Baptism of Babies
by Stephen Bastin
We live in troubled times.
Politicians lie to us. Our
environment is polluted. Thieves
break into our homes, our cars. Nobody
seems to care anymore.
I don’t know about you, but
I need to know that there is something that doesn’t change.
I need to have something to hang on to.
I found it in God’s Word,
the Bible. Or better yet, I came to
know the God who wrote the Bible.
Everybody has their own
opinion. Opinions are always
changing. It’s good to know that
in all this change there is one opinion that does not change.
Not only does it not change, it is always right.
Whose opinion is this? God’s
opinion. He is always right.
We can clearly plot our course through life with the unbiased opinion of
God. Even in religion I ran into the
same problem. One church teaches
this doctrine. Another teaches the
opposite. There seem to be as many
different philosophies and doctrines as there are fleas on an old hound dog.
When I went to the Bible, I
found that Jesus said, “Why do you call me, Lord, Lord, and do not do what I
say?” I decided that the problem
could only be solved by listening to Jesus and following His word.
After all, he’s the Lord.
I had always believed that an
innocent child is born into the world full of sin.
“They” called it original sin. Someone
else called it “Total Hereditary Depravity” (whatever that is).
Now does it seem logical, much
less Biblical? A child condemned
before he or she started life. A
precious child, a minute, a day old, darkened with sin, stained by the sin of
someone else, created “depraved.” So
I began to ask questions and then look in the Bible for answers.
These are some of the things that I found.
Where do
children come from?
“Sons are a heritage from
the Lord, children a reward from him.” “...the
spirit returns to God who gave it.”
Children come from God.
God makes nothing imperfect. Sin
does not come from God, but rather from the choices that people make.
The child’s body comes from his parents; his spirit comes from God.
For a child to have sin, the sin would have to come from God!
Where does
sin come from?
This one was easy.
The Bible tells us a lot about sin. “Anyone
who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”
“Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact sin is lawlessness.”
These were some of the things
I read in the Bible about sin. Sin,
then, comes from a desire to do what God does not want us to do.
Or, sin comes from being lazy and not doing what God does want us to do.
Do you mean
that if God had given no law, there would be no sin?
The apostle Paul wrote many
letters to Christians that are a part of our Bible.
In one of them, called Romans, he wrote in chapter 7, verse 9, “Once I
was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and
I died.” Then I understood that
for that baby there is no law since there is no understanding yet and therefore
no sin. Only when the child becomes
old enough to understand God’s law will he be guilty before God.
But doesn’t
the Bible say something about inheriting sin?
As I read, I found this verse
in Ezekiel. “The soul who sins is
the one who will die. The son will
not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the
son. The righteousness of the
righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be
charged against him.” So the Bible
taught me that sin could not be inherited. As
I continued reading I found over and over again that it is my own personal sin
that comes between God and me. “Surely
the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.
But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have
hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.”
But then
someone told me about original sin.
They told me that the human
race was fallen because of what happened to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.
Wondering what really happened I read Genesis, chapter 3.
While I found nothing concerning original sin or the fall of man I did
learn a lot about how we are tempted and how easy it is to do the wrong thing.
I could sympathize with Adam and Eve although I could not excuse them.
I also found nothing about
their sin being handed down to succeeding generations.
The penalties that God imposed were passed down, but not the sin.
Cain and Abel did not inherit the sin of their parents, but Cain figured
out his own way to sin against God.
Then I asked,
“What about baptizing or christening babies?
I knew that people were doing
this in order to identify their child with a local congregation or a certain
denomination. My mother meant well
when she had this done to me, but I found that it is only another tradition that
is not in the Bible. I found that
baptism is actually being identified with Christ.
In order to identify with Christ I found that we must first believe in
Him and then repent of our past life of sin.
This is followed by being baptized. The
Bible says in Acts, chapter 2, verse 38, “Repent and be baptized, every one of
you, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven and you shall
receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
So how does a
child believe before he hears the word of God?
The Bible says that faith
comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
And how does a child repent unless he has done something wrong to start
with? Now when a child comes to
understand, he needs to make a decision to be identified with Christ.
He does this by being baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection as
described in Romans, chapter 6.
Check these things out. If they be true, believe them. If they be not true when compared with the Bible, then by all means reject them. Things are not right because we have always believed them, but right because the Bible says so.
Bible
References for preceding: Luke
6:46; Psalm 126:3; Ecclesiastes 12:7; James 4:17; 1 John 3:4; Romans 7:9;
Ezekiel 18:20; Isaiah 59:1-2; Genesis 3; Galatians 3:26-29; Acts 2:36-38; Romans
10:17; Romans 6:1-4