One In Jesus

Yes, I know, I’ve skipped John, but we have to cover Acts first, because Acts is also by Luke, who is part of the Synoptic tradition. We need to see how Luke puts it all together.

Baptism in the Spirit

Many readers will have noticed by now that I consider all Christian baptisms to be baptism in the Spirit — although the traditional 20th Century Church of Christ teaching is that only the disciples at Pentecost and Cornelius and his household received baptism of the Spirit. This teaching traces back to H. Leo Boles’ influential book The Holy Spirit: His Personality, Nature and Works, but I believe Boles is mistaken. Continue reading →

Pre-Pentecost baptisms by the apostles

(John 3:22-26 ESV) 22 After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he remained there with them and was baptizing. 23 John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because water was plentiful there, and people were coming and being baptized 24 (for John had not yet been put in prison). 25 Now a discussion arose between some of John’s disciples and a Jew over purification. 26 And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness — look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.”

(John 4:1-3 ESV) Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee.

Jesus spent some time early in his ministry baptizing, through his disciples. We are told next to nothing about the nature of these rites, except he was very successful, even more successful than the prophet John. Evidently, some of John’s disciples saw the two men as in competition, and so it seems likely that Jesus’ preaching wasn’t greatly different from John’s. That is, he surely baptized for repentance into the remission of sins — as did John — in anticipation of the coming Kingdom. Continue reading →