1 Cor 1:17
For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.
KJV

 


The apostle Paul is addressing the problem of factionalism in the church at Corinth.  Some of those Christians were inordinately enamored with the person who had immersed them — even to the point of adopting the baptizer’s name as a religious title (1 Corinthians 1:12-13) — a practice not dissimilar to the common habit of wearing human titles in the modern world of "Christendom." In view of such a perversion, Paul expressed thanksgiving that he had personally immersed only a few of these people (1 Corinthians 1:14-16). It was within this context that he wrote: "For Christ sent me not to baptize" (1 Corinthians 1:17). Baptism was not the problem; it was the perverted practice of certain Corinthians that warranted rebuke. The apostle was not disassociating himself from the importance of baptism as a component in the sacred plan of redemption (Mark 16:16; Acts 2:38; 22:16; Galatians 3:27; 1 Peter 3:21); rather, he was contending that no special adoration was to be attached to the person administering the rite.

Since Paul himself was immersed in order to have his sins "washed away" (Acts 22:16), and inasmuch as he taught that by means of baptism one enters "into Christ" (Romans 6:3-4; Galatians 3:27), he certainly is not about to disavow the divine command as an element apart from the gospel.

It is a perversion of the scriptures to use 1 Corinthians 1:14-17 in an attempt to nullify God’s holy commandment to be baptized (Acts 10:48).


1 Corinthians 1:17


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1 Corinthians 9:24-25

Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.  And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.