Have you ever considered our tagline here at A Faith that Obeys? It reads, “Rethinking the Traditional Plan of Salvation.” Now, I must admit, this does sound a bit presumptuous doesn’t it? Hopefully the tagline provides a crisp clarity to the issue we are debating and anyone piqued enough to investigate this apparent arrogance, discovers a warm and welcoming place to explore the age old debate regarding water baptism. Now, you know me. I gotta pick apart a term! After all, we need to agree on what a word means. Let’s begin with, “Rethinking.” Why are we “rethinking" anything? Well, because we think we might have gotten something wrong or we need to review our understanding of a thing; in this case, The Traditional Plan of Salvation. Defining Our Terms A “plan" is an ordered succession of smaller events leading to a specific goal and our plan leads to salvation. “Salvation” means, a person receives the forgiveness of sins, from God; is moved from a lost state to a saved state and will enjoy the benefits of the indwelling gift of the Holy Spirit and the promise of eternal life with God in heaven. “Traditional” means; the plan is something which has been used and reused for a very long time and is assumed to be correct. Our process of rethinking, leads us to probe, poke holes in and otherwise scrutinize the assertions made by the traditional plan. At A Faith that Obeys, we’ve discovered the primary and most glaring difference between the Traditional Plan and the Biblical Plan is this small, seemingly insignificant fact. Listen carefully. The only difference between the two plans is that the declaration of salvation is made at different points along the same common path. Let me explain because this issue can be a little hard to see. The Roadmap to Salvation The plan of salvation is like a map. When we look at the map carefully, we spot two different exit ramps. Both are clearly labeled, “This way to the Pearly Gates.” To arrive at our destination, we must use the correct exit ramp. But, right there on the map are two different exit ramps going off in different directions. The traditional plan asserts a person is saved when they first believe and trust in Christ. This happens at some point before water baptism. That’s ramp one. The Biblical Plan demonstrates that a person is not saved until they obey the Gospel, which includes water baptism. That’s ramp two. Intellectual belief and acceptance of the Gospel message and obedience to that message, are two separate things and happen at different times along the same spiritual highway to heaven. The crazy thing is that if we are not paying attention, the routes look identical! When deeply committed Christian believers, who have not yet obeyed the “Biblical Plan of Salvation,” hear about it, become convinced of its truth and want to obey, the question inevitably comes up, "Do I need to be baptized again?" They are questioning this because, sometime in the past, they experienced a full immersion baptism, and now think they may need to be baptized again, the right way. They made a sincere commitment to Christ and believed they had been saved but, that happened well before their water baptism. Our goal should always be to humbly obey the Gospel to the best of our ability, right? Everyone who truly loves Jesus wants to please him. If we were baptized at some point in the past with a full immersion baptism, we should ask ourselves a couple of questions; “What teaching were we following?" And, “Why did we get baptized?” Let’s jump in the Wayback Machine and review our thinking.