Exactly When and How Are We to be Baptized?

In this regular feature Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call.  Here is this week’s question:Dear Tom and Dave, I’ve been a believer for a number of years, but have yet to be baptized, although I was baptized as an infant.When I began to do a biblical study on the subject, I came away more confused than encouraged by the topic.Expecting to find just simple water baptism by immersion, I discovered there are all kinds of baptisms in the scriptures.Can you simplify this for me?

Tom:

Well Dave, baptism can be a bit confusing.On the one hand, it’s pretty simple.I think many cooks in the kitchen have sort of added different ingredients and so on and so forth.Made it more complex than the scripture states.I think first of all, the order of baptism is something worth addressing.It’s a believer’s baptism.First comes repentance, belief, and then baptism.That’s the way the scripture lays it out verse after verse.

Dave:

Well there were a number of baptisms in the Bible.For example, 1 Corinthians 10.Speaking of Israel, they were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea.There was—

Tom:

So what does that mean?

Dave:

Well, they went through the sea on dry land.I mean baptism—you could talk about—they use the expression “the troops got the first baptism of fire,” in other words, they got into this experience.And the Israelites when through the sea with Moses and they’re following this cloud.You could say that was their initiation into this wilderness experience.Baptism, I suppose could be looked upon in that way—some baptisms.There was the baptism of John and that is not believer’s baptism again.It was the baptism that Christ commanded.Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”That’s not what John did, although, again, since I studied Calvinism so diligently for over a year, everything comes up Calvinism.I can’t help it, because John Calvin taught that the baptism of John and the baptism that we now baptize, believer’s baptism, is the same.And he likened baptism to circumcision.

Tom:

So it’s a covenant.

Dave:

Yes, and therefore he said infants should be baptized because they were circumcised the eighth day.Of course as you have pointed out, only the males were circumcised, how did the women get saved?But Calvin taught that baptism as an infant made you a child of God.Forgave your sins, and you’re in the church now.

Tom:

Right, a member of the family.

Dave:

Yes, that’s not biblical because when the Ethiopian eunuch said to Philip, “Here’s water, what would hinder me from being baptized?”Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may be baptized.We have believer’s baptism all through the scripture.

Tom:

Certainly an infant couldn’t qualify for that.

Dave:

That’s right.They cannot believe.But Tom, to this day in Europe, this is a real problem.The Anabaptists—ana means again.These were people who they had been Catholics all their lives and they realized that Catholicism taught a false gospel.That they had never been saved through faith in Christ.They were trusting the church, trusting its rituals, trusting their works and so forth.

Tom:

Sacraments.

Dave:

And when they became Christians through faith in Christ, then they said we ought to be baptized.Being baptized as an infant was meaningless.We didn’t even know what was happening.And we certainly couldn’t believe the gospel.So they were baptized as believers.They were called Anabaptists.They were not only hated, persecuted, and killed by the Catholics, but also by the Lutherans and the Calvinists.And we have the same problem today.

Tom:

I just thought that many were drowned because they did not reject.They held them under the water and they wouldn’t let them up until they rejected their baptism.There’s a harsh and ironic kind of penalty.

Dave:

But Tom, I talk to people in Europe for example, and of course they don’t drown them, they don’t burn them at the stake any more, but families reject them.They become a Christian and they have been baptized.Wow!You are thrown out of the family in many instances.You are certainly thrown out of the church, whether it’s a Calvinist church, a Lutheran church or a Catholic church.And John Calvin taught that the one sure way to know you’re one of the elect, because this is a problem if you are regenerated sovereignly without even believing the gospel which Calvinism teaches.You must be regenerated before God can give you the faith to believe.How would you know you are one of the elect?How would you know if this really happened?How would you know that the faith you now think you have in Christ is not from yourself?It wasn’t given to you by God, so Calvin said the sure way to know that you are one of the elect is if you were baptized as an infant.Even by an unbelieving godless Roman Catholic priest.That is valid and you must then trust your baptism and that is a sure way to know that you are one of the elect.Now this is taught by Lutherans today.Of course they don’t go back to the Catholic baptism, but Luther did.You work with an organization called “Reaching Catholics for Christ” and you have many ex-Catholics.We’re having a conference coming up.If Catholics are there, how would an ex-Catholic accept either Martin Luther or John Calvin as one of themselves an ex-Catholic when they don’t give you a testimony of when they got saved?They both trusted in their infant baptism.They both looked back to that as the time that they had passed from death to life.But baptism is for believers.That’s very clear in scripture.

Tom:

And it’s very simple.It’s a public declaration that we are buried with Christ, that we have risen with Christ and there’s nothing efficacious about it.It’s just a matter of obedience to an ordinance that Christ said go, do this.

Dave:

Right.If you’re not a Christian, well you’re an infant, you’re surely not, although Calvin taught the contrary.If you’re not a Christian whether young or old, you go into the waters a dry sinner; you come out a wet sinner.Nothing has changed.But if you are a Christian as you said, then this is a public declaration that you have embraced Christ as your Savior and that you have accepted his death as your death.That as Paul said, you are crucified with Christ.Nevertheless you live, but it is no longer I who lives, Paul said, but Christ who lives in me.This is what baptism is declaring.It doesn’t do anything for a person.It simply declares that something hasbeen done and it is only for those then who have put their faith and trust in Christ.

Tom:

Dave, on the other hand, it does something.You are walking in obedience to the Lord.You are pleasing him.

Dave:

Amen.

Tom:

But that’s as far as it goes.