Acts 19:3
And he said, “Then with what kind of baptism were you baptized?” And they said, “With John’s baptism.”
“Then with what kind of baptism were you baptized?” This sentence is hard to translate without giving the wrong idea, and the words are packed with meaning. The sentence is more literally, “Into what, then, were you baptized,” but the Greek word
eis, “into,” (
#1519 εἰς), is being used in the “static sense” and here means “in connection with” or “in relation to,” not “into” as if motion was being indicated (cp. R. C. H. Lenski, “
The Interpretation of Acts;” also
commentary on Romans 6:3). That would make the literal translation the very awkward: “In connection with what, then, were you baptized?”
Paul was not asking, “How were you baptized,” as many versions say, as if he was asking whether or not they were baptized in water. Actually, as Newman and Nida write: “he was asking them what was the meaning or significance of their baptism. And the answer that they give to the question is ‘the baptism of John,’ by which they indicate that the meaning of their baptism was the same as that which John the Baptist had proclaimed” (Newman and Nida,
A Translator’s Handbook on the Acts of the Apostles). R. C. H. Lenski adds, “And ‘what’ (neuter gender) shows that Paul had in mind, ‘in connection with what name?” This explains why the disciples answered, literally, “In connection with (
eis) John’s baptism,” giving the name of John. For ease of reading we just have, “With John’s baptism.” We might say more fully, “It had to do with John’s baptism.”
The Greek sentence is hard to translate in a way that gives us the correct meaning in English. That is due in part to the difficulty of the sentence construction and that the words are pregnant with meaning, but it is also due to our general misunderstanding of baptism. If we translate the sentence, “Into what then were you baptized,” the automatic answer we give is “water.” If we translate the phrase “How were you baptized,” again, we think “water.” Even if we are a little closer to the Greek meaning and translate, “What kind of baptism did you receive,” we still tend to think the answer to the question is “water.” But the disciples did not answer saying “water;” they understood the question and answered that they were baptized in connection with John’s baptism, which, while the element was water, the baptism was a “baptism of repentance” (
Mark 1:4;
Luke 3:3;
Acts 13:24;
19:4).
John baptized with a “baptism of repentance,” which is a genitive of relation, meaning a baptism related to repentance, specifically a baptism that symbolized repentance. John’s baptism was a symbolic act that portrayed and symbolized in a visible way the invisible cleansing that had occurred in God’s sight when the person repented (cp. John Schoenheit,
Baptism: The History and Significance of Christian Baptism). Thus, if we were to paraphrase and expand the meaning of Paul’s sentence, we might say something like: “In connection with what name were you baptized, and what did it mean?” The answer, “In connection with John’s baptism” was enough, because Paul knew that John’s baptism was a baptism that symbolized repentance.
Paul was genuinely shocked when the disciples said they had not heard about holy spirit, because as long before that as the Day of Pentecost (
Acts 2:38), Peter had taught about the coming of holy spirit. But here at Ephesus were disciples who had not heard that the gift of holy spirit had been given. It is possible that they were some of John’s disciples who moved to Ephesus before Pentecost, or perhaps they had been evangelized by one of John’s disciples who left Judea before Pentecost (perhaps after John was killed) and had not heard of the coming of holy spirit (they had almost certainly heard John, or one of John’s disciples, tell that the holy spirit was going to come, after all, the prophets had been saying that for centuries, but they meant they had not heard that it had already come).
This verse shows that in the opening decades of the Christian Church, believing in Christ was associated with “being baptized in holy spirit,” otherwise known as receiving holy spirit. People who genuinely believed in Christ’s death and resurrection were baptized in holy spirit, and the proof of that was that they then manifested the gift of holy spirit, certainly most usually by speaking in tongues, but also by interpretation and prophecy. And that is exactly what we see here in
Acts 19. The disciples had confessed their sins in association with being baptized in John’s baptism. But confessing sins does not get a person saved in the Grace Administration
