Acts 22:16

“And now why do you linger? Arise, and be baptised, and wash away your sins, calling on his name.”

He had then been told that he must not delay in being baptised in the name of ‘the Lord Jesus' (Jesus is ‘the Lord'). This was now the requirement of the Lord for all men, that believing in the Lord Jesus Christ as their risen Lord and Saviour they respond to Him and be baptised as belonging to Him. Literally this is ‘Having arisen be baptised, and wash away your sins calling on the name of the Lord.' Note the sentence construction. Each clause has a participle and a main verb. This separates the first statement from the second, so that they can be read as two separate statements indicating two separate, although connected, actions.

This is significant here for nowhere in the New Testament is baptism ever spoken of as washing. Elsewhere baptism, when specifically spoken of, points to the coming down of the Holy Spirit and to rising to new life. Its waters are like the rain that comes from heaven and provides springs and rivers that produce life. If there is a ‘washing' it is a ‘washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit' (Titus 2:5), again depicting the life giving rains. Water represents the water of life, not water of washing. Indeed when a medium for washing is described it is the washing of water with the word (Ephesians 5:26) not by baptism. When John the Baptiser spoke his call was to fruitfulness and life, and he constantly used images from nature. He too saw his baptism as pointing to the drenching and lifegiving rain in accordance with the prophets (Isaiah 32:15; Isaiah 44:1; Isaiah 56:10). He gives not a single hint that it has in mind ritual washing. It was the Pharisees who might possibly have interpreted it in that way, and Josephus who did, and even they would not see it as ‘washing from sin' but as removing ceremonial defilement. But they had misunderstood it.

On the other hand when men are called on to ‘wash away their sins' in the Old Testament the idea is always of a change of life by turning from sin to right living. ‘Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge rightly on behalf of by the fatherless, plead for the widow', says Isaiah (Isaiah 1:16). This has no direct connection with the image of baptism, indeed its context is a diminishing of all ritual. The point is practical. You ‘wash' by thrusting away all sin and evil in your life. It is a practical transformation carried out by an act of will followed by acts of will.

The main purpose of water among the Jews in ancient days was in order to be used for drinking and in order to water the ground to make it fruitful. It is true that they did engage in ritual ‘washing'. But when they ritually used water on themselves it was for removing ‘earthiness' in the presence of God, the removal of odour and all that was unpleasant. (We view things very differently. To us water is on tap and is largely for washing. Most of us own no fields that are dependent on rain. But that was not how the ancients saw it, apart from the Greeks and the wealthier Romans). In the Old Testament ritual washing never cleanses. It is only ever preparatory to cleansing, a removing of earthiness and sweat and odour. It is the passing of time in separation that cleanses spiritually. ‘You shall wash and shall not be clean until the evening' is a regular refrain. The only water that ‘cleanses' is water that has been purified with the ashes of a heifer, the water of purification, ‘clean water', and that cleanses because the blood of the heifer has been shed. On the other hand when the Pharisees poured water over their hands they did not see themselves as ‘washing'. They were removing any taint of ritual uncleanness.

We are wrong therefore when we compare baptism to Old Testament ritual or to ‘washing clean'. More to the point, if baptism was connected with washing, would be David's words in Psalms 51, ‘wash me and I will be whiter than snow'. But that is in parallel to ‘purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean' which suggests that it has the water for purification in mind, the water seeped in sacrificial blood. If David was thinking of bathing, it was as a privilege of the rich. Ordinary people did not even think of washing. They did not see themselves as dirty. They saw the rich as fastidious. Yet even so the New Testament never uses this idea of baptism. Indeed Peter declares the opposite. Baptism is not the putting away of the defilement of the flesh, it is the answer of a good conscience towards God (1 Peter 3:21).

So what Ananias was saying here was, ‘arise and be baptised as a sign that you are becoming His, that you are being baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus and thus becoming His man and a recipient of the Holy Spirit, and at the same time turn your life around so that it is totally changed and ‘washed from sin', and begin to live a new life, ‘calling on the name of the Lord', that is, acknowledging and worshipping the Lord. Baptism was a baptism ‘unto repentance'. The baptism indicated entry into the age of the Spirit and the forthcoming ‘drenching with the Holy Spirit', but it was promising a changed life in the future. The change of life was to result and was to be carried into effect, and that was described as ‘washing' as in Isaiah 1:16.

Of course we can argue that Ananias was uniquely signifying that baptism washed from sin. It is one possible interpretation of his words. But if he did so he was the only person in the New Testament who interpreted baptism in this way, and that appears very unlikely. It was the later church that would change the meaning of baptism into this and thereby diminish its significance, for they made it teach what was intrinsically not true, and it resulted in all kinds of queer ideas so that even the most prominent Christians followed them, ideas such as not being baptised until near death because they thought that the physical act would wash away their sins up to that point. That was the inevitable result of such a foolish idea. It had become mere superstition.

The truth is that being baptised does not wash away your sins. Only the blood of Jesus appropriated by faith can do that. If you are a true Christian what baptism does signify (but only if there has previously been an act of true faith in Jesus Christ that has resulted in the baptism, or is at the time) is that the Holy Spirit has come on you, and that you have died and risen with Christ.

Thus the thoughts of the verse are, firstly to arise and be baptised, thus revealing himself as a servant of Jesus Christ as a result of receiving the Holy Spirit, and secondly to turn from sin to righteousness, resulting in true worship of the Lord. ‘Calling on the name of the Lord' had signified worshipping God truly from as far back as Genesis 4:26. Compare Acts 2:21.