Questions & Answers

The question that you ask is an important one that can lead a person to examine Scripture on a variety of key issues like "Where does faith come from? What is the relationship between faith and baptism? What is baptism -- a work of the person or a work of God? Can infants and small children be brought to faith?" And so forth.

I assure you that your baptism when you were an infant really counted and still counts. From the promises that are attached to baptism in the Bible, we know and believe that the Holy Spirit uses this sacrament to work faith in human hearts. And with faith comes forgiveness of sins – even when an infant may not be consciously or mentally aware of it. Saving faith is not a matter of a human being expressing intellectual or volitional decisions about God, but a matter of God changing hearts and destinies by his power and in love.

When this gift of faith is nourished, nurtured, strengthened, and preserved in a person through repeated use of the gospel (by reading and hearing God’s Word and by receiving the Lord’s Supper with its gospel message), the believer may cherish and recall the unconditional promises God made to him at his baptism. These remain a source of comfort for us all, just as Paul spoke of it in Galatians 3:26-27 and Titus 3:5-7.

If this gift of faith given in baptism is tragically neglected, eventually despised and lost through unbelief (through a neglect and rejection of God’s Word and sacrament), the infant baptism is not the fault or problem, and God’s promises made at that time still stand. The person need only be brought back to divine promises in Christ and will then again cherish his baptism.

If a person is brought to faith through God’s Word later in life and without the privilege of baptism, that person will surely seek baptism and value it as another opportunity to have the Holy Spirit work in the heart to strengthen that faith. This is the point of the words you quote (“Believe and be baptized” – from Mark 16:16 or perhaps Acts 2:38). When faith is first received through baptism, it is to be strengthened and preserved through the Word; when faith is first received through the Word, it is to be strengthened and preserved through baptism. I invite and urge you to rejoice in both and despise neither. How gracious God is and how powerfully the Holy Spirit works through all his chosen instruments!

If you are interested in a more thorough study of what the Bible says about the nature and source of saving faith, the purpose and function of baptism, and the specific issues that pertain to infant baptism, you are invited to read archived questions and answers on this important topic that are available at this website. You are also invited and encouraged to undertake a more thorough study through publications we offer at our publishing house. Here are links to two books that will be very helpful to you: My Adoption Into God's Family and Baptized Into God's Family.