1What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? 2May it never be! We who died to sin, how could we live in it any longer? 3Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.
5For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be part of his resurrection; 6knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be in bondage to sin. 7For he who has died has been freed from sin. 8But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him, 9knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him! 10For the death that he died, he died to sin one time; but the life that he lives, he lives to God. 11Thus consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
12Therefore don’t let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 13Also, do not present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14For sin will not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.
15What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! 16Don’t you know that when you present yourselves as servants and obey someone, you are the servants of whomever you obey, whether of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God that, whereas you were bondservants of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were delivered. 18Being made free from sin, you became bondservants of righteousness.
19I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh; for as you presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to wickedness upon wickedness, even so now present your members as servants to righteousness for sanctification. 20For when you were servants of sin, you were free from righteousness. 21What fruit then did you have at that time in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22But now, being made free from sin and having become servants of God, you have your fruit of sanctification and the result of eternal life. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Among various Christian groups there is difference of opinion as to whether the form of baptism that is to be performed, in obedience to Matthew 28:19, Acts 2:38, and Romans 6:1, among other passages, should be by immersion (or dipping) or sprinkling (or pouring). The first division over the mode of this ceremony performed on the Christian initiate was between the Eastern and Western Church. The practice of the Eastern Church has been dipping of adult and infant into water and that of the Western Church has been sprinkling or pouring.
There is little question that the meaning of the Greek words baptisma (βαπτισμα) and baptizo (βαπτιζω) from bapto (βαπτω), to dip, speaks of immersion or dipping of the individual into water that covers the body. On the other hand, those who practice pouring or sprinkling of the person consider the purpose of the act more important than the actual mode of the act.
Since the early Jewish model, after which the Christian practice emulates, was of dipping the body into the waters of the river or mikva, and the history of the eastern church, from which the practice travelled, immersion or dipping is surely the original form. There is a deviation from this strict immersion practice in an early manual of the church, called The Didache (The Teaching, of the apostles, chap. 7). This early manual dated in the 80s or 90s A.D., speaks of immersing the individual three times, in the name of the Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit. It continues, however, that if running water is not available one is to follow this method, apparently for expediency, to pour water on the head three times in the name of the Trinity.