Is Baptism necessary for salvation?

No. A person is saved by trusting Christ, and the water adds nothing to it. But that answer needs its second half straight away, because in the New Testament nobody who believes stays out of the water for long, and a man who hears “not necessary” and concludes “not for me” has misunderstood what he was told.

Start with the word. The Greek verb is baptizō, and it means to dip, to plunge, to put something under — it was an ordinary word before it was a religious one, used of a ship going under. What it describes is not water sprinkled on a person but a person put right under the water and brought up again.

That is what makes the picture work.

Romans 6:4 (NKJV)

Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

Going under is a burial. Coming up is a resurrection. In about three seconds a Christian acts out the two things that have already happened to him: he died with Christ and he was raised with Him. Baptism does not perform those things. It announces them.

When the Philippian jailer asked what he had to do to be saved, the answer he was given contained no ceremony at all.

Acts 16:31 (NKJV)

So they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

Then look at what happened next in the same chapter. Before that night was over, the jailer and his whole household were baptised. He was saved by believing. The baptism came after.

One verse stands against everything said so far, and it is Peter's statement spoken on the day the church began.

Acts 2:38 (NKJV)

Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Read that and it does sound as though forgiveness waits on the water. This is not a fringe reading. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that a person is born again through baptism, and the Eastern Orthodox churches teach the same — between them, more than half of everyone on earth who calls himself a Christian. Acts 2:38 is where they begin.

Peter settled the meaning of his own sentence a few years later, in the house of a Roman officer named Cornelius. He was still preaching when God interrupted him.

Acts 10:44–47 (NKJV)

While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word. And those of the circumcision who believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also. For they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God. Then Peter answered, “Can anyone forbid water, that these should not be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”

The men in that room heard the gospel, believed it, and received the Holy Spirit. No water had touched any of them. God does not pour out His Spirit on unforgiven men, so these men were forgiven, saved and sealed before taking baptism.

Which tells us what he meant at Pentecost. The crowd there had just been told they had crucified their own Messiah, and they asked him a practical question: what shall we do? Peter told them what to do. Turn from your sin, and be baptised. He was not setting out the mechanics of how God forgives; he was telling frightened men what turning to Christ looks like.

So the water saves nobody, and no one in the New Testament stays out of it. Jesus commanded His disciples to baptise (Matthew 28:19), and the book of Acts records the command being obeyed almost immediately every time. Three thousand went into the water on the day they believed. Saul was baptised as soon as he could see again.

Most people who delay are not weighing the doctrine. They are waiting until they feel they have earned it — until the life is tidier, the doubts are smaller, the record is better. Baptism is a burial, and nobody brings anything to his own burial. The Ethiopian official worked that out on a desert road, with a scroll open on his knees, no church, no minister and no preparation of any kind. He saw water at the side of the road and asked one question: “See, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized?”