At what age should believing children be baptized?

American Baptist culture has clouded the clear biblical teaching regarding when believing children should be baptized.

The following excerpt is found in John Kuyper Liberty, Gospel Theology: God’s Good News for Everything (Bloomington, IN: WestBow Press, 2021), 311-314. Used with permission. Pick up the book at Westbow Press or Amazon.

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The very clear practice in the book of Acts was to baptize professing Christians right away because the sacrament is so closely tied to conversion. A person could be regenerated without water baptism, but something (non-salvific) is missing. You can be a married person without a ring on, but (in our culture) something is missing if you have not yet put on the symbol displaying that you are in a marital covenant union.[1] You can be a college graduate if the printer for the diplomas failed before the commencement ceremony, but you are going to want that diploma in hand as soon as possible.

If these newly baptized people were found out to be false converts later on, they would be dealt with accordingly and removed from the visible church. For example, consider Simon the Magician in Acts 8:1-25. He professes to believe and is baptized (Acts 8:13). A short time later it is discovered that his conversion may have not been real (Acts 8:18-23).[2] A famous passage on church excommunication, 1 Corinthians 5, provides more evidence. Everyone in the church had been baptized (1 Cor 1:13-15; 12:13). But not everyone turns out to be a true Christian:

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. (1 Cor 5:1-2)

The apostles baptized many professing Christians, thereby acknowledging their admission into the visible church, knowing that not all of them would prove to be true Christians.[3] Not one time in the New Testament will you see baptism withheld from a person credibly professing Christ. You will never see a person having to go through a certain time of testing or growth before baptism can occur.

Some Christians with excellent motivations want to protect baptism by waiting for an arbitrary age, making people go through a certain amount of trial, waiting to see fruit, or giving thorough biblical instruction, all for the purpose of trying to make absolutely sure the person is truly converted before the baptism occurs. This confuses the order of biblical baptism. Baptism is not a mark of Christian maturity. Vern Poythress writes:

Baptism in the name of Jesus functions in the New Testament to mark the beginning of the Christian life. Baptism was not merely for those with mature, tested faith, but for those starting the Christian walk. Therefore, in Acts adult converts were baptized when they professed faith. Later in church history, baptism was delayed until after people had gone through catechetical training. But I believe this practice represents a deviation rather than an improvement. Most catechetical training belongs after baptism. Baptism is at the beginning, because it signifies the inception of union with Christ (Rom 6:1-4). Following baptism one enters on a whole lifetime of discipleship, including catechism or doctrinal training that brings us into deeper knowledge of the gospel and Christian faith.[4]

I appreciate and respect the motivations of Christians who want to be sure they are baptizing true Christians. But delaying baptism after a credible profession of faith has been made does two things.

First, it subtly teaches new Christians that they have to do more than simply trust in Christ alone to be saved. Simply trusting in Christ is not then enough for someone to be considered a Christian (or at least a Christian eligible for baptism!). They have to attain to a certain level of maturity. But that is neither biblical nor healthy. In the Bible, baptisms were done on profession of faith to demonstrate visibly that Christ alone saves a person by faith alone. Does this encourage your soul? I hope so. Think about what this means for you practically. You have to do as much to earn your right to be water baptized as you do to be cleansed from your sin: nothing! You are cleansed from sin immediately upon conversion to Christ, immediately upon trusting in the true Christ alone for your salvation. You do not have to achieve a certain level of holiness for baptism any more than you have to achieve a certain level of holiness to initially become a Christian, or to stay a Christian. A Christian is someone who is covered in the holiness of Christ. That person then, slowly but surely, grows in practical holiness.[5]

Children so often get the short end of the stick here. They get told that they can be baptized when they go through enough testing, or when they understand the gospel more deeply, or have shown enough fruit, etc. But that is an artificial, man-made standard that then confuses them about what is required to be one of God’s people. How do we know an eighteen-year-old has gone through enough trial? How do we know a thirty-year-old understands the gospel deeply enough? The gospel is understandable enough for a three or four-year-old to intellectually grasp. And if three or four-year-olds have a true and appropriate understanding of the gospel (at a level you would expect a three or four-year-old to have), and they have a credible profession, we should baptize them (which is bringing them into the visible church), admit them to the Lord’s Supper, and treat them as Christians.[6] Vern Poythress agrees:

Faith is genuine long before intellectual apprehension reaches its completion. Faith in Christ is trust in a person, not merely assent to a system of doctrine. Trust in a person normally includes some knowledge about the person–propositions. But the ability verbally to articulate such knowledge varies with age and verbal skill...Christ saves us; our verbal or intellectual abilities as such do not.[7]

Withholding baptism from Christians of any age keeps them from the means of grace of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and participation in the visible church, which are all means God uses to help faith grow! It is more dangerous to keep a true Christian from baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and participation in the visible church, than it is to wrongly baptize a false Christian, and later find out the person was a fraud. How can I say that? Because that was the clear practice of the apostles in the New Testament. As mentioned above, there are many examples of Christians who were baptized and then later uncovered as unbelievers. But the New Testament knows nothing of baptism, the Lord’s Supper, or participation in the visible church being withheld from a Christian with a credible profession of faith.

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[1] Chester makes this same analogy in Truth We Can Touch, 30-31.

[2] John Piper comments on Acts 8:18-23 and the state of Simon’s soul, “I take this to mean that Simon was not truly converted. He has no part or lot in this matter of Christianity. His heart is not right with God. He still needs to repent. He is still enslaved to bitterness and iniquity. He is still in his sin and not yet converted. This is confirmed by the entire tradition of the early church that says Simon went on to become a heretic and not a true Christian (cf. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Jerome, etc.).” “Simon’s Perversion of Signs and Wonders,” Desiring God, May 12, 1991, accessed June 5, 2020, https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/simons-perversion-of-signs-and-wonders.

[3] Vern Poythress explains, “In fact, the visible church includes wolves and hypocrites as well as the genuine sheep (that is, those who are regenerate). 1 John 2:19 indicates that some people ‘went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.’ These people were not regenerate: ‘none of them belonged to us.’ But they were for a time members of the visible church: ‘they would have remained with us.’ Similarly, in Acts 20:29-30 Paul warns that ‘savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.’” “Indifferentism and Rigorism.”

[4] Poythress, “Indifferentism and Rigorism.”

[5] See Appendix I.

[6] We must not use sophisticated theological language with young children and then assume they are not Christians if they do not understand. It is the job of adults to teach children and use wisdom to discern their true understanding. Just as God condescends in his communication and does not require a perfect understanding from us, we are to do the same for our young children.

[7] Poythress, “Indifferentism and Rigorism.”