Why do we Baptise Children

Pray

Introduction

Over the last few weeks Paul and I have been teaching on eldership for our current election of elders. And during that series we touched on the role of elders within the church.

From there, we then spoke about the purpose of the church - what it’s for, why do we go, and so on.

Today and next week, we’re going to look at two things that we do in this church. We call them sacraments. And very simply put a sacrament is a visible sign of God’s invisible grace. In other words, signs that demonstrate God’s grace.

And in the Presbyterian church we have 2 sacraments - 2 commands by Jesus that demonstrate his grace. They are baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Today we’ll look at baptism and next week we’ll look at the Lord’s Supper.

And we’re going to ask similar questions - why do these things? What’s the point of them? What do they mean?

And the biggest question surrounding baptism is this - do we baptise babies or adults? How can there be such a difference in approach to baptism between the Presbyterian and the baptists, for example? What’s the difference between infant baptism and believers baptism?

So we’re going to look at this a bit this morning to show you what we believe and why we believe what we believe.

But first, I’ve got to thank Paul for letting me speak on baptism, because this is something particularly close to my heart because for the first 27 years of my life I was a baptist. For me, baptism was a celebration of someone coming to faith in Jesus Christ and it was only for believers. Now, my belief has changed, and I’m going to take you through my journey.

And I’m also indebted to the teaching of a guy called Bryan Chappell on the subject. Out of all the people dealing with the issue of infant baptism, his was the most helpful and I would suggest you check out his booklet on the subject.

Pause

So first of all, some life history.

Like I said, I was brought up a baptist. And I never knew the argument for infant baptism - for me it was a clear-cut case. Baptism was for believers - for those who had put their faith in Jesus Christ. Cos the New Testament is all about believing and THEN being baptised...as it says in Acts 2:38...

Acts 2:38 ESV

And Peter said to them, “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.

Now, notice the order there - repent and be baptised. Repentance comes first, baptism second. And to me, that was clear cut. Open and closed case.

And so to me, in the first 3/4 of my life, baptising babies was wrong. Because a baby has no knowledge of God or Jesus and has no capability of believing in Jesus or repenting and so they can’t be baptised. In fact...

A baby can do NOTHING with respect to its salvation

And so You MUST believe first and then be baptised. That’s the order in the New Testament, that’s what we should do.

Pause

Now, keep the words on that slide in the back of your mind. Lock it in there - cos that’ll prove to be important later.

But that argument, for me, came from reading the bible back to front. But we don’t read the bible back to front, do we? We read it from front to back. And so we start at the Old Testament and work forward.

And taking the bible like that will give you a much richer experience of Scripture, and will also help you in your interpretation of it.

And when you read the bible from front to back, what you see is this...

That the bible is an account of how God is working to redeem the world - to buy it back, to set it free from slavery to sin. It starts with perfection at creation, then there’s the fall when sin comes into the world, and then God chooses a people to bless and uses that family line to eventually send his Son, Jesus, into the world to die to pay the punishment for sin - to fix the world, to set it free. And from then God’s Spirit is living in those who have put their faith in Jesus Christ until everyone hears the good news and then we’ll be rescued and live in a new heaven and a new earth.

So that’s the sweep of God working in the bible - and IT’S ALL CONNECTED. It’s not different books stuck together - it’s one continuing story of God’s love for us and his promises to us - promises with a condition. We call them covenants.

And God made a covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17...

Genesis 17:7–11 ESV

And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.” And God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.

Ouch.

So God promised to be Abraham’s God, but not just to Abraham - to his children and their children and so on, and the sign of that promise, the sign of the covenant was circumcision. Every male child at 8 days old would be circumcised. And Abraham...

Genesis 15:6 ESV

And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

And so the sign was a promise, by God, that if the conditions of the covenant were met - faith - then God would bless and honour his part of the covenant and credit that person with righteousness.

And circumcision was a sign of blood - in other words, blood was shed during circumcision, which pointed to the blood that would be shed on the cross when Jesus died to pay the price for sin.

So the sign of God’s promise was given to Abraham and his family, and the sign was circumcision. And this sign was given to every male child throughout the years and continues in Jewish families to this day.

Now, that’s what we see when we read from the Old Testament forward.

Pause

And, what’s that got to do with baptism?

Well, when you get to the New Testament, baptism replaces circumcision as the sign of the covenant that God has made with his people - a NEW covenant in Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ came and died and his blood paid the price for sin, and those who have FAITH in Jesus have their sins washed away.

And so...

While Circumcision pointed forward to Jesus’ shed blood, baptism points back to it.

So Paul writes, talking about Christ...

Colossians 2:11–12 ESV

In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.

So the argument that Paul gives is that Circumcision was an outward sign, but circumcision didn’t DO anything. It was a sign of being part of the covenant community, but it didn’t SAVE you. What SAVES you is your faith in Jesus Christ. That’s why Paul calls it a circumcision of the heart - which is faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The act of circumcision is just a sign.

But the promise that God has made to be God to Abraham and to his children and his children’s children - that’s still happening in the New Testament. That promise is still the same and that’s why we have baptism as the sign of the covenant.

Let’s go back to that verse I showed earlier - the one that used to argue from a believers baptism point of view...

Acts 2:38 ESV

And Peter said to them, “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.

That’s what I read earlier…but Peter continues… And this is the very next verse but it’s critical....

Acts 2:39 ESV

For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”

Hang on a second - that sounds a lot like the same promise given to Abraham.

And it is.

The promise is the same - God will be our God, to us and our children and our children’s children and for all who are far off.

We have a new covenant in Jesus Christ and baptism is the sign of the covenant.

And like I said earlier, while circumcision was a blood sign that pointed forward to Jesus’ shed blood, baptism is a water sign which points BACK to what Jesus’ blood actually did. Remember the children’s talk - Jesus blood washes sins away for those who have put their faith and trust in Jesus. And...

water represents the washing of our sins and our new life in Jesus

The amount of water is irrelevant.

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[SHOW SLIDE]

In the Old Testament, there’s a promise, which is for you and your children, and there’s a sign, given to children.

In the New Testament, there’s a promise, which is for you and your children, and there’s a sign - given to who? Given to children, of course - why would you change it?

And that’s exactly what happened. Children continued to receive the sign of the new covenant and were being baptised.

Baptists often ask, ‘give me a verse that explicitly says that we should baptise infants?’ But as Bryan Chapell says, it should be the other way around. We should be asking the baptists, ‘Give US a verse that explicitly says NOT TO baptise infants - cos that’s what was always done and there’s nowhere in the bible where it says it should change.’

In fact, there are instances in the bible that indicate that it SHOULD continue!

In every instance in the New Testament, bar one, when someone comes to faith in Jesus Christ, they are baptised, but not just them, their household are too. So the passing of the sign of the covenant is continuing through parents and their children. Let me give you 2 examples.

The Philippian Jailer believed and he and his household were baptised. Same happened with Lydia.

The only time a household wasn’t baptised in the New Testament after conversion was the case of the Ethiopian Eunuch - who didn’t have a household.

Pause

Now, back to Paul in Colossians...

Paul said that circumcision was an outward sign, but it’s the faith in Jesus that saves you - circumcision didn’t save you.

And it’s the same with baptism...does baptism save you? No. Does baptism guarantee that a child will become a Christian later in life? Absolutely not.

It is a sign of the promise that when the conditions of the covenant are met - in other words, faith in Jesus Christ - that God will honour his promises and give you the blessings that he has promised - including righteousness, which comes only through faith.

And the other thing is this - the sign of the covenant in the Old Testament was given to the children of Israelites only. Not to any other nation or tribe - only to the Israelites, because the promise was for the Israelites, or the Jews, ONLY. So a Gentile - someone who wasn’t a Jew - couldn’t go up to a rabbi and have their child circumcised because God’s promise was ONLY to the Jews. It wouldn’t be allowed.

And it’s the same with baptism. The sign of the New covenant is given to the children Christians ONLY. And so, just like a Gentile couldn’t go up to a Rabbi and have their child circumcised, someone who isn’t a Christian can’t go up to a church and have their child baptised, because the promise is for Christians only.

So baptism within this church is not offered to people of other faiths, or even people with NO FAITH AT ALL. Only where one or both parents have a saving faith in Jesus Christ can that child receive the sign of the promise that God has made for Christians and their children. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise.

Pause

One last thing quickly - what about the ‘repent and be baptised’ parts of the New Testament? How do we get round that one? Why is that in the bible if babies can’t repent first? Let me give you this scenario...

An adult atheist comes up to Paul, or a muslim, or…let’s make it a bit more parallel to the bible - a JEW comes up to Paul and tells them that they have come to faith in Jesus Christ and want to be baptised - what would Paul say?

Would he say, ‘no, you’re not a child - you’ve missed the boat.’? No, he would baptise them - as an adult - as a believer…because it’s a command from Jesus that represents the washing of their sin through the shedding of his blood and their new life in Christ. They have repented and so they are baptised.

But that’s adult baptism. That’s believers baptism - we don’t do that. Yes we do…because in that case, the atheist or the Jew or whoever hadn’t been baptised before - they’d never received the sign of the covenant. And so to enter into the covenant community of believers they must believe first and then be baptised to receive the sign of the covenant. You can’t receive the sign given to Christians and their children BEFORE you’re a Christian.

But, if that person has a child, that CHILD will then be baptised to receive the same sign or the promise God makes to us and OUR CHILDREN.

And that’s the case back in Acts 2 - the Jews hadn’t been baptised before. Neither had the Gentiles - nobody had. But once they came to faith in Jesus, the first Christians were baptised as adults, receiving the sign of the new covenant that God has made in Jesus - but from then on, their children were baptised.

The first Christians HAD to be baptised as believers first. And so any NEW Christian, who hasn’t been baptised before must believe FIRST and then be baptised. But for future generations, it’s the child which receives the sign of the promise, in keeping with the biblical tradition.

But if an adult comes up to Paul and says, “I was baptised as a child but I wouldn’t have called myself a Christian until now, but now I have made a decision to follow Jesus, will you baptise me?” Paul would say, ‘no’, cos that person has already been baptised and has already received the sign of God’s promise, and that promise has now been fulfilled when that person came to faith in Jesus Christ. We would still rejoice that they came to faith, but they don’t need re-baptised.

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Now, go back to the slide I told you to lock away in your mind. I want to leave you with this...

A baby can do NOTHING with respect to its salvation

Remember that was my argument for believers baptism? Well, look at it this way...

Infant baptism is a perfect example of God’s grace. Remember, it’s a sacrament which is a visible example of God’s invisible grace - cos the child has done NOTHING to deserve ANYTHING - and yet God extends his promises to them - that’s grace. When I was a baptist, baptisms were a celebration, and rightly so - but it was a celebration of the person. Look at what I’VE done. I’ve decided to follow Jesus.

But because a baby can’t do any of that because they’re a baby, Infant baptism is a celebration of what God has done in Jesus Christ. Now THAT is grace. And it’s awesome to know that God’s promise in Christ is a promise for us, if we’re Christians, AND for our Children.

Let’s pray.