is not written as such. Some churches have exalted what they call the Holy Eucharist into a very elevated position indeed. far beyond what Scripture has ever accorded to it. Yet the Lord's Supper has never had given to it in the Word of God the position of being put side by side with faith, as baptism is in this and other passages.

I am not going to dwell on that point tonight. I am merely telling you what the teaching of the New Testament is. Our appeal is to the law and to the testimony. I must also say that it is not possible that there can be any saving grace in the baptism itself. It is not possible that there can be any saving grace in the baptism itself. The act of applying water in any way whatsoever cannot wash away a single sin. That would be going back to the old covenant of works, the old ceremonies of the Mosaic Law. All the washings under the law never washed away one sin. Nor can any washing in water take away the sin of any man or woman. Even the tears of Christ are never spoken of as eradicating any sin. It is His precious blood and His precious blood alone that cleanses away the sin of men and women.

In my text, while it says whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, yet when the condemnation is announced, it is simply whoever does not believe will be condemned. The matter of baptism is not mentioned. For there are many who believe but who are not baptized, and who cannot be as the dying thief on the cross, for instance, yet they are assuredly saved. Nevertheless, here stands my text, and I cannot alter it. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved."

Now, why do you suppose that baptism is put into this prominent position? I think that it is for this reason. Baptism is the outward expression of the inward faith. Why do you suppose that baptism is put into this prominent position? I think that it is for this reason. Baptism is the outward expression of the inward faith. Whoever believes in Christ with his heart confesses his faith before God and before the Church of God by being baptized. The faith that speaks this way is not a silent faith. It is not a cowardly faith. It is not a sneaky faith. Paul states it this way, If you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

But why is confession so necessary to prove true faith? I answer that it is necessary to the very existence of the Church of the Living God. Because if I can be a believer and never confess my faith, then you also can be a believer and never confess your faith. And all around us we would thus have a company of believing men and women, and yet none of them confessing Christ as their Lord. So what would become of the outward ordinances of the Church of the Dear Christ? How could any pastor or preacher minister? How could we establish and add to the Kingdom of Christ? For a hundred reasons, it is absolutely necessary for Christ's Kingdom that the believer would openly confess his faith. Don't you see that? And therefore, baptism, being God's way of our openly confessing our faith, is required to be added to our faith that the faith may be a confessing faith. not a cowardly faith, that the faith may be an open faith, not a private faith, that the faith may be a working faith, influencing our life and the lives of others, and not a mere secret attempt for self-salvation by a silent faith which dares not own Christ.

Remember those words of the Lord Jesus, Whoever acknowledges me before men I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my very Father in heaven.

There is, therefore, no regenerating effect in water or in immersion or in baptism in any shape or form, but it is necessary as the outward visible expression of the inward spiritual faith. by which the soul is saved.

And dear friends, once more, baptism is often the test of obedience. Baptism is often the test of obedience. Whoever believes in Christ takes Him to be his Master as well as his Savior. And Christ therefore says to him, Go and do so and so. The man refuses to do it. He thereby proves that he does not intend to be the disciple of the Master.

Oh, someone says, you know that baptism is a non-essential. Haven't I begged you to cease such idle and wicked talk as that? Imagine that you have a servant and that you leave for your place of business early in the morning. You have instructed your maid to bring you a cup of tea at six o'clock in the morning before you leave for work. The maid does not bring it to you, and you ask, why haven't I had my tea brought to me? Oh, she answers, it is non-essential. You can do your business very well without that cup of tea.

Let such a reply as that be repeated. or let it be given only once, and I will tell you what will be not essential. It will be not essential for you to keep that woman any longer in your house. You will want another servant, for you will say, clearly she is no servant of mine. She sets herself up as the mistress of the house, for she begins to judge my commands and to say that this one is essential and that one is not essential.

Let me ask again, what do you mean by saying that baptism is a non-essential? I mean that I can be saved without being baptized. Will you dare to say that wicked sentence over again? I mean that I can be saved without being baptized. You nasty creature. So you will do nothing that Christ commands if you can be saved without doing it? You are hardly worth saving at all.

A man who always wants to be paid for what he does, whose idea of religion is that he will do what is essential to his own salvation, only cares to save his own skin, and Christ may go where he likes. Clearly, you are no servant of his. You need to be saved from such a disreputable, miserable state of mind, and may the Lord save you.

Oftentimes I do believe that this little matter of believer's baptism is the true test of the sincerity of our profession of love to Christ. It would have been just the same if maybe the Lord Jesus Christ had said, pick up six little stones off the ground and carry them in your pocket and you will be saved. Somebody would have said, picking up those stones is a non-essential.

My dear friends, everything becomes essential as soon as Christ commands it. Everything becomes essential as soon as Christ commands it. It is in this way that baptism, if not essential to your salvation, is essential to your obedience to Christ. If you have become His disciple, you are therefore compelled to obey all your Master's commands. Do whatever he tells you.

Lastly for tonight, concerning being saved. Concerning being saved. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. What does it mean to be saved? Well, it means, of course, what everyone wants it to mean. Salvation from the punishment of sin. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. Their transgressions will be forgiven. Their iniquity will be blotted out. They will not be brought into condemnation. And in the last great day they will be justified in Christ. No, they are justified now, as the Apostle says. Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. This is certainly a part of what it means to be saved.

Next, it means that whoever believes and is baptized will have salvation from the dominion of his old nature. To be saved means that whoever believes and is baptized will have salvation from the dominion of his old nature. When you believe in Christ, there will suddenly spring up in you a new life, a new principle. A well will be dug within you and a fountain of living water will begin to bubble up within you and will flow for all of eternity. A miracle will take place in you. The Holy Spirit will come into your heart, making His home there and recreating you, setting up within your soul a new King. The old power of sin will be broken and there will be a new order of things within your heart and righteousness will begin to reign there through Jesus Christ.

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. That is, he will have salvation from his old sins. He will no longer be the slave of drunkenness. He will stop swearing. He will overcome his lying, his anger, and his lust. Whoever believes and is baptized will see all his old adversaries defeated and chased away. What he could not do through the weakness of his flesh will be done for him by the power of the Spirit of God. By divine grace he will overcome his sins. He will begin to live for God under new impulses, strengthened with a new power. and therefore he will be delivered from his old sins.

Listen again, for this is wonderful. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. He will be saved from going back into his old sins. He will be saved from going back into his old sins. If it were not for the final perseverance of the saints, I think my gospel would be a poor gospel to preach. but he who truly believes in Christ will have such a change brought about in him that the blessed work will never be undone. My Lord will light such a candle in your heart that the devil himself will never be able to blow it out. Christ will come to you with such power and authority and set up his eternal throne in your soul with such divine majesty and strength that you will be His in time and throughout eternity. We do not preach a temporary salvation, nor a work of grace that will in time grow feeble and lose its power. But we proclaim a work of grace that will enable you who believe to go on from strength to strength, from glory to glory, until every sin in you will be driven out and you will be made perfectly like your Lord. Then you will see His face in righteousness and be with Him forever and ever.

" Once more, whoever believes and is baptized will be saved from the age in which he lives. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved from the age in which he lives.

But someone says, I don't want to be saved from that. Don't you? No. But if you go with the age and go with the world, you will also go down into the same destruction to which this world is doomed. Do not cherish the friendship of the world that killed your Lord, for the world and the works that are in it will be burned up.

Do you remember what Peter said on the day of Pentecost? Save yourselves from this corrupt generation. That is what I want you to do tonight. With many other words he warned them and pleaded with them. Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.

A man who wishes to be a man and desires to be a saved man needs to take up arms against this evil age. He who would prove himself to be alive to God must swim against the current of the times. Dead fish go downstream. Can't you see them? I see the white bellies of the dead fish floating down by the millions. But the living fish go up the stream against the current and find their way to pure waters.

Beloved, He who believes in Jesus Christ with all his heart will become a rare man and will stand firm for God and truth where others yield to the satanic power and to be holy where ungodliness, like a mighty torrent, now sweeps down our streets.

Whoever believes and is baptized into the sweet name of Jesus vows to follow Christ and Christ alone believing in Him and resolving to live for Him, to die for Him, and in Christ to find hope here and eternal bliss in eternity. He is the man who will be saved from this present evil age to the glory of God the Father.

All this great work is brought about by faith in Christ. That is the only way of salvation. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Believe in Him, as men sometimes say, up to the hilt. Believe in His manhood, sympathizing with you. Believe in His Godhead, able to help you. Believe in His blood, cleansing you. Believe in His eternal life, bringing everlasting life to you.

God bless you. every one of you, for his dear son's sake, amen.