Sacri-what? Belivers

Lecture 7: Believer’s Baptism

We’ve been talking about the practice of pedobaptism. Today we are going to talk about an alternative view – believer’s baptism.

Today we want to talk about the subject of believer’s baptism.

Notice that I did not say “adult baptism.”

The alternative to pedobaptism is not adult baptism.

It is believer's baptism.

That is to say, only someone who has consciously exercised faith in Christ is a

legitimate candidate for baptism.

Again, several arguments can be offered on behalf of this view.

1. Confession and faith are essential to salvation and baptism.

They are essential components of salvation and therefore of baptism.

In Acts 2:38, we have the pattern for Christian baptism described in Peter’s Pentecostal sermon:

Acts 2:38 BSB

38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

So the pattern here is to repent and be baptised.

That act of repentance is an act of confession followed by faith in Christ.

So this is something that an infant simply cannot do.

An infant cannot exercise confession and faith and therefore isn’t a legitimate candidate for baptism.

1 Peter 3:21 (a verse that we previously read) says:

1 Peter 3:21 BSB

21 And this water symbolizes the baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

Here baptism is seen as an appeal of the person to God for a clear conscience.

Therefore this is something that requires a conscious decision in order to make such an appeal to God – a decision that cannot be exercised by an infant.

2. What about the argument based on household salvation?

Certainly in the Jewish context and in the Old Testament you have the idea of the solidarity of the family as a unit.

But notice that even in the Old Testament the law of individual retribution still stands.

As both Jeremiah and Ezekiel emphasize, each person is responsible for his own sin.

Ezekiel 18:2–4 BSB

2 “What do you people mean by quoting this proverb about the land of Israel: ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the teeth of the children are set on edge’? 3 As surely as I live, declares the Lord GOD, you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel. 4 Behold, every soul belongs to Me; both father and son are Mine. The soul who sins is the one who will die.

Each person is individually responsible before God, and therefore it isn’t true that one’s being a member of a household overrides your individual responsibility.

Each person is responsible before God to respond in repentance and faith.

When you look at the New Testament it is clear that Christ’s message did divide families.

They were not always unified.

For example, in 1 Corinthians 7:12-16, Paul gives instructions for Christians who are married to unbelievers and how they should handle

this situation whether the unbelieving partner wants to live with the Christian or whether that unbeliever wants to separate.

1 Corinthians 7:12–16 BSB

12 To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If a brother has an unbelieving wife and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. 13 And if a woman has an unbelieving husband and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. 14 For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his believing wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy. 15 But if the unbeliever leaves, let him go. The believing brother or sister is not bound in such cases. God has called you to live in peace. 16 How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

So the Christian message is one that did divide families.

It is not true that simply because of the decision of the head of a household everyone was treated as a Christian.

The bottom line is that there is no baptism of infants recorded anywhere in the New Testament.

The defense of household salvation and infant baptism is based upon an

argument from silence.

There is no suggestion anywhere in the New Testament that little infants were taken out of their cradles and brought to be baptized.

So the defender of believer’s baptism would say that the argument from household salvation doesn’t really go through.

Indeed, infant baptism doesn’t meet the prerequisites for legitimate baptism.

3. What about Jesus and the children and his blessing them?

In the first place, it is not clear that these are infants.

Rather these seem to be little children who are exhibiting love and faith in Jesus and who believe in him.

The lesson that Jesus wants to teach here about the little children is that this is the same way in which we need to come to Christ.

We need to come to him in love and faith and with the same sort of childlike trust that a little child has in his or her parents.

We should also be childlike in our faith and trust in Jesus.

In any case, even if people were bringing little infants to Jesus to lay his hands upon them and to bless or pray for them, prayer and blessing just is not the same as baptism.

There’s no suggestion that these little children should be baptized.

On the contrary, as I’ve said, repentance and faith are prerequisites for Christian baptism.

4. What about the argument based upon circumcision?

It is important here to understand that the way in which one enters the covenant as we’ve seen is by faith.

It is not as though some act like circumcision or baptism makes you a member of the covenant.

You enter the covenant by faith and, as we saw when we looked at the New Perspective on Paul, the way you stay in the covenant is by faith.

There isn’t some sort of means by which you enter and stay in the covenant apart from faith.

The fact that circumcision and baptism were not seen as parallel is shown by the fact that in Palestine they were both practiced.

Jewish children who were children of believing families that were part of the Jesus movement (that is, part of the church) were still circumcised.

It is not as though baptism replaced circumcision in the New Testament church.

For Jewish believers in Jesus, both circumcision and baptism were practiced.

So there is no reason to think that infant baptism began to take the place of circumcision among Jewish believers.

Indeed, when you look at Colossians 2:11, what corresponds to circumcision is not baptism.

Paul writes:

Colossians 2:11–12 BSB

11 In Him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of your sinful nature, with the circumcision performed by Christ and not by human hands. 12 And having been buried with Him in baptism, you were raised with Him through your faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead.

What corresponds to circumcision is Christ’s death on the cross.

When it talks about “putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ” it is talking about Christ’s death.

It is his atoning death on the cross that is a spiritual circumcision that puts away the body of death.

Then we are united with Christ in his death and resurrection in baptism.

There is no suggestion in Collosians 2:11-12 that infant baptism should

somehow replace circumcision of infants as a sign of the new covenant.

So it would seem on the basis of these arguments that the practice in the New Testament is believer’s baptism.

As was alluded to a moment ago, these believers might be children.

There might be youngsters who have come to consciously place their faith in Christ and believe and so who would be legitimate candidates for baptism.

But what would not be acceptable would be the baptism of little infants who have no conscious volition or faith in Christ.

Finally, I’d like to say a word in conclusion about the combination of sacramentalism with infant baptism.

I’ve argued against a sacramentalist view of baptism, and I also think

that the case for pedobaptism is very weak.

The argument for confession and faith as essential to baptism seem to me to be powerful.

Nevertheless I could see where one might have one or the other practiced without great injury to the church.

If you had a sacramentalist view of baptism but you reject pedobaptism, while that might be mistaken, nevertheless it wouldn’t be injurious to the church because once people exercised faith in Christ and submitted themselves as candidates for believer’s baptism they can be baptised and they might believe that at the moment of their water baptism they were also baptised in the Holy Spirit and became regenerate believers.

That might not be right but it wouldn’t do any great harm.

Similarly, if you have a non-sacramentalist view of baptism and you view baptism as a sort of sign or external seal of the covenant, then even if you were baptizing infants you would not be regarding their baptism as the moment at which they received justifying grace and were saved.

So they would still need, when they grow up, to exercise repentance and faith and receive justifying grace and become regenerate Christians.

So even if pedobaptism were practiced, on a non-sacramentalist view it wouldn’t be a terrible injury to the church.

But it seems to me that what is truly disastrous for the church is to combine

sacramentalism with pedobaptism because then what you have is people falsely thinking that in virtue of being baptized as an infant they are therefore regenerate Christians who are recipients of God’s justifying and saving grace.

This leads to a church that is filled with non-Christians who have never themselves actually exercised saving faith in Christ but are simply trusting in a ritual which has been done to them unwittingly as tiny infants.

So while sacramentalism or pedobaptism might be practiced independently of each other without great harm to the church, it seems to me that when they are combined then the results really are disastrous for the health of the church because it will basically lead to a church that is filled with unregenerate people falsely thinking that they are in fact regenerate and justified Christians.

Next time we’ll turn from a discussion of baptism to a discussion of that second sacramental ordinance, the Lord’s Supper.