And so, according to the circumstances and disposition, and even age, of each individual, the delay of baptism is preferable; principally, however, in the case of little children. For why is it necessary—if (baptism itself) is not so necessary (to salvation)—that the sponsors likewise should be thrust into danger? Who both themselves, by reason of mortality, may fail to fulfill their promises, and may be disappointed by the development of an evil disposition, in those (children) for whom they stood? The Lord does indeed say, “Forbid them not to come unto me.” Let them “come,” then, while they are growing up; let them “come” while they are learning, while they are learning whether to come; let them become Christians when they have become able to know Christ. Why does the innocent period of life hasten to the “remission of sins?” More caution will be exercised in worldly matters: so that one who is not trusted with earthly substance is trusted with divine! Let them know how to “ask” for salvation, that you may seem (at least) to have given “to him that asketh. -Tertullian who lived from about 160-240 AD
Quick History of Baptism in the Church
When to baptize someone has been an issue that has apparently been a challenge for the church since the very beginnings of church history. While some claim that the early church fathers all believed in infant baptism, this quote from Tertullian — which is one of the earliest writings on baptism that we have — indicates that it was certainly not a settled issue in the early church. Tertullian is one of the foremost theologians of the time, and is here arguing for delaying baptism until there is a credible profession of faith. At bare minimum then, the issue was not settled in the early church, but was open to debate.
While it is certainly true that for most of church history the church has practiced Paedobaptism (baptizing infants), I would argue that this is because the church lost the light of the scriptures. As soon as this was recovered again in the reformation, the debate about whether or not we should baptize infants resumed, with most of the reformers saying that we should continue to baptize infants (especially Luther and Calvin). It is my humble contention that while they got a lot right, they got this part wrong.
We are a church with lots and lots of kids. And I have found that one of the most difficult questions that parents will have to answer is when they should baptize their children. This is not a new debate, but an ancient one, and I hope to give some wisdom and light on how I am approaching this question as a father — and how I think that members of our church ought to approach it — as a pastor.
Overview
We need to address two things to answer this question well:
- Why I am not a Paedobaptist, and the biblical reasoning for believers baptism (also called Credobaptism).
- Some advice for when we ought to baptize a person.
- Why I am not a Paedobaptist
Everybody agrees that the simple answer to the question “who should we baptize?” is “Christians!” but the challenge comes when you try to define if children of believers are Christians or not? it brings to the front of our minds the question: what is a Christian? which is a deceptively difficult question to answer.
Covenant members?
Paedobaptists see being a Christian as being a part of the new covenant (as we do), but where we differ is that they believe that a person can really be a part of the new covenant without being born again, without receiving the Holy Spirit.
They argue that the new covenant follows the basic pattern of the old covenant, and that in the old covenant, children of Israel were admitted into the covenant (relationship with God) through circumcision as infants. Therefore, because the new testament has not explicitly renounced that, we ought to also admit infants into the new covenant (relationship with God) through baptism as infants. Their argument says that if we fail to baptize our children, we are communicating to them that they are not Christians and that this will sow seeds of doubt into our children that might seriously harm them.
Visible vs. Invisible church?
Another way of approaching the question is by thinking about the nature of the true church. Most Christians believe that there are multiple ways to view the church – that there is the invisible and the visible church. The visible church is made up of people that have been baptized, and show up to church, say that they are Christians, it easy to see who these people are, they are easily visible and are thus called the visible church.
And then there is the “invisible” church: people that have actually been born again by the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ. It is called the invisible church because we can never really know for certain if somebody else is part of the invisible church or not. We do not have Holy Spirit glasses to see if He lives within someone. In that sense it is not visible, or easy, to discern. Paedobaptists believe that because we cannot discern without error who is in the invisible church, we ought to baptize everyone that is in the visible church. And they argue that children are in the visible church regardless of their age because they are brought there by their parents and taught to profess Christ by their parents. Therefore we ought to baptize infants.
Why I disagree with paedobaptist convictions
I reject these arguments because I believe that the scripture does make it explicitly clear that entrance into the new covenant is never on the basis of family lineage, but rather on faith and regeneration, and that baptism is only meant to be applied to the invisible church.
Entrance to the new covenant is only by faith and regeneration:
[Jer 31:31-34 ESV] 31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
What Jeremiah is saying here is that a new covenant is coming that is better and different from the old covenant. In the old covenant, there were some people that were circumcised and a part of Israel, but they did not really “know the Lord”. They were not really saved. As Jesus says in the sermon on the mount, “many will say to me Lord, Lord, and I will say to them depart from me, I never knew you” (paraphrase and emphasis mine). So this phrase, “know the Lord” is often used in scripture as shorthand for salvation. As Paul says in Galatians:
[Gal 4:8-9 ESV] 8 “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. 9 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?”
But in the new covenant, there will not be anybody like that. There will not be anybody in the new covenant that does not know God. everybody that is in this new covenant will be saved. In this sense, it will be a much better covenant. Our Paedobaptist friends have to say that this verse does not refer to the time that we are in now, but rather to the end times when in the new heavens and new earth everyone knows the Lord. But that is certainly not what this means. The author of Hebrews cites this verse and applies it to the church in the present tense with confidence! (Hebrews 8 and 12)
Jeremiah is saying in chapter 31 that everyone that is in the new covenant will have a saving relationship with God, not that they will know everything that there is to know about God — that won’t even happen in eternity. This must mean that it is impossible to be in the new covenant and not be saved. It is impossible to be in the New Covenant and not be born again. I believe that this is because the way that we have right relationship with God is by being born again. It is the only way to be a part of this new covenant.
[John 3:3 ESV] 3 “Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’”
To say that we can be in the new covenant with God, without being born again (as our Paedobaptist brothers do) brings us dangerously close to Roman Catholicism that says that we can have right relationship with God through works and sacrament and not through faith and regeneration alone.
So that is my first reason for why I do not think that we should baptize babies; they are not really savingly in the new covenant unless they are born again.
Baptism is meant to be applied to those in the invisible church as well as we can discern that
But maybe baptism is meant to apply to the visible church and not the invisible church? It is my belief that if you look at all the scriptures on baptism, it is only meant to apply to those that are truly in the new covenant; that is, those that have been born again — the invisible church.
Look at these passages:
[Rom 6:3-6 ESV] 3 “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 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. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.”
Does this seem to refer to somebody that is made new and savingly in the church; being regenerated and given a new heart? Or could it refer to somebody that is in the church without having a genuine faith? I believe that the only way to faithfully read this text is to argue that baptism should only apply to people that have died to their old self and been born again through the Spirit of God. And furthermore, I believe that the same holds true for all of the other major baptism texts.
[Col 2:11-12 ESV] 11 “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, 12 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.”
This verse confirms the point made above. Paul is saying that those who are baptized have been circumcised with the circumcision made without hands – that is the spiritual rebirth that is the putting off of the old man, the flesh, and performed by Christ in salvation.
I could cite other verses, but they all point to the truth that baptism makes most sense when done by immersion (life to death and washing imagery) and that it is to be performed in conjunction with a person being born again. Not that baptism should be performed as a sign that some has outwardly joined the church only.
Summary to this point
To try and summarize some of this…to be a Credobaptist (that is, to believe in believers baptism), is to believe that you only have a saving relationship with God in the new covenant through faith in Christ and regeneration of the Holy Spirit. And that baptism is only meant to apply to those that are in the new covenant in this sense. It was never meant to be a symbol that simply means that you are a part of the visible church, but that you are a part of the invisible church. And even if we cannot discern who that is without error, we are called to try and discern that before administering baptism, rather than disregarding any attempt to discern a genuine faith by baptizing infants.
The dangers of the Credobaptist position
We have all heard of that kid that has been baptized five times and is open to being baptized again if they have an experience with Christ. This is profoundly unbiblical and reveals a low view of baptism. It reveals a view of baptism that is more of a marker for significant things that have happened in your life, or it can reveal that many people have been too eager to administer baptism without a credible profession of faith. Either way, it denotes a low view of what baptism is and is unbiblical.
But the other potential error is that we parents of Vintage Faith Church might discourage our children from believing in Christ by telling them that they are not Christians when we withhold baptism from them wrongly because we don’t want to wrongly apply the sign. When our children profess faith in Christ and want to be baptized, and we say “not yet”, we might be guilty of communicating, “you are not good enough yet to be baptized.” This could be a form of legalism, and it could discourage our children. So how do we walk this line of administering baptism properly, if the danger on the Paedobaptist side is to give baptism without any discernment, and if the danger on the Credobaptist side is to deny baptism to those that should truly have it?
It will require wisdom. And it will drive us to prayer. I wonder if this tension isn’t even a design feature; that God built in this confusion because it forces us to our knees begging God for wisdom and helps us know how to navigate this issue.
Also, have frank and open conversations with your children about what it means to be saved: that you must be born again through faith in Christ, and that Baptism will not save you.
Here is how Charles Spurgeon’s mother would pray for him on Sunday evenings at family worship: “Now, Lord, if my children go on in their sins, it will not be from ignorance that they perish, and my soul must bear a swift witness against them at the day of judgment if they lay not hold of Christ.”
While we want to be careful not to discourage our kids if they are genuine Christians, we also want to call them to be born again as Charles Spurgeon’s mother did in this prayer through openly and frankly sharing the gospel with them and calling them to repent of their sin.
And this problem is one that every parent has! Even if you baptize your children as infants, you still must pray and beg and plead with the Lord for them to be born again. And you still would have to teach your children that they are not Christians only because of baptism, but they must personally know the Lord through faith.
2. When to baptize your children
This is probably the most practical part of the article, but I think that everything above informs this section. If we believe that we should only baptize our children based on a credible profession of faith, then the next logical question is: What makes up a credible profession of faith? I would point us to 1 John and the markers that are contained there that help us to identify a true and saving faith.
1. Does the person that is about to be baptized exalt and confess Jesus as the Son of God that came into the world to save sinners?
[1 John 4:15 ESV] 15 “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.”
2. Is there contrition for sin?
[1 John 1:10 ESV] 10 “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”
3. Do they love other Christians?
[1 John 4:7 ESV] 7 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.”
4. Do they believe that God’s word contained in the scriptures is true, and are they hungry to know more of God through His word?
[1Jo 4:6 ESV] 6 “We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”
5. Is there love for good that leads to a desire to obey Him?
[1Jo 2:4-5 ESV] 4 “Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him…”
Conclusion
I am not saying that someone has to have all of these things down perfectly, or that they are saved by these things! But, simply, that these will be the fruit of faith, even if they are found in small amounts. The question is not how much do they display these qualities, but rather: do they display these qualities at all? That will take discernment and wisdom. I advise parents to seek wisdom from God, their pastors, and trusted friends to know when to baptize their children.