Welcome to Apostolic Life in the 21st century. I say this a lot, but we are so glad you have

taken time to listen to this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube, whether you're

listening on Apple Podcasts or some other platform. We're glad you took time to listen to

this episode. We're going to talk today about something that the Apostle Paul said that has been

hotly debated. It's from 1st Corinthians chapter 1, and he makes a very curious statement when

discussing baptism. Dr. Bernard, when recalling which members of the Corinthian church that he

had personally baptized, the Apostle Paul wrote, he said, I thank God that I baptized none of you

except Christus and Gaius. And a few verses later, he added this explanation. He said,

for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel. That's

1st Corinthians 117. It's hard to imagine a credentialed UPCI minister saying something like that.

Don't Paul's words undermine the importance of baptism, and there have been some that

have argued that this statement proves that baptism isn't

necessary for salvation. What did Paul mean? Well, not at all. This has a couple of very

interesting lessons for hermeneutics or principles of interpretation. The first thing is

you always have to look at context. Anytime there is a difficult statement or curious statement,

a statement that seems to be contradictory or different from what your understanding

is from the rest of scripture, go back and look at the context.

And don't be limited just by the verse and chapter because those divisions were added

later for convenience.

But look at the relevant, maybe the entire book or the relevant discussion in a section of

that book.

Second thing is, when you look at the epistles, you have to realize they're occasional.

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