During the service of dedication, the parents present their child in church. The story of Jesus' presentation in the Temple as told in Luke is often read. The parents promise to bring the child up according to Christian values, in a Christian home and as part of the church community. The celebration of baptism is a way of showing that this belief exists and the person wishes to be totally committed to the will of God.
The use of total immersion at a more mature age imitates the example of Jesus who was baptised by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. During the ceremony -. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children" Acts Those words of Peter echoed God's promise to Abraham, to be a faithful God to him and his children.
About 3, people were baptized that day. After Pentecost, the Holy Spirit kept adding to the church, and not just one individual at a time. The Spirit added whole families. Entire households were baptized. When the Lord opened the heart of a woman named Lydia, the result was not just an individual baptism.
When a suicidal jailer asked the apostle Paul, "What must I do to be saved? A synagogue ruler named Crispus "and his entire household" came to Christ and were baptized Acts In one of Paul's letters, he wrote, "I also baptized the household of Stephanas" 1 Corinthians Did any of these family baptisms include babies? Probably so, but there's no way to prove it--and there's no need to prove it. Whether there were babies or not, the principle of family solidarity is clear.
When an adult was baptized, whether a father or mother, so were the children in the household. When lost sheep went into God's fold, their lambs went with them.
The gospel addresses households, and it's biblical to respond as households. Biblical faith declares, "As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord" Joshua In the Old Testament, when the head of a household was circumcised, his boys were also circumcised. In the New Testament, when the head of a household was baptized, the rest of the household was also baptized. Today, too, churches should baptize individual converts and the children under their care.
A gospel that speaks only of a personal relationship to God but not a family relationship to God is missing something. Our culture is extremely individualistic, and that makes it harder for us to see how babies too young to think for themselves could be included in God's covenant.
So let's ask ourselves: are we marbles or branches? The Bible speaks of Christ and his church as a grapevine. One way God's vine gets more branches is to grow them.
Another way is for branches to be grafted in from outside. Either way, whether a branch grows from the vine or is grafted into it, any twigs on the branch are included as well. When a child is born to someone who is already part of the church, the child is part of the church. When parents from outside the church of Christ become part of it, their children become part of it too.
And baptism is the sign of belonging. In our individualistic culture, says author Douglas Wilson, we'd rather be marbles than branches. We picture Christ not as a vine but as a marble box where individual marbles are placed one by one for safekeeping. No marble is connected to any other marble. Each is on its own. But has Jesus ever said, "I am the box; you are the marbles"?
No, Jesus says, "I am the vine; you are the branches" John If a branch is connected to the vine, so are any twigs that are connected to the branch. This does not automatically mean that every branch or twig that's connected to the vine is truly alive and bearing fruit. Some baptized persons are part of the church and attached to the vine outwardly, but they turn out to be dead wood, without the life of Christ or the fruit of faith. Jesus says, "My Father Some Christians oppose infant baptism largely because some people baptized as babies turn out faithless and fruitless.
That's an important concern. But there are also people baptized as youth or adults who turn out faithless and fruitless. Lifeless, nominal Christianity is a serious danger, but that doesn't mean that no babies should be baptized. It means churches must be sure to baptize not just any child but only covenant children, children of active, professing believers.
It also means that church discipline must be applied when it becomes evident that a branch is dead. If a baptized person rejects Christ and lives in sin, that person must be warned of God's judgment and no longer be regarded as part of the church. The story of Jesus' presentation in the Temple as told in Luke is often read. The parents promise to bring the child up according to Christian values, in a Christian home and as part of the church community.
Baptism scene, Granada, Nicaragua. They do know, however, that infant baptism was prevalent in the third century. The ritual is not practiced by all denominations. And those who do, do it for different reasons. The denominations that do not practice infant baptism believe that children babies, toddlers are unable to grasp the concept of Jesus Christ as Savior.
The denominations that practice infant baptism are of two minds. Some perform the rite with the belief that we are born into sin and baptism cleanses us from it and gives us eternal salvation. Others see it as no more than an initiation into the faith tradition or Christian community. Believers tend to baptize their children as early after birth as possible. In the Eastern Orthodox Church and Oriental Orthodoxy, for instance, it is customary though not mandatory, to baptize infants on their eighth day of life.
The practice may have Judaic origins relating to the circumcision of male children. By the third century, according to religious historians, adult baptism was a mandatory part of Christian life and deemed a sacrament.
Later, there were disagreements among the various groups of Christians whether or not baptism really was a sacrament—some thought of it as a symbolic ritual.
In the symbolic baptism, Christians believe that it is only a public representation of the Sacramental gifts. In some denominations, it is thought that children at age eight do have understanding and can be baptized as adults. Also, some faiths require adult baptism for membership even if converts were baptized as children. There are three forms of baptism: immersion, affusion or pouring, and aspersion or sprinkling.
Here again, methods differ among the various faith traditions. All agree that the water should be moving to represent living water. Places used to conduct the ritual: rivers, ocean, lakes, indoor or outdoor swimming pools, and baptismal fonts. Immersion: Baptism by this method could be total submergence of the body into the water or partial submergence into the water where believers just stand or kneel while water is poured over them. Immersion was the method of baptism practiced by the early Christians.
John the Baptist, submerged his converts in the Jordan River, according to biblical accounts. There is also pictorial evidence of partial submergence being performed by others.
Most of the churches exclusively practicing adult baptisms prefer this method. Affusion: water is poured onto the head of the convert. This was the main method used in the 10 th century. It is believed this method derived out of the necessity to baptize children and people who were sick and people who were incarcerated.
Patrick's Church, Tuticorin, Tamilnadu, S. Arun Ebenezer, in Public Domain, wikimedia commons. Though the ritual of baptism is practiced by most Christians, it is also practiced by the Sikhs, a monotheistic religion founded more than years ago by Guru Nanak, and the Gnostic Mandaeanism, an ancient religion—still viable today in Iran and Iraq—whose theology favors John the Baptist over Jesus.
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