The Greek word baptizo, which means to immerse, became associated with the dyeing trade. When a cloth is immersed in dye, the union leads to an altered condition. The cloth’s previous color no longer exists; it has a permanent new identity.
Baptizo, which has no English equivalent, is a spot-on description of what happens in the sacrament of baptism. When we’re merged with Christ through water and the Word, we leave behind our original sinful condition. Through that union, Jesus gives us a new identity in him — so “we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:4, NIV).
Bible scholar James Montgomery Boice offered another great example of baptizo from, of all places, a 200 B.C. pickle recipe. Nicander, a Greek poet and physician, explained that a vegetable must first be “dipped” (bapto) into boiling water and then “baptized” (baptizo) in a vinegar solution. “Both verbs concern the immersing of vegetables in a solution, but the first is temporary,” Boice writes. “The second, the act of baptizing the vegetable, produces a permanent change.”
In the New Testament, baptizo “more often refers to our union and identification with Christ than to our water baptism,” according to Boice. “Christ is saying that mere intellectual assent is not enough. There must be a union with him, a real change, like the vegetable to the pickle!” And like the cloth to the dye.
