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Water baptism symbolizes the believer’s total trust in and total reliance on the Lord Jesus Christ, as well as a commitment to live obediently to Him. It also expresses unity with all the saints (Ephesians 2:19), that is, with every person in every nation on earth who is a member of the Body of Christ (Galatians 3:27–28). Water baptism conveys this and more, but it is not what saves us. Instead, we are saved by grace through faith, apart from works (Ephesians 2:8–9). We are baptized because our Lord commanded it: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).
In his first public sermon, Jesus quoted the prophet Isaiah and said that he had come to set the captives free. We tend to think of that statement in judicial terms—we think of salvation setting us free from the penalty of sin. And that is certainly part of the meaning. But salvation is so much more than the elimination of sin. Salvation releases us to become the people God has destined us to be. It sets us on a path toward our God-ordained destiny in our spiritual, relational, and professional lives. And part of that is becoming men of God.
Unfortunately, a lot of men feel like half-men. We feel incomplete. We feel unfinished. We feel like captives. We want to be men of God, but we aren’t entirely sure how to get there or what that looks like.
John Eldredge, a well known writer to men, captures it well:
"What we have now is a world of uninitiated men. Partial men. Boys, mostly, walking around in men’s bodies, with men’s jobs and families, finances, and responsibilities. The passing on of masculinity was never completed, if it was begun at all. The boy was never taken through the process of masculine initiation. That’s why most of us are unfinished men."
