Babies & Baptism

 [This is my Faith Post for April 2025.] 

I've been blessed to get some baby time lately. I have a new niece and our family spent spring break getting to meet her.  While I've been through my fair share of baby time in my years (*ahem* 5 kids) my youngest is now 3+ and those days are increasingly behind us. Still, there is nothing quite like holding a newborn in your arms.

I've also spent a fair amount of time thinking about baptism lately.  I've been in the midst of several new member classes at my church and with each of them the topic of baptism comes up. I also met with a younger couple at my church preparing for the baptism of their first-born and we went through the nice review of Baptism and its ins and outs. 

Babies and baptism make a great combination, without a doubt.  Being a Lutheran pastor I spend a fair amount of time teaching and preaching on this very thing.  The Scriptures are quite clear on what a wonderful thing it is to baptize, and babies are surely a part of it.  Nonetheless, not all of Christianity agrees with this sentiment.  That's unfortunate.

While on our Spring Break meeting the new niece I heard a great Lenten sermon teaching about baptism and the pastor used a helpful analogy highlighting our passivity in baptism as a Scriptural argument for infant baptism.  Lutherans teach from Scripture that faith is God's work within us.  Faith is the Holy Spirit calling us by the Gospel and bringing us to Christ.  It is God who converts us to the faith, it is not a work of our own.  

This is pertinent to the infant baptism discussion because the Scriptures further teach baptism as a work of God, not one of our own.  This is where the analogy on our passivity comes in.  As you think of a baby in the womb preparing for birth you don't think about all the things that baby is doing.  That baby is being fed and cared for and protected by the womb of its mother.  Then comes birth.  Every aspect of the birth process is essentially something done to that baby.  I'm sure most mothers would agree, they're doing all the work, and then some.  The baby is along for the ride.

In baptism, it is no different.  Regardless of the age or ability of the individual being baptized, they are passive.  They are essentially "along for the ride."  It is God at work in the water and the word baptizing a person. It is God who forgives sins. It is God who works faith. It is God who makes one and adopts one as a child of God. We don't choose God, He chooses us.

Since God does the work and the benefits and effect of baptism depend on God ... there is no reason a baby cannot or should not receive it. We don't wait for them to be old enough to understand it.  We certainly don't wait for them to be able to choose it.  God does the calling.  God does the choosing.  A baby needs baptism and should not be denied it.  Period.  

Babies should be baptized as much as babies should be given the chance of life and birth. After all, it is Jesus in John 3 who describes baptism as being "born again."

To God be the glory.

Mark Witte is the pastor at Grace Lutheran Church.
You can contact him at pastorwitte@gmail.com