Three Reasons Why I’m a Baptist

In the Great Commission, in Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus said to His disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

In Acts 2, when the disciples preached the gospel for the first time at Pentecost, many were cut to the heart and asked the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

Peter said to them, “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, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself.”

A Debate Over Baptism

To baptize comes from the Greek word βαπτίζω (baptizo), which means to submerge. In the Bible, it is strictly a New Testament word. While there were various kinds of washings in the Old Testament, the act of baptism is depicted only in the New Testament, beginning with John the Baptist. It is an ordinance of Christ that believers should be baptized.

When it comes to convictions over the practice of baptism, there are two main views: credobaptist and paedobaptist. The credobaptist view is the conviction that baptism should only be for those who have professed faith in Jesus Christ and they understand the significance of this ordinance. The paedobaptist view believes the same but also includes the practice of baptizing infants.

Now, there are other baptism debates, like whether someone should be sprinkled or dunked (they should be dunked), or whether baptism itself is regenerative or it is an outward symbol of an inward change (yes, that one). There are some who believe the waters of the Jordan River have more power than the baptismal at your church (they don’t). There are debates over whether someone should be rebaptized (depends). But for the purposes of this post, we’re going to stick with the debate over infant baptism.

Most churches today and throughout history have been paedobaptist. In fact, when I searched for an image of baptism to go with this post, the first several images that came up were of babies being baptized. The Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox are the two largest denominations that baptize babies. Among Protestants there are the Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists including Wesleyans and Nazarenes, and some Congregationalists.

Credobaptist denominations include Baptists, Mennonites, the Disciples of Christ which are the Christian Church and Church of Christ, and most charismatic denominations such as the Assemblies of God, Four Square, and Pentecostals. Also most nondenominational churches tend to be credobaptist in practice. I’ve joked that they’re baptists in denial.

I am a pastor of a Reformed Baptist congregation. I was ordained in a Southern Baptist church that eventually became Reformed Baptist. I was baptized as a teenager in a Mennonite church, and my wife and I were married in a Wesleyan church. But I’ve been credobaptist my whole life. More than just my upbringing, it is the position on baptism I am convinced is the most biblical.

Now, I have many paedobaptist bretheren. I have friends who are Presbyterian and Lutheran, and members of my family hold various paedobaptist convictions. Just because we differ on our views of baptism does not mean we are not brothers and sisters in the Lord. We still believe in “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Ephesians 4:5). But the debate about baptism can be good and healthy, and it is one we will continue to have until the Lord’s return.

In this article, I mean to respond to a debate that recently came up on social media—three arguments made by a former Baptist as to what convinced him of paedobaptism. After that I will share my own experience in the baptism debate, and present three questions that more greatly solidified by Baptist convictions. Perhaps this will be helpful to you.

Responding to a Recent Baptism Debate

Brother Joshua Haymes of The Forge Press made a post listing three arguments that convinced him of why Christians should baptize their babies. He had been “a committed Baptist” his entire life, he said, but he became convinced of the paedobaptist position a year ago (one wonders then how he could have called himself “a committed Baptist”).

I appreciate Haymes as a co-laborer in the gospel of Christ, but as I’m sure you know I did not find his arguments convincing. Here is what he shared:

1. The argument from silence.
Brother Haymes says, “The New Testament never clearly teaches that children went from being included in the covenant, as they are in the Old Testament, to be excluded from the covenant until such time as they can make a ‘credible’ profession of faith.”

But the New Covenant—which is salvation through faith in Jesus—is not like the Old Covenant (Jeremiah 31:32, Hebrews 8:9), hence why it is called “New.” The Old Covenant was specific to the physical descendants of Abraham; the New Covenant is with spiritual, not physical offspring.

Paedobaptists believe that baptism is to the New Covenant what circumcision was to the Old. Baptism is the new circumcision. To this, Brandon Adams asks this question: “If baptism is simply the New Covenant equivalent of circumcision, with the same covenantal meaning, why did John [the Baptist] require circumcised members of the Old Covenant to be baptized?”

Now, Haymes’ “argument from silence” cuts both ways, which I will elaborate on in a moment. It is much more troublesome for the paedobaptist position than the credo.

2. All the apostasy passages.
Brother Haymes says, “The New Testament seems to teach that there are members of the New Covenant who are ‘cut off’ and ‘fall away.'” That’s some odd language: “Seems to teach”? Either the Bible does teach this or it doesn’t. Haymes didn’t present any passages to show what he meant.

“Since one cannot lose one’s salvation,” he went on to say, and I agree, “this must mean that there are persons who are unregenerate members of the New Covenant, just as there were unfaithful, unregenerate members of the Old Covenant.” But how is that an argument against the credobaptist conviction?

Baptists agree that there are people who get baptized who were never truly regenerate or saved in the first place. In the parable of the sower, Jesus said that there will be people who hear the word of the kingdom and claim to have faith, but over time they demonstrate that it was never genuine (see Matthew 13:20-22). This is not some paedobaptist-specific position.

3. And finally, we have the Vipers in Diapers fallacy.
In case you haven’t heard this reference before, “viper in a diaper” was popularized by Voddie Baucham, a Reformed Baptist minister, when teaching on original sin or our inherent sin nature: “People who don’t believe in original sin don’t have children,” he said. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: that’s not a little angel, that’s a viper in a diaper.”

“This, I believe, is a fatal flaw in Baptistic theology,” Haymes says. Okay, here we go—the fatal flaw. This is his hardest-hitting argument. “If you are a Baptist,” he says, “you do not have a category for covenant children. For the Baptist, your children are little God-haters. The problem is, I have yet to meet a Baptist who actually treats their children like little God-haters.”

That’s it? That’s Haymes’ linchpin argument?

What does it mean to treat someone as a God-hater? Do we treat the librarian at the library, or our waiter at the restaurant, or the people we stand behind in line at the post office as God-haters? We know they are God-haters if they aren’t Christians (see Romans 3:10-12), but what does he mean to treat someone like a God-hater?

Here would be my counter-question for brother Haymes: Do you treat your toddler like he or she inherently loves God? I bet you don’t—even as a paedobaptist who believes your unconverted child is in the covenant, you don’t. If you believe what the Bible says, you know they don’t love God. They rebel and do wrong because it is in their nature to do so, and you punish them for it so that they learn there are consequences for wrong behavior.

As they grow, you have to teach them what sin is and that they are sinners in need of a Savior—just as you would have to show an unbeliever with whom you are sharing the gospel. You tell them to believe in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. You teach them to love God and what that looks like. Why? Because left to themselves, they will remain God-haters, as everyone is before they believe in Jesus.

“We are not individuals who would otherwise pursue God if the devil would just leave us alone,” says Voddie Baucham. “Far from it. Since the fall, with the first Adam as our federal head, we are averse to all good things. Listen to the way the confessions put it, both Westminster and London:

“From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.”

“Our sins come from our sin nature,” brother Baucham reminds us. “It’s who we are. It’s what we want. It’s what we desire. So don’t think of it as though we come into this world and we’re innocent and we’re looking for a way to find God a way to please God, but all of a sudden this world says, ‘No, don’t do that,’ and the devil says, ‘No, don’t do that.’

“Here’s who you were before you came to Christ,” Baucham says: “You came with fleshly desires that were against God. You came with desires of your body and your mind that were alienated from God. You came with desires that were evil. And the devil and the world did not have to seek you out. You rested in them, because they gave you exactly what you wanted.”

Every God-fearing, bible-believing Baptist I know teaches the Bible to their children, disciplines them when they sin, instructs them in the right way to go, tells them to believe in Jesus for forgiveness, and prays for their salvation. Why? Because apart from Christ, they’re God-haters. My children are in the covenant when God brings them into the covenant—by His grace.

As Ephesians 2:8 says, “It is by grace you have been saved through faith, not of works” such as baptism, and not because of the family you were born into. Hey, all kinds of Baptists baptize their children—when they profess faith in Jesus. But we don’t baptize our infants because they do not yet know.

My Own Baptism Debate

Every time I hear of a Baptist becoming paedobaptist, they always have a story to tell as to how they got there, and they always have an argument that pushed them over the edge. As with Haymes’ arguments, I’ve never found them convincing. Most of the time, those arguments tend to be more emotional or philosophical than Scriptural (speaking from my own experience).

I have a constant reminder of how often this happens on my own ordination certificate. One of the signatures of a then-Baptist minister is now paedobaptist. Occasionally, I hear of a Baptist pastor becoming paedobaptist, and he never resigns nor does his church require him to. Or a well-known Baptist becomes paedobaptist, and an infant baptizing church or ministry is immediately ready to snatch him up.

That I truly don’t understand. That is treating the ordinance of baptism rather flippantly—an opinion you can just step in and out of with no bearing on your convictions or responsibilities as a pastor. How do you know he won’t change his mind again next year? Nor next month? Or next week? He is not permanently disqualified, but he should have enough respect for the office to step away for a time while he solidifies his new beliefs before he can shepherd other people in them.

It is perfectly fine to test one’s beliefs and traditions. Through testing, you may find some of your beliefs and traditions to be wrong, or you may solidify your confidence in those beliefs as true. For me, when I was tested in my Baptist convictions, it was the latter.

In 2015, I had been a pastor for five years, and our Southern Baptist church was on the brink of installing its first plurality eldership in its then 60 year history. We had just come through a series of three major controversies in a span of six months (which I may write about at another time), and things were finally becoming peaceful again—or so I thought.

Three young families in our congregation had been attending a week night study put on by another reformed church, with an emphasis on parenting. The teacher, with whom I was acquainted, took the group through a book written by a prominent paedobaptist. I did not have any concerns, as I had talked with that teacher and was told the gathering was just a study of Proverbs.

After several weeks, those young families started to exhibit a change in their convictions which turned into some cage-stage behavior (in case you don’t know the term, a cage stage is when someone has come into a new belief which they now think everyone else is an idiot for not believing, and they go through a stage of needing to be locked in a cage until they calm down).

They started to judge everyone’s parenting decisions, which also led to a lot of gossip. They were checking everyone’s Facebook pages, appalled at their photos or what events they attended. Some of the concerns may have been legitimate, but it’s not like they did anything about it—they just gossiped. They also murmured and quarreled about sins that weren’t really sins—it was just a difference of opinion.

In addition to all of this, one of the young wives told a group of ladies in our church that she was now Presbyterian. Her husband joked that he would have to baptize his infant daughter at home because he knew I wouldn’t do it. This prompted some sit-down conversations with these families.

Now admittedly, I did not handle this saga well. There are things I wish I had done better. For one, I got caught up in the gossip myself. When I got together with those young families, and they would gossip about others in the church, I read them as raising valid and loving concerns, with a desire to build one another up. But they were biting and devouring one another (Galatians 5:15).

Before long, they turned on me, too, and they actually tried to have me removed as pastor. They confronted me with a letter signed by everyone in those families. Their leading charge against me was that I was an unfit husband and father, and my wife was an unfit wife and mother, thus making me disqualified according to 1 Timothy 3:4-5 (this whole thing shattered Beki, by the way, who felt betrayed).

Had it not been for the fact that we were currently testing two men for eldership, and had those families not already irritated so many others, they might have succeeded. It turned out to be a great test for our two elder candidates. They examined the charges brought against me and found them to be illegitimate. Not a single accusation could be substantiated.

Seeing as how I was not going to be disciplined, and the families wanted to baptize their babies anyway, every one of them left. Though I had baptized two of them, I never heard from nor saw them again. I will never forget all the drama of 2015 for as long as I live. I still have in my possession that letter they signed.

In the midst of discussing baptism with those young families, I was challenged in my own beliefs and traditions. I came out a more dedicated Baptist as a result.

These were the questions I asked during that period—and I never felt like the answers I received even from my Presbyterian friends were satisfactory. These questions won’t end all debate, but they were helpful for me in solidifying why I’m a Baptist.

1) Where does the Bible command baptizing infants?
We are commanded to make disciples and baptize those disciples (Matthew 28:19). But where does is it said to baptize infants, who cannot be disciples? Since infant baptism is not commanded, it cannot be a sin if you don’t baptize your babies. But it might be sinful to require infant baptism when God does not, or it might be sinful to tell someone who has not been baptized by their profession of faith that they don’t need to be.

It is a common argument among Baptists to say that there is no example of infant Baptism in the New Testament. This is dismissed by paedobaptists as an argument from silence. But it is quite a resounding silence. If baptizing infants is something we must do, why did God not give us a direct command to do so, nor a single example in the narrative?

2) Can you be saved in your first birth or only in your second birth?
I caught that just this week, brother Andrew Owen asked a similar question this way: “Does one become a member of the New Covenant by baptism or by regeneration?” Inward regeneration precedes our outward baptism. The water doesn’t regenerate us—the Holy Spirit does. We demonstrate that we have been washed by the water of the Spirit by being immersed in the physical waters of baptism.

Paedobaptism creates two different doctrines of baptism: one is covenant membership by association to a family or church, the other is covenant membership by profession of faith. The Bible says “it is those of faith” (Galatians 3:7) and not of the flesh who are in God’s covenant of grace. The New Testament requirement for baptism is the same for everyone: by profession of faith. Galatians 3:27-28 says, “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”

3) Is Christ the federal head of your unconverted children?
This is a bit headier of a question. What is federal headship? It was mentioned a moment ago in my quote from Dr. Baucham.

Federal headship is the theological understanding that everyone born in the line of Adam is born guilty of sin because Adam was our representative for the whole human race. As Romans 5:12 says, “Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” When a person is born again, Christ’s righteousness is imputed to him. As verse 18 goes on to say, “As one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.”

So all are born under the federal headship of Adam, but are born again under the federal headship of Christ. When a person is born again and professes faith, his baptism is an outward confession that he’s been brought from death in Adam to life in Christ (read Romans 5:12-6:5 to see this in context).

In paedobaptism, infants are baptized though they remain unconverted. So who is their federal head? Is it Adam, or is it Christ? If it is still Adam, why are they being baptized?

Would a paedobaptist argue that Christ is the federal head of his unconverted children? If he says yes, then Christ is a failed mediator, for not all baptized children grow up into believing adults and make it to heaven. If he says Christ is not their federal head, then why have them “baptized into Christ” (Gal. 3:28) when they’re not in Christ? Should you not wait until they understand and make a profession of faith?

Again, this is not the end-all of this debate. But these three questions were convincing enough for me that what I believed about baptism was true. Therefore I remain a committed Baptist.

Conclusion

Jesus instructed His disciples to baptize other disciples “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). Just as every person of the God-head was present at Jesus’ baptism, so they are present at every Christian’s baptism. We are not saved by the waters of our baptism, we are saved by Christ. We are baptized to show we belong to Him.

I have been blessed to baptize my oldest daughter. She is strong in faith and has shared the gospel with her peers. She’s been out with me to evangelize and hand out tracts, and last year she went on mission to witness to Muslims. She was showing fruit of her conversion very early in her life, and I had several conversations with her about getting baptized. But I waited until she told me that she was a Christian and wanted to be plunged in the waters of baptism (not sprinkled, dunked—as it should be *wink*).

I pray for the rest of my children, and my wife and I are seeing fruit in their lives. As I teach them to become disciples of Jesus, it will be by their profession of faith that they will be baptized, as I believe is the model of baptism we find in the Bible.