Is there any good reason for parents not to have their children baptized as infants?
Hi, I’m Mark Daniels, and this is another ‘Short Shot.’
You hear it all the time, whether from well-meaning Christian parents or from those indifferent to questions about God, faith, or eternity. They say, “I don’t want to impose any religion on my kid. I’ll let them decide when they’re ready to be baptized, or if they even want to believe in God.”
Words like these are meant to sound enlightened, considerate. But they’re based on the false premise, at least as it relates to Christian faith, that we can decide to believe in or follow Christ. What we call “saving faith in Jesus Christ” isn’t something that any person can decide to have.
Let me explain. By nature, you and I are sinners bent on worshiping ourselves and ignoring the needs or desires of others, whether the “others” are our parents, siblings, spouses, friends, co-workers, strangers, or even God. That’s why one of the first words babies learn to say is, “No!”
To have saving faith in Jesus is to be declared righteous or innocent by God. This righteousness or innocence–what the Bible calls justification–in the eyes of God is the one and only thing we need to be part of God’s Kingdom today and in eternity. And because of our sinful condition, none of us is capable of deciding to be righteous, innocent, or justified. We can all say truthfully with the apostle Paul, who writes in God’s Word, “I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.” (Romans 7:18-20)
For people operating under the false notion that we have free will when it comes to life with God, the Bible’s teaching that we are incapable of deciding to follow Jesus in the power of our own will, will lead to despair. Faith in Jesus is not something you decide to have, it’s something God gives to you by means of God’s choosing because of His love for you. He gives it through His Word, whether that Word is delivered to you by preaching, teaching, or Holy Baptism or Holy Communion. This Word comes to us by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Bible says, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3) Baptism, this act by which God gives His Word and His Holy Spirit to the baptized, by which we share in Christ’s death and resurrection, is usually the first way in which God delivers the Word of saving faith in Jesus to people. The apostle Peter writes that, “Baptism…now saves you…” (1 Peter 3:21) It isn’t our decision for Christ that saves us, it is God’s decision for us, which He usually first delivers to us in Holy Baptism.
Some will ask: “What about the thief on a cross to whom, though he was not baptized, Jesus promised eternity when the thief declared his faith in Christ?” I didn’t say that Baptism is the only way the Gospel Word of Jesus that gives faith to those who receive it can be delivered. God’s hand is not constrained. He’s a big God Who can give His saving Word to us in many ways. But I am certain that, like John the Baptist, who leapt while still in his mother’s womb because of his faith in Jesus when the virgin Mary, carrying Jesus in her womb, called out to his mother Elizabeth, even infants can have saving faith in Jesus Christ!
But if you don’t accept all that I’ve told you so far, parents should nonetheless baptize their children as soon as possible for one big reason: Jesus commands it. I’m going to explain why really fast. But you can look up the Bible passages to which I link in the transcript of this Short Shot.
We baptize infants because Jesus, in the great commission, commands that we baptize “all the nations,” and every nation, or every people group in the world, includes children.
We baptize infants because Jesus says not to hinder the children from coming to Him. Our job as Christian parents and as the Church, is not to prevent children from receiving the saving Word about Jesus, but to take every opportunity to give it to them.
We baptize infants because the Biblical evidence suggests that was the practice of the apostles. The apostles were the twelve preachers to whom Jesus gave responsibility for leading the Church after His resurrection and ascension. The New Testament book of Acts, which roughly gives the history of the Church for the first thirty years or so after the resurrected Jesus ascended to heaven, tells of how whole households were baptized by the early Church. The New Testament, you know, was written in Greek. Nowhere in either secular Greek or Biblical Greek, including the Greek translation of the Old Testament created centuries before Jesus born and with which Jesus was familiar, the Septuagint, did “household” mean only adults. While household could mean more than just a husband and wife, and their children, it always meant at least, a husband and wife, and their children. Always. (See Acts 10:48, Acts 16:15, Acts 18:8, 1 Corinthians 1:16)
We baptize infants because the Bible draws an analogy between circumcision, the rite by which God claimed eight day old boys as part of His family, and the Sacrament of Holy Baptism instituted by Christ. In Baptism, God claims and saves infants, taking them through crucifixion to resurrection and eternal life with Jesus.
We baptize infants because we know that the Church Fathers, those preachers and theologians who, in the early centuries of the Church’s life, passed on the faith and the practice of faith, taught by Jesus’ apostles, baptized infants. (See the great study by Joachim Jeremias, Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries.)
I know of no one today who would claim, as one of my great-great aunts did years ago, that unbaptized babies will go to hell. The God we know in Jesus Christ is gracious. But parents who refuse to have their children baptized are denying the children a vital connection to God by which God works the saving faith in Jesus that brings eternal life with God.
For ten years of my life, from my teens until I was in my twenties, I was an atheist. I was committing spiritual and eternal suicide, throwing away the life God gave me when I was baptized as an infant. But thank God, my parents had taken me to be baptized, and I can testify that while I tried to forget that God had made me His own in Baptism, God never forgot. Time and again, He made His love for me unavoidable until finally, His saving Word sank into this once unbelieving brain, heart, and will, and I was able to believe in Jesus Christ as the Lord Who has overcome sin and death to give me forgiveness and life with God, now and forever. That was because I was baptized as an infant!
Parents: Don’t stand in the way of what the Holy Spirit can and will do when, while your children are still young, they are baptized in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
God bless you. See you next time.
