BAPTISM
Because it was seen as the entrance into covenant relationship with God and the church, baptism was one of the most important aspects of early church worship. The Greek word baptizein has come to mean simply “to wash” or “to purify with water” is indicated by certain occurrences of the term in the Septuagint and New Testament where baptize cannot mean immerse (Luke 11:38; Acts 1:5; 2:3-4, 17; 1 Corinthians 10:1-2). Hebrews 9:12-23 is a reminder that the purification water rites of the Old Testament, the biblical antecedents of baptism, were washings and never immersions.
There is no clear-cut answer as to whether or not baptism must be by immersion. Most evangelicals and pentecostals, however, practice baptism by immersion, and many denominations have set that mode as a doctrine of their churches. The earliest artistic representations depict baptism by pouring. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles requires that a person be baptized in the name of the triune God; prior to baptism, the one baptizing and the one being baptized should fast (Did. 7). The mode of baptism was not expressly taught by the apostolic Fathers; however, the Didache permits affusion as an alternate mode.
The earliest baptisms recorded in scripture were done in the “Name of Jesus.” By the end of the first century, however, the “Name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost,” was the most frequently used formula. As with other aspects of the mode of baptism, there is no clear right or wrong phrase to use. Either form was apparently acceptable to the early church. Use of both of these phrases in the baptismal ceremony could be construed as being acceptable to God. The words hold no magical significance. It is the act of baptism, as a sign of being in covenant with God that is important. This was a sign of sanctification and a token of the New Covenant that, once entered, was renewed with each partaking of the Lord’s Supper.
When we come to the action itself, there are many different but interrelated associations. The most obvious is that of washing (Titus 3:5), the cleansing water being linked with the blood of Christ on the one side and the purifying action of the Spirit on the other (see 1 John 5:6, 8), so that we are brought at once to the divine work of reconciliation. A second is that of initiation, adoption, or, more especially, regeneration (John 3:5), the emphasis again being placed on the operation of the Spirit in virtue of the work of Christ.
Water Baptism was seen by the presbytery of the early church as being symbolic of the work of God in the substitutionary death and resurrection of Christ. This identification with sinners in judgment and renewal is what Jesus accepts when he comes to the baptism of John and fulfills when he takes his place between two thieves on the cross (Luke 12:50). Here we have the real baptism of the New Testament, which makes possible the baptism of our identification with Christ and underlies and is attested by the outward sign. Water baptism is the sign or seal that the believer is in covenant relationship with God. Some other important scriptures concerning baptism are Matthew 28:19; Acts 2:41; 8:12; 8:38; 9:18; 10:48; and 18:8.
INFANT BAPTISM IN THE EARLY CHURCH
Very early in the Christian church, prominence was given to the rite of baptism so that many, in effect, taught baptismal regeneration. Those who received the Word were baptized. Through this act we are reminded that we are dead and alive again with him and through him (Romans 6:4,11). Justin Martyr taught that, to obtain the remission of sins, the name of the Father should be invoked over the one being baptized (1 Apol. 61). “After baptism, the Christian was supposed not to sin, and some sins, if indulged in after that rite had been administered, were regarded as unforgivable.” Although this concept was not as emphatic among the apostolic Fathers, it became increasingly so in the following centuries. Augustine, for instance, taught that original sin and sins committed before baptism were washed away through baptism. For that reason he advocated baptism for infants. August ine nonetheless emphasized the need for repentance and faith as the conditions whereby baptism might be received by adults. Irenaeus and Origen both acknowledged the validity of infant baptism, but Tertullian opposed it.
Entire households were baptized once they believed, and infant baptism became the normal rule from the first century to around the seventeenth century, when the post Reformation churches abandoned the traditional practice. The early church saw baptism as the introductory rite of Christianity. Infants of godly Christian parents were baptized into covenant with God. This practice came to replace circumcision as an important covenant rite. The only debate among the Ante-Nicene Fathers was over whether or not baptism should occur on the third or on the eighth day of the child’s life. There was never a debate as to whether or not this practice was scriptural or covenantal. Under the New Covenant it was simply accepted as the norm. Confirmation around age 12, following lengthy instruction into the precepts of the faith confirmed the covenant, after the child confessed faith in Christ. This completed the sealing process of establishing a covenant between God and the Christian child.
Because the first generation of believers were baptized into God’s covenant out of paganism, direct biblical references all concern adults. As those first Christians gave way to subsequent generations, such was the strength of their faith that they wanted to raise their children under the principles of God’s covenant. You may not agree with this practice, but it did tend to limit juvenile delinquency. Children raised under covenant usually became committed Christian adults. We need to be careful of criticising those Christians who were only a few generations removed from Christ and his original apostles. We cannot say they were wrong without a direct word of scripture refuting their practices.
Infant baptism, which is practiced by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Lutherans, is defended on several grounds. It is related to covenant theology. As infants in the nation Israel were circumcised and thereby brought into the believing community, so infant baptism is the counterpart of circumcision, which brings the infants into the Christian community. It is related to household salvation (cf. Acts 16:15, 31, 33–34; 18:8). Some understand the statement, “when she and her household had been baptized” (Acts 16:15) to mean infants were baptized.[1]
Augustine, a great proponent of grace, emphasized that God’s grace was necessary to rescue man from his state of total depravity. Yet Augustine himself taught the necessity of baptism to wash away sins committed beforehand. Baptismal regeneration and infant baptism quickly became part of the church’s teaching.[2]
When a Child is baptized into covenant, he is placed under the sovereign care of God and the Church. The child’s parents, moreover are obligated to raise the Child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This process does not absolve the child from making a decision, upon reaching maturity, to serve Christ. Nor is this baptism necessarily equated with being “born again.” It is the first step in the child’s walk and relationship with Christ.
If a child is baptized, that child belongs to God and God will do whatever it takes to bring him back to his Heavenly Father, if he should stray from the Christian way. There are many children who are raised in a Christian home, and never realize the full benefits of God’s covenant until later in life when they are finally baptized into covenant with God. The following illustration shows how easy it is for our children to misunderstand God because of our misunderstanding of baptism.
Johnny was a twelve year old raised in a Christian home who came to his parents one day saying: “I know that you have told me not to do certain things, but I am going to have to commit some serious sins, so that I can get right with God.”
“What do you mean?” his parents asked.
“I have to sin and live in sin so that God can save me. Then I can serve God and be a minister.”
“But you don’t have to sin to live for God.” his parents objected.
“Yes I do,” said the boy. “Everyone who has a ministry has a testimony of how bad they were, and of how Christ saved them. I can’t have that testimony until I have lived in sin.”
Johnny had no frame of reference for a time when he did not live as a Christian. His only memories were of praying, attending church, and participating in family devotions. But Johnny did not know that he was in covenant relationship with God. He did not know whether or not he was even a part of the Kingdom of God.
There are many children that face this frustration because they are told that they must be saved and baptized when they are old enough to understand these processes. They are, however, never told when that time is, and they do not see themselves as a part of the Kingdom of God. Not being taught about God’s covenant, they often stray from their childhood religion and turn their attentions elsewhere.
Infant baptism may not fully prevent this from happening, but it does give the child a reference point of entrance into covenant with God. It also provides a reference point for parents to begin the spiritual instruction of their children. If a child is raised in the Church and taught the principles of the Bible, and if the child’s parents demonstrate these Christian principles in their daily lives, the child is likely to continue in covenant relationship with God, family and Church for his entire life.
Traditionally the Church has recognized that there is a need for the mature person to fully accept and apply the sacrifice of Christ to his or her life. The study of Christian Catachisms and the practice of Confirmation (Wesley’s Entire Sanctification) became the means by which maturing children, teens, or young adults could confirm their covenant with God. Baptism is the entrance into covenant (as was circumcision in the Old Testament), Confirmation is the affirmation of personal responsibility under the covenant, and the Table of the Lord is the continual renewal and reaffirmation of one’s covenant with God.
The Anabaptists dramatically influenced the doctrine of the church with their stress on believers’ baptism, and their consequent rejection of infant baptism.[3] This idea was picked up by many post Reformation Protestants.
BAPTISM IN THE HOLY SPIRIT
In due time the prophet John, seeking to prepare the Jews for the Messiah, emphasized one aspect of this remarkable prophecy. He warned of a radical inward and personal purification, accompanying an outward national purgation by judgment. The one alternative he offered to such an immersion (baptism) in “Spirit and fire” was to accept his baptism in water as a symbol of total repentance and reformation of life (Matt. 3:11-12; Luke 3:7-17).
In this way the promise of the Spirit first became associated with the language of baptism—a baptism with the Holy Spirit. But far more authoritative and compelling in establishing this connection of the coming of the Spirit with water baptism was the model experience of Jesus. In the moment of his baptism, all four Gospels insist, the Spirit descended like a dove and abode upon him (Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32; cf. Acts 10:38). Thenceforth, water baptism and the reception of the Spirit became linked in the minds of some Christian as a somewhat controversial doctrine that John Wesley called Entire Sanctification.
John’s contrast of baptism with water and baptism with Holy Spirit, as alternatives, was given a deeper significance, however, when his words were repeated by Jesus (Acts 1:5), echoed by Peter (Acts 11:16), recalled again by the Apostle John (John 1:26, 33), and by Paul (Acts 19:4-6; cf. 1 Corinthians 12:13). Since for Judaism, for John, and for the apostolic church baptism by water was a rite of initiation into the people of God, the initial experience of the Spirit’s indwelling came to be called a “baptism in” or “with” the Holy Spirit.
In Greek, the preposition is here ambiguous: en may be local, meaning “within” the Holy Spirit; or, following Hebrew idiom, it may be instrumental, meaning “by means of” the Holy Spirit. But, as in the parallel phrases, “baptism in or with fire” or “suffering” (see Mark 10:38-39), the difference between “in” and “with” is more theoretical then practical.
In particular, the indwelling and endowment with the Holy Spirit, which became available through Christ to all who believe, came inevitably to be linked with, and described in the language of, that crucial public step by which individuals first became Christians and were accepted as members of the Spirit-filled, Spirit-led, Spirit-empowered church of Christ. Quite naturally the experience came to be described as being baptized in or with the Holy Spirit. This teaching was part of the doctrine of the early church until excesses associated with Montanism and other heresies caused most bishops to down play this charismatic experience.
Many early church ministers originally insisted that reception of the Spirit should accompany baptism in water or proceed as a direct result of water baptism. Indeed, the Bible speaks of one baptism. It was argued that apostolic baptism was certainly no mere ritual but a deliberate, and often perilous, public and irrevocable commitment to the lordship of Christ. It was accompanied by the confession of Christ before men, which was essential to saving faith on the part of each repentant believer (Romans 10:9; Matthew 10:32-33). The early apostles believed that Christ’s own baptismal experience sets the norm for every Christian baptism. And they recall, beside the oft-repeated words of John linking water baptism with the promised baptism of the Spirit, Peter’s clear instruction and promise at Pentecost: “Repent, and be baptized... and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38-39).