Mark 16:16
Bob Wilkin, The GES News, Mary-June 1995, pp. 2-4
From 1974 to 1978 I was involved in evangelistic outreach ministry at two universities: Arkansas State University (1974-76) and North Carolina State University (1976-778). I often ran into students who believed that in order to go to heaven you had to be baptized. One of the passages they cited was And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned." In this article I will explain why this verse can't be teaching salvation by baptism and then show what it does mean. There are a number of clear and compelling reasons why we can be sure that Let's briefly consider each of those points in more detail. Condemnation Is for Unbelief Only Jesus didn't say, "He who is not baptized will be condemned." Neither did He say, "He who does not believe and is not baptized will be condemned." By this our Lord made it clear that faith alone was necessary to avoid eternal condemnation. He said the same thing in The Apostles Preached Salvation by Faith Alone Two of the disciples in the inner circle were Peter and John. Both of them heard Jesus say the words recorded in Peter proclaimed the Gospel to Cornelius and his family. He led them to faith in Christ before he even mentioned baptism (cf. The apostle John wrote an evangelistic book that we call the Gospel of John. He repeatedly indicated that faith is the condition of eternal salvation. Yet not once in all of John's Gospel, written after the event recorded in The Gospel Never Changes "What about the thief on the cross?" I would say. "Jesus said he would be with Him that day in Paradise, yet he was never baptized." The response I would get was inevitably this: That was before Pentecost. After Pentecost, you have to be baptized in order to be saved. What these students were telling me was that the Gospel had changed. Before Jesus' resurrection and the coming of the Spirit a person was saved without water baptism. After that water baptism is required. That is an impossible position to defend since the apostle Paul clearly indicates that we are saved in this age the same way Abraham and David were saved in their age (cf. Rom. The NT Gives Examples of Salvation Before Baptism In addition to the thief on the cross, there are other NT examples of people who were saved without being baptized. Martha ( These four points prove that The key to understanding these verses is to recognize that they are a summary statement of the Great Commission. Mark is not reporting everything that Jesus said about the Great Commission. He is recording one summary statement that Jesus made of it. The Great Commission was communicated by the Lord on five different occasions (once each in the Gospels and Acts). There is a lot of variety in the way the Great Commission is expressed in these five instances. In some of those statements only evangelism is mentioned (e. g. , What Jesus is saying in It is, of course, true that all who believe and are baptized will be eternally saved. That is not to say, however, that those who either refuse to be baptized or who fail to be baptized through procrastination, ignorance, or lack of opportunity (for example, some people have died immediately after trusting in Christ) will not be saved. They will. At the very moment they believe, they are saved from the penalty of sin, eternal condemnation. We must be careful not to read into Scripture. Jesus does not say or even imply that the one who isn't baptized won't be saved. We know that is not true from other Scripture, and even from the second half of v. Conclusion ________________ *Another understanding of
