Faith, Repentance, Discipleship and Baptism

Rev. Ronald Hanko

Rev. Hanko is a minister in the Protestant Reformed Churches in America and has authored a number of books, including (among others) the following: Doctrine According to Godliness: A Primer on Reformed Doctrine (2004), The Coming of Zion’s Redeemer: Commentary on Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi (2015). He was also the joint author of Saved by Grace: A Study of the Five Points of Calvinism (1995) and its accompanying study guide (all of which can be purchased at http://www.cprc.co.uk and http://www.rfpa.org).

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[Previous section: “Infant Baptism in the New Testament”]

Another significant Baptist argument against paedobaptism and for “believer’s baptism” says that faith, repentance and becoming a disciple of Christ must precede baptism.  This argument is critical to the Baptists.  One Baptist preacher in expounding on the subject of baptism repeatedly says that the sign implies the presence of what is signified prior to the administration of the sign.[1]

      

The argument is based on various passages which list these things before baptism.  The passages are Matthew 28:19, which lists discipleship before baptism (the word “teach,” there, is literally “makes disciples of”), Mark 16:16, which lists faith before baptism, and Mark 1:4 (along with Acts 2:38), which are understood to teach that repentance must precede baptism.

       

Obviously, if these verses do teach that faith, repentance and being discipled must precede baptism, then only those who are of an age to show that they have repented of their sins, believed in Christ and become His disciples can be baptized.  The Baptist argument, however, is based on the assumption that the order in these passages is in fact the order in which these things must take place.  That assumption is not only unproved by the Baptists, but is false.

Mark 16:16 (Faith and Baptism)

This verse reads:

              

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

The fact that faith is mentioned before baptism is taken as proof that it must precede baptism.  Thus, too, Baptists speak of the rite as “believer’s baptism.”

The first thing that must be said here is that the Baptist position is an impossibility.  They can, at best, only baptize those who make a profession of faith.  Because no one can know the heart, there is no way of ensuring that all baptized persons are indeed believers.

      

The usual Baptist response is that they baptize far fewer unbelievers than do those who practice family baptism.  This, of course, is beyond proof, but the fact of the matter is that if a Baptist church baptizes even one hypocrite or unbeliever, they are no longer practicing “believer’s baptism.”

      

That, however, is not the main point.  The words of Jesus in Mark 16:16 also need to be explained, especially as they are the command and warrant for the New Testament church to be baptizing.  There are several things that need to be said about this passage.

      

First, the passage does not say (though every Baptist reads it that way), “He that believeth and then is baptized shall be saved.”  It only says that both faith and baptism are necessary for salvation.

      

Second, just because faith and baptism are listed in that order does not mean that they must necessarily happen in that order.  II Peter 1:10 lists “calling” before “election,” but calling does not come before election, as every Calvinist knows:

Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall.

The order in Mark 16:16 is simply the order of importance.  Faith is listed before baptism because it is far more important.  We see this in the last part of the verse where baptism is not even mentioned again, though faith is.

      

Indeed, if the order in Mark 16:16 is the temporal order, i.e., the order in which things must actually take place, then the order is faith, baptism, salvation: “He that believeth, and is baptized shall be saved”!  No Baptists, certainly not those who are Calvinists, want that order!  Yet if the order of the passage is the temporal order, then the verse not only puts faith before baptism, but baptism before salvation, and teaches the error of baptismal regeneration.  The Baptist, however, wants arbitrarily to change the rules for interpreting the passage in the middle of the verse.  He wants the relation between faith and baptism to be temporal, but not that between baptism and salvation!

      

Not only that, but there are passages in the New Testament that suggest that at least in some cases faith did not precede baptism.  Acts 19:4 speaks of John’s baptism and says that he told the people when he baptized them, “that they should believe on him who should come after him.”  He did not baptize them because they had already believed on Christ, but with a view to their believing in Christ.  Indeed Mark 1:4 suggests that John baptized before he even preached!

      

Perhaps a Baptist would argue that John’s baptism was prior to Christ’s ministry and therefore, faith in Christ could not and did not precede baptism then, but only repentance.  But this leaves a Baptist with only several options:

      

1. To admit that faith did not always precede John’s baptism, that it was really the same as the Old Testament baptisms and, therefore, of no significance with respect to the New Testament sacrament.  In that case, John’s baptism cannot be used by a Baptist to prove anything at all about the New Testament sacrament—not immersion, not the necessity of faith and/or repentance prior to baptism.  This, however, would ignore the fact that half of the references to baptism in the New Testament are to John’s baptism.[2]  The only other option, though, is:

      

2. To continue to use John’s baptism as an example of New Testament baptism and to concede that faith at least need not necessarily precede water baptism.  This, however, would be conceding that the foundation for Baptist teaching is in error, i.e., that baptism is not necessarily believer’s baptism.

Acts 2:38 (Repentance and Baptism).

Another argument for so-called believer’s baptism is the argument that not only faith, but also repentance, must precede baptism.  The principle text in support of this argument is Acts 2:38 which reads:

Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

To some extent, the argument based on this verse has been answered in the previous section, but there are some things that do need to be pointed out in connection with the verse.

      

Here, again, the Baptists simply assume, having already made the same assumption with Mark 16:16, that the order in the verse—repentance and baptism—is the temporal order in which these two ought always to take place.   This assumption is also unproved and false.

      

Even if repentance had to precede baptism in the case of those who were converted under Peter’s Pentecost preaching, that does not mean that repentance must always precede baptism.  Mark 1:4 and Acts 19:4 show that this is not so.

      

Let us look, first of all, at Mark 1:4, which says:

John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.

      

On the basis of Acts 2:38, the Baptists conclude that the baptism of repentance is a baptism which is preceded by repentance.

      

This is, however, by no means evident.  While the word “of” could mean “the baptism that has its source or basis in repentance” (and be suggesting that baptism ought to follow repentance), the word “of” might also mean, however, that baptism and repentance simply belong to one another, without saying anything about the order in which they occur.

      

We believe that the phrase says nothing about the order in which the two occur, but rather means that repentance and baptism always belong together—that baptism demands repentance (either prior to, or following, or both). 

      

What is interesting, however, is that other passages which do speak of an order between baptism and repentance teach that baptism is followed by repentance!  Matthew 3:11, a parallel passage to Mark 1:4, makes this clear.  There we read of a baptism “unto” (literally, “into”) repentance, where the word “unto” has the idea of “movement towards something.”  The idea, then, is that baptism is administered with a view to repentance following, or even as a kind of call to repentance.  Matthew 3:11 reads in full:

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.

In suggesting that baptism looks forward, and not back to repentance, Matthew 3:11 identifies an important difference between the Baptist and Reformed views of baptism.  The Baptist view is that baptism is a sign or mark of what we have done in repenting and believing.  The Reformed position is that baptism is sign or mark of what God has done in regenerating us.  It does not mark our response to grace, but the work of grace itself and calls us to respond to that work.

       

Baptism, in the very nature of the rite, is a picture of the washing away of sins by the blood of Jesus.  This is what God does in saving us, and He does it first.  He does it when we are yet incapable of responding to His gracious work.  Repentance follows.

       

If we understand this, then infant baptism will not seem something strange, but fitting.  After all, there is not one of us saved—as an adult or as an infant—that does not enter the kingdom of heaven as an infant, that is, by a work of pure grace that precedes all activity and response on our part.  That work of grace is what infant baptism marks and commemorates.

      

Acts 19:4 gives further confirmation of what we have said.  Paul refers to the baptism of John and says that John told the people while he was baptizing them that they should believe on Christ who would come:

Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus.

He did not demand faith before baptizing them, but called them to faith while baptizing them.  In that light it is difficult to see that how the baptism of repentance, as John’s baptism is called, could be a baptism in which repentance, but not faith, had to precede the baptism.

      

Furthermore, the fact that repentance does precede baptism in some cases does not prove that it did in all.  We will have more to say about this in the next section.

Matthew 28:19 (Discipleship and Baptism)

The passage under discussion records the great commission.  It reads:

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

              

There is here one paedobaptist argument that is never addressed by the Baptists—the fact that this commission concerns nations (which always include infants), not individuals.  Indeed, nothing is said about individuals.

      

What is more, Matthew 28:19, is the obvious fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy in chapter 52:15: “So shall he sprinkle many nations.”  You may argue that Isaiah refers to the “reality” of baptism, and not the sign; that is true, but even then the reality is a “sprinkling” and is a sprinkling of the “nations”—and, as we have seen in Part I, chapter 12, the reality of the sign should mirror the thing signified.  Not only that, but when these nations are saved, they are described in the book of Isaiah as bringing with them their sons and daughters, and as being gathered in with their children, even nursing children (e.g., 49:22; 60:4).  Indeed, it is impossible to disciple and baptize nations without also discipling and baptizing the children who belong to that nation.

      

The argument that this passage speaks of “nations” would be of no weight, however, if the passages established a temporal order between teaching and baptism or faith and baptism.  The reference to nations would not affect a command that required first teaching, then faith, then baptism.  But there is no temporal order established in the passage.

       

The Baptist argument, therefore, is that these passages do establish a temporal order—first discipling (teaching) then baptizing.  The passage, however, establishes no temporal order at all.

      

Consider:

      

1. The word “then” is not found in the verse, though the Baptists explicitly or implicitly read it in there.  If the passage used the word “then” there would be no question that the Baptists are correct, but the word is not there, though every Baptist automatically reads it into the verse.

      

2. Not every list of things in Scripture lists things in their temporal order (cf. II Pet. 1:10, a very good example—“calling” does not precede “election” either temporally or logically, but the order there is the order of experience).  There are many different ways one can list things as well, and it is not uncommon to list them in order of importance, as we believe the Word of God does here (cf. Rev. 7:5, for example, where Judah is listed first because it is first in importance).

      

3. We have already seen that, in the case of John’s baptism, faith in Christ did not precede baptism but followed it, so that unless the baptism of John is not a New Testament baptism, the passage cannot be establishing a necessary and inviolable temporal order.

       

4. With respect to Matthew 28:19, it is very clear from the grammar that there is no temporal sequence in the verse.  The two things—teaching and baptism—take place concurrently.  “Baptizing” is a present participle which always denotes contemporaneous time.  In other words, Matthew 28:19 literally says: “teach all nations, while baptizing them,” or, “... when baptizing them”—the two events taking place side-by-side, not one after the other.  If Jesus had wanted to indicate a temporal order here, He would either have had to use the temporal adverb “then” or an aorist participle and a different order.  This follows from the fact that the passage is talking about nations, not individuals.

      

In the case of new disciples who are converted under missionary preaching, we have no quarrel with the fact that disciples are first made and then baptized.  That is the only way things can be done in their case.  That, however, proves nothing about the children or families of disciples. The Baptist argument from passages such as this runs something like this:

      

(1) Adults who are baptized must first be discipled.

(2) Infants are not adults (and cannot be discipled).

(3) Therefore, infants should not be baptized.

      

Apart from the fact that it is not true that infants cannot be discipled and taught, this argument is fallacious.  Those who have difficulty seeing the fallacy of this argument should think about the similar argument:

      

(1) Adults who are punished should first be found responsible for wrong-doing.

(2) Infants are not adults.

(3) Therefore, infants should not be punished.

       

The argument assumes what needs to be proved—i.e., that because in some cases Scripture speaks of disciples being baptized, that therefore only disciples can be baptized.  To put it in other words, even if the passage is speaking principally of adult believers, it speaks only of them and not of children.  To say what must happen in the case of adults implies nothing about children.  To use a little different example, to prove that believing adults are saved does not prove that infants are lost—though they are incapable of conscious, clearly-professed faith.

      

What is more, disciples are followers and learners, something that does not exclude children but rather includes them.  The passage, therefore, does not teach what the Baptists want it to say: “Go, therefore, and convert people, and when they are able to give a credible profession of their own conversion, then baptize them,” but says rather: “Go to all nations and make disciples of these nations, while at the same time baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”  The passage says nothing about the order in which these events are to take place, it allows no assumptions about the subjects of baptism, and certainly does not forbid infant baptism.

[Next section: “Baptism and Regeneration”]

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FOOTNOTES:

1. Robert Martin, Emmanuel Reformed Baptist Church, SeaTac, Washington, series of 8 study tapes on baptism.

2. Matt. 3:1, 6-7, 13-14, 16; 21:25; Mark 1:4-5, 8-9; 11:30; Luke 3:3, 7, 12, 16, 21; 7:29; 20:4; John 1:25-26, 28, 31, 33; 3:23; 10:40; Acts 1:22; 10:37; 13:24; 18:25; 19:3-4.