Is Infant Baptism Biblical?

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That's solomedia.org forward slash offers. When I first became a Christian I began attending a Baptist church. I assumed then that the only people who believed in infant baptism were Roman Catholics and that the Protestant Reformation came along and everyone started to read the Bible again and because of that old timey traditions that didn't have any biblical support like infant baptism got abandoned. The more I studied church history, the more I realized that that wasn't how things went and the more I studied the Bible, the more I came to believe that the scriptures don't just allow for infant baptism but necessitate it. Here's my journey towards infant baptism.

So as I began studying this issue more there were two big shifts that happened early on that helped me to understand the proper way to approach this question. The first one had to do with the nature of baptism and the second had to do with the burden of proof. First, I had always been taught that baptism was fundamentally something an individual did in order to say something to the world. It's an outward sign of my inward faith, a way of telling the world that I'm committed to following Jesus and if that's all baptism is, my proclamation to the world, then it makes sense that a baby shouldn't be baptized.

After all, a baby can't speak and hasn't chosen to follow Jesus. The more I study the Bible though, the more I realize that this way of thinking misunderstands the nature of baptism. In scripture, baptism isn't a work that I do but the sign and seal of something God does.

God himself is the baptizer and men and women, regardless of age, are the objects of his promises and the recipients of his grace. This was helpful for me because if baptism is first and foremost something that God does, then when we witness a baptism today it's less of a statement that the individual is making and more of a statement that God is making. In baptism, God is speaking the promises of the gospel to us and to our children and we lay hold of the reality of those promises by faith. And by the way, this idea that baptism is the work of God is everywhere in scripture. In the Bible, baptism is a sign of new creation, Genesis 1, 1, and 2. You think of 2 Corinthians 5, 17, John 3, verse 5. Judgment, the flood in Genesis 6 and what Peter says in 1 Peter 3, 19 through 21. And deliverance, Exodus chapter 14. I think of Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 10, 1 through 5. God, not man, is the one who judges, delivers, and brings about the new creation. When you recognize that baptism in the Bible is God's work, you can begin to understand why the church and the earliest Protestant reformers, guys like Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, saw infants as the proper recipients of baptism.

The second thing that shifted for me had to do with the burden of proof. As a Baptist, I'd often say, look, if you can show me that silver bullet Bible verse proving that infants are baptized, I'll believe it. Where does it say that Lydia took her infant and sprinkled her or that Peter baptized any babies?

Now, it is interesting, in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, it says that all of the people of Israel crossing through the Red Sea, including infants, were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 1 Corinthians 10, 1 and 2. There were types of infant baptism in the Old Testament, but what about the silver bullet verse for infants baptized into Christ? I assumed that the burden of proof was on those who believed in infant baptism. They needed to supply the positive proof text for the practice, and because the ones they'd appeal to didn't seem convincing to me, I rejected it.

But here's the thing. Throughout redemptive history, God has always included the children of believers in his worshiping community. Children were considered a part of the covenant people, which is why God commanded Abraham to circumcise his household, including his infant sons in Genesis 17.

During the Exodus, Moses told Pharaoh that all the people, including the infants, were called into the wilderness to worship God, Exodus chapter 10 verse 9. The burden of proof isn't first and foremost on those arguing for the continuance of this ancient practice, but on those who reject it saying, now God is no longer in the business of treating our kids as a part of the worshiping community, the covenant community. Sure, God gave the sign of the covenant to infants in the Old Testament, but he's not doing that anymore today. In other words, I came to the point as a Baptist where I realized that the burden of proof was on me. I needed to make the case that now God was excluding the children of believers from the covenant community, that they weren't the proper recipients of the sign of the covenant because they weren't holy in any sense. And the more I looked at the language in the New Testament, the more it became clear to me that I as a Baptist could not supply that burden of proof. On the contrary, the New Testament continued to use covenantal language, the language of the people of God when referring to the children of believers.

Two quick examples. In 1 Corinthians chapter 7, where Paul is responding to questions that Corinthians had on marriage and family, he stresses that even the children of one believer are considered by God to be holy. Listen to his words. This is 1 Corinthians 7 verse 13. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, unclean, but as it is, they are holy.

Now that language of holy and unclean didn't just fall from the sky. It's taken from the Old Testament, places like the book of Leviticus, where that which is holy is that which belongs to God and is dedicated to his worship. And that which is unclean is incapable of participating in the divine worship.

These are covenantal categories relating to the worshiping community. And Paul says if you are a Christian, your children are in some sense positionally holy. Now that doesn't mean that your kids, our kids, are destined to go to heaven just because they're our kids. The word holy there is used in a cultic sense having to do with the worship of God.

By virtue of God's covenant promises, your children are treated as a part of the worshiping community because as the Lord has said throughout scripture, he intends to be a God to us and to our children. Now maybe you're objecting in your mind, well, if you're going to baptize the baby because he or she is holy, then you should baptize the unbelieving husband too, right? After all, he's made holy because of his wife. But Paul is clearly talking about two different things here. He uses the verbal form of make holy when talking about the marriage signifying that the spousal relationship has the potential of leading to the unbelieving partner's conversion.

This is why he goes on to say in verse 16, for how do you know wife whether you will save your husband or how do you know husband whether you will save your wife? But when speaking about the child, Paul uses the adjectival form of holy emphasizing something about the child standing. They are holy as opposed to unclean language, which would be really confusing for Paul to use if our kids didn't have any covenantal status. Now Paul uses this kind of familial covenantal language elsewhere in places like Ephesians chapter six verses one through three. Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right.

Honor your father and mother for this is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. So there Paul is applying covenantal promises to the children in the church. This is just how the New Testament speaks and it fits with the infant baptist perspective more than with the baptistic one. Another relevant set of passages to consider are the household baptisms in the book of Acts. Acts chapter 16 verses 14 and 15 says, one who heard us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God.

The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul and after she was baptized and her household as well, she urged us saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay and she prevailed upon us. So get this, Lydia believes she's baptized and then her household is baptized too. Now it's common knowledge that in scripture households often included infants. There are other household baptisms described in places like Acts 16 with the Philippian jailer, Acts chapter 18, a man named Crispus, and then you have the household of Stephanas in First Corinthians chapter one. And one of the objections to these household baptisms is that we just don't know if any infants were present.

Maybe these were eight year olds making a profession of faith if there were any there who got baptized. But here's the thing, and again, going back to this idea of the burden of proof, for Luke to use the language of household in the context of the administration of the new covenant sign of baptism, a word which can be traced back to places like Genesis 17 where Abraham is commanded to circumcise his household, would have been strange if he's trying to communicate that now the new covenant sign doesn't extend to the household. The way in which the New Testament writers speak assumes continuity when it comes to the sign of the covenant extending to the children of believers.

They aren't unclean outsiders but holy members of the visible church through baptism called like all of God's people throughout every age to lay hold of the promises of God by faith. So as I considered these things and looked at these and other passages, more and more I came under the conviction that infant baptism didn't just make sense in the light of the entire teaching of the Bible, it was the only possibility. And here's an encouragement for you, as you're reading through the scripture and your daily devotions or listening to it preached at church, take note of all the times God states his intention not just to be our God but a God to our children as well. Even the great promises of the new covenant found in the Old Testament still use this familial language. God said I'm going to circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, Deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 6.

In baptism God is speaking his gospel promises to the whole church and those promises are made efficacious by the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit. Don't doubt God's promises and don't withhold them from those to whom they rightly belong. Weakness isn't a flaw, it's where hope begins. In A Place for Weakness, Michael Horton shows how the cross and resurrection of Christ don't just explain suffering, they overcome it. This isn't a book about clichés or quick fixes, it's about real hope for real pain. Hope that quiets guilt, silences doubt, and outlasts every storm, whether you're grieving or walking with someone else through their grief. A Place for Weakness shows how the doing, dying, and rising of Christ silences the thunder of the law and gives eternal hope in the face of life's hardest questions. Grab your copy today for a donation of any amount at solomedia.org slash offers that solomedia dot o-r-g forward slash offers.