Dear Friends,
Apart from the obvious New Testament fact that baptism served as a “badge of initiation” into the fellowship, work, and worship of a local Church of Christ, there are two other reasons that spiritually compelled the New Testament believers to observe the ordinance. In the first place, they were responding to an injunction (or a command) of the Word of God; in the second, they were rejoicing in an identification with the Saviour who had loved them and given Himself for them.
Injunction (or command).
A fact that ought to be self-evident from any reading of the Scriptures is the fact that the call to baptism is an injunction; it is a command of the Word of God.
It is a command that is given, in the first place, to the individual professing faith in Christ, and it is a command that is also given to the Church of Christ as the baptising agency under God. These two commandments, however, or these two aspects of the baptism commandment, are not to be confused. In the first, the individual exercising faith in Christ is called to be baptised; in the second, the Church is called to baptise. Both injunctions are distinct, and each must be complied with in accordance with its distinctiveness.
With regards to the first, then, it must be clearly seen, that as baptism involves a command given to each and every individual within the gospel call, that command can only be obeyed and complied with on the part of the individual in question. No one else at all can fulfil a command of God’s Word given to me, except me. I alone am responsible for the obeying of God’s explicit commands to my soul. No one else may obey for me, or undertake to obey for me, in those commands.
Now, this is fundamental to the whole question of Christian baptism. “Believe and be baptised” is the very essence of the gospel call. And as no other person can fulfil the command to “believe” for me, so no other person can fulfil the command to “be baptised” for me.
This principle of fact runs right through the pages of the Word of God. When the Word of God exhorts me to take up my cross daily and follow Christ, no one else can fulfil that exhortation for me. When the Word of God tells me to hold fast the profession of my faith without wavering, I alone am responsible for the observing of that precept – not someone else. The command of God’s Word concerning baptism is for me, the individual in question, to be baptised, and no one else may fulfil that commandment, in any way for me but me.
Although the commandment relating to baptism involves the agency of the Church of Christ to baptise, that commandment, in the first place, is a commandment that involves the activity of the believing individual to be baptised. As the command to “believe” is laid personally at the feet of all those who hear the gospel, so the command to “be baptised” is laid personally at the feet of all those who receive the gospel. All commands of God’s Word directed at the individual may only be complied with and obeyed by the individual in question. This is fundamental, and is not to be quietly ignored when it comes to the great commandment to “believe and be baptised.”
It ought to be clearly noted and observed that there are no other commands, or no other aspects of the baptism commandment, apart from these two alone. The first, concerning the individual who is commanded on the exercise of faith in Christ to be baptised; the second, concerning the Church of Christ go baptise all who exercise such faith in Christ. There is no other commandment concerning baptism, and there is certainly no commandment given to any parent to have baptism performed on their unconscious infant children.
This lack of any such commandment, or any such notion within the baptism commandment, is a source of great embarrassment and perplexity to many good and able paedo-baptist advocates. But whereas this absence of any such commandment is admitted, the clear conclusions fail to be arrived at. For Example:-
“There is no express command to baptise infants in the New Testament, and no express record of the baptism of infants.”
We are compelled to ask why those two facts alone should not prove conclusive in the whole issue of infant baptism. Surely, the clear reason why there is “no express command,” and “no express record,” is because the New Testament Church of Christ never had any such ordinance as infant baptism within its apostolic doctrine and practice.
“It is only too apparent that if we had an express command or even a proven case with apostolic sanction, then the controversy (over infant baptism) would not have arisen.”
Indeed, it would “not have arisen!” And how, in the name of all scripture and reason, did it ever arise – seeing that there is “no express command,” and “not one proven case with apostolic sanction” in the whole of the Bible?
That is a question that paedo-baptists must answer.
There are, then, one or two practical matters that ought to be faced in the light of the foregoing.
First of all, can infant sprinkling really be conceived of as Christian baptism in any sense? The short, Biblically conclusive answer to that is no. Not only is an unconscious infant not the proper subject for Christian baptism, and not only is sprinkling not the proper mode of Christian baptism, but there is also missing and absent this tremendous element of true Christian baptism as being a response in obedient faith to a command of God given. “Believe, and be baptised.”
Secondly, since the command to be baptised is, indeed, a command of the Word of God to be actively complied with on the part of a believing individual, there are several portions of God’s Word that unbaptised Christians need to consider. (That is – Christians only sprinkled in infancy at the instigation of someone else.) For example, when our Lord Jesus Christ says, “If ye love me, keep my commandments,” (John 14:15.) Or again when He says, “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you,” (John 15:14.) Or again, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me ...” (John 14:21.)
The issue to be faced is clear: is the commandment to be baptised a commandment of the Word of God or not? And if a commandment of the Word of God, then, it must be complied with in obedient faith, and received in obedient faith on the part of the person to whom the commandment is given.
It should be noted that it is fundamental to the whole historic understanding of Protestant theology, as opposed to Roman Catholic theology, that an ordinance is only an effective means of grace when it is received by faith on the part of the recipient of it. This is held to be the case in the other ordinance of the Church, the Lord’s Supper; why not in this ordinance of baptism? In the majestic words of the apostle Peter, baptism is “the answer of a good conscience towards God,” and that is through obedience in faith to those things commanded by God in His Word. As Paul puts it, in relation to his whole Christian life-style and belief, in the light of God’s Word, “And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men.”
Baptism is the believer’s conscious response in faith to what God has said in His Word, when He has commanded us to “Believe, and be baptised.”