Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Is Baptism Necessary?

I discussed how life is a gift from God and how he formed all people lovingly in the womb in my last post. While God has promised that he saves through Baptism, so we know it always works and can look to it for assurance, He has not said he cannot use other means. Charles Porterfield Krauth, in his great book The Conservative Reformation. This is great news for all who have endured miscarriages.


"The Lutheran Church holds that it is necessary to salvation to be born again of water (baptism) and the Spirit, (John iii. 5, and Augsburg Confession, Art. II. and IX.;) but she holds that this necessity, though absolute as regards the work of the Spirit, is, as regards the outward part of baptism, ordinary, not absolute, or without exception; that the contempt of the sacrament, not the want of it, condemns; and that though God binds us to the means, he does not bind his own mercy by them. From the time of Luther to the present hour, the Lutheran theologians have maintained the salvability and actual salvation of infants dying unbaptized.

The rest of the doctrine of the Lutheran Church, as a whole, is involved in her confessing, with the Nicene creed, "one baptism for the remission of sins," and that through it the grace of God is offered, that children are to be baptized, and that being thus committed to God, they are graciously received by him. At the same time she rejects the theory of the Anabaptists, that infants unbaptized have salvation because of their personal innocence, and maintains that the nature with which we were born requires a change, which must be wrought by the Spirit of God, before we can enter into heaven (A. C., Art. IX. and II.,) and that infants are saved by the application of Christ's redemptory work, of which Baptism is the ordinary channel."

However, it remains an open question what size/age children (and the rest of us) will be after the resurrection. Biblical justification for this doctrine can be found easily. First of all God Commands it.

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. -Matthew 28:19

Secondly, the Bible tells us why it is necessary. Notice, while baptism saves, it is a lack of faith that condemns.

Baptism... now saves you. -1 Peter 3:21

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. -Mark 16:16

While Baptism is the normal means through which the Holy Spirit has promised to work, he is not bound by it. He has not promised to do so, and we have no assurance of it, but He can.


Yet you are he who took me from the womb;
     you made me trust you at my mother's breasts.

On you was I cast from my birth,

     and from my mother's womb you have been my God.
    they go astray from birth, speaking lies.
    he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him;
    and that Israel might be gathered to him—
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord,
    and my God has become my strength—

-Psalm 22:9-10

Likewise, the opposite is true.

The wicked are estranged from the womb; -Psalm 58:3

Those who believe in decision theology say that Psalm is poetic and cannot be taken literally, but there are other verses as well.

And now the Lord says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,to bring Jacob back to him; and that Israel might be gathered to him—for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord, and my God has become my strength -Isaiah 49:5

Also, John the Baptizer believed when he was in the womb in Jesus, who was also in the womb. Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, not because she chose to believe, but because God filled her.

In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” -Luke 1:39-45

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