Covenant Baptism Q&A

 

1. What are the blessings and privileges for a baptized child that are separate from salvation?

 

This is a good question and an important one because it takes us back to what baptism actually accomplishes and what purpose it serves. Let me begin by noting that one truly dreadful debate tactic is that of caricature. The tactic goes like this: when the person with the other position states his position, don’t respond to it constructively; instead, distort the other side’s argument and then kick it around. This is also called creating a straw man. Not only does this approach violate the Ninth Commandment, but it avoids the real issues at stake and does nothing to promote understanding and unity. So it is tempting for an advocate of infant baptism to say to someone who opposes infant baptism: “You would deny your children the covenant sign that God has reserved for them? Well, you must not really love your children. When are you going to stop neglecting your poor babies and be a good parent?” Likewise, a Baptist might say to a paedobaptist, “You think that just because your baby got a little water dribbled on the forehead that he is automatically saved. You’re no better than a Roman Catholic who thinks water is magical. When are you going to stop believing in that old Popish holdover and start believing what the Bible really says about salvation by grace through faith?”

 

These kinds of statements are not only harsh and demeaning – they are simply distortions of the truth. The Christian who holds to covenant baptism ought never to think that Baptists are bad parents just because they do not baptize their children, and the Christian who holds to believer’s baptism ought never to think that paedobaptists are just superstitious dupes who think that salvation comes through a bath.

 

That said, let it be stated in answer to the question: baptism does not insure the automatic salvation of anyone, infant or otherwise. An advocate of covenant baptism, in asserting that baptism is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, is not asserting that baptism, when applied to covenant children, automatically confers eternal salvation. It is, however, to say that baptism is something more than a subjective testimony. Covenant baptism affirms that God has ordained that through baptism blessings of grace are conferred. Granted that those blessings do not include an automatic ticket to heaven, exactly what blessings are conferred?

 

A concise description:

• The privilege of being a recipient of the promises of God and bearing God’s own mark that seals the child under those promises.
• God’s favor shown in being set apart from the world.
• The blessing of being included in the covenant people of God, the body of Christ.
• Having parents and a community who embrace a child’s covenantal status and who parent according to the promises of God (covenant nurture).

A fuller explanation:

It is a blessing to bear the mark of baptism itself. When a child is baptized, God claims the child as His. God told Abraham that the covenant He was establishing was between Him and Abraham and his descendants after him. God would be Abraham’s God and his children’s God as well (Gen 17:7). Then God gave Abraham the covenant mark of circumcision as a symbol of the heart cleansing that God would effect by faith in order to bring about the goal of the covenant – union between Himself and His sinful but beloved creation. We are heirs of this Abrahamic covenant in Christ, and God extends His covenant and its blessings of grace to us and to our children (Acts 2:38-39; see Ps 103:17-18; Is 59:21). According to 1 Corinthians 7:14, a child born to a believing parent is, in God’s estimation, holy (this word for holy means set apart; it is the same word from which the word saint comes). Truly, it is good to be consecrated to God. Though by nature the child born to a believer is conceived in sin and under the curse for sin (like any other child), by grace the child’s status, covenantally, is that of a saint (unlike the children of unbelievers). Baptism is the rite that ratifies this reality. It is good to bear God’s seal of covenantal blessing. It is good to be set apart from the rest of humanity and to be marked out as a member of Christ’s covenant community.

 

Baptism is a sign from God confirming the covenant of grace and obligating the baptized to keep the covenant through faith and repentance. Through baptism, God declares that this child has been born into a special relationship to Him. By His sovereign design, this child has been born to parents who belong to the Father, so, in accordance with the way that God has always worked with families, this child is His also. This child will be brought up to love God and keep covenant with Him, and God will be very gracious to him. God will graciously cause everything these parents do in faithfulness to His covenant and in reliance on His promises to be effective so that, by faith, the child is redeemed by Christ, body and soul.

 

Baptism is a one-time experience with lifelong repercussions. Baptism continues to speak long after the water is dry. God graciously gave the rite of baptism to stick in parents’ psyches and show them that God will work through them and the other means of grace to make the gospel effectual and to bless their children with salvation. And as parents raise their children in the training and admonition of the Lord and continually remind their children of their baptismal engagements, the children grow up remembering nothing other than that they have always belonged to the Lord and have always been meant to live in lifelong faithfulness to the Lord. This is covenant nurture. It is a powerful tool for winning our children to the gospel. God has designed the Christian home to be the means by which the church is filled with well-discipled Christians loyal to the God of Israel who is also the God of their parents. Baptism figures large in this process. Baptism says to the one baptized and to the parents, “What this child needs most in the world – reconciliation to the Creator, rescue from sin, a clean heart, new life, the work of the Holy Spirit to unite him to Christ – this is what God promises for all who have faith in Him. And this promise belongs to you. There is no reason to hang in doubt about what this child’s life was intended for. Baptism into the name of the Triune God assures you that it is so.”  Again, to bear this promise is good and powerful.

 

Does regeneration come through baptism? Regeneration, or the impartation of cleansing and new life, is absolutely necessary for salvation. Scripture does not teach that regeneration comes through baptism, but instead that regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit signified in baptism. Is it possible for an infant to be regenerated? Yes. “The wind blows wherever it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Again, the application of water is not the means by which regeneration is granted. The Holy Spirit gives the gift of regeneration by the Word of God (1 Pet 1:23). Parents should believe the promises of God concerning their children – that God, in His own good time, will give the gift of regeneration (early in life or late in life) to their children as signified in their baptism – and should nurture them as if they belong to God, neither being unduly suspicious of their motives and overweening about their sin nor being naïve about their sinful nature and their need for the gospel.

 

Where should a parent’s (and a child’s) assurance of their regeneration lie? Too often parents look to a conversion experience. They teach their children to expect a dramatic experience of conversion and then to base the assurance of their salvation on that experience. Until that experience, parents regard the child as an unbeliever who is hostile to the gospel. The effect of this kind of parenting is to impart to a child a frame of mind that doubts his standing with God. But parents should not base their assurance that their children are truly regenerate simply on a conversion event in their child’s life. As Douglas Wilson wrote, “A man does not need to know what time the sun rose in the morning in order to know that it is up. In a similar way, the father and mother do not need to tell exactly when the sun rose in their child’s life in order to see the evidences of grace. The fruit of the Spirit is as obvious as sunshine.” If a child’s life exhibits the fruit of love, joy, and peace, and they have grown up in it, they may not be able to pinpoint the day or hour they were born again. But while a flashy testimony is appropriate for a former drug dealer who came to Christ, it is not uncommon for a child who grows up with an expectation that he will hate his sin and trust in Christ never to remember anything else and consequently not to be able to name the time and place of his conversion. This is okay. It should be regarded as normal and desirable.

 

We cannot talk to infants (baptized or unbaptized) in order to discern their thoughts and convictions, so we cannot know what their actual status is. Some infants may be regenerate. John the Baptist was filled with the Spirit in the womb (Luke 1:15). Jesus spoke of children praising God from their mother’s breast (Matt. 21:16). But because we cannot see the heart we cannot know for certain about anyone’s true condition; this includes our infant children. Nevertheless, we should believe what God’s Word tells us concerning our children: they have been set apart for Him. We must believe this until we see clear biblical evidence to the contrary. The truly wonderful thing is that if we hold to the covenantal promise in a believing, biblical way, we will not find scriptural evidence to the contrary. God keeps His promises.

 

A child consecrated from birth and marked with the covenant sign should be treated as a partaker of the covenant of grace. Christian parents should parent believing what God says about their children and make an assumption of regeneration until proven otherwise. As a child matures, he will show the evidence of his nature – regenerate or unregenerate. Some covenant children are regenerate, while others are not. How do we tell the difference? The same way that we would with adults (the Bible is not age-graded): on the basis of profession and fruit. Wise parents will not automatically presume that their baptized children are unregenerate. They will parent based on the promises of God and evaluate their child’s life in light of Scripture. That means that just because a child sins, he is not assumed to be unregenerate (could we bear that kind of scrutiny and evaluation?). Assurance of a child’s salvation is based on his fruit – the fruit of faith in Christ and conviction of sin.

 

Once again, baptism figures into this process. Baptism blesses a Christian family by placing the child in objective relationship with Christ and the covenant of grace in such a way that parents can then bank on the promises of God sealed in that baptism and nurture the child toward Christian maturity. What comfort and confidence we receive from our Heavenly Father through the covenant sign and seal of baptism.

 

2. What are the similarities and differences between the Baptist practice of baby dedication and infant baptism?

 

Baby dedication is a frequent practice in many churches that do not practice infant baptism. In this ceremony parents bring their child to the front of the sanctuary during a worship service, and the pastor prays for the child and charges the parents and congregation to be committed to being instruments of Christ in the raising of the child. In itself this is a wonderful desire and a God-honoring activity. Would it ever be wrong to pray for our children’s salvation or ask for Christ’s blessing on our children? Would it ever be wrong for parents to express their sincere commitment to bring up their children in the training and admonition of the Lord? Obviously not. However, there are significant differences between the practices of baby dedication and infant baptism.

 

First, the Bible includes clear instructions to baptize people in the Lord’s name, but it does not provide instructions to dedicate people to the Lord. There are examples in the Bible of people dedicating themselves to God, and Samuel was dedicated to the Lord in 1 Samuel 1 as a specific act of devoting him to service in the temple. But there is no biblical basis for the practice of baby dedication. Again, this is not to say that it is unbiblical to practice it or that the motives behind it are improper. On the contrary, they can be very God-honoring. It is simply to say that the practice has no explicit biblical warrant, as does baptism. It has always been interesting to me (even when I was a Baptist myself) that those who oppose infant baptism on the grounds that it is not explicitly commanded in Scripture were willing to practice baby dedications, even though this is a practice not explicitly commanded in Scripture. The consistent practice for a Baptist who argues against infant baptism on the grounds that there is no explicit warrant for it would be to deny the legitimacy of baby dedication on the same grounds.

 

A second difference between baby dedications and infant baptism is the nature of what these two practices accomplish. A baby dedication is a public way to confirm or ratify a vow or covenant with the Lord. This in itself (as stated above) is certainly not unbiblical, and if anything it is something God smiles on. God is pleased when His people are true to their vows to Him. However, baptism functions in a very different way. As one pastor stated, “Dedications obligate people to lesser vows or covenants, whereas baptism obligates one to the covenant, that is, to God’s covenant with his people.” Dedications cannot replace baptism because they are not an integral part of God’s covenant with His people. Baptism has the distinction of being the sign and seal of the covenant of grace. Dedications do not serve this lofty function.

 

3. What is the status of an unbaptized child of a believer?

 

To understand how a paedobaptist thinks about the unbaptized child of a believer, you must look to the Old Testament practice of circumcision. In Genesis 17:14 we read, “And the uncircumcised male child, who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.” God regards parents and children as a covenantal unit. So if a parent failed to administer to his son the mark of circumcision, he was disobeying God. This sin of the parent was passed on to the child, and the child was considered as being a covenant breaker. He was cut off from God’s covenant and from the people of the covenant. The child had committed no intentional sin, but he was counted as a covenant breaker nonetheless because of the principle of family solidarity. As the head of the household goes, so goes every member of the household. This status of being a covenant breaker, however, was not a permanent condition. If the parents repented, the child could be circumcised and would be brought into the covenant and into the covenant people. This is exactly what took place in Joshua 5 when the people of God had their children circumcised before entering the Promised Land. The children were in a state of being cut off from the covenant, but were restored to the covenant when the mark of circumcision was applied to them.

 

If a believing New Covenant parent does not apply the New Covenant sign of baptism to his child, the child is cut off from the covenant and from the covenant people of God. This does not mean the grace of God is dammed up and stops flowing toward the child or the parents. Salvation is not so tied to the covenant sign that the withholding of the sign means the withholding of salvation. Salvation comes by grace through faith in Christ at the hearing of the Word of God. An unbaptized child of believers who is brought up hearing the Word of God and being trained in the ways of God may very well come to Christ, just as a baptized child who is not given consistent covenant nurture may depart from the faith of his parents and reject Christ. A Baptist may follow biblical principles in his parenting faithfully and see the fruit of salvation in his children while a paedobaptist may neglect the Word of God and see the bitter fruit of children cut off from the covenant in unbelief. In either case the child has the positive responsibility to repent of his sin and trust Christ. There is no salvation apart from faith and repentance.

 

But the means of grace is precisely the issue. Baptism is one means of grace that God has given His church, and when we diligently apply ourselves to God’s means of grace, He blesses us. When we read, study and obey the Scriptures; when we practice and live out our baptism; when we come to the Lord’s Table; when we pray and practice fellowship with God – in short when we are faithful to attend to the means God has given of receiving His grace, He does indeed pour out His grace on us. This is not to say that our obedience obligates God to bless us; it is to say that God has promised to bless us when we trustingly obey Him. It is an act of faith to obey God and then to look to Him to bless us. This is His gracious, Fatherly nature and disposition toward us.

 

So someone who holds to covenant baptism believes that God gives grace through the sacrament of baptism, and the grace continues to flow throughout the life of the baptized as they trust Christ and obey the Word. A parent who holds to covenant baptism believes that he is bringing his child into a gracious position of being a covenant member. Not to do so does not mean that the child will not be regenerated, but it does mean that I am cutting my child off from a primary means of receiving the grace of redemption.

 

An analogy is the practice of family worship. Can the children in a family who does not practice consistent family worship come to Christ and live for Him? Under God’s sovereignty, absolutely, yes. But does that make the practice of family worship optional or unnecessary? Does it make the parent who practices family worship sinfully presumptuous if he believes that consistent, earnest family worship will contribute to his children coming to Christ? Absolutely, no.

 

Or by way of negative example, is a Christian parent in sin who allows his children to be taught for seven hours a day in a government school that God is irrelevant to history and science and language and the arts? I believe the answer is yes. That parent is not obeying what God has commanded concerning the discipleship of his children. But does that mean that everything that a Christian parent attempts to do to lead his child to Christ will be frustrated? No – because of God’s grace and longsuffering many of these children will come to Christ and walk faithfully with Him, in spite of their parents’ sin (by God’s grace, I am exhibit A in this example). But this does not diminish the reality that the schooling choices the parents made were sinful.

 

God ordains means in salvation – “how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?” – and the baptism of infants is a great means toward the end of the salvation of our children. Withholding this means of grace does not mean in absolute terms that a child will not come to Christ. It simply means that if a child does repent and believe (and again, a great number do), it is in spite of our lack of faithfulness to the biblical practice of baptism.

 

So a paedobaptist believes that the unbaptized children of believers are cut off from the covenant and are denied a great, God-ordained means of grace. Covenant nurture, which begins in baptismal engagements, is vital to the life of children, families, and the church.

 

4. Should infant baptism be considered absolute truth or an area of liberty?

 

To answer this question we need to be very clear about our terms. First, “absolute truth.” I would say that all that the Bible teaches is absolute truth. The Bible teaches baptism; therefore, what the Bible teaches about baptism is absolute truth. Obviously, the church (universal) does not agree about what the Bible teaches concerning baptism. True Christians agree that new believers in Jesus Christ should be baptized. True Christians disagree about whether the infants of believers in Jesus Christ should be baptized. Credobaptists believe that paedobaptists are in error on this issue, and vice versa. Are they still brothers? Yes. Is there still “one Lord, one faith, one baptism,” though they do not agree on the recipients and timing of that baptism? Yes. Baptism with water in the name of the Triune God is the one baptism of Christ. I would say that this is where our bedrock of absolute truth is found. Here is where we touch bottom in the stormy seas of baptismal controversies. And it is here that we find common ground so that we can work toward one understanding and practice of baptism. Credobaptists and paedobaptists agree on “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” and yet live together in peace with different convictions on the propriety of baptizing the infant children of believers. We can be in lockstep on issues of first importance (like the Trinity, the gospel, and the authority of Scripture) and then work toward being in lockstep on issues of secondary importance (like the mode and timing of baptism for our children).

 

There is a second area of clarification needed in answer to this question. Is infant baptism “an area of liberty”? In the Westminster Confession of Faith we find these words concerning liberty of conscience: “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to his word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship.” The Bible does not forbid membership in political parties, so Christians should not feel guilt in their consciences over this issue. The Word of God does, however, command baptism, so Christians are bound to obey it. If we do not obey what the Bible says about baptism, then our consciences should bother us because it is not a proper exercise of liberty to use our freedom to violate the Scriptures.

 

If a man is convinced that infant baptism is the teaching of Scripture, then he should obey. He is not at liberty to disobey. But if a man is not convinced that infant baptism is the teaching of Scripture, then he should not have his children baptized. To do otherwise would be to do what is contrary to Scripture and violate his conscience, which is bound to Scripture alone. In either case, liberty is not the issue. Obeying the Scriptures is the issue because baptism is an issue to which the Bible speaks and commands persons. We must obey the Scriptures – the liberty we have in Christ sets us free from sin and from everything not commanded by God. Baptism does not fall into this category. If I, as a very human pastor, command a Christian to baptize his children, and he does so, even though he believes that the Scriptures do not require him to, then that Christian is following the teaching of men and violating liberty of conscience, which ties him to the commands of God alone. That is the point at which infant baptism becomes a liberty of conscience issue. Otherwise, it is a simple matter of obedience to the Scriptures.

 

5. Infant baptism is not explicitly commanded in the Bible, but then again neither is the baptism of professing children of believers explicitly commanded in the Bible. You have your evidence for paedobaptism and I have my evidence for credobaptism – how do we know which to practice if neither is explicitly commanded?

 

It is admitted that the baptism of infants is neither commanded nor forbidden in Scripture. How then do we establish the proper practice of baptism? We employ the same procedure as with a range of other issues in which there is no explicit command. Are miraculous gifts still functioning in the church today? What form of church government should a church follow? Should a church use musical instruments in its worship? Should the church gather on the Lord’s Day – the first day of the week? There is no explicit command in the Scriptures that we should do so, yet we gather on Sunday, the first day of the week, each week because, we believe, that is what God’s Word would have us do. Should women participate in the Lord’s Supper? There is no express command in Scripture to the effect that women should do so. There is no example of women partaking of the Lord’s Supper. Yet we wholeheartedly allow women to come to the Table and would even argue that it would be a sin, a violation of Scripture, to bar them from the Table.

 

We worship on the first day of the week, and we believe it is right for women to come to the Lord’s Supper because these are doctrines established by good and necessary inference. Inference is the mental act by which we reason from a premise to a conclusion. It works like this: given that the premises are true, then the inferred conclusion – if it is a sound one – must also true. When a biblical practice is established by good and necessary inference, it is as if that practice were explicitly commanded in Scripture.

 

So, to use the example of women and the Lord’s Supper, we argue in the following manner:

Women are different from men in many ways, but they, like men, are made in the image of God, and they are granted essentially equal privileges in Christ. Galatians 3:28 tells us that in Christ there is neither male nor female. That is, men do not have privileges to union with Christ that women do not have. Their standing before God as sinners and as redeemed children of God is equal. God is the Father of both men and women, Christ is the Savior of both men and women, and the Holy Spirit indwells both men and women. Therefore, since the Scripture speaks so clearly about their status as equal with men, we infer that women should be able to avail themselves of the same spiritual privileges as men, including the Lord’s Supper. Furthermore, we do have the example in Scripture of women being baptized, so we infer that since it is proper for women to participate in one sacrament of the church, then it is proper for women to participate in the other sacrament of the church. Therefore, women should participate in the Lord’s Supper. This is a practice built on inferences, and I believe each link in the chain of inferences is “good” – that is, it is soundly reasoned – and it is “necessary” – it is logically required, given the premises.

 

Infant baptism and believer’s baptism are both established on inferences. The question is about which set of inferences is the most sound and the most necessary. This is why I have argued again and again that your theological foundations and interpretive reference points are so crucial. Where you will end up is largely determined by where you start. Paedobaptists begin with presuppositions about the unity of the covenants, the unity of the people of God, the continuity of the covenant signs, and the place of the covenant household in redemptive history. This creates a chain of scriptural connections that leads to infant baptism. It is needful to examine each link in the chain of inferences along the way and evaluate it by the Bible’s own standards of legitimacy. The paedobaptist position argues from the status of the child as being a covenant member toward being given the covenant sign as a privilege of covenant membership. This follows a similar path as women being given a status of privilege in Christ and then being able to exercise that privilege by participating in the Lord’s Supper.

 

Are you aware of your interpretive assumptions and starting points? Can you support your inferences biblically?

 

6. What about the mode of baptism? Do you believe exclusive immersion is required by the Scriptures?

 

We have to be careful about how we go about answering this question. Specifically, we should emphasize the way the Bible itself uses the words “baptize” and “baptism” and not simply rely on lexical definitions. We should understand the definitions of these words primarily from the context of their use in the Bible. This is a correction of the very common way of trying to understand these words simply through lexical reference and dictionary definition. These are helpful, but the primary way to understand the meaning of the word is through contextual study. Studying the uses of the words baptize and baptism lexically, you can see that immersion is one of the primary meanings, but as you do contextual study in the Bible, you can see that the words have other uses as well. What this means is that there is no dispute over the propriety of immersion as a true form of baptism; however, we cannot restrict ourselves to that one mode biblically. What are the modes of baptism according to the Scriptures?

 

According to Acts 2 the Holy Spirit was poured out on the people of God. This is called a baptism of the Holy Spirit. See Acts 1:5; 2:17; 11:15-16. God, by baptizing the disciples with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, did so by pouring out His Spirit upon them. Pouring is therefore very clearly described as a biblical mode of baptism.

 

The New Testament also uses the word baptize to refer to dipping, which could be called a partial immersion. See Matt 26:23 and John 13:26. These two passages use a form of the word baptize (bapto, which is related to baptizo). In both these instances dipping is the mode of baptizing – whether it be the bread or the hand that dips the bread. This is, again, a partial immersion, not a total immersion.

 

The Scriptures also refer to baptism as identification. See 1 Cor 10:1-4. The Israelites were baptized into Moses, which does not mean that they were immersed into Moses but that they were identified with Moses. After the Red Sea crossing, their identity was found in him and they were committed to him.

 

The Scriptures also speak of baptism as immersion/pouring and sprinkling together. See Heb 9:9-10. The washings of the Old Testament law are here called baptisms; the word for “various washings” is literally “various baptisms.” Just as the Lord’s Supper grew out of the Old Testament practice of the Passover but is distinct from it, so baptism grew out of the Old Testament practice of ceremonial cleansings and purifications but is distinct from it. The background for the Hebrews passage is Numbers 19. See vv. 4, 13, 17-20. Notice in that passage that after the priest sprinkled water, he had to complete his cleansing with a bath in water (v. 19). This most likely was an immersion or a pouring of water. The point of the writer of Hebrews is that these various washings had to be repeated again and again. Just as the priests had to perform sacrifices again and again, so they had to purify themselves again and again. But now that the Lord Jesus has come to be our once-for-all sacrifice, it is no longer necessary to be purified again and again. The washing that Jesus performed is not to be understood as a bath or a physical cleansing but as a cleansing of the conscience. See 1 Peter 3:21. The ashes of a heifer cleanses someone outwardly, but the blood of Christ cleanses someone inwardly. In Mark 7 we are told that the Jews took this matter of cleansing very seriously. Verse 4 tells us that they were concerned with “the washing [baptism] of cups, pitchers, copper vessels, and couches.” The washing of a couch would most likely have involved some other mode than immersion.

 

Romans 6:3-4 is an important passage in this discussion. The spiritual or true baptism that Paul speaks of is at least consistent with immersion. When someone is buried, he is completely enclosed in a grave. When we are united to Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit, we are enclosed in Him and His death, burial, and resurrection. This said, we need to be careful not to impose modern burial habits on the ancient practice. The way we baptize by immersion by lowering into the water and the way we bury the dead by lowering into the ground appear very similar. But we need to remember that in the 1^st C.  the Lord Jesus was buried by being placed in a small room or cave and having the door shut. This would seem to make the similarity between immersion and burial disappear. Elsewhere Paul says that we who have been baptized into Christ have put Him on like a garment (Gal 3:27).  We should be careful not to see immersion as the essence of baptism, and baptism as a reenactment of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. Instead, baptism signifies union with Christ or total identification with Him – in His death, burial and resurrection. This union can be done equally well by baptism with water in the Triune name through sprinkling, pouring, or immersing.

 

It should be obvious that the issue is not over whether we should practice immersion in baptism. It is agreed that immersion is a biblical mode of baptism. The point is that this is not the sole biblical mode. Sprinkling and pouring, as shown above, are equally valid modes for baptism. This debate is not between immersionists and anti-immersionists. It is between “exclusive immersionists” and “open immersionists” (Doug Wilson’s terms). To show a case of immersion in the Bible is not to prove things one way or the other; there are also cases in which it is plain that other modes are used in baptism. How does the Bible use baptizo and bapto?  We see pouring, sprinkling, pouring/immersing, dipping, and total identification.

 

There are other considerations as well. One common argument, for example, is that the Ethiopian eunuch “went down into” and “came up out of” the water. The prepositions are seen as being definitive. But note in Acts 8:38-39 that Philip went down into and came up out of the water along with the Ethiopian eunuch. The prepositions settle nothing.

 

Consider the sprinkling of the blood of Christ in the New Testament. The blood of Christ is at the heart of the new covenant. It is this blood of the new covenant that is sprinkled on us to make us clean. See 1 Peter 1:2; Heb 9:14, 18-22; 10:22, 24, 29. The blood of Christ and its sprinkling is connected to our initial entry into the new covenant. Our entry to the new covenant and our cleansing from sin are also marked by baptism. See Acts 22:16. Scripture uniformly describes the mode of this initial cleansing from sin by the blood of Christ as that of sprinkling.

 

I believe that when you put all this evidence together, you find that immersion is a biblical mode of baptism, but is not the exclusive mode of baptism.

 

7. Do the pastors believe that members of the congregation who do not baptize their children are sinning? How are we as a church to regard one another if our views of baptism differ?

 

The true church of Jesus Christ is made up of those who believe baptism is to be reserved for those who have professed faith in Jesus Christ as a testimony of their salvation and those who believe that God has ordained baptism as a sign and seal of His covenant, which is to be given to believers and their children.  We realize that the church of Jesus Christ is divided over this issue. Yet there seems to be a growing unity within the reformed churches over baptism

 

We have come together as a body to be a local expression of the church of the living God. As such, we are a collection of paedobaptist families and credobaptist families. Paedobaptist families are convicted that the baptism of their children is biblically warranted. Credobaptism families believe that their children should be baptized only as confessing believers. The nature of the case, that is, the nature of belief and obedience, is such that these families are convicted that to do otherwise would be to sin. However, we can still live together in peace; we do not have to go around regarding other families as sinful. We trustingly and lovingly regard them as families who are doing their best to understand and obey the Scriptures. In humility we recognize that families can do this and come to different conclusions – even within the same local church.

 

We must recognize that the church universal, the church as a whole, like us, does not agree on this issue of baptizing the children of believers. We as a church have recognized this from the beginning, and we have decided to come together as a church in spite of it, in humility refraining from judging or condemning one another and instead uniting as a body of believers who major on the majors of Scripture and find unity at every point where we can do so peaceably. From the beginning of our church, we have lived together as paedobaptist families and credobaptist families. We will continue to do so without being judgmental or mutually condemning. In the past when a family joined the church it probably was not even known (unless there had been a specific one-on-one conversation about it) whether the family was paedo- or credo-. I expect this to still be the case – not because we are hiding something or being cagey about the whole thing, but because we are too busy being about the important matters of the kingdom and training our children and serving one another and studying the Word.

 

The difference now, obviously, is that the pastors’ views on baptism have changed, and the pastors are proposing that we now practice paedobaptism. Before this change, paedobaptist families who came into the church had to lay aside their conviction that their children should be baptized (though it is true that while we did not practice it, we have always accepted the baptism of infants by sprinkling – a custom at odds with historic Baptist practice and intentionally calculated to contribute to catholicity and unity). Before the pastors’ change, if a paedobaptist family had a baby, they had to live with the fact that the baby would not be baptized. That was something of a hurdle for paedobaptist families to overcome. Now, however, credobaptist families have something of a hurdle to overcome because there will be the practice of infant baptism in the church.

 

Now, let’s be clear: the hurdle is NOT that credobaptist families have to give up their believers’ baptism convictions or that they have to accept infant baptism. Credobaptist families whose children, for example, are not baptized and who come to Christ will still be baptized by the pastors by immersion – and with great joy and without reservation. However, credobaptist families have to accept the actual practice of infant baptism in the life of the church. That is the hurdle – and it is one that I believe our credobaptist families can overcome. There are many, many Baptist families who are part of Presbyterian churches and who have reservations about infant baptism but who are in great agreement with the theology, vision, and ministry of the church and who function quite well in the life of the church. Pastor Stout and Pastor Bryant are convinced that this can be the case at Providence as well. The pastors do have convictions of their own that will influence how they practice baptism in their own families, and their convictions will invariably come out in the life of the church. But the pastors, with wholehearted purpose, want to lead the church toward unity and love and forbearance, especially on such a polarizing issue as baptism.

 

We are working toward unity (“the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God” – Eph 4:13), and we cannot work toward that unity in different churches. However, even with our differing convictions regarding the baptism of our children, we can work together toward unity and love. We can obey God together in presenting our children to Him as a heritage for His name and for His glory, differing baptismal convictions notwithstanding.

 

So in direct answer to the question: No, the pastors do not believe that those who do not baptize their children are sinning. Open and unrepentant sin would require church discipline and though some have placed baptism in such a category we, along with others, reject such teaching. This unity recognizes the desire of both credo- and paedo- baptists to be faithful to the Word of God and raise their children in the most God-honoring fashion.  Since God has seen fit to include credobaptists and paedobaptists in His church universal the elders at Providence are loath to place barriers where He has granted access

 

Instead, we acknowledge that we see the Scriptures differently on an issue that the universal church has been divided over for centuries. In humility we will each obey the Scriptures as we believe we must. For paedobaptist families that means baptizing their children (which in the days ahead will be a new practice in the church), and for credobaptist families that means baptizing their children only after a profession of faith (which has been and will continue to be a reality in the church). The pastors will attempt to treat all these families (to the extent that they are able to, with their sinful natures and limited wisdom) with equal care and love, not regarding one group as being righteous while the other is sinful.

 

8. Can the church still be unified if we have differing views of baptism?

 

We have been unified on this issue already. There have been families who submitted to the elders and the confession this church embraced, though their convictions were otherwise.  We recognize the difficulties that come with a change in practice, and the elders are committed to leading the congregation in unity around the centrality of the gospel, the worship of the Lord, and the pursuit of God-honoring fellowship

 

9. We are talking about changing our church confession to the Westminster Confession of Faith and beginning to baptize infants in our worship. What else do you expect to change in our church?

 

“Reformed and Always Reforming” has been and is still our guiding principle. Other changes in the life of the church will surely seem small by comparison.  We were never a Baptist church in the strictest sense of the word and our view of the Lord’s Supper, worship, and even baptism has always been more Reformed than Baptist.