Baptizing them in the name.........

When my wife and I presented Lindsey before God and our home congregation the world was in love with our daughter. One hour later after she was baptized the world hated her. I announced these words before the dinner prayer. One of Tracey's Uncles approached me and couldn't believe I could "say such a cruel thing."

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. 

How gracious God is and how powerfully the Holy Spirit works through all his chosen instruments!

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