What Is It Called to Be Baptized Again
What should I do if I become convinced that I might take been born again later on my baptism? That can be a tricky question (for baptists, at to the lowest degree). There are a lot of people who stop up being baptized two, iii or four times. The Gospel Coalition recently shared ii answers to the question, ane from a credobaptist (a person who holds that baptism should follow conversion) and i from a paedobaptist (who holds that infants should be baptized). Recently I read J.D. Greear's book Terminate Asking Jesus Into Your Heart (my review) and found his answer to the question very helpful. B&H, the publisher, was kind enough to allow me to share information technology with yous.
What do you do virtually baptism if you recall that yous might have been "born again" later your kickoff 1?
There are several answers to this question, depending on your particular state of affairs. If your baptism occurred as an infant, I think the answer is clear: yous should be baptized once more. Your babe baptism was more a symbol of your parents' organized religion (and thank God for their faith!) than yours. Every baptism we run into in the New Testament, notwithstanding, was a believer confessing his or her own faith. So be baptized "once again," fulfilling the promise your parents had when they baptized you as an infant. Don't fear that y'all are dishonoring them. What amend manner to honor the hopes they expressed in your baptism than to cull for yourself to follow Jesus?
But what if you were baptized after an initial conversion experience but at present suspect that your actual "regeneration" occurred later on? Should you become re-baptized? In that location's no hard and fast answer, but here'south what I'd suggest: if you know clearly that you were not saved at the point when y'all were baptized (i.e., y'all were pressured into baptism past your parents or friends, had no real grasp on salvation, had some ulterior motive, etc.), then be baptized again.
Withal, if your baptism depicted the beginning of a journey of faith, a journey marked past numerous "awakenings" and defining moments, permit it stand up, even if you wonder that perchance your "regeneration" happened later.
Baptism is postconversion because information technology symbolizes a public selection to follow Jesus. Thus, to knowingly baptize people who aren't saved notwithstanding would pervert and undermine the symbol and its role in the church. Only getting the technical order wrong in your own experience is non a perversion of the symbol, information technology'due south merely a timing mistake—and a minor one, at that.
Baptism is not similar the number sequence on a combination lock that if y'all get out of order will not open up. So don't captivate about making sure it happened subsequently your regeneration. If you were baptized after making a sincere, conscious confession of faith, accept that and motion on, fifty-fifty if you sometimes suspect that your regeneration may take happened afterwards. Every bit Christians we continually have new experiences of grace that make us feel similar everything we take experienced up to that point was only dimness.
C. S. Lewis describes a day in 1951 (afterward writing The Four Loves and giving the talks that became Mere Christianity) where he passed from "mere intellectual credence of, to realization of, the doctrine that our sins are forgiven." He did non think of this equally his conversion, but he did say that in light of it "what I had previously called 'belief' looked absolutely unreal."After writing i of the all-time classics of the Christian faith. When that happens to you, I would encourage you lot not to meet information technology equally conversion, merely equally a progressive deepening of your relationship with Jesus. God is continuing to mature you in Christ, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. Don't go re-baptized.
If you are walking with Jesus now, see your initial confession of Jesus as Lord as the offset evidence that God had planted the seed of life in you, even if what you understood then is hardly comparable to what you see now. The validity of our organized religion is revealed not by the intensity of our beginning reaction to it, but by our perseverance in it. So, if you are walking with Jesus today, the starting time sprouts of organized religion that led to your baptism were likely real ones. Let your first baptism stand.
The writer of Hebrews calls baptism an "unproblematic" thing that we should build from, not work up to (Heb. 6:1–3). And then, unless you know you were either completely ignorant or willfully hypocritical at the fourth dimension of your baptism, get busy with the meatier things of Christianity (i.e., serving Jesus and pouring yourself out for Him)! Move on.
And, if maybe you lot get to heaven and find out that you were regenerated subsequent to your baptism, it'southward non like yous're going to be demoted to a lesser, "out-of-order-baptism" department in heaven. Baptism is indeed a very of import symbol of the faith, a moment in which we place with Jesus and declare our organized religion in His finished work to the earth. Just don't make it more than that.
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The comment section is open for your feedback. I'd appreciate it if my paedobaptist friends would refrain from defending their view of baptism hither; that is a discussion for some other fourth dimension and place. And don't get too bothered over the give-and-take "re-baptism" either; we acknowledge that from God'due south perspective each of u.s.a. is baptized only once, but, every bit we acknowledge as well in fifty-fifty having to inquire this question, some Christians wonder whether they were baptized before or later on they were saved.
Source: https://www.challies.com/quotes/should-i-get-re-baptized/