Baptism

“We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

— Romans 6:4 (ESV)

Baptism is the ordinance Christ instituted for his church, in which a professing believer is immersed in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19) as a sign of union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection (Rom. 6:3-4) and of the washing away of sin (Acts 22:16). Baptist churches, including those anchored to the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession, hold that this sign belongs only to those who have themselves professed repentance and faith (Acts 2:38, 41) — not to their infant children, who have made no such profession. This distinguishes Reformed Baptist practice both from traditions that baptize by sprinkling or pouring and from the infant baptism practiced by most other Reformed and Protestant churches.

Confessional Definition

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession devotes its own chapter to baptism, defining it first by what it signifies:

“Baptism is an ordinance of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, to be unto the party baptized, a sign of his fellowship with him, in his death and resurrection; of his being engrafted into him; of remission of sins; and of giving up into God, through Jesus Christ, to live and walk in newness of life.”¹

The confession then names its proper subjects, its element, and its required mode in three further paragraphs:

“Those who do actually profess repentance towards God, faith in, and obedience to, our Lord Jesus Christ, are the only proper subjects of this ordinance.”²

“The outward element to be used in this ordinance is water, wherein the party is to be baptized, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”³

“Immersion, or dipping of the person in water, is necessary to the due administration of this ordinance.”⁴

Each clause of paragraph 1 names something baptism signifies, not something it accomplishes on its own: “fellowship” with Christ’s death and resurrection, being “engrafted into him,” the “remission of sins,” and a new manner of life. Baptism pictures a union and a cleansing already given to the one baptized through faith; it does not itself regenerate or forgive. Paragraph 2 restricts the ordinance to those who “actually profess” repentance and faith — an act only a person capable of professing can perform, which is why the confession never extends the sign to infants. Paragraph 4 states the mode as more than a preference: immersion is “necessary to the due administration” of the ordinance, because the sign depicted in paragraph 1 — burial and rising — requires going under the water and coming back up, not an application of water to the head.

Read together, the four paragraphs rule out two practices at once: an ordinance administered to someone who has not professed faith (infant baptism), and an ordinance administered without immersion (sprinkling or pouring). Both distinctives are treated in full below — the paedobaptist alternative in Opposing Views, and the mode question in Objections and Responses.

Biblical Basis

Jesus commands baptism as part of the Great Commission: disciples are to be made “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19-20). Paul explains what the act pictures: those baptized “into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death,” so that baptism is a burial and a rising with him, “in order that … we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:3-4). Gill reads this burial imagery as baptism’s very design: the ordinance is “emblematically represented” so as “to exhibit to view the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, and of believers in him.”⁵ Paul draws the same picture in Colossians, where believers are “buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith” (Col. 2:12).

The pattern of Acts consistently places profession before baptism, never the reverse. At Pentecost, Peter tells the convicted crowd to “repent and be baptized” (Acts 2:38), and Luke records that “those who received his word were baptized” (Acts 2:41) — reception of the word precedes the water. The same order holds in Samaria, where “when they believed Philip … they were baptized, both men and women” (Acts 8:12), and with the Ethiopian official, who is baptized only after professing, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God” (Acts 8:36-37). Ananias tells the newly converted Paul to “rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name” (Acts 22:16), joining baptism to a faith already exercised, not one yet to come.

Historical Development

Immersion was the common practice of the early church; even Calvin, who argued the mode was not obligatory, granted that “the mere term Baptise means to immerse entirely, and it is certain that the custom of thus entirely immersing was anciently observed in the Church.”⁶ Affusion and sprinkling became common only later, driven in part by the spread of infant baptism itself, which by the patristic period Reformed paedobaptists themselves describe as already widespread practice.⁷

The Reformation did not, on its own, restore believer’s baptism: Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin all retained infant baptism, redirecting its theological basis rather than abandoning the practice. The recovery of believer’s baptism by immersion came instead from the Anabaptist movement of the 1520s and, in England a century later, from the Particular Baptists, who combined credobaptism with a broadly Reformed theology otherwise close to the Westminster and Savoy standards. Their 1689 Second London Baptist Confession adapted the Westminster Confession chapter by chapter, replacing its paedobaptist chapter on baptism with the credobaptist formulation quoted above.¹ John Gill, a Particular Baptist pastor and systematic theologian of the following generation, articulated the same position at length, insisting that “the ordinance of baptism” belongs “only to its proper subjects, believers in Christ,” and “in its proper manner, by immersion.”⁸

Opposing Views

Paedobaptism (covenant theology). Reformed paedobaptists — including most Presbyterian and Continental Reformed churches — baptize the infant children of professing believers. Their argument does not rest on any claim that infants can believe or repent; Bavinck writes: “Not regeneration, faith, or repentance, much less our assumptions pertaining to them, but only the covenant of grace gave people, both adults and children, the right to baptism.”⁹ On this view baptism functions for the New Covenant much as circumcision did for the Old: a sign given to the children of covenant members simply because they belong to the covenant community, prior to and apart from their own profession. Calvin makes the comparison directly, arguing that because “the Jews [were] comprehended in the covenant,” there is “no substantial difference between baptism and circumcision,” since Peter told the Jews at Pentecost that “the promise is unto you and to your children” (Acts 2:39).¹⁰ Hodge adds the household baptisms recorded in Acts — Lydia’s household (Acts 16:15) and the Philippian jailer’s (Acts 16:33) — as apostolic precedent for baptizing whole families, reasoning that “where parents enter into covenant with God, they bring their children with them,” just as a parent’s entry into the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants brought his children in with him.¹¹ Both theologians answer the objection that infants cannot exercise faith by pointing out that no baptism, infant or adult, gives certain access to a candidate’s inward state; Bavinck adds that a child may possess the disposition of faith without yet possessing its exercised acts.⁹

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t the New Testament use of baptizo for various washings show that immersion isn’t required? Hodge’s argument for this is that Old Testament washings covered sprinkling, pouring, and immersion alike, so that “there is not a single case where baptism necessarily implies immersion.”¹² The confessional answer is that the mode carries the meaning: baptism was instituted specifically to picture burial and resurrection (Rom. 6:3-4), and only immersion depicts going under and coming back up. A general Old Testament word for washing proves less than it needs to when the New Testament ordinance is defined by an image sprinkling cannot supply.

Don’t the household baptisms in Acts show that infants were baptized on a parent’s faith? Acts records no infants present in any of these households, and where the text describes the household’s response at all, it describes faith: the Philippian jailer “rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God” (Acts 16:34), and Paul recalls that “the household of Stephanas” were the first converts in Achaia and had “devoted themselves to the service of the saints” (1 Cor. 16:15). An argument from silence about the households’ composition cannot outweigh Acts’ consistent pattern elsewhere of profession before baptism (Acts 2:41; 8:12, 36-37).

If circumcision was given to covenant children, shouldn’t baptism be too? The credobaptist answer turns on what actually changed at the New Covenant, not merely on what continued. Where the old covenant sign was given to a mixed community by physical descent, the New Testament consistently describes baptism’s recipients by profession, not birth — those who “received his word” (Acts 2:41) or “believed” (Acts 8:12). Gill ties this directly to admission to the ordinances: “these are required to a person’s admission to baptism,” namely “faith and repentance,” and unregenerate persons “have not the proper qualifications” for it, however born.¹³ The continuity paedobaptists draw from circumcision to baptism is a fair covenantal argument, addressed above in its own terms, but it does not settle the question the New Testament itself addresses directly: who Peter, Philip, and Ananias were shown actually baptizing, and why.

Related Doctrines

References

The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 29, “Of Baptism,” para. 1. ↩ ↩²
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 29, “Of Baptism,” para. 2. ↩
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 29, “Of Baptism,” para. 3. ↩
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 29, “Of Baptism,” para. 4. ↩
John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book V, chap. 5, “Of the Burial of Christ.” ↩
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 4, chap. 15, 526. ↩
Charles Hodge, “Chapter XX. The Means of Grace,” in Systematic Theology, Volume III (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 553-554. ↩
Gill, book V, chap. 14, “Of the Spiritual Reign of Christ.” ↩
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 22, “The Spirit’s Means of Grace.” ↩ ↩²
Calvin, book 4, chap. 16, “Pædobaptism, Its Accordance with the Institution of Christ and the Nature of the Sign,” 538-539. ↩
Hodge, 552-553. ↩
Hodge, 533. ↩
Gill, book VI, chap. 11, “Of Regeneration.” ↩