I indeed have baptized you with water, but He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost. Mark 1:8
Stories abound of children being badly scratched as they struggled to baptize the family cat in a backyard puddle. We laugh at the way children try to imitate the ordinance they have seen performed somewhere. We recognize that they just don’t understand what was going on; they don’t grasp the significance of baptism or what it is supposed to accomplish. Probably most of the folks John was speaking to in today’s text didn’t understand, either. But many of them probably experienced two other baptisms in their life, the baptism of the Holy Ghost, as John mentioned, and believer’s baptism that we practice today. We need to recognize the differences.
John practiced baptism for repentance. As with believer’s baptism, the water involved in John’s baptism did nothing more than get the person wet. This baptism made no change in the individual, but it did indicate the person’s admission of sin and acceptance of their need for salvation. We don’t practice John’s baptism today, because John was a forerunner for the Lord Jesus, and his baptism was to prepare people for the Gospel’s great focus on the Saviour.
Unlike John’s baptism, which made no change in the individual, Jesus’ baptism with the Holy Ghost made a definite change, in fact, the greatest change that is possible to occur to a human being. Introduced on the day of Pentecost, the baptism of the Holy Ghost resulted in the third Person of the Trinity taking up residence within the saved person. From that day, every person who trusts Christ as Saviour is sealed by the Holy Spirit, Who becomes the permanent Resident of that person. During His ministry, the Lord Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit, identifying Him as the Comforter and the Encourager. He spoke of the power of God being available to Christians, because of the presence of the Holy Spirit. How much better than John’s baptism is the baptism of the Holy Ghost!
This bring us to believer’s baptism. If John’s baptism speaks of the repentance that qualifies us for Salvation, and the baptism of the Holy Ghost as that which seals us forever in God’s Salvation, believer’s baptism is the act of telling others of our purpose to live in the good of the Salvation we have received. We no longer need John’s baptism, although we definitely need repentance. We don’t actually need believer’s baptism to get to Heaven, although it is necessary for obedience as a Christian. But we definitely need the baptism of the Holy Ghost. We are lost without that! -Jim MacIntosh