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Acts 2:38 - Indication of baptismal regeneration
Peter said to them, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."Other proof texts of baptismal regeneration:
Acts 22:16
And now why do you delay? Get up, be baptized, and have your sins washed away, calling on his name.'Romans 6:3-4
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.NOTE: If baptism were just symbolic, by being baptised we would not be baptized into much of anything... let alone the death of Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 6:11
And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.And the clincher:
Titus 3:5
...he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.Water of rebirth and renewal! And all this after Jesus Christ just got done saying:
John 3:5
Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.If being baptised of water is symbolic, what is the point? Why does Jesus DEMAND that people be baptised of the water AND the Spirit? And so, to be ecumenical, allow me to quote those of my brothers who belong to the Anglican Church. In their Common Book of Prayer, they have this to proclaim on baptism:
Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened, but it is also a sign of Regeneration or New-Birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church; the promises of the forgiveness of sin, and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost, are visibly signed and sealed; Faith is confirmed, and Grace increased by virtue of prayer unto God.-From The Book of Common Prayer, NY: The Seabury Press, 1979, p.873The Baptism of young Children is in any wise to be retained in the Church, as most agreeable with the institution of Christ.
