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Are We to Baptise Infants? + Sprinkling or Immersion?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Hello. I was wanting you to speak on baptism, due to the fact that a lot of my friends have been quizzing me, myself coming from a sprinkling baptism viewpoint as opposed to their viewpoints of immersion, and also the area of infant baptism. Maybe you could just share some things along that line, what the Scriptures teach.
HC: All right. Fine. Thank you.
The question that's raised is concerning the question of baptism. And actually, there are two aspects that are frequently of concern. One is the mode of baptism. The other is the timing of baptism. Let's talk about the timing of the baptism first.
There are those who believe in believer's baptism. That is that when a person becomes born again, then they are to be baptized. Now that is very scriptural. That is very scriptural. If anyone is born again, and has not been previously baptized, then they ought to be baptized, whether they're a young person or whether they're an adult. They are to be baptized. It has its Old Testament antecedent in circumcision. If anyone wanted to become identified with Jehovah God of the Old Testament, he was circumcised because that was the sign of becoming identified with the Kingdom of God. And so it is true that if someone becomes a believer, then they ought to be baptized.
The knotty question, however, arises in the matter of infant baptism. Are we to baptize infants? In the Old Testament it is very very clear that infants were circumcised. Beginning in Genesis 17, anyone who was a member of a family in which the father or the mother were believers was to be circumcised at eight days. It was the outward sign that declared that this child too was to be identified with the Kingdom of God.
Many churches in the New Testament see in this a very parallel relationship to baptism. In Acts 16 we see this, where it speaks of the family of the jailer of Philippi. At the same time he was saved, he was baptized, of course, because he now had entered the Kingdom of God in a very real way. But at the same time, his household was baptized. The same was true of Lydia, in Acts 16. At the time she was saved she was baptized, and so was her household.
And this directly parallels what we read in Genesis 17. At the time that Abraham was circumcised, his whole household was circumcised. The problem frequently arises, however, that those who believe in the Old Testament that they had been circumcised felt that this guaranteed salvation for them . . . "I'm a circumcised Jew, and therefore I'm one of God's chosen people. Therefore I can depend upon it that Jehovah God will bring me to Heaven." The same kind of thinking is very prevalent today amongst those who have been baptized as an infant. They believe they have been baptized, and this guarantees that they are saved, guarantees that they will go into Heaven
Now the Bible does not teach this at all. The Jews who were circumcised as infants had no guarantee of salvation. It was simply an identification to indicate that they had become identified with the Kingdom of God. The fact that the children of Lydia or the children of the Philippian jailer were baptized was no guarantee that they were saved. But it did indicate they had become identified with the Kingdom of God in a corporate sense. Their father, in the jailer's case, and their mother, in the case of Lydia, had become born again believers. Therefore all that were of their families became corporately citizens of the Kingdom of God.
Only, however, if they became born again would they really enter into the Kingdom of God in a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Someone in the Old Testament who was circumcised could go to hell just as readily as any unsaved person. Someone in the New Testament who is baptized as an infant can go to hell just as readily as anyone else.
In the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament, however, God did give promises to families. God said, "I will be a God to you and your children." Along with that promise God also gave mandates. He declared that you are to bring up your children in the fear and the nurture of the Lord: "Train up a child in the way that he should go, and in his old age he will not depart from it."
Now you can see immediately that when you tie all these verses together God does work through families. In practice, of course, we see this. The children of believing parents who have made a determined effort to bring their children up in the fear and the nurture of the Lord will see a great number of their children saved in time. Those who are careless in rearing their children, regardless of the fact that they themselves are believers, will not see their children saved, because they are repudiating, setting aside the promises that God has made toward them and their children, by virtue of the fact that they're not training their children up in the fear and the nurture of the Lord.
Now this, I believe, is the biblical teaching. I know this is not understood by a great many because, unfortunately, a great many people do not read the Old Testament carefully enough. They do not understand that the promises that were made to Abraham concerning the fact that in his seed the nations would be blessed, and that he would be a father of a multitude of nations, and he would be given the land as an everlasting possession, were not given to national Israel. They were given to those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, whether they are of national Israel or whether they are of the nation of the United States or Argentina, or whatever. This is the way God works, through His believers, through parents and their children.
Now in reference to the mode of baptism, there is much confusion on this matter also. There are those who insist that the Bible teaches immersion. The fact is, Young's Concordance, which is a very excellent concordance, a very accurate concordance, defines baptism as immersion. Now the definitions found in Young's Concordance are not Biblical. Young's Concordance is a marvellous concordance in that it gives us all the words of every kind in the Bible, and the places where they are found. And that is a great help. That is without any commentary whatsoever.
However, when Young's Concordance gives definitions of words, then we know we have the work of a man rather than the work of God. When we search out the word baptism, which is the Greek word baptizo or baptizmus, in the New Testament, we find that never is it used in the sense of immersion.
It's used in the sense of washing or purifying. Any time it's used and it's not translated baptize, it's translated to wash or to purify. We find, for example, in Mark 7:3, "For the Pharisees and all the Jews, except they washed their hands, oft eat not, holding the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not." And this word wash is baptizo: "And many other things there be which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups." It's baptizus again. It's the word baptize. It means to purify or to cleanse. And we find other places in the Bible where the same word is translated wash or purify.
Secondly, we don't find anywhere in the Bible where immersion is used as a description of salvation. The word immersion is not found in the Bible used in that sense whatsoever. When the Bible talks about salvation, it talks about being cleansed of our sins, being washed of our sins, being purified from iniquity, as well as a lot of other expressions, like being covered by Christ's righteousness, and so on. But we never find the word immersion featured. All the synonyms of salvation have to do with cleansing or purification.
And so the idea that baptism must be by immersion is not found in the Bible. That is a foreign idea to the Bible. It doesn't say anywhere that it would be wrong to immerse. It doesn't say, however, either, that it would be wrong to pour water on or to sprinkle water on. The fact is, the word sprinkle is far more often found in connection with salvation. It is the word that is used very frequently in connection with salvation.
In the Old Testament we find the sprinkling of the blood on the mercy seat. Sprinkling is used constantly. God Himself said, "I will sprinkle many nations." In Ezekiel 36:25 it says that God would sprinkle water upon them, and they shall be cleansed of all of their uncleannesses. And so those who hold for sprinkling as one mode, one valid mode of baptism, have very good Biblical basis for it.
It isn't wrong to immerse, but nowhere does the Bible insist on immersion. That just is not found in the Bible. Now there are those who say, "Well, Jesus was immersed. Didn't He go down into the water, and didn't He come up out of the water?" Well, He did go down into the water, and He did come up out of the water. That's Biblical language. But under no circumstance does it say that He was immersed.
The fact is, God gives us further information, in Acts 8, which gives us real reason to believe that He was not immersed when He was baptized, because when the Ethiopian eunuch was baptized we find that it says that both he and Phillip went down into the water. We read in verse 36 of Acts 8, "As they went on their way they came unto a certain water, and the eunuch said, See, here is water. What doth hinder me to be baptized? And Phillip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And he commanded the chariot to stand still, and they went down both into the water, both Phillip and the eunuch And he baptized him."
Now if to go down into the water means to be immersed, then Phillip immersed himself as he baptized the Ethiopian eunuch. And that of course doesn't make any sense whatsoever. To go down into the water simply means that they saw a little pool of water, or stream, or whatever, and they went down the bank, and they entered into the water. They may have gone ankle deep, or knee deep. It doesn't say how deep. And he baptized him, the Ethiopian eunuch. And then it says in verse 39, "And when they [that is, both of them Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch] were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Phillip [indicating again that to come out of the water does not mean that someone has been immersed]."
Now immersion is a perfectly satisfactory way to be baptized, but it is not insisted upon in the Bible. If you really believe that it is, then you are going to have real trouble. Some people look at Romans 6, where it speaks about the fact that we have been, in verse 3: "Know ye not that so many of us that were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life."
And so they say immersion is a picture of going down into the grave and coming up again. Now that's a very beautiful picture to describe. But the fact is, Jesus was not buried in water. Jesus was buried in a grave. And He came up out of a grave. He didn't come up out of water. He came up out of a grave. And so the picture loses its significance to some degree.
This is not what God is talking about in Romans 6:3. He is simply saying that in our baptism, in the fact that we have experienced this. And actually, the substance of our water baptism is in what the Holy Spirit has done, in cleansing away our sins. When the Holy Spirit baptized us in the Holy Spirit, He identified us with the death and burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is altogether God's action. The water baptism is an outward signification of this.