Baptism in Jesus Name!

I received a comment asking us to explain why we believe it is essential to baptize in Jesus' name. In response I wanted to write the reason in a post in lieu of just answering the comment in case anyone else may have the same question. The reason we believe that you need to be baptized in the first place is because the bible records Jesus stating in John 3:5 "Verily verily I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God", so from that we know that we need to be baptized in the first place. If that isn't enough to convince us of how essential baptism is we can look into what every person recorded in the new testament did once they believed in Jesus Christ, and the answer is they were baptized. Just as important as it is to be baptized it also is important how you are baptized. In Matthew we have Jesus speaking to the disciples in what is commonly called the "great commission" and this is the place that we find Jesus commanding the disciples to baptize "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." At first glance that would seem like we are to say those exact words; however, it is speaking of only "one" name, which is why the bible states in the name, and not names. If we look into prophecy we can go to the book of Zechariah and look at chapter 14 verse 9 which states "And the LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one LORD, and his name one." If there is any question into what that name was to be we can look to Acts Chapter 4 where Peter is speaking about Jesus and he states this in verse 12: "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." We do follow that great commission but we actually baptize in the name he was referring to and that is Jesus. When he was speaking to his disciples they knew what that name was and what Jesus was instructing them to do. We know this because in the very first place after this happened we have Peter in Acts chapter 2 verse 38 telling the people what they must do to be saved, so what did he say? He said "Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." If that isn't enough every where after this where people were baptized, they were baptized in the name of Jesus. There is not one place that we read in the New Testament where anyone baptized in the titles. The reason they didn't was because they were titles and Jesus didn't ask them to baptize in the titles Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, but the Name of the Father, and the Name of the Son, and the Name of the Holy Ghost which is Jesus.

Using ourselves as examples my husband is a father, and he is a son, but his name is Jeff. The authority is in the Name of Jesus Christ and your name is a recognition of who you are. We believe in Jesus Christ and so we want to be recognized as being his; therefore, we are baptized in his name. A very good example to read in regards to this is Acts chapter 19 where Paul finding disciples said beginning in verse 2 "He said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. And he said unto them, Unto what then were ye baptized? And they said, unto John's baptism. Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus." Then what did they do? Verse 5 lets us know "When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus". So as you can see from this it does matter into what name you are baptized. We also were at one time years ago baptized in the titles, but we could not deny the revelation the scripture gave to us that we needed to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, so just as the scripture speaks in Acts 19 referenced above once we believed on Jesus Christ we were baptized in the name of Jesus and filled with the Holy Ghost.