Randy Frazee | – WP 111: So What's the Big Deal About Baptism?

So What’s the Big Deal About Baptism?

All Christians throughout history have agreed, on the basis of Scripture, that baptism is important. Historically, baptism has not been understood to be an optional practice. It is commanded by God. But there has often been disagreement about whom baptism is for, how it should be done, and why it is significant.

The issue most debated is whether baptism should be performed on children of believing parents or only on people who have made their own decision to believe in and follow Jesus.

Infant Baptism: Covenanting with the Community of God

Biblical Argument

Scripture’s support for infant baptism falls under three motifs:

1. children and the covenant,
2. household baptisms
3. baptism as New Testament circumcision.

Children were included in the old testament covenant.
-Gen. 17:7
-Josh. 8:35

New Testament
-Mark 10:14–16
-Acts 2:38–39

(Children are participants of the covenant of God and thus may receive the Holy Spirit when their parents enter into the covenant with God. The way this covenant is sealed in the New Testament is through baptism.)

Household baptisms:
-Acts 11:13–14
-Acts 16:14
-Acts 16:31, 33
-1 Cor. 7:14

Stresses familial identity. Children are made holy by the faith of their parents, though the notion runs counter to the Western individualistic worldview. It is also why children are consistently included in their parents’ covenant and why the church should baptize children of believing parents. Entering the covenant of God is not simply an individual affair. Indeed, as in the Old Testament, children are included within their parents’ covenant.

Paul draws in analogy between circumcision and baptism.

“In him [Christ] also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead” (Col. 2:11–12).

(The idea here being since physical circumcision was offered to infants and adults alike, baptism is the new circumcision for infants and adults alike.)

SUMMARY
1. Church tradition. From at least the second century, infant baptism has been practiced by the majority of Christians throughout history.

Objection: Bible contains no explicit reference to infant baptism. If we believe that scripture is more authoritative than tradition this must be a major consideration.

2. God’s initiative in salvation. When people restrict baptism to adults, they give the impression that salvation is a matter of God responding to human choice.

Objection: Scripture gives faith as a prerequisite to baptism. “Repent, and be baptized” Acts 2:38. Jesus says, “Repent for the Kingdom of God is near.” Matthew 3:2.

Can an infant repent? Also, see the great commission.

Believers Baptism

Biblical Argument

Throughout the New Testament, salvation is offered to and baptism is commanded of only people who can meet the conditions of repenting, repenting, believing, and obeying Jesus Christ.

-Mark 1:5
-Matt. 28:19–20
-Acts 8:12
-Acts 8:35–38
-Romans 6:3

Can an infant have it’s old self crucified so it is no longer a slave to sin?

1. Baptism is an act of discipleship that can be entered into only by people old enough to be disciples. This is why every example of baptism in the New Testament involves a person old enough to decide to follow Christ. Never do we read about infants being baptized.

2. The importance of discipleship – If someone is considered a Christian by virtue of being born to Christian parents (or in a Christian state), then the urgency of stepping out on one’s own and making the radical decision to follow Jesus is compromised. This is not to suggest that all Christians baptized as infants are passionless or that the practice of infant baptism causes one to be passionless. But this practice invariably tends in that direction, and for obvious reasons. By contrast, the practice of adult baptism forces each individual to make his or her own decision to follow Christ.

Summary: While it is true that the infant baptism view has been the primary perspective throughout church history, it is also true that there is no explicit evidence of infant baptism until the second century and no evidence that it was dominant until much later. This is plenty of time for an aberration of Christian practice and theology to take place. Indeed, most evangelicals would agree that the dominant theology of baptism was becoming aberrant by the mid-second century, because Christians at this time were increasingly holding that baptism literally washed away sin and was necessary for salvation, a view almost all evangelicals reject.

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