As Catholics, we believe that baptism is “necessary for salvation” because “God has bound salvation to the sacrament” (CCC 1257). But many Protestants claim this belief unbiblical. Although a Catholic doesn’t believe something has to be explicit in the Bible in order to believe it, Scripture does witness to the necessity of baptism for salvation. Let’s take a look at the evidence.
The first passage is John 3:5, where Jesus tells Nicodemus, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Christ intends the themes of renewal, water, and Spirit to be heard in light of Ezekiel 36:25-27, where God promises that in the messianic age he would “sprinkle clean water” upon his people to cleanse them and give them a “new heart,” a “new spirit,” and put his own spirit within them that they might walk in his statutes and observe his ordinances.
It was common among first-century Jews to associate the eschatological water and Spirit found in Ezekiel’s prophecy with an eschatological baptismal ministry. For example, the Qumran sectaries sought to combine the motifs of cleansing and hope of the Spirit with actual immersions in water (cf. 1QS 3:6–9; 1QH 11:12–14). If the event of Ezekiel’s prophecy was seen by first-century Jews as an eschatological baptism, and Jesus intends Nicodemus to understand rebirth by water and Spirit in terms of that eschatological event, then it follows that Jesus intends baptism to be the new birth by water and Spirit.
This interpretation is further confirmed by the context of the passage in question. Consider, for example, that the images of Spirit and water together constitute the one event of Jesus’ baptism, which John hints at in John 1:29-34. In John 3:23, the evangelist records how John the Baptist was baptizing at Aenon near Salim. We’re also told in John 4:1-2 that the apostles went about baptizing. If the instruction to be born again of water and spirit is bookended before and after by the theme of baptism, it’s reasonable to conclude that baptism is what Jesus has in mind when he speaks of the necessity to be born of water and spirit for entrance into heaven.
Some Protestants counter that the water doesn’t refer to the baptismal waters but to the amniotic fluid of our mother’s womb through which we passed during birth. The second birth is being born only of the Spirit when you confess Jesus as Lord. Therefore, they say, this text doesn’t refer to baptism.
One problem with this interpretation is that Jesus includes water and spirit in the one act of the second birth. He doesn’t say, “You must be born of water, and then born of the spirit.” He simply says, “you must be born again of water and spirit” in response to Nicodemus’s confusion about how a man is to be born again. The attempt to reinterpret being born “of water” as referring to our natural birth simply fails.
Although John 3:5 is the key passage for the biblical testimony that God has bound salvation to baptism, there are others. Consider, for example, Romans 6:3-4: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
Paul understands the death of baptism as that which saves. He makes this clear in two subsequent verses. In verse seven, he writes, “For he who has died is freed from sin.” The Greek word for “is freed” is dikaioo, which means “I justify,” or “I declare righteous.” Similarly, in verse eleven, Paul instructs the Romans, “consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” To be dead to sin and alive with Christ is the essence of being saved.
Peter concurs on the relation between baptism and salvation. He tells the crowds gathered on the day of Pentecost, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). Peter ties baptism to the forgiveness of sins, and it’s not sins that have already been forgiven. The word “for” in Greek, eis, means, “in order to obtain,” not “because you have received.” Peter views baptism, therefore, as the means through which a person initially receives the forgiveness of sins.
Peter is even clearer in 1 Peter 3:21: “Baptism . . . now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Like Paul, Peter understands baptism to be the means by which we are united to Christ in his resurrection, and as a result we receive a clear conscience. This parallels Paul’s statement that we are “freed from sin” (Rom. 6:7) through the death we experience in baptism.
Because the Church “does not know of any means other than baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude” (CCC 1257), it continues to echo the teaching of Scripture that baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom it is revealed.