A sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 17 Feb 2008, 21 Feb 2016
A) Let me begin with a heads-up that at the end of this sermon, I plan to pour water on an infant and call it a baptism.
B) I am aware of two reasons, this could be controversial:
1. there is a historic dispute over what makes a recipient of baptism qualified for baptism,
2. there is a historic dispute over the proper way of applying the water for baptism.
C) My position, and the position of this church, however, is that the scriptures leave room for Christians to practice baptism in more than one way. Since this position is not common, I want to offer a Biblical defense of it.
D) This is going to necessitate showing a Biblical basis for sprinkling and for infant baptism, because most of the people who would sprinkle infants have no problem with immersing adult Christians, but that attitude of tolerance is not so common in the other direction, so while I will try to keep a degree of neutrality in the big picture, it is going to be necessary, in order to reach that neutrality, to look especially at whether or not immersion is the only way to baptize and whether or not mature converts are the only qualified recipients for baptism.
E) Let’s start with the less emotionally-charged subject to begin with:
A) In our modern culture, Christians have some deeply-entrenched positions which are mutually exclusive about how to do water baptism.
1. The London Baptist Confession of Faith from the year 1677 says that “Immersion or dipping of the person is necessary to the due administration of this ordinance”
2. But Westminster Confession of Faith from the year 1648 says that “Dipping of the person into the water is not necessary, but baptism is rightly administered by pouring or sprinkling water upon the person.”
3. They can’t logically both be right. They’re mutually exclusive.
4. I’ve seen Southern Baptist churches deny membership to people who were obviously Christians because those Christians had been sprinkled as infants and hadn’t been immersed.
5. On the other hand, I’ve seen Presbyterian churches disqualify godly men from leadership because those men wanted to wait until their children made a profession of faith before baptizing them. Charles Spurgeon... John Piper... John MacArthur... unqualified for church eldership? Gimme a break!
B) Who’s right? and Must it be this way? I am convinced that the only way Christians can reach unity is through the Word and the Spirit. So I want to ask today, what is the witness of the Word and the Spirit on this subject?
C) I want to begin by looking at the baptisms recorded in the New Testament to see if we can find clues as to how baptism was done.
1. Circumstantial evidence weighs in that John the Baptizer may well have immersed[1].
(a) He baptized Jesus “into (eis) the Jordan,” and
(b) John 3:23 states that “John was also baptizing in Enon [which is near the Jordan River] because there was much water.” Having “much water” would support immersion, although that is not absolutely conclusive.
2. Later on, when Jesus’ disciples baptized people, they did not do it in the Jordan, but rather in Judea somewhere (John 3:22-4:2).
(a) We also read in Acts 2 of the apostles baptizing 3,000 souls on the Day of Pentecost. If you were one of those apostles, how would you go about baptizing 3,000 people in a single afternoon in a big city?
(b) The Bible doesn’t actually give us the details, so it’s left up to our imaginations.
3. In Acts 8:36, The Ethiopian Eunuch is in the desert with Phillip the Apostle. He “sees water” and asks to be baptized by Phillip. They go down into the water, then Phillip baptizes the eunuch, then they come up out of the water.
(a) (The same wording is used in Matthew's account of Jesus' baptism: They went down, then one got baptized, then they came out.)
(b) In other words, the coming into the water and the going out of the water are mentioned separately from the baptism.
(c) If this is the case, then these passages don’t really address the question of how the water was applied in the baptism of the eunuch or of Jesus, unless you assume
(i) that the “going in” and “coming out” of the water are verbs of identical action with the verb for “baptized,”
(ii) or you assume that the going in and getting baptized and coming out of the water are denoting three separate, sequential actions, in which case the water might just as well have been poured or sprinkled as immersed.
4. Acts 10:47 In the baptism of Cornelius, Peter said, “Can any man forbid the water, that these should not be baptized?” Peter's question is interesting.
(a) Caesarea was located beside the Mediterranean Ocean, so that would naturally be a convenient body of water in which to immerse the new converts, so why does Peter talk about whether or not to forbid water? Could he forbid the Mediterranean Ocean to exist?
(b) No, but a servant could be forbidden from carrying water in a container from the spring up to the house before it being applied to the new believers! In this case, a servant was “commanded” to fetch water.
(c) As fun and as meaningful as it may be to “gather by the river” for a baptism, the scriptures tell us that Peter did not consider a deep, outdoor body of water necessary.
5. Acts 9:18-19 “And straightway there fell from [Paul’s] eyes, as it were, scales, and he received his sight; and he arose and was baptized; and he took food.”
(a) This appears to be another indoor baptism. Paul apparently did not leave the house between being healed and eating. So how would an indoor baptism be done?
(b) They didn’t have bathtubs in their houses in that culture. You would also expect the verb “he went down” instead of “he went up” if it were done in a tub of water. The way this verse is worded, it appears Paul was standing when he was baptized.
(c) Later on, when he recounted his baptism to others in Act 22:16, Paul quotes Ananias as saying, “Arise, and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His [Jesus’] name.”
(d) Washing in that culture was done by pouring water over the body that was being washed[2].
(e) I may not be able to prove it with absolute certainty, but these circumstances appear to describe a scenario where Paul stood and had water poured over him for his baptism.
6. On Paul’s 2nd missionary journey, the Scriptures describe 2 baptisms in the town of Philippi:
(a) Paul was “alongside the river” when he met and baptized Lydia and all her household in Acts 16:15-33. How he did it is not described, but it seems likely he used the river that they were already beside. (Acts 16:15 indicates it was not at her house because they went to her house after the baptism.)
(b) The next baptism in Philippi appeared to be an indoor one: The Philippian jailer and the people living in his house were baptized “immediately” after the jailer had washed Paul and Silas, and then he took them into his home. This would suggest that they were in the jail when they were baptized.[3]
(i) (So, if you want a really Biblical baptism, go to jail! J.K.)
(ii) The most likely scenario to my mind is that a household member had brought a basin of water to wash Paul and Silas’s wounds, and that same basin of water was used to baptize the whole family, which makes the likelihood of immersion seem slim.
7. And that’s every water baptism described in the New Testament.
(a) None of the Bible’s historical accounts give absolutely-conclusive information as to how the first Christians got wet.
(b) The command to be baptized is issued to all Christians in only one place in the Bible, and that is Matthew 28:18, where it just says, “Go make disciples, by baptizing and teaching.” Unless you assume that the word “baptize” necessarily means one particular mode of baptism (and I have challenged that assumption in a previous sermon[4] and don’t have time to address that point today), Jesus left no written instruction on how to apply the water.
(c) I would go so far as to way that no one mode of baptism, whether immersion or pouring or sprinkling, fits the circumstances of all the Biblical accounts uniformly.
(d) Now obviously we have to get wet somehow, so I believe we are left to pick a mode that is consistent with the range of possibilities in the Scriptures and just do it. Don’t worry if another Christian picks a different mode for themselves. It’s not important.
D) But what if Jesus left spoken instructions that the early church knew about baptism?
1. The ancient Greek document known as the Didache or the “Teaching of the Twelve” supposedly containing instructions from the 12 apostles themselves, lists both immersion and pouring water over the head as acceptable forms of baptism. It is dated to around 100AD. While the Didache does not carry the authority of scripture, it does provide a window into what Christians were doing early on for baptisms.
2. Second-century catacomb drawings in the cemetery of Calixtus show Christians standing in water and the pastor pouring water over their heads. Again, while this is not Scripture, it does show how some of the earliest Christians interpreted the command of the Bible long before there was such a thing as a Roman Catholic church.
3. Moving into the third Century, the earliest-known church building is a Roman residence near the Syria-Iraq border which was converted into a church meeting place around 240 A.D. The baptistery was an anteroom opening off the meeting room with a shallow fountain into which candidates for baptism would step, and then water would be scooped up and poured or sprinkled over them (Michael Walsh, Triumph of the Meek, HarperCollins).
4. Cyprian, also in the third century A.D. wrote, “sprinkling of water prevails equally with the salutary washing”
5. Later, baptisteries of the Nicene age (4th century) in the in the warm southern climates, were built for immersion (Phillip Schaff, History of the Christian Church).
E) I am left to conclude that neither history nor scripture commands one exclusive mode of baptism, for they support pouring or sprinkling as well as immersion.
F) But could it be different in the case of who is eligible for baptism? (Does the Bible support the exclusive practice of believers baptism?) Again, what does the Bible actually say?
A) The New Testament records the baptisms of the Jews at Pentecost, the Samaritans and Simeon that Philip baptized, the Ethiopian Eunuch, Cornelius, Paul, Lydia, the Philippian jailer, Crispus and Gaius in Corinth, the men at the synagogue in Ephesus, and the folks at Cornelius’ house.
1. In every case, the Gospel was received by at least some of the people, and the adults are the only ones mentioned by name as being baptized.
2. This leads all Christians to agree that it is Biblical to baptize adults who have responded in faith to the Gospel message. Nobody disagrees with that, so I won’t belabor that point.
3. To go beyond this and say whether or not there are circumstances in which it is acceptable to baptize someone who is not an adult or who has not responded in faith to the Gospel, that is where the debate lies.
B) The argument that “the Bible doesn’t explicitly mention baptizing babies therefore no babies should be baptized” is certainly worth taking seriously. We should not add practices willy-nilly to the Christian faith.
C) But, on the other hand, an argument from silence like that is not an airtight argument, and I want to offer three Biblical points that support infant baptism:
1. The New Testament was written in the narrow space of about 30 years, really only describing the history of about 15 of those years – the first generation of Christians who heard the gospel as adults for the first time, responded in faith, and were baptized. Little wonder that it does not spend a lot of time on the practices of passing on the faith from generation to generation.
(a) The Old Testament, on the other hand, contains information about God’s people over the course of some 4,000 years – dozens of generations, so naturally the Old Testament does have things to say about the relationship that God has with the children of believers and how to symbolize that.
(b) The symbol in the Old Testament was circumcision, but the New Testament tells us in Colossians 2 that “baptism” is the “circumcision of Christ” and that we should no longer use the symbol of circumcision.
(c) In the presence of the Biblical expectation among Jewish believers of a symbol of faith for the next generation[5], and in the absence of any command against infant baptism in the Bible, I believe it is reasonable that most Christians throughout history have inferred that baptism could be applied to the children of believers in the New Testament in much the same way that circumcision was applied to the children of believers in the Old Testament.
(d) And in the midst of fierce controversy over such trivial matters as the date of Easter, the early church found no controversy in the baptism of infants:
· Tertullian’s writings from the late second century imply that infant baptism was a normal practice in the church.
· Irenaeus in the late 100’s A.D. wrote that Jesus “came to save through means of Himself all who through Him are born again unto God, infants, and little children, and boys, and youths, and old men.”
· Origen, in the 3rd century, speaks of infant baptism as a “tradition of the apostles.”
· And the council of Carthage in A.D. 253 also takes infant baptism for granted, the only controversy being whether an infant could be baptized before the 8th day!
(e) This first argument goes that there was no need or opportunity for the New Testament authors to impress upon Christians the use of a symbol of their children’s relationship with God because that practice was already well-established in the Old Testament.
2. There is another reason why I don’t think it is Biblical to prohibit the baptism of infants, and it is this: the New Testament speaks of household baptisms, which admit the possibility that children or infants were actually baptized by the apostles.
(a) The Bible records at least five occasions where a household was baptized along with the head of the household: Cornelius (Acts 10), Stephanus (1 Cor. 1:16), Lydia (Acts 16:15), Crispus (Acts 18:8, 1 Cor. 1:14), and the Philippian Jailer (Acts 16:31-33) “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, you and your house… and he was baptized – he and all who belonged to him immediately.”
(b) The word “household” normally means all adult family – including parents and grandparents, all children, and all slaves in the estate. This would corroborate with the practice of the Old Testament where children and slaves were circumcised.
(c) Now, admittedly, only males were circumcised in the Old Testament, but why shouldn’t the sign be more inclusive in the New Testament and be applied to both genders, in light of New Testament passages like Galatians 3:27-29? “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to promise.” (NASB) And if things were essentially different for Abraham and his circumcised children, why is the Apostle drawing lines of continuity like this with New Testament believers[6]?
(d) Why, we might ask, would any hope of salvation be extended to children of believers?
(i) Recent statistics reported by the Baptist Press indicate that when a child is the first person in a household to make a decision for Christ, there is a 3.5 percent probability that everyone else in the household will follow.
(ii) When a mother is the first to become a Christian, there is a 17 percent chance that everyone else in the household will follow.
(iii) But when a father comes under the Lordship of Christ, the impact is dramatically increased to a 93% probability that everyone else in the family will follow and come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ! 93%!
(iv) You see, there is a sociological reason why household baptism was practiced in the Bible. It is God’s design that when the head of the house becomes a Christian, normally the children follow.
(v) That is why God demands in Titus 1:6 that the elders of the church have children who believe. If the salvation of our children were a matter of random choice, it would seem unreasonable for God to demand that only men who had believing children could be leaders of His church. But, you see, the Bible shows that is a normative thing for the children of believers to become believers.
3. A third reason why infant baptism is reasonable comes from the fact that the Bible teaches that God treats the children of believers differently from others.
(a) Children are sinners who must be punished by the fires of hell, just like the rest of us.
(i) They are imputed with the original sin of Adam and Eve (“sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all [except children,” Right? No, children die too!] - Romans 5:12)
(ii) People are “formed in iniquity and conceived in sin” and “go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies” says David in Psalm 51:5 and 58:3.
(iii) “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” wrote Paul in Romans 3:23.
(iv) John 3:3 makes it clear that no one [not even a baby] who has not been born again by the Spirit can go to heaven.
(v) If God didn’t treat the children of believers differently from the children of non-believers, we would have to expect every one of our miscarriages and every one of our children who died in infancy to be in hell.
(vi) Yet David prophecied that he would see his son in heaven, even though the child died at 7 days old and was therefore neither circumcised nor baptized! (2 Sam. 12:23). What a glorious promise that our children won’t die and go to hell simply because they are too young to express faith in Jesus!
(b) God treats the children of believers differently from non-Christians:
(i) David claimed to have trusted God during the first year or so of his life when he was a nursing infant in Psalm 22:9: “You made me trust when upon my mother's breasts.”
(ii) John the Baptizer was “filled with the spirit” “even from his mother’s womb” and leaped in her womb upon his first encounter with Jesus! (Luke 1:15&41)[7]
(iii) Jesus said that the angels of little children are “in heaven always behold the face of the father” (Matt 18:10). Here are children with special privileges of getting their prayers answered.
· Jesus did not say “all children” but “these children” – the children of His followers who were gathered around Him!
· (Heb 1:14 informs us that angels are “ministering spirits sent to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation.” Non-Christians who have no promise of inheriting salvation don’t get guardian angels and special attention to prayer, but the children of Jesus’ followers do!)
(iv) And Jesus said, “Let the LITTLE children come to me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven,” and then He blessed them (Matt. 19:14). Does God promise blessings for the wicked? Note, Jesus did not say, “Wait until they are old enough to see whether they will express faith in me or not, and then I will bless the ones who come to me in faith.” No, rather Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is composed of these little children whose parents believed in Him enough to ask Him to bless their children.
(v) In 1 Corinthians 7:13-14, the Bible explicitly states that God considers the children of believers to be different – “holy,” even if only one of their parents is a believer. “And a woman who has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, she must not send her husband away. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy.” (This does not mean they are saved, merely that they are holy. Holy means that they are in a special relationship with God.)
A) In Acts 2:38-39, the apostle Peter said, “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. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off.”
B) Now, even if God has offered promises to you and to your children, you, like the Old Testament saints in Hebrews 11:33 who “through faith… obtained promises,” must also exercise faith in Jesus to forgive your sins before you or your children will actually obtain the promises of the Holy Spirit and of eternal life. You must believe in Jesus to be saved.
C) Furthermore, if you are a believer in Jesus and you have not been baptized, that is the next step of obedience you should take. And if somebody practices baptism differently, don’t condemn their position unless the Bible actually condemns it.
D) And if you want to baptize your children, this practice is reasonably Biblical:
1. to symbolize your children’s relationship with God in continuity with the Old Testament,
2. to demonstrate God’s intention that whole households should be blessed by faith in Jesus,
3. and to mark them as holy to God with special blessings, promises and accountability.
E) And if you can’t in good conscience do that, then keep your conscience clear before God and we’ll wait together for the right time.
F) In the mean time, let’s hold each other accountable:
1. let the credo-baptists be faithful to remind us to call baptized children to personal faith in Jesus,
2. and let the paedo-baptists hold us accountable to nurture children’s immature faith in Jesus.
G) And together let us build up the body of Christ!
[1] I would argue that John’s baptism wasn’t the same as Christian baptism because the men at Ephesus (Acts 19) who had received John’s baptism had to get re-baptized when they became Christians, so that raises a question in my mind as to whether John’s baptisms should even be included in this list.
[2] See, for instance, 2 Kings 3:11
[3] Although it is possible that the jailer and his family “took” (Acts 16:33) Paul and Silas to the river - or to a bath, I interpret the word “took” as the jailer taking Paul and Silas out of their cell into a common area or else taking Paul and Silas into his personal custody.
[4] http://www.ctrchurch-mhk.org/sermons/Baptism.htm
[5] The Jewish Mishna teachings show that in Jesus’ time, the Jews baptized converts to Judaism in addition to circumcising them, and if they had children, the children were baptized with them. (Luis Berkoff, Systematic Theology)
[6] I’ve heard it postulated that the Old Testament sign of circumcision was applied to males because it was only designed to point to the coming of the Christ, after which it would be abolished. Apart from seeing no Biblical basis for this explanation, it also would not explain why most of the first people to be circumcised were Abraham’s slaves, who were not in the line of Christ.
[7] Cf. Jeremiah 1:5, “before you were born, I consecrated you.”