I am a Baptist by accident – or at least that is how it started. At the age of 11 I was given a Gideon Bible in school, and from there it was a short step to a Crusader (now Urban Saints) group in the local Baptist Church.  Once there I started attending occasional baptismal services, and a couple of years later I was baptised. 

That was all a long time ago, and I am now a Baptist by conviction.  I have been a Baptist minister for over 25 years, and it has been my privilege to baptise many as believers during that time.  I am now a firm believer in believer’s baptism, as opposed to adult baptism.  The distinction is important, since it is conscious belief and consent which matters, rather than any specific age.

Three scriptural pillars

For me, there are many scriptural pillars on which this belief rests, although I shall pick out just three of them here. The first is to be found at the very end of Matthew’s Gospel, in a passage to which we often refer as the ‘great commission’. Christ enjoins his disciples to ‘go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ (Matthew 28:19) On the birthday of the Christian church, Pentecost Day, Peter’s response to the crowd’s plea about what they should do next was simple: ‘repent and be baptized’ (Acts 2:38). In both these instances, baptism seems to be part of the normative process of passing from death to life and darkness to light. The third pillar is perhaps the most interesting. Paul was trying to combat the slipshod theology of the church in Rome. There were people there who were embracing antinomianism – the belief that it was fine to sin today, as it would always be forgiven tomorrow. The single most potent corrective of which Paul could think was to ask them to recall their baptism day – and all its rich symbolism of being joined in an irrevocable way with Christ. Time and again he hammers this point home in Romans (6:1-10).

The ticket to heaven?

For me, baptism is not a ‘ticket to heaven’, but an external proof that you already have one in your possession. It is an enacted and external parable of a spiritual and hidden reality. When a bride slips a ring onto the finger of her groom at the front of the church, she is not falling in love with him at that very moment. Rather, she is showing to him and to all the world that this wonderful thing has happened, and the she wishes to be bound by it and to him for ever more. In this way I see believer’s baptism. I wonder whether you do?

What are the elemental differences between believer’s baptism and infant baptism?

If it is NOT vital to salvation, can it be said to be vital at all?