Baptism for non-Baptists

posted July 23, 2009 by Don Graffam |

White Bear Lake

Hi everyone – One of the things I enjoy doing is teaching the Starting Point class. It’s a good way to get to know some of you more and it’s a great way to spend an evening talking about the greatest mission on the planet. A common discussion that comes up during this class is in regard to our position on baptism. I had someone email me a dilemma they are in talking with their mother about their baptism and trying to explain how the church that he’s a part of as an adult, and his Biblical perspective, are different then what he grew up with. I thought it might be interesting to post our dialogue (with his permission). Let me know if you have thoughts/question, but hopefully it’s helpful for some of you that might be involved in similar conversations.

Don, We met again yesterday, my name is …. and I started volunteering yesterday at the 9:05 ushering. My daughter Shelby and I are getting baptized on Sunday and are very excited. The excitement was lost on my mother who I invited. She is a Catholic and said when you’re baptized you are baptized for life. I explained that I wasn’t trying to undo my infant baptism, I am simply reenforcing it. I quoted Mark 16:16 and told her I wanted to be obedient to what the Bible teaches and publically declair it for myself my decision to follow Christ. I thanked her for my Christian upbringing and that this is a good thing and she should be happy. Any pearly of wisdom to make this less traumatic for her?In Christ,

Hi …… – Thanks so much for jumping in and serving. How was your first experience? It looks like you are on an all-star team.

First of all – way to go on the move toward baptism. I believe God will bless you for this.

The issue of baptism is a tricky one. Families can face a lot of tension when they come at it with such different perspectives.

Let me break our teaching down into 2 concepts.

Salvation – As you’ve heard us teach, the Bible is quite clear that baptism is not salvation and salvation is not baptism. They are two different acts. So…when a parent strongly believes in infant baptism, it’s often because they believe that their child will be “saved” if something were to happen to him or her. So…if they are “saved” through baptism, there’s no need to do it again. However, salvation is taught clearly that it is about an act of repentance (Jn 3:16, Eph 2:8-9, Romans 10:9, Romans 10:13 and others). So…salvation is something that an infant is not capable of.

Baptism – First of all, the definition of the word baptism is to be “immersed” in something. The idea of sprinkling people (or babies) didn’t come till much later in church history.

More importantly – the Bible gives regular examples of people “repenting and being baptized.” Again – you can’t do this as an infant. Acts 2:38 is Peter’s instruction to the people to “repent and be baptized” and later in Acts 8:26-38 is a great story about how Philip shares his faith with a man, wins him over to “repent” and quickly has him baptized right afterwards. Just 2 examples of people confessing, believing and baptizing…again – not possible for infants.

Other great resources are to listen (or have your mom listen) to Bob’s teaching last summer from the “Water, Wine and Worship” message. The “Water” message is all about baptism. It would make for a great conversation piece for the 2 of you.

One other resource is at our website at http://www.eaglebrookchurch.com/pages/page.asp?page_id=39166

However, after all that said, the bigger question even still might be to figure out how best to say this to your mom so that she knows you still respect her decision to have you baptized as an infant and yet have her respect your decision to be baptized as an adult (even if you have Biblical understanding of this). Here’s a few suggestions – realizing I don’t know all the ins and outs of your relationship to each other.

Assure her you appreciate her commitment to you and to God – which it already sounds like you’ve done.
Ask her to watch the “Water” message I referenced earlier and see if she’ll agree to discuss it with you.
If appropriate, send some of these verses I gave you, or other parts of this email to help her to see your perspective.
Ask her to give you better understanding of why she believes so strongly in infant baptism. What scripture and theology does she rest her beliefs in? It might be a good way to understand more of her perspective.
If it’s a BIG barrier for the 2 of you, one idea would be attend this weekend’s baptism together. That way she’ll hear a short teaching on baptism that we’ll do at the location, she’ll see the energy and hopefully have a great experience. The two of you could plan to grab dinner afterward and talk about what happened an how you want to participate as well.
My LAST suggestion (and I’d try many others before this) would be to make the decision without her approval. This is obviously to be avoided however much is possible, however, there might come a point where you develop a Biblical understanding that’s different and may be worthy of responding to as an adult.

OK – I’m sorry this got so long, but hopefully some of it helps. Let me know what you think.

Again – thanks for making some bold moves with your faith to get baptized and to serve at our church.

Don

Comments