Congregation Shema Yisrael

“I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” -Matthew 3:11-17

While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The Jewish believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Then Peter said, “Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we Jews have.” So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus Christ). Then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days. -Acts 10:44-48

The passages you’ve just read are illustrations of the nature and character of baptism. Certainly the baptism of Yeshua (Jesus) by Yochanon the Immerser (John the Baptist) teaches us that he was baptized into both water and spirit. The example from the Book of Acts is illuminating, since we see that the concept of baptism in water and spirit was uniquely Jewish up to this point and time, and the Jews were amazed that even the Gentile believers received the spirit and thus, also should be baptized in water.

Many believers think that baptism began with John as we see in both Matthew 3 and Mark 1, but is this something that began in the “New Testament”? In John 3 we see Jesus telling an apparently amazed Nicodemus that a man must be “born again” of the Spirit to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus is actually talking about the baptism as well here and in fact, he chided Nicodemus, because the concept of rebirth by water should (and probably was, as we shall see) have been completely familiar to him in a Jewish context. How can baptism and being born again be Jewish, and why is this important to the Gentile believer today?

The history of what you may understand as “baptism” is actually from the much older concept of Mikvah. According to Wikipedia, a Mikvah is “a ritual bath designed for the purpose of ritual immersion in Judaism. The word “mikvah”, as used in the Hebrew Bible, literally means a “collection” – generally, a collection of water. Several biblical regulations specify that full immersion in water is required to regain ritual purity after ritually impure incidents have occurred…” Leviticus 14 and 15 outline the conditions when a Jewish man or woman must be immersed in the Mikvah. I won’t go into a set of lengthy quotes regarding the specific circumstances, but immersion is required for such events as a man’s nocturnal emissions, after a woman’s menstrual period, and after being cleansed of tzaarat (spiritual leprosy). Priests entered the Mikvah when being consecrated, and the High Priest entered the Mikvah before performing the annual Yom Kippur service in the Holy of Holies of the Temple.

There is one particular use of the Mikvah that is not recorded in the Torah or anywhere in the Bible. Immersion in the Mikvah is a necessary last step in the process of a Gentile converting to Judaism. According to the Talmud in tractate Yevamot, the last act of a Gentile converting to Judaism, before the conversion process is complete, is for the person to be completely immersed in the Mikvah, and then to rise out of the water again. Since the water represents an environment where a person would die because they cannot breathe, the convert is considered to have died to being a Gentile once they are completely immersed, and once they rise from the water, they are “born again” as a completely new creature: a Jew.

When he (the proselyte) comes up after his immersion, he is deemed an Israelite in all respects -Yevamot 47b

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. -2 Corinthians 5:17-18

As we can see, Paul’s idea of a “new creation” wasn’t an one that was entirely his own. He, like Nicodemus, would have known the history of the Mikvah and the Rabbinical (but not Biblical) tradition of the conversion process through immersion.

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” “How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!” Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked. “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? -John 3:1-12

Nicodemus shouldn’t have been surprised at anything Jesus was saying, since being “born again” through the waters of the Mikvah, was very familiar to him. What was probably puzzling though, was the idea that a Jew would have to be “born again” by immersion, since the concept of dying and being reborn as a new creation only applied at that time, to Gentiles who were converting to Judaism. A Jew wouldn’t have to be born again as a Jew. But then again, that’s not what Jesus was saying, either.

Jesus, like John (who was “baptizing” Jews in the Jordan), understood the immersion both from the Talmudic and Torah perspectives, and was teaching that what dies within you is your sin nature, and you are reborn united with God through the Messiah. This is why immediately after explaining the true understanding of being born again to Nicodemus, Jesus relates the following:

No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven; the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God. -John 3:13-21

Being born again in the Messiah through immersion, is directly connected with the lifting up of the Messiah (the Son of Man), release from condemnation, and entering the Kingdom of God. In that sense, being ethnically Jewish is insufficient to accomplish God’s purpose. A person must turn away from their sins, become a new creation apart from sin, and be reconciled with God. This applies to Jew and Gentile alike.

The history of immersion as a way of dying to a former life and rising from the waters to join God as His own is actually older than the Mikvah.

But the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. That day the LORD saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. And when the Israelites saw the great power the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in Him and in Moses His servant. -Exodus 14:29-31

This is the final sequence of events regarding the parting of Yam Suf (the Reed Sea); the miracle of God through Moses, where the sea was parted for an entire night, allowing six million men, woman, and children and all their livestock and belongings to escape the Egyptian army as if they were walking on dry land. These people, the Children of Israel and the “mixed multitude” of Gentiles, had been slaves of the Egyptian people and the Egyptian gods for centuries. Even as Moses was leading them out of Egypt, that slave frame of mind persisted (and that frame of mind would ultimately be the downfall of that generation, causing them to wander for 40 years after failing to obey God and conquer Canaan). Not in body, but in spirit, this entire people were still enslaved to the pagan gods and idolatrous practices of Egypt; their old nature. They went down into the sea that way, but when they rose up again, they were something different.

The final words of Exodus 14:31 state that “the people feared the LORD and put their trust in Him and in Moses His servant”. Almost the entire contents of Exodus 15 records the songs of Moses and Miriam, in praise and adoration for the God of their Salvation. While the Egyptians were immersed, never to rise again, the six million, Jewish and Gentile alike, arose as newly created Children of the Most High God, all immersed into Moses.

For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. -1 Corinthians 10:1-4

Here Paul defines the Reed Sea event as a “baptism” into Moses in the cloud (Spirit) and the sea (water). We could also make a comparison between the “spiritual food and drink” Paul relates, and how Jesus describes himself as “bread and wine” at the final Pesach (Passover) meal with his disciples, just before his crucifixion.

What’s very important to recognize in the Reed Sea immersion though, is that it applied equally to both the Jewish and Gentile people going through the experience. We also see later at Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19 and 20), that the same population fully accepted the Torah of God unreservedly. This group of Jews and Gentiles, as if they were a single person, became a new creation in God, and then received His Word as the Creator’s preferred lifestyle for His redeemed people. It’s the same for us today.

We believers in Yeshua as the Messiah, Savior, and High Priest in the Heavenly Court, are immersed into the reality of God and the Messiah by water and Spirit, in response to both the example at the Reed Sea and to the commandment of Yeshua:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit -Matthew 28:19

We see that this immersion was given “first to the Jew but also to the Gentile”, not to convert the Gentile to Judaism (and certainly, not to convert the Jew into Gentile Christianity), but as a commitment enacted by each of us, to die to our old, sinful nature, and to arise as a completely different person by the water and the Spirit, baptized into the very death and resurrection of the Messiah, to be united, like he is, with God the Father, as true Children of Heaven. This was God’s plan from the beginning, and is as old as the parting of the Reed Sea, and the giving of the Torah. Immersion in water and Spirit has been given in it’s most complete form through the Son of God. Let us be immersed into him and rejoice as brothers and sisters together; and as Children of God, and inheritors of the Promise.