The One Baptism Argument for Eternal Security: Why Regeneration Doesn’t Have a Reset Button

Jayni Jackson
Aug 7
12 min read

Have you ever stopped to consider what your baptism actually meant?

Not just what it symbolized in theory—but what it declared about you, about Christ, and about the permanence of your salvation.

When you were baptized, you weren’t acting out a temporary phase. You weren’t dipping your toes into Christianity to see if it would stick. Baptism isn’t spiritual dating. It’s a wedding. It’s a funeral. It’s a resurrection. It’s a public, irreversible statement: “I have died with Christ. I have been buried with Christ. I have been raised with Christ. And now I belong to Him.”

Which brings us to a question that most Christians never think to ask:

If salvation can be lost… why don’t we get baptized again?

Think about it. If baptism is a sign of new birth, and if you can lose that new birth through sin or unbelief, then wouldn’t you need to be baptized again if you ever repented and came back? After all, if you can be born again, lose it, and then be re-born, shouldn’t your baptism reflect that? Shouldn’t it follow you back into the faith like it did the first time?

And yet, not a single Christian tradition teaches that you should get re-baptized every time you “fall away.” Why not?

That question isn’t just clever—it’s devastating. It forces us to deal with what baptism actually means and whether it can be undone. It brings us face to face with the One Baptism Argument for Eternal Security: the idea that there is one baptism because there is one salvation. And that salvation—if it is real—doesn’t come and go. It doesn’t flicker in and out based on your spiritual performance. It doesn’t toggle off when you sin too many times and back on again when you try harder.

In this post, we’re going to walk through the logic of baptism, the testimony of Scripture, and the contradictions that appear the moment you say a true believer can lose their salvation. We’ll expose the systems that fall apart under the weight of that claim—and we’ll highlight the good news that your baptism was meant to reflect: that the Savior who united you to Himself is not letting go.

Baptism Is a Sign of an Irreversible Spiritual Reality

Baptism is not a private ritual or symbolic performance—it is a public declaration of a permanent spiritual change. The Apostle Paul says in Romans 6:3–4, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” That’s the power of baptism. It marks you as someone who has died with Christ, been buried with Him, and now walks in resurrection life.

You cannot experience that kind of union with Christ and then simply “go back.” You don’t come up from the waters only to climb back into the grave. You don’t get spiritually resurrected and then slip back into death, as if salvation were just a reversible transaction. Baptism represents a definitive break with your old self. The “old man” is not just injured—he is crucified. And the new man is not on probation—he is alive with Christ.

That’s why baptism is a one-time event. You can’t duplicate it. You can’t reenact it. You can’t press rewind on the spiritual reality it signifies. If what baptism represents—union with Christ in His death and resurrection—can be undone, then so can the gospel itself. But Paul’s entire point in Romans 6 is that this transformation is foundational to the Christian life. In verse 6 he says, “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing.” Crucifixion isn’t temporary. Burial isn’t temporary. Resurrection isn’t temporary. So why would salvation be?

To say that a truly saved person can lose their salvation is to make a mockery of what baptism represents. It turns the symbol into a sham. Because if you can die with Christ and still go to hell, then what good was that death? If you can rise with Christ and still perish, then what was the resurrection for? If salvation can be lost, then baptism should be repeatable. But it’s not. That silence from Scripture isn’t accidental. It’s theological. Baptism is the outward sign of a salvation that doesn’t expire.

Scripture Affirms One Baptism, Not Many

There is no verse in the New Testament that commands—or even hints at—the idea of being baptized more than once for salvation. And that’s not because people didn’t sin grievously after being saved. Peter denied Jesus three times. The Corinthian church was rife with immorality. Some believers even fell into heresy. But what you don’t see in any of these situations is the command to “start over” through re-baptism. The assumption behind every New Testament letter is that Christians who fall into sin are called to repent—not to reenter the covenant through a second baptism. Why? Because Scripture is clear: there is one baptism.

Paul affirms this in Ephesians 4:5 when he declares, “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” Just as there is only one Lord who saves and one faith through which we believe, there is only one baptism that marks our entrance into Christ. And Paul doesn’t mean that Christians should only be baptized once ideally. He means that one baptism is the theological reality of the new covenant. To say otherwise would be like suggesting that a believer can be crucified and raised with Christ multiple times—which, of course, would be absurd. Hebrews 6 warns about this exact line of thinking, saying it is impossible “to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened” if they fall away. Why? Because that would be to “crucify the Son of God all over again” (Heb. 6:6). The death and resurrection of Christ happened once—and your union with Him through faith and baptism happened once too.

That’s why you’ll never find a single example in the New Testament of someone being re-baptized after apostasy. Even the man caught in sexual immorality in 1 Corinthians 5 is not told to get baptized again. When he repents, Paul tells the church to forgive and reaffirm him—not re-baptize him. Why? Because true salvation doesn’t get erased and reapplied like chalk on a blackboard. You don’t get re-married to Christ. You return to Him. Baptism wasn’t a trial run—it was a covenant sign. And if that covenant was real, it still stands.

If you believe that salvation can be lost, then you’re faced with a glaring problem: either Scripture should command re-baptism for every person who falls away—or the absence of that command means that salvation isn’t something that can be lost in the first place. The only reason baptism isn’t repeated is because the salvation it points to doesn’t need to be.

Can You Be Born Again… Again?

When Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born again to see the kingdom of God, the Pharisee was confused—and understandably so. “How can a man be born when he is old?” he asked. “Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” (John 3:4). But Jesus wasn’t talking about a second physical birth. He was speaking about spiritual rebirth—what He called being “born of the Spirit” (John 3:5–6). And while Nicodemus misunderstood the metaphor, the absurdity of his question actually underscores a crucial theological point: birth—whether physical or spiritual—is a once-for-all event.

To be born again is not just to start over; it is to be made new by the Spirit of God. It is to be brought from death to life, from blindness to sight, from slavery to sonship. And just like you can’t be unborn physically, you can’t be unborn spiritually. Scripture never speaks of the new birth as something that can be undone or repeated. When you are made a new creation in Christ, the old has passed away and the new has come (2 Cor. 5:17). You don’t toggle between those states. You don’t get born again… again.

This is what makes the idea of re-baptism or re-regeneration so incoherent. If you can lose your salvation, then you must be able to lose your regeneration. And if you can lose your regeneration, then logically you must need to be re-regenerated. But regeneration isn’t like rebooting a frozen computer. It’s not a reset button. It’s a resurrection from spiritual death. And resurrection, by definition, is not cyclical.

To claim otherwise is to stretch the metaphor of new birth past its breaking point. You’re left with a kind of spiritual schizophrenia: born again, then dead again, then born again again—each time as if nothing permanent ever took root. But Jesus doesn’t describe the work of the Spirit like that. In fact, He says the exact opposite. In John 14:16, Jesus promises the Spirit will be with us “forever.” Not temporarily. Not conditionally. Forever.

The new birth is not an experiment. It is a decisive act of God that brings you into His family and seals you with His Spirit. If salvation could be lost, then so could regeneration. And if regeneration could be lost, then Jesus was wrong when He said the Spirit would never leave us. You see, this isn’t just about a metaphor. It’s about whether the Spirit of God finishes what He starts.

The Absurdity of Baptismal Regeneration That Doesn’t Last

If baptism is what regenerates us—as Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and some Lutherans teach—then we’re faced with a disturbing question: what happens if you lose your salvation? Does that mean you were un-regenerated? And if so, why isn’t a second baptism required to be regenerated again?

That’s the dilemma. If baptism truly saves, and if that salvation can be lost, then logic demands that baptism must be repeated. But no major Christian tradition affirms that. Why not? Because deep down, even traditions that claim baptismal regeneration know it’s not the water that saves—it’s the faith. They may insist that baptism is necessary, but when someone falls away and returns, they don’t send them back to the baptismal font. They call them to believe again. To repent again. To trust again. But if faith is what reactivates salvation, then faith—not baptism—must be the real source of regeneration.

And that raises a deeper problem: if baptism only regenerates when it’s paired with faith, then baptism isn’t what saves. It’s faith. Because it’s not the ritual itself that has power—it’s the belief that accompanies it. And if faith alone is what makes a baptism “stick,” then faith alone must also be what brings someone back to salvation. So what, then, does baptism actually do? If the saving power of baptism depends entirely on your belief, then baptism becomes a dependent sign, not a regenerative cause.

Even worse, what happens to the “grace” of baptism once someone falls away? Does it just sit dormant inside them? Is there some residual holiness that remains even though they’re now an unbeliever? That’s the logical conclusion if you say baptism has lasting effects—even when someone is no longer in Christ. But what does that even mean? Are we to believe that the benefits of salvation can exist apart from saving faith? That baptism functions like an “on-off switch,” waiting to be flipped back on? The New Testament never talks like that. There is no category for unbelievers who still retain portions of salvific grace because of a ritual they once underwent.

And when you add infant baptism to the equation, the problem explodes. If a child is baptized but later grows up to reject the faith, are they still regenerated in some sense? Some will say yes—that they’re covenantally “set apart” but not yet saved. But then we’re left with a baptized unbeliever who is neither fully inside nor fully outside the covenant, possessing the signs of salvation but not its substance. That’s not biblical—it’s incoherent.

Scripture never divides salvation into partial stages that can be pieced together across a lifetime. Either you are in Christ or you are not. Either you are a new creation or you are not. Either you are born again or you are not. The idea that baptism regenerates apart from lasting faith—and that this regeneration can flicker on and off based on your spiritual condition—is nowhere found in Scripture. It’s a theological invention designed to hold contradictory beliefs in tension: that baptism saves and that salvation can be lost.

But you can’t have it both ways. If baptism saves, and salvation is secure, then baptism is a once-for-all sign of a once-for-all salvation. But if salvation can be lost, then either baptism must be repeated or it never saved in the first place. Any attempt to preserve both views ends in contradiction. And contradiction is a sure sign that something’s gone wrong—not with Scripture, but with our understanding of it.

The Real Reason Re-baptism Isn’t Taught

At this point, we’ve seen the dilemma: if salvation can be lost, then logically, baptism should be repeated. But it isn’t. No church tradition, ancient or modern, teaches a recurring cycle of baptism every time someone falls into serious sin or unbelief. Why? Because everyone instinctively knows what Scripture makes plain—baptism is a once-for-all event because salvation is a once-for-all reality.

The reason re-baptism isn’t practiced for believers who fall away is not because we’ve forgotten to include it. It’s because we know, deep down, that it makes no theological sense. The New Testament never shows a believer being baptized again after drifting or doubting or sinning. They are called to repent and return to Christ, but not to re-enter the covenant through water. Why? Because if their salvation was real, then it was God who saved them—and God doesn’t make mistakes. He doesn’t adopt a child and later un-adopt them. He doesn’t unite someone to Christ and then sever the bond. The Spirit doesn’t come to dwell in a believer and then pack His bags when they fall into sin.

The moment you introduce the idea that salvation can be lost, you are forced to create an entire system of repair: re-conversion, re-regeneration, and logically, re-baptism. But Scripture doesn’t give us that system. Instead, it gives us one baptism. One new birth. One indwelling Spirit. One unshakable union with Christ. That’s why Paul says in Philippians 1:6, “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Not, “He might finish it—if you do your part.” Not, “He’ll restart it if you mess up badly enough.” No, the work began in grace and will end in grace because God finishes what He starts.

The absence of re-baptism in the Bible isn’t a silent mystery—it’s a loud theological statement. It tells us that salvation is not a lease you can default on. It’s a gift. And when that gift is given by a sovereign Savior, it doesn’t come with an expiration date. Baptism is the visible sign of that promise. And that’s why it’s only given once. Because the promise isn’t going anywhere.

One Baptism, One Faith, One Lord—One Security

The Christian life is not built on repeated attempts to grab hold of salvation, but on the unshakeable foundation of a salvation that grabbed hold of us. Paul’s words in Ephesians 4:5—“one Lord, one faith, one baptism”—aren’t just a poetic flourish. They are a theological anchor. Our unity as believers is not just horizontal, shared with one another in community, but vertical—anchored in the unchanging work of God. And at the center of that unity is this truth: salvation happens once, through one Lord, by one faith, and marked by one baptism.

Think about it: if there is only one Lord who saves and only one faith that justifies, then the logic demands there is only one baptism that identifies. And all three go together. If you try to sever one from the other, the whole thing collapses. You can’t claim one Lord and one faith, but multiple baptisms. That would be to imply that the Lord saves in pieces—or that faith justifies in intervals. But that’s not what we see in the gospel. God saves completely. And because He saves completely, we don’t need a new baptism every time we fall—we need only to remember the one baptism that marked our union with Christ in the first place.

This is why assurance and perseverance go hand in hand. If there are multiple baptisms, then assurance becomes impossible—how do you know which one “worked”? If regeneration can be undone, then perseverance becomes unbearable—how do you know if you’re still “in”? But if there is one Lord, one faith, and one baptism, then you can rest in the knowledge that what God started, He will finish. You don’t need to keep starting over. You just need to keep walking forward in the grace that saved you.

The reality is, no one is saved because they held onto Jesus tightly enough. We are saved because He holds onto us—and He doesn’t let go. Our baptism isn’t a badge of achievement. It’s a declaration of death, burial, and resurrection in Jesus. And that resurrection life isn’t fragile. It’s eternal.

Closing Appeal — You Don’t Need to Be Baptized Again. You Need to Believe the Gospel

If you’re someone who has doubted your salvation—whether because of sin, failure, coldness of heart, or fear of falling away—this post is not meant to crush you. It’s meant to comfort you. You don’t need to be baptized again. You need to believe the gospel again. And again. And again. Not because the gospel changes, but because you do—and the only thing that can stabilize your soul is the unchanging promise of God.

Salvation isn’t a revolving door. It’s not a treadmill of rededication. It’s not something God hands you temporarily until you mess up. Salvation is a resurrection. It is a miracle of grace. And baptism is the sign of that miracle—a watery tomb that declares you are no longer who you once were. You are not saved by how strongly you cling to Christ. You are saved because He has united you to Himself, and He does not lose those whom the Father has given Him (John 6:39). The Shepherd doesn’t abandon His sheep. The Bridegroom doesn’t divorce His bride. The Father doesn’t disown His child.

So stop searching for the spiritual reset button. Stop wondering if you need to “go back” and make your salvation stick. If your faith is in Christ—no matter how weak it feels—then your baptism still stands. Your regeneration still holds. The Spirit still dwells. God hasn’t changed His mind about you. And if you’ve wandered, you don’t need a new sign. You need to return to the Savior who already gave you one.

One Lord. One faith. One baptism. One salvation. And once it’s yours, it’s yours forever.