pented of their sins. Upon Jesus's request, John, who did not believe himself worthy to baptize Christ, did so. Even here with Christ's own baptism we see him following the second, third, and fourth rules. As for the first and fifth rules Christ was without sin and thereby had no need to repent of it and Christ had not given the command of the fifth yet. Here Jesus himself is showing us that baptism is something good and, something that every believer should do. Jesus even says that this own baptism is "fitting(_) to fulfil all righteousness" (Matthew 3:15 RSV). The Greek word _ presumably indicates, in an indirect manner, the divine will (Beasley-Murray 1963). This implies God's own will in Jesus's baptism. God himself endorses baptism again by opening the heavens after Jesus's baptism and says " This is my son in whom I am well pleased"(Matthew 3:17, Mark 1:11, Luke 3:22 RSV). We also see that Jesus himself told his disciples to baptize people early on in his ministry (John 4:1-2 RSV). Although Jesus Christ himself did not baptize anyone he not only was baptized, but he told his disciples and all of his followers to be baptized and to baptize others. In all the above cases we see the first three (and in some cases the fourth) requirements followed. Primitive Baptism, or the tradition of Baptism found in the early Church, is outlined for use through out the New Testament (Acts 2:38, 10:48, Galatians 3:27; NIV). It is still argued today whether or not water-baptism was practiced in the early Church (White 1960). This argument has been an ongoing argument that will not be solved this side of Heaven, and for the sake of this paper we will use Dr. Weizsacker's statement in his book The Apostolic Age(1958), "From all our authorities there can be no doubt that [baptism] was practiced from an early date in the Apostolic period." In light of the fact that in scripture the apostle neither added or took away from baptism, then Weizsacker's state...
