“Do I have to be baptized in order to be saved?”

Steve Brown:
Do I have to be baptized in order to be saved? The answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
If you think laughter isn’t spiritual or that faithfulness to God means conformity to Christian stereotypes, then this program probably isn’t for you. But if you’re looking for honest, Biblical answers to honest questions. Welcome to Key Life. Here’s our host, author and seminary professor Steve Brown, along with Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com.

Steve Brown:
Hi Pete. How you doing?

Pete Alwinson:
I’m doing good. How are you?

Steve Brown:
I’m doing really good, as a matter of fact.

Pete Alwinson:
Good, good. I mean, you’re healthy as could be, man.

Steve Brown:
Well, I swam 50 laps today.

Pete Alwinson:
Good night.

Steve Brown:
That’s cause you’re my mother. You won’t let me not.

Pete Alwinson:
I’m checking on it.

Steve Brown:
Well, you do all the time. I want to say. Leave me alone.

Pete Alwinson:
We’ve got to keep, they’ve tasked me on the board with keeping you alive, man.

Steve Brown:
You know, I don’t know if that does me any good, but it’s certainly makes me feel like it’s doing some good.

Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And emotionally that’s an important thing.

Pete Alwinson:
It is. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
Hey listen. How many, you’ve got three Forge meetings in Central Florida.

Pete Alwinson:
We’ve got two main sites. After COVID, we still haven’t been able to open up our third. We’ve got two main sites and seven virtual sites. So, go to our website and they could check us out.

Steve Brown:
And if you live in Central Florida, and you’d to go, you can do the virtual thing, but it’s better to sit there. You serve food?

Pete Alwinson:
We don’t. Just coffee.

Steve Brown:
You could more people, if you serve donuts.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s true.

Steve Brown:
He gets big crowds anyway, but if you can, you might want to check that out. ForgeTruth.com As you know, Pete comes in and we answer questions on Friday and we’ve been doing that for over 25 years. And we love to get your questions. You can get a answer by dialing 1-800-KEY-LIFE, hitting the right button and recording your question. And then sometimes we put your voice on the air. Or you can send your question to

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Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
Help us if he can, if you can’t say a prayer for us. And Pete, speaking of prayers, you pray for us.

Pete Alwinson:
Father, we do come to you on this Friday, grateful that Lord Jesus, you have provided access to the only God there is, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And we worship you and praise you. We honor you. We thank you for your power and your wisdom and your kindness and your mercy toward us. We thank you that you have a plan that you are in charge that even though the world seems crazy at times, you are in charge and you are good and kind. And so, we come to you with our lives and we know we need you. We know we need you more than we even know Lord. And so, we asked that you would move into our relationships, our finances, our work, our churches, every aspect of our lives. And continue to exert your power, your grace and your glory. Lord this week-end, our churches are going to meet and we pray that we would be able to get together with them. And we pray for our leaders, our pastors and priests and teachers and worship directors, Lord so many. And we ask Lord that you by your Spirit would fill them with the ability to communicate your gospel and enable us to worship you in spirit and in truth. And we pray for the same thing now, as we do Q&A. We commit this time to you in Jesus’ strong name. We pray. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, this is an e-mail. I gave my life to Christ over a year ago. Do I have to be baptized in order to be saved or have I been saved since I gave my life to Christ?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, if you’re baptized by the proper minister, then you don’t have to have it done again.

Steve Brown:
And in the proper way.

Pete Alwinson:
And in the proper way, which would be our way.

Steve Brown:
Of course. Listen, do you believe in baptismal regeneration?

Pete Alwinson:
No, well only in the sense that Paul says baptism is of the heart, really, ultimately like circumcision is of the heart, ultimately. It’s a work of God in the heart, but not by the physical, external act of the application of water.

Steve Brown:
That’s a sign, isn’t it of something that’s going on inside. And, you’ve gotta be careful. Now, with all of that being said, the answer to the question would be no, you don’t have to be baptized to be saved. And then if you say in response to that answer, good, I don’t want to do that anyway, afraid I’ll drown in that thing, then what we would say?

Pete Alwinson:
We would say, you need to do it.

Steve Brown:
Why is that?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, you know, it is the sign and seal of the covenant of grace. And so, I think the debate here is, well, I was baptized as an infant with the Trinitarian commitment of my parents. Do I need to be rebaptized, no, you don’t have to. If you’ve never been baptized, even as an infant, but you’re a new believer. Yeah, absolutely. Take that step of faith and make it public. Go public.

Steve Brown:
Exactly. It is a public witness about whose side you’re now on, and also, you’ve got to remember, Jesus told you to do it.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
I mean, that ought to be reason sufficient. If Jesus says, now go get baptized. Do it.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. I mean, you know, when I was baptized and follow your Lord in the waters of baptism, Jesus took that step, not because he had any sin that needed to be washed away, but to set that example for us.

Steve Brown:
Exactly. So do it, but it won’t save you.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And if you’re not saved, and you think it will, by getting into the water. That’s not gonna work.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. Good point.

Steve Brown:
This is an e-mail. How should we view the Apocrypha? Are these books excluded from the Canon of Scripture for any particular reason? Could they be read or an accepted as part of the revealed word of God?

Pete Alwinson:
What’s the Apocrypha, is that like a muscle?

Steve Brown:
Don’t do that to me. You know, Roman Catholic Bibles include that almost always. And most Protestant Bibles don’t. So there would be a little bit view. If you’re Roman Catholic, you talk to your priest to get an answer for that, but from our perspective.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, right. No, from our perspective, the Apocrypha is not on the same level as prophetic or apostolic literature and not therefore to be seen on the same level of Scripture.

Steve Brown:
And when we read it, there’s great wisdom there, there’s great insight. It’s a good, those are good books to read, but it’s not the same as revealed propositional truth and the other 66 books of the Bible.

Pete Alwinson:
Exactly. We would see the word Apocrypha means hidden and we would see them as pious books that sort of help our faith. But there are elements that we see that make them less, not Scripture, not a clear apostalic or prophetic author, some historical mistakes, some there’s clearly fiction, in a fictional writing. So, they’re not on the same level as Spripture.

Steve Brown:
Okay. That’s sufficient. Is it okay to go to the movies and listen to secular music? This is an e-mail too. Are these things really wrong? I want to be an obedient Christian, but am I being too legalistic?

Pete Alwinson:
I understand you went to a movie once.

Steve Brown:
All kidding aside. After I became a Christian and I left the Christian faith after that. So, I don’t believe you can lose your salvation, but I was a teenager and I decided because the group I ran with decided that going to movies was a sin. And I remember the first time I went to a movie, after I got over whatever that disease was, it was a comedy, it was a Jerry Lewis movie. And I remember that the teacher of this group said, do you want for Jesus to come back and find you in a movie? And I’m sitting there. I can’t laugh at the jokes because I’m looking to see if Jesus is gonna come while I’m there. And then I looked and he was sitting beside me and laughing. You’ve got to be careful though, don’t you?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, I think you do. I think like anything literature that we read, movies we watch, news we take in, I mean, we can become news junkies. So, I think, we do need to watch what we allow to influence our thinking and our hearts.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, it really is. I one time posted from a movie, Little Darlings a sermon. And it had been advertised as almost a pornographic movie. And a friend of mine said. I saw it. It’s almost a Christian movie and it’s the most powerful movie about sex and family discussion you could go to. So, we went and then we brought our daughters and we had a wonderful discussion and it was very positive in terms of sexual values. But I didn’t realize that the people in my congregation didn’t know. And I said, we went to see the Little Darlings the other night, our family. And people gasped. And I said, you guys need to take your head out of the sand. And then I thought, what am I saying? And then I decided, let me explain something to you. And I explained what went on. But you do have to be discerning.

Pete Alwinson:
No doubt. It is interesting in some movies, of course, you know, the pornography that’s out there, in even normal movies nowadays, the language. But there are a lot of, some movies have really a lot of movies, surprisingly have a redemptive theme that goes through them. The theme of redemption is a common theme that can be used to talk to other people about Christ.

Steve Brown:
And we interviewed a man a number of years ago from Scotland, who had written a book that movies saved my soul.

Pete Alwinson:
Isn’t that something.

Steve Brown:
And it was a great interview, as he talked about just what you said, the themes of the movies. You don’t want to be legalistic, but you want to be careful. And as you’ve said, there is a lot of powerful, profound stuff in movies and in books, that maybe somebody told you, you ought not read.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, we do have to be careful.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. And talking about being careful, we’ve got to be careful that we get out of here before the clock ticks us out. And I must say, Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.