If You Were Baptized As a Baby, Should You Be Re-Baptized?

Ask the Pastor with J.D. Greear

J.D. Greear

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.9 • 624 Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Pastor J.D. is answering a listener question from Ashley: If you were baptized as a baby, should you be re-baptized as an adult?

Show Notes:

* I want to answer this question in three ways: theologically, practically, and also try to expand the question for those who aren't sure they were saved when they were baptized.
* Biblically speaking, baptism is a ceremony — a celebration — that goes along with conversion. In the New Testament, baptism and conversion are tied incredibly close together.
* Baptism is a confession of faith. So, if you were baptized as a baby, whose faith was that a confession of? It has to be your parents' — which by the way, is nothing to be ashamed of. At our church, I usually tell people that when you're re-baptized as an adult, you're actually fulfilling your parents' hopes for you when they had you baptized as a baby in the first place.
* The simple fact is, every baptism we see in the New Testament is in response to a confession of faith.
* Now, what about if you were baptized already and you're not sure if you were saved at that time?
* If you know for certain that you weren't saved at that time, then yes, you should be re-baptized.
* But, unless you know for sure, I think it's better to look at it like that was the beginning of your faith journey (which is when your baptism should happen), and the proof that what was going on inside of you was real is the fact that you're following Jesus now.
* Baptism isn't something you achieve, it's something you start from.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everybody, welcome to Ask Me Anything. My name is Matt Love. I'm here with Pastor J.D. Greer, and we have a listener question that is actually, it's a question from Ashley.
0:27.6	Though, J.D., I don't know if you remember, you actually answered this question for me.
0:30.7	I do remember that.
0:31.4	On your back porch when I was a sophomore, junior, in college.
0:35.4	So this will be a good redux of that. But J.D., Ashley wants to know if you were baptized as a baby, should you get rebaptized as an adult?
0:45.6	So, Matt, I want to answer this in two or three ways, maybe similar to how we talked about it on my backports, put myself in that situation again.
0:51.4	One is I want to answer the question, maybe kind of biblically, theologically, and kind, the way we do it the way we do it. Secondly, I'd like to be practical with
0:58.9	people about like, well, what if you're not fully convinced to that and you're a part of a church
1:03.5	that's asking you to do that? And then thirdly, I want to expand the question a little bit just
1:08.7	to people that are maybe not asking about infant baptism, but they're baptized at seven or eight, and they're not really sure if they were saved or not.
1:17.0	You know, and they've had an awakening since then.
1:20.0	It really is a great question.
1:21.3	I do want to say that you don't want to give this question too outsized of importance, like this is the, you know, the defining element of the
1:28.5	Christian life. I think baptism is a very important thing, but also know that there are people, you know,
1:33.1	that obsess about certain questions like this, especially if, you know, was I saved after I was
1:39.0	baptized when I was 10, that you just, you want to keep this in the right category. Baptism in the New Testament is a, it is a proclamation, a declaration.
1:50.1	It's in many ways it's the ceremony that goes along with conversion.
1:54.3	One of the reasons that the Bible always talks about conversion and baptism almost synonymously is because it's kind of like when you get
2:02.8	married, technically the thing that makes you married is saying, I do, and taking a vow.
2:06.6	Technically, it's signing the marriage certificate. But, you know, we would talk about the rings
2:11.6	and the vow. We talk about all those as if they're one thing because it's part of the ceremony
2:16.6	that's associated with the covenant.
	...

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