Acts 16:31—“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house …”

Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, and brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?  And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.  And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house.  And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway.  And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house (Acts 16:29-34).

BAPTIST ARGUMENT:

“How does this text imply infant baptism?”

(I)

Rev. Ronald Hanko

(a)

[Source: Sprinkling, Infant Baptism and the Bible]

The relation between baptism and the promise of God is of critical importance.  Not only, as we shall see, does the Baptist fail to take the promise of God regarding His covenant seriously, but the Baptist does not even see that baptism marks and seals that promise.  Watson, whose book we have already quoted, explicitly rejects the idea that baptism is “the sign of an objective promise, and has no reference to the character and condition of the person baptized,”[Watson, Baptism not for Infants, p. 80] and therefore also the idea that baptism is a seal of anything.[Ibid., p. 82]

Not only do paedobaptists see baptism as a seal of God’s objective promise, but object strenuously to the Baptist idea that baptism somehow marks the spiritual condition of the person baptized.  Where in Scripture is the support for the idea that baptism somehow shows the spiritual character of the person baptized?  Indeed, no Baptist can consistently maintain that baptism marks the spiritual condition of the person baptized unless he is willing to say that every baptized person is saved.  Even he knows better.  He will say he baptizes fewer unsaved persons, but that is to concede the whole point, even if what he says is true (it is, of course, unprovable).  Admitting that they baptize even one unsaved person, is the same as admitting that baptism does not mark, sign, seal, or embody the spiritual condition of the person baptized.  It cannot.  It can only mark, sign, seal, embody something objective—the sure and unchangeable promise of God.

Watson closes his case for believer’s baptism by saying, “Not that any church of professing believers will be entirely free from occasions of stumbling, alas.  But it will be much purer than the corresponding paedobaptist church, and will thereby bring more glory to the name of the Saviour.”[Ibid., p. 101]  Somehow, the Baptist case always seems to come down to this utterly unprovable assumption.  Yet even if it were proved, it only shows that the Baptist does not believe his own objections to paedobaptism.  He says that paedobaptism is wrong because individuals who do not have faith are baptized and then admits that he has the same problem while trying to cover himself by saying that he has “less” of a problem.

Insofar as baptism marks the objective promise of God, it is exactly like circumcision, which is called a seal of the righteousness which is by faith, in Romans 4:11:

And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also.

It is true, of course, that circumcision did not guarantee that the person circumcised was justified in the sight of God, but neither does baptism.  Circumcision guaranteed the objective promise of God to justify His people.  It sealed that promise only to the elect, but to them it was sure; and insofar as it was applied to their children, it also guaranteed the rest of God’s promise that He would have His elect and justified people among their children.

We say, then, that baptism seals something to those baptized—though only to the elect; that is, the sure promise of God to be the God of His people and of their children.  We add, however, that it is also a seal to the whole church of that promise of God to the elect and their elect children—a kind of visible gospel promise; but with this, we will deal in more detail in chapter 17.

What has been said about God’s promise leads us to two passages from His Word:

[…]

Acts 16:29-34

Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, and brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?  And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.  And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house.  And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway.  And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house.

… Paul promised the salvation of the jailer’s house, without even knowing who was in the house, when the jailer himself inquired concerning salvation.  Paul did that knowing the sovereignty of God in salvation and the certainty of God’s promise to save the households of those who believe.

No Baptist we have spoken to is able to understand this as a promise.  The Baptists always want to make this just a pious wish on Paul’s part, or simply a statement that if others in the man’s house believed, then they too would be saved.  But the verse does not say that.  It says as emphatically as possible: “You believe, and you and your house will be saved!”

That promise, Scripture teaches, belongs both in the Old Testament and in the New to all God’s people.  It was on that basis that Old Testament people of God circumcised their children, and it is on the basis of that promise that New Testament believers baptize theirs.

 (b)

[Source: Sprinkling, Infant Baptism and the Bible]

[This] is another passage that shows that God’s sure and immutable promise is the real basis, first for assurance of the salvation of the children of believers (though not all of them), and then also for infant baptism as a seal of that salvation.

      

Note please that Acts 16:31 neither says nor implies: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, and thy house, if they believe.”  Not only that, but any Baptist who insists that the order in such verses as these is always temporal, ought to be troubled by the fact that here the baptism of the jailor’s household precedes any mention of their faith.

      

The two examples given in Romans 9 illustrate the unfailing character of God’s promises to save His people and their children and are examples where only one child in the family was saved.  Both in the family of Abraham and Sarah, and in the family of Isaac and Rebekah, there was only one, and these are the examples Paul uses to prove that the promise and word of God are not without effect!

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(II)

More to come! (DV)