“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:” (Matt 28:19).
Who does what?
This may appear like a simple question to you, but some are making it difficult and are opposing Jesus’ commands on how to be saved. Here’s how the objection sounds; “Water is not stated in that verse therefore it’s Holy Spirit baptism.” They will make this claim in all the places that baptism is commanded, (see Acts 2:38; 8:12; 9:1-18; 22:16; 16:15; 25-34).
There are several ways to answer this objection but let’s just look at a simple and logical one; Answer the question: Who is being commanded to do what?
In every case that a command is given, the one receiving the command is the one expected to perform it. This includes both inward actions (faith, believing, repentance, loving) and outward actions (going, teaching, baptizing, praying, singing, giving). Scripture never presents a command that is fulfilled by another person performing the commanded action in the place of the one commanded. In other words, the command is being given to people to do, therefore people comply with the action being commanded.
Faith is not excluded from this principle simply because it is inward.
• Jesus commanded: “Believe the gospel.” (Mark 1:15);
• Paul told the jailer: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Acts 16:31);
• John writes: “This is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ.” (1 John 3:23);
Believing is therefore something the hearer is commanded to do. Likewise:
• Repent (Acts 17:30);
• Confess (Romans 10:9-10);
• Continue in the faith (Colossians 1:23).
These are personal responses. Although invisible to others, they are nevertheless actions of the person commanded. (this same reasoning answers other similar objections).
Back to Matthew 28:19; what kind of baptism can a person administer who is commanded to “go…baptizing them”? A human being cannot administer: the baptism of the Holy Spirit, nor the baptism of fire. John the Baptist distinguished these. “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance… he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire” (Matthew 3:11). Notice the distinction. John administered water baptism. Christ administers Holy Spirit baptism. The administrator identifies the baptism. Only Jesus is ever said to baptize with the Holy Spirit. No apostle is ever commanded to baptize anyone with the Holy Spirit. But the apostles are commanded to baptize. Therefore, the baptism they administer must be one that men can administer. That baptism is water baptism.
Matthew 28 does not have to mention water explicitly. It identifies the administrator. Once Scripture identifies that men are to administer the baptism, the only baptism men are ever shown administering is water baptism.
Necessary inference. When Scripture gives a command:
• The person commanded is responsible for performing the commanded action.
• Matthew 28:19 commands people to baptize.
• People can administer only water baptism.
• Therefore, the baptism commanded in Matthew 28:19 is water baptism administered by one person to another.
Agape
Spencer
BONUS ANSWER: Acts 8:34-39
“And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man?
35 Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.
36 And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?
37 And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
38 And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him.
39 And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing.”
What Inescapable conclusions do you draw from this passage?
Borger church of Christ @ Franklin & Juniper 
Under your logic, the people commanded to teach the gospel in Matthew 28:20 are the same as those who are commanded to baptize. Paul explicitly denied that his mission involved baptism (1st Cor. 1:17). That puts him at odds with the Great Commission, since he was supposed to be the apostle to the Gentiles and thus
And if you are correct that preacher must be baptizer, then because Paul explicitly denied that his mission included baptism, you are forced to conclude that Paul probably worked in tandem with other Christians who felt themselves obligated to perform baptisms…thus contradicting the Great Commission, which requires the preacher and baptizer to be the same person.
Sure, you can argue that Paul was a special exception to the rules, but you forfeit any right to be taken seriously if you are just going to conjure up exceptions and mysteries every time a biblical inconsistency is drawn to your attention.
You’ve misunderstood the point of Paul’s comment in 1Cor 1. He’s is pointing out the error of division based on who baptized who. NOT ABOUT BAPTISM’S RELEVANCE. Jesus commanded water baptism, (Matt 28:18; Mark 16:16), the Apostles (& Paul) taught it, (1Co 1:14 ¶ I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius; 15 Lest any should say that I had baptized in mine own name. 16 And I baptized also the household of Stephanas: besides, I know not whether I baptized any other.) Others taught it & did it, (Acts 8:34-38). so.. there’s that.
seb
You apparently missed the critical portion “….Christ did not send me to baptize…”
There is no way Paul could be correct about that if your interpretation of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19) is correct. The Great Commission, under your interpretation, does not allow the people charged with its fulfillment to prioritize preaching above baptism anymore than it allows them to prioritize baptism above preaching. Both aspects are equally important, and yet Paul clearly does not think they are equally important.
And the fact that Paul did not baptize most of the Corinthian believers makes it reasonable to say he did not view baptism to be equally as necessary to the Great Commission as he thought preaching was.
But not much can be gained from the logical import of Paul’s words, given that he was intentionally duplicitous whenever he thought it beneficial to his ministry. 1st Cor. 9:20-21.
How do you know Paul was intentionally duplicitous? Could there be some other conclusion? or is it an inescapable conclusion?
First, I don’t know why you jump out of your skin when confronted with a claim that Paul was intentionally duplicitous. You don’t have a doctrine that says Paul was inspired by God in everything he did after his conversion on the road to Damascus. You might wish to re-examine your own beliefs: if you recognize Paul remained a sinner for every second of his life after Acts 9, why do you respond in such a knee-jerk fashion when somebody comes along and purports to have evidence that yes, you are correct, his sinful nature did indeed manifest itself occasionally after Acts 9? Have you allowed your beliefs about Paul to go out of control…so that your mind now automatically equates an attack on Paul’s conduct, with an attack on God Almighty? If not, why are you so reactionary against those who think Paul actually did what you know sinners inevitably do, and actually sinned even after he became born-again? Are you afraid that any such concession on your part will start an unstoppable slippery slope that might advantage a bible critic?
Second, reasonableness on my part doesn’t require my viewpoint to be “inescapable” or that I knock my opponent’s contrary view all the way out of the ballpark…because reasonableness is not synonymous with absolute perfection, nor with exhaustive scholarly comprehensiveness. If you think a Christian can be reasonable to hold a theological view without necessarily being able to answer every criticism that a true biblical scholar could possibly throw at them (eschatology, the long ending of Mark, authorship of NT books, Cessationism, inerrancy, etc, etc), you commit yourself to the premise that reasonableness can possibly be achieved even while a certain amount of ignorance remains. Fairness would then dictate that you extend such a forgiving epistemological luxury to skeptics….who may then also achieve belief-reasonableness even if their belief doesn’t rise to the level of “inescapable”.
Apparently, you think you still have breathing room as long as the skeptic doesn’t exhaustively eviscerate your own position. You are in error. My skepticism attacks only one single belief of yours…the belief that the skeptical view is foolish or unreasonable. I do not argue that your own view is “wrong”. I argue that my contrary view is “reasonable”. If you think my view is unreasonable, I don’t need to prove my view is “correct”, all I need to do is prove that my belief is not unreasonable. While we can be reasonable to be correct, you err if you think the only beliefs that can possibly be correct are those that are ultimately correct.
Third, under such reasoning, I might be reasonable to view Paul as duplicitous, even if that conclusion didn’t rise to the level of “inescapable”.
Fourth, my being reasonable to view Paul as duplicitous does not demand that your contrary view of Paul be “wrong” or “unreasonable”. As the courts of law and mature educated civilized adults agree, two people can possibly be equally reasonable even while their disagreement over a single factoid is still in progress. So I do not argue that if I am reasonable to view Paul as duplicitous, then this must somehow require that your contrary view be unreasonable. If you knew what exactly reasonableness and unreasonableness required, you probably wouldn’t jump out of your skin every time somebody comes along with an attack on the bible that you haven’t seen before.
Fifth, the best evidence for Paul’s intentional duplicity is the reference I gave you, 1st Cor. 9:20-21, I’ll quote it then pose the challenge to you directly:
Challenge:How do you figure Paul could a) view himself as free from the law, but b) when among Jews act as if he believes himself to be under the law…and do all this without giving the Jews a false impression of his genuine theological convictions?
The dictionary doesn’t limit lying to forthrightly stated falsehoods. It also says it’s lying to give a false impression. So if Paul gave the Jews a false impression of his true belief about his relation to the Law, he was “lying” to them no less than if he had forthrightly identified himself as King Herod.
And at that point you are on the horns of a dilemma: You couldn’t deny that Paul told lies as he went around promoting his religion…but you still blindly insist he was absolutely trustworthy in all of his now-canonical writings…when normal common sense would dictate that if a person has a known history of giving other people a false impression by verbal statement, such tendency to lie is not limited to their oral conduct, but likely also infests their writings.
I verified that my comprehensive reply actually successfully posted a few seconds after I clicked “reply”, but now, the reply has disappeared. Is this a case of unexpected glitch, or intentional suppression? If you have a “rule” that says the only answers allowed are those which edify fundamentalist Protestants, you didn’t reveal that rule to me at any time in the past.
correction, I said ” you err if you think the only beliefs that can possibly be correct are those that are ultimately correct.”
I should have said ” you err if you think the only beliefs that can possibly be reasonable are those that are ultimately correct.”