Who Is To Be Baptized?

Catholic priests and many Protestants pastors perform what is called a christening ritual on infants shortly after birth. The ritual involves the sprinkling or pouring of water on the child’s head as the ministrant utters a few words of explanation to dedicate the child to the Lord. This they describe as baptism in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Most gospel preachers at some time in their evangelistic life have been asked to perform this service. They refuse to do so for biblical reasons – the first of which is that sprinkling and pouring water on a person is not baptism. Baptism is immersion (see Roman 6:4). But the chief reason is that the New Testament nowhere teaches infant baptism. This is a practice that was started many centuries after the church was established and the Bible was written.

There are good reasons why Bible students never read of infant baptism in the scriptures. First, the Bible at no place teaches that infants are born in sin and have need of baptism. The prophet Ezekiel teaches “that the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son” (Ezekiel 18:20). Since baptism is “for the remission of sins,” there is no need to baptize an infant. Jesus also spoke of the innocence and purity of little children when he told his disciples that “to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 19:14).

Second, the Bible teaches specifically that baptism is for those who believe in Jesus as the Christ, repent of their sins, and confess Jesus as Lord. Jesus in the great commission told the apostles to preach the gospel to every creature and tell them: “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:15-16). Peter on the day of Pentecost told the believing Jews: “Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of sins” (Acts 2:38). The apostle Paul told believers that “with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).

Belief means to understand “that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:30-31), repent refers to “changing one’s mind” in the rejection and repudiation of sin (Luke 3:7-8), and confess denotes the utterance from the lips that Jesus is Lord (Romans 10:9-10). Obviously, infants are unable to perform these basic but significant tasks in preparation for baptism.

Finally, some have argued that infants were circumcised under the old covenant and that baptism is likened unto circumcision in the New Testament. This, they assume, means they should be baptized under new covenant teaching. The problem with this reasoning is that one cannot enter the new covenant until he knows the Lord (Hebrews 8:10-11), and that those who are spiritually circumcised in baptism are “raised through faith” in this working of God (Colossians 2:12). Knowing and believing in the Lord eliminates infants as subjects of baptism into covenant relationship with God.