Can We Be Baptized for the Dead?
by David K. Bernard
Podcast recording (no venue stated in the delivered transcript)
Kind: teaching
Scripture: Hebrews 9:27, 1 Corinthians 15, 1 Corinthians 15:29

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/david-k-bernard--can-we-be-baptized-for-the-dead
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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I certainly don't think he meant that. And I believe this question is raised because people are looking for uh some kind of hope that there could be a second chance after death for people to be saved. But so I think we have to go to the basic teaching of scripture in that regard. Hebrews 9 and 27 says it is appointed unto men once to die but after this the judgment. So the basic I concept the Bible presents today is the day of salvation. You need to choose God today. If you reject God today you can't expect to have a second chance after you die.

Now some people have speculated well what about the babies who die you know will they be allowed to grow up and have some choice. What about u people who never really heard the gospel or or maybe they heard something but never really understood the truth of the gospel or they just have no chance. So maybe God's going to open the door for them and give them a second chance after death. Well, I'll just simply say uh certainly we might hope, wish, or wonder, but we can't teach any such thing because the Bible doesn't teach it. And this passage certainly would not give grounds for that.

So, for example, the Mormons have this idea, they've been very big in genealogies because they think you can go back, if you can trace all your ancestors, then you can go back and get baptized for each one of them. And then the consequence will be God will give that person a chance to repent in eternity if they got bapti if you or if they were baptized by proxy. Again, the Bible doesn't teach this. You have at most one obscure scripture and a basic principle of interpretation which is actually a an evidential rule from the Old Testament that Paul quoted in the New Testament. At the mouth of two witnesses or three witnesses, let every word be established.

Now, that that rule of interpretation doesn't mean that we should ignore any one passage of scripture, but it's more like a rule of thumb to say if you're basing an entire doctrine on one verse and that's the only verse, you're probably misinterpreting that verse because God's method of establishing truth is always by two or three witnesses. So if you really are going to teach uh a second chance after death or baptism by proxy for the dead, you can't just use one verse. You need to have really the witness throughout scripture. You need to have a basic scriptural principle. You need to have two or three distinct witnesses.

Now in this case, admittedly, it's kind of hard to understand what's going on. This is probably one of those passages in second Peter. Paul uh Peter referred to Paul's uh epistles. He said they're they're scripture, but sometimes they're hard to understand and people twist them to false doctrine. So even if the even the Apostle Peter had a hard time understanding some things that Paul wrote, well, maybe it's a little understandable that we might have some things that we don't fully understand. But I think the root problem in our understanding is as all the epistles, they are occasional. They're written for an occasion. They're written for re a reason to respond to questions, problems, issues, or local situations.

And it's like listening to one side of a phone conversation. We don't really know what the other person is saying on the other end. If we knew that, we would have a better understanding of the person's response that we're listening to. So, we don't know what situation Paul was talking about. But we do know in 1 Corinthians 15, he's trying to establish that the resurrection is real and it's future. Uh so there are some people who are denying the resurrection or saying the resurrection is already passed. And Paul basically saying, well, Christ rose from the dead, but he's the first fruits and our hope of salvation is that one day we're going to be resurrected from the dead.

And so if we're not going toin Sign be resurrected, our hope is in vain. There's no salvation. We might as well give up. And so he uses various arguments to demonstrate, no, we really still have a hope of future bodily resurrection. That's what it's going to mean to have eternal salvation uh in a glorified human body with the Lord Jesus Christ for eternity. So as one of those arguments, he says, "Okay, what about these people are getting baptized to the dead?" Now, we don't know who these people are or what they were doing, but apparently the Corinthians did. So apparently there were some people in the Corinthian church who were um you doing this practice and so Paul just makes an example.

If there's no resurrection, why would they be doing that? So he's not commending that. In fact, um it doesn't seem to be the church itself is doing that. He's just using an illustration or example. If there really is no resurrection, why would they even do this? It would all be in vain. No. So if you want to figure out what he was trying to refer to um probably the most common thought might be if a Christian dies their loved ones get stirred up at the thought of their death and are led to repentance and conversion. So Paul would be saying something like this.

You know if there's no hope of Christians being resurrected why were these unbelieving families get so stirred up and thinking I just lost my loved one. and I want to see my loved one again. I want to meet them in eternity. So, I need to repent and I need to get baptized so I'll be saved so I can join my loved one in eternity. But if there's no hope of the loved one ever being resurrected, why would you get converted and be baptized because your loved one died? So, that that's probably a reasonable uh scenario. Um, another possibility is that um because of Christ's death, they're being baptized into Christ's death.

But what might mitigates again mitigate against that is the dead here is plural. So they're being baptized not for the dead one Christ but for the dead ones perhaps their their loved ones. And of course the third explanation would be they're being baptized by proxy for dead people which I think is the least likely because nothing else in the rest of the Bible alludes to that. And even the concept of you could be born again after you die. uh even those hypothetical scenarios I gave would be people that didn't just knowingly reject the gospel but for whatever reason uh we felt like they may did not full have a full opportunity and even that as I said there's no scriptural teaching of that so but my point is even that third option seems very remote because it doesn't seem to fit with any passage other passage of scripture it doesn't seem to fit with any teaching or principle of scripture the idea that you could be baptized on behalf of someone else.

Uh if they had no choice, then how could you save them? If they did have a choice, why did they need your baptism? Whatever God's plan is for them, it seems it would be between them and God. You wouldn't have to be part of it. So, I can't find any scenario where that even makes sense in in Christian salvation. So I believe the probably the most likely is the one I've stated that there were some people in Corinth that were motivated by the death of their Christian loved ones to in turn be converted and be baptized.