BIBLICAL BRIEFS 9
The baptism of babies is a Roman Catholic consuetude, later taken up by Protestantism. This is inspired by the false belief/dogma that God made a covenant with a special group of people (Israel at that time) and by the ritual act of sprinkling water, one is baptized into this covenant. They teach that the circumcision of babies in the old covenant has in the new covenant been replaced by the baptism of babies. The baby is through this act of faith of the parents accepted in the new covenant and so to speak then born again. This is Scripturally not true. There is no explicit testimony or evidence that babies were baptized in the New Testament. It is also not found in the recorded history of the first 100 years of church history. The only reference to the ritual of sprinkling referred to in the Bible is the sprinkling of blood in the Old Testament (Heb. 11:28), and as for the New Testament, the symbolic sprinkling of the blood of Jesus (1 Pet. 1:2; Heb. 9:19). The word for baptism in Greek means immersion, because it is symbolically associated with the death and resurrection of the Saviour. Rom. 6:4 says that believers are ”buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead … we too may live a new life”. This is described clearly by Jesus in Mark 16:16 – “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved …” The sprinkling of water on babies is a sacrament which robs believers of true baptism. The old covenant’s physical circumcision was replaced by the circumcision of the heart in the new covenant, in other words, being born again. Titus 3:5 offers a good summary: He has “saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit”.
Dr. Tom Gouws
