How much should a person know before being baptized into Christ? It’s a good question, and one we need to consider as we teach people the gospel. On the one hand, some accounts of conversions in Acts seem to imply a very introductory understanding of the facts about Jesus. Cornelius (Acts 10) and the Philippian jailer (Acts 16) were baptized at their first hearing of the good news, apparently without any in-depth discussion of all that discipleship requires. At least, no such discussion is recorded. On the other hand, biblical teaching about repentance and the costs of discipleship needs to be made clear to prospective Christians before they make an ill-informed commitment that they may not be inclined to keep. Obviously, they cannot be fully advised of every difficult spot on the road to heaven that they will encounter. But they need to be aware that “we must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God<\/em>” (Acts 14:22), and that anything less than total devotion to Christ is useless.<\/p>\n This seems to be the point of some of our Lord’s teaching. Please read Luke 9:57-62 and 14:25-35, where Jesus bluntly insists that one must be prepared to give up everything to follow Him. Repentance itself involves change – something that many people are simply not intending to do. Unfaithful Christians are sometimes Christians who didn’t make this fundamental commitment at the start, only to find somewhere down the road that Christ demands more than they are willing to give.<\/p>\n The rich young ruler (Mark 10) might have made a ‘good” lukewarm Christian. But Jesus saved him the trouble. We do no one a favor by watering down a message that will face them, undiluted, in judgment.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Jim King How much should a person know before being baptized into Christ? It’s a good question, and one we need to consider as we teach people the gospel. On the one hand, some accounts of conversions in Acts seem to imply a very introductory understanding of the facts about Jesus. Cornelius (Acts 10)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[52,390,1093],"class_list":["post-57068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-baptism","tag-conversion","tag-knowledge"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":49619,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/six-questions-about-baptism\/","url_meta":{"origin":57068,"position":0},"title":"Six Questions About Baptism","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"December 19, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"by Matthew W. Bassford This lesson was prompted by a series of questions passed to me by one of the young people in the congregation.\u00a0 They are all very thoughtful, and they are all on the subject of baptism. I think publicly exploring the topic is important.\u00a0 Others may be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":92783,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/does-cleaning-the-conscience-by-jesus-blood-come-before-any-obedience\/","url_meta":{"origin":57068,"position":1},"title":"Does Cleaning the Conscience by Jesus’ Blood Come Before Any Obedience?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"December 24, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry Wane Benton Hebrews 9:14 says that He \"offered Himself without spot to God,\" and this was to \"purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.\" Does Jesus purge our conscience before we hear the gospel, believe it, repent of sins, and are baptized in His\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14597,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/how-far-should-a-persons-past-be-checked-before-baptizing-them\/","url_meta":{"origin":57068,"position":2},"title":"How far should a person’s past be checked before baptizing them?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"April 1, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: When you have an open Bible study with a family, and they come to the knowledge of the truth, and you find out that a previous marriage has taken place earlier in years, and show them the truth of marriage, divorce, and remarriage, and they feel like they are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14284,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/how-was-johns-baptism-different-from-jesus-baptism\/","url_meta":{"origin":57068,"position":3},"title":"How was John’s baptism different from Jesus’ baptism?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"March 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I have some questions about John's baptism. I've read about how it was a fulfillment of prophecy to prepare the way, but I'm really confused about what that really means and what the point of John's baptism was. I am curious about a few things: What does \"preparing the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":24451,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/how-much-repentance-is-needed-before-baptism\/","url_meta":{"origin":57068,"position":4},"title":"How much repentance is needed before baptism?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"September 8, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I have a few things that bother me from time to time and I can't seem to be at peace with it. The topic of repentance comes to mind. I have read through some of\u00a0your articles, as well as other articles, regarding repentance and its necessity for baptism (which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":68764,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/the-umbrella-nature-of-the-term-faith\/","url_meta":{"origin":57068,"position":5},"title":"The Umbrella Nature of the Term \u201cFaith\u201d","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"July 7, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry Wane Benton One preacher (Stephen Whitsett) argued the following: \"In the same way, it would be possible that Acts 2:38 is indeed communicating the fact that they were to be baptized \"as the result of\" or \"because\" they already had believed and in doing so had already received\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}