Does water wash away sins?
Mark 16:16 & Acts 22:16. This enforced link between water and sin’s remission, under threat of damnation for non-compliance, is unique to the whole New Testament. This was not even hinted by John the Baptist or Jesus. In Peter’s first sermon, he nearly links repentance with water, but not remission. His second sermon disavows even the link between water and repentance. Neither he nor any apostle linked sins’ remission with water.
Nevertheless, Ananias, a devout Jew, is obviously harking back to the Levitical priest’s water of separation that cleansed away ceremonial sin. For whatever reason he quoted Ananias’ strange words neither Paul nor the rest of the apostles ever endorsed them. This second version of Ananias healing and baptizing Saul of Tarsus in the city of Damascus conflicts with:-
(1) Luke’s first version in Acts 9.18;
(2) Paul’s own doctrinal position in his epistles on faith alone by grace alone;
(3) Paul’s progressive de-emphasis of the water rite until his final downgrade of its necessity (1 Corinthians 1:17);
(4) Paul constantly alludes to the essential baptism of the Spirit each time he uses the words baptized or baptism in his epistles of Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians and Colossians. Indeed, he finally declares that there is only one baptism that matters for the child of God, which is obviously not baptism in water, but the fire of the Spirit (Ephesians 4:5);
(5) Both Mark 16:16 and Acts 22:16 directly echo the Old Testament’s compulsory ceremonial ritual (Numbers 19.9) of the priest’s water of separation washing away sin of the offender (“sin,” in 24 English versions).
(6) While Mark 16:9-20 is the replacement of the lost original, the reader should also note that the Trinitarian baptismal invocation of Matthew 28:19 was unknown to the apostles because Peter, Philip and Paul continued John’s water rite, but in the name of Jesus Christ.
Did the 4th C founding of the Church of Rome unjustly promote the Galilean baptismal commission to establish its own water-of-rebirth sacrament? Did the ensuing churches merely perpetuate Constantine’s precedent?
Is the Judean waterless apostolic commission by our ascending Lord on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives inferior or not? According to the physician Luke and John the most reliable of the Twelve, everything in Christ’s passion, resurrection and ascension occurs at Jerusalem and its nearby Judean villages, not an unnamed remote mountain 60 miles to the north.
http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/?p=61