Acts 8:37
“And Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God”
In answer to the question ‘why shouldn’t I be baptised?’ Philip says you may if your heart is right.
But the verse isn’t there. We jump from v36 to v38.
Verse 37 does not appear in the oldest manuscripts and so is not included in the modern translations. (You will probably see it in a footnote). I think the verse was only starting to be inserted in the copies from 500 AD onwards.
It could have been inserted to show that actually baptism isn’t what brought the Ethiopian to faith but it was his belief in Jesus Christ.
In our generation we don’t need verse 37, certainly not in some places of the world.
On Tuesday evening I attended an event where I listened to an old missionary share of his experiences in Iraq and Iran. He showed a film testimony of a man who described how and why he changed his religion to become a Christian and he did it by baptism. I was so moved by the dedication and high risk element of this. The missionary described the many Jesus followers who he had personally baptised who entered the water shaking with fear because they knew what leaving the old life was going to mean for them. It would potentially mean death, it certainly meant hardship of a scale none of us in the west have ever known. I recalled the baptisms I did a couple of years ago in a small lake in an Islamic country. I have never seen such determination on a baptismal candidate. They approached me in the water as if they were going to swim a mile not simply go under.
In these places belief isn’t enough. Belief without baptism is not an option. They MUST be baptised and the sacrifice that this calls for is everything and it moves me deeply and to tears even now as I write this.
Of course belief is enough and if you haven’t been baptised for whatever reason but believe in your heart Jesus is Lord and confess this with your mouth, then you are saved. But for those in other parts of the world, well, a Jesus follower doesn’t need verse 37 to prove they are saved, for baptism is everything, it is the sign of death to their religion and their life.
Missions Paul 