Why is immersion the Biblical method of baptism?
The word “baptize,” by its very definition, means to “immerse or dip.” Even though various denominations and churches have practiced other methods of “baptism” such as sprinkling or pouring, the very word itself denotes immersion.
Since baptism is clearly a picture of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus (Romans 6:3-6), only immersion will work. Only if the person is fully immersed in water and then comes back out of the water, does it picture Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. Other methods of baptism, such as pouring or sprinkling, do not properly show the picture that baptism is supposed to show.
Very often in the accounts of baptism in the Bible, it is clear that the method of baptism is immersion. For instance, at Jesus’ baptism, it says that after He was baptized, He “…went up straightway out of the water:...” (Matthew 3:16). He would not have been in the water if anything but immersion was being used. Later, John 3:23 tells us that John was baptizing in Aenon near to Salim, “because there was much water there….” Why would John have needed to be at a place where there was “much water” if he did not need to immerse those whom he was baptizing? Pouring or sprinkling would not have required “much water.”
Clearly, since the very word “baptize” means to immerse, and since immersion shows the right picture, and since the Biblical pattern was immersion, baptism must be by immersion.