A friend asks for an explanation of 1 Corinthians 15:29, he says that his minister claims that in Paul’s day there were people who believed that if a man died without being baptized, a living man could be baptized in his stead, and it would be counted the same as though the dead man had been baptized. We do not believe that there were any people in Paul’s day who held to anything of the kind, and it is certain that Paul had no reference to any such custom. The Mormons now believe in and practice the baptism of the living as substitutes for the dead, professing to derive their authority therefore from this text; but the text gives no warrant for any such practice.

In the first place, no man can perform an act of righteousness for another. No man can do more than his own duty, so as to have some of his good deeds placed to the credit of some other one who has come short. Christ is the only one whose righteousness can be imputed to another, and even his righteousness cannot be imputed to the dead. It can be imputed only to those who have faith for themselves. But the dead know not anything; “their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 9:5, 6. The apostle says that “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the Judgment.” Hebrews 9:27. This text, taken with the one quoted just previously, shows that so far as a man is concerned, the next thing for him after death, is the Judgment. Death ends every man’s probation; it is as though he were brought immediately before the Judgment seat. It therefore necessarily follows that since there is no probation for the dead, it would be folly to be baptized for them.

But what does the text mean? Let us read it, and consider it in connection with the context: “Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?” This language occurs in the midst of a chapter that is devoted to a defense of the doctrine of the resurrection. The apostle proves that the dead do rise, from the fact that Christ is raised. In him alone is our hope of salvation, and if he is not raised then our faith is vain and we are yet in our sins. He “was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification.” Romans 4:25. His death would have accomplished nothing for our salvation, if he had not risen from the dead. The apostle’s argument turns right upon this fact.

Baptism is an act by which we express our faith in the death and resurrection of Christ. It is designed as an expression not merely of our belief in the historical fact that Christ did die and rise again, but to show our personal faith in that event as the means of justification from sin, and of our acceptance of it as accomplishing that for us. In another place the same apostle gives expression to this fact in these words:-

“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Romans 6:3, 4.

Thus it appears that baptism is the act by which we express our death to sin, and our resurrection to a new life, and our union with the crucified and risen Redeemer, by which our new life is made possible. Not only this, but it is a token of our belief in the final resurrection of the dead, of which the resurrection of Christ was a pledge. With this view, it is easy to see how absurd it would be for anybody to be baptized if he did not believe in the resurrection. The argument might be paraphrased thus: You say that there is no resurrection of the dead; if that is so, then of course Christ is not raised; then why are we baptized? So many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death; but if the dead rise not, then we are baptized only into his death, into a dead Christ, and our baptism amounts to nothing. In short, if the dead rise not, then our baptism is only a baptism for the dead, having no reference to a new life in Christ, for baptism derives all its force from the resurrection.