From “How to become a Christian”: Chapter 8 – More bad news – Judgment, Hell and the Lake of Fire in closer detail
Should babies be baptised? The answer is no, because baptism is something that each believer must choose to do when they have repented and believed in Jesus for themselves. Baptism is not something that we can do to, or for, our infant children. They must choose for themselves later, when old enough. Our task is to bring them up to know and fear the Lord and to encourage them to believe and be baptised. But they must, in the end, do it for themselves.
That said, they can make that decision while still children, even if they are quite young. All that is required is that they know and understand the gospel and are genuinely able to realise what they are doing. The age at which they become ready for that varies from child to child.
What we can say clearly is that the Bible does not support “infant baptism”. That is where people baptise their children while they are young babies. That practice is an invention of men, brought into the church after the first century. It is not biblical. Ironically, one generally sees nominal Christians baptising their babies, whereas Bible believing Christians do not. That apparent contradiction confuses some people, but the thinking behind it is as I have set out above. (See Step 3 – Baptism in Water – chapter 16 for more detail on baptism in water).
