As we have seen in our study of Scripture throughout the course of this book, baptism by immersion in water with the invoking of the saving name of Jesus Christ, is essential for all who believe in Jesus.

We who believe must be baptized, and we must do so in His name: “Jesus.”

This is the biblical record, proven by the actions of the disciples of Jesus Christ in the Book of Acts, as they went forth to obey Jesus’ commands… as every example of water baptism found within the confines of Scripture is carried out in “Jesus’ name,” or the “name of the Lord” (which is Jesus).

The greatest question that arises then is usually one that comes with reference to Jesus’ words to His disciples in Matthew 28:19, where Jesus told His disciples to “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

The question usually looks something like this (and is a valid question to ask): “If Jesus told His disciples to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then why did His disciples seemingly deviate from that command?”

First, we have to acknowledge what Jesus said. Yes. He absolutely told His disciples to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but was His command a formula to be repeated? Or a command to obey? If it was a formula to be repeated, then yes, the disciples of Jesus would absolutely have been (based on their action in the Book of Acts) deviating from His command, but if His words were a command and not a formula, then could it have been just that the disciples were simply obeying Jesus?

When Jesus’ disciples went forth to obey the command that Jesus gave them in Matthew 28, they did so by baptizing believers in the name of Jesus, calling on the name of the Lord at baptism.

Is this error? Were the disciples directly disobeying Jesus? Or were they obeying Him?

No, no, and yes.

Jesus told His disciples to “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” _(Matthew 28:19), and that is exactly what they did. Jesus said to go baptize in the _“name.” So they did, in the name of “Jesus.” Why? Because they knew what name He was talking about. He had spent copious amounts of time teaching them, pre- and post-Resurrection, and they had received great revelation from God about who Jesus was (Matthew 16:17).

Later on in the epistles, Jesus’ disciples wrote the revelation that they understood from God: that God was in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:19), and that in Him (Jesus) dwelt all the fullness of God in bodily form (Colossians 2:9). They knew that when they saw Jesus, they were looking at the Father because the Father was in Him (John 14:9–11). They knew that He was the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15) and the express image of the invisible God (Hebrews 1:3). They knew (because they wrote it) that He was the Son, and His name—the name of the Son—was to be called “Jesus” (Matthew 1:21). They knew that He had told them that the Spirit was going to be sent “in His name” (John 14:26). They knew the writings of Isaiah that prophesied about His coming declared Him, the Son and Messiah, to be the “everlasting Father” (Isaiah 9:6).

So, with this understanding, when Jesus looks at His disciples and tells them to go baptize “in the name” (singular) “of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” He meant to go baptize in His name, which is the “name” of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Uniquely, Father is not a name; neither is Son, or Holy Spirit for that matter. These are all titles, descriptions of roles and attributes, but none of them are names. So then, what is the name?

Jesus is the name.

“Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

To go a layer deeper, the Bible tells us in regards to baptism that we are buried with Jesus at baptism into His death (Colossians 2:12; Romans 6:4). This is important for us to acknowledge as we seek to understand the necessity of Jesus’ name as it relates to baptism. How? We know that the Father, which was the divine Spirit of God within Jesus, didn’t die; if He had, the gospel has no power. God did not die. As we have already covered, Jesus was fully God, but also fully man. As a man, Jesus died, but as the eternal Spirit and Father of all creation, which was within Him, He did not die. The flesh of the man Jesus died, but the Spirit of God that was within Him—the fullness of God (Colossians 2:9)—did not die. This is why the Scripture says that “there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5–6). God did not die, but the man in whom He became to redeem us, the mediator and High Priest, did, as He became the sacrifice which atoned for all of our sins, and God raised Him (the sacrificial lamb of God—the man Jesus Christ) from the dead.

Here’s my point: the Bible helps us to understand that the Father didn’t die. And the Bible also tells us that we are _“buried with Jesus at baptism into His death” _(Colossians 2:12; Romans 6:4).

If the Father didn’t die and wasn’t buried, and we are baptized into Jesus’ death, being buried with Him at baptism, then we can’t be buried with someone who hasn’t died and been buried. And since the Father, who is the eternal Holy Spirit, did not die, how can we be baptized into a death He did not die? Simply, we can’t.

It was “God” who “was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself,” the “one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all” (2 Corinthians 5:19; 1 Timothy 2:5–6). Jesus. Of whom the Bible says that “there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). And “in Him,” Jesus, “dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9).

Father, Son, and Spirit are not names, but titles, just as I am a father, a son, and a pastor, but my name is Justin Michael.

I carry the titles that I do because of the roles that I fill in relationship with those who are connected to me.

Remember when we said that all we know about God, we know through relationship? This is another example of that. We know God as our Father in creation and spiritual adoption, as Son in redemption and salvation, and as the Holy Spirit in relational interaction as His children with Him, who is our Father. But His name is Jesus.

If you walked into a crowded room and shouted “Father,” I am sure that any man with kids would turn and look to see who was calling them. If you shouted “Son,” any male would perk up. If you shouted some other descriptive of your choice, you might even get a narrower response than the first two. But if you came into a room and called out “Justin Ryan Michael,” odds are, there is only one of me. And since you called me by name, you have now invited my attention to you.

This is important to know because we know that the process of dunking in water is not what washes our sins away, but it is the calling on the name of the one who can wash our sins away and inviting Him to participate that makes this covenantal act of obedience possible to remit sins because Jesus is invited into the water with you to remit your sins.

We must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

The Bible says that He is “the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:26–27).

Jesus.

If baptizing in the name of “Jesus” was a deviation from Jesus’ intention in Matthew 28:19, then we would be unable to trust anything else that the disciples of Jesus did from that point forward, as every baptism that they would have performed, as recorded in the Bible, was done in Jesus’ name. If this was a deviation, then they most certainly would not have confirmed to us what was first spoken to us by Him (Jesus—Hebrews 2:3). However, since we can clearly see that the disciples were obeying Jesus instead of repeating Him, we can with great confidence trust that this is exactly what Jesus desired to take place and even had instructed His disciples to do.

Let’s take a look at a moment in Acts 10, where Peter is found preaching the gospel to the household of Cornelius (more on this story in a moment).

Let’s read what he says:

“God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. And we are witnesses of all things which He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem, whom they killed by hanging on a tree. Him God raised up on the third day and showed Him openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before by God, even to us who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead. And He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that it is He who was ordained by God to be Judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:38–42).

Now, pay attention to this last line that is recorded of the gospel message that Peter preaches to them just before the Holy Spirit falls on all of those of Cornelius’s  house who believed: “To Him all the prophets witness that, through His name, whoever believes in Him will receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43).

We just learned through Jesus’ words in Mark 16 that those who believe and are baptized will be saved. We also learned through Peter’s message in Acts 2, on the Day of Pentecost, that baptism is for the remission/forgiveness of sins. And now, Peter provides even further clarity to baptism, saying that even the prophets of old pointed to a coming salvation for all who would believe and receive remission of sins “through His name”—JESUS!

Then why do so many people not baptize in Jesus’ name? Good question.

As Scripture shows us, and we have already discussed at length, baptism in the Scripture was exclusively done in the name of Jesus. This truth is not only confirmed in Scripture, but also in historical accounts as well, as it wasn’t until the second century that baptism began to be widely embraced by many as to be done in the repetition of Jesus’ words in Matthew 28:19 instead of the obedience of it—in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Why was this changed? There are a number of reasons, yet it is not the purpose of this book to dive deep into those reasons. I would encourage you to take a deeper look into this subject on your own for further study. But regardless of whether we explain why it happened, we know that it did. And this is where we refer back to the game of telephone that we discussed early on in this book. When there is not a hardline commitment to refer back to originality, things have a high tendency to change.

This move away from baptism done in the name of Jesus was direct disobedience to the command of Jesus in Matthew 28:19 to go baptize in the “name,” as proven by the actions of the apostles in the Book of Acts. It is still disobedience today. This was a massive deviation from what Jesus intended and what was the norm of the first-century church. But not only was this direct disobedience to Jesus and a massive deviation from the norm of the first-century church, it was also a direct disobedience to a command issued by the writer of Hebrews, who said:

“Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms” (Hebrews 6:1–2).

The writer of Hebrews, which was written in approximately ad 60, gave specific instructions: do not re-lay the foundation of the doctrine (which we have learned means teaching) of baptisms. Don’t deviate from what we have been doing. Don’t try to make another stab at this. But they did. Scripture is clear on that, as we have observed together.

So, what do we do?

We do what the first-century church did. We baptize and experience baptism for ourselves “in the name of Jesus Christ.”

The Bible is clear as to what baptism is:

Since we know what baptism is, according to the Scriptures, we can declare with accuracy then, what baptism is not. And we should.

Above all, remember: our experience must match that of the experience we see within the Bible, and in the Bible, every disciple who believed was baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. So should we.

If you have been baptized, and it was not done in Jesus’ name… I want to encourage you, and challenge you, to become re-baptized in Jesus’ name, according to the Scriptures.

After all, there is no other valid and authoritative source for proper doctrine than the Scriptures. And if every record of baptism in the authoritative Scriptures, which are profitable for doctrine, is done in the name of Jesus, then I must be baptized or re-baptized in His name. No matter who isn’t, and no matter who says otherwise.