Baptism is to be one of the first acts of obedience for a believer when they repent and come to Christ in faith (Acts 2:38; 8:35-38). But how should parents and elders respond to the testimony of young children who profess Christ? Is there a certain “age of maturity” kids should reach before being baptized?  

In this podcast Scott Brown and Jason Dohm, joined by special guest Jeffrey Johnson, tackle this thorny topic. Arguing against a minimum age, they emphasize that, prior to baptism, children should demonstrate a cognitive maturity and clear articulation of the gospel they profess, accompanied by tangible fruit of a real heart change. Acknowledging that children are impressionable, they counsel for careful evaluation of each child’s profession, while also encouraging baptism when the signs of conversion are clear. This is somewhat of a counterpoint of the podcast with Sam Waldron on the same subject.

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture, and we're here again to talk about baptism and what a sufficient scripture says about baptism, particularly the age of baptism and baptizing children. We're going to jump right into that, but just a second, I want to tell you about a couple things. We've got a really neat conference planned in October at the end of October, October 26 through 28, called Build, Dwell, Plant. This is actually a conference all about the family.

We launched what used to be called the National Center for Family Integrated Churches in this same room in St. Louis. We had several hundred men in this room when we launched what was called the NCFIC, now Church and family life. But Build, Dwell, Plant comes out of Jeremiah, a conference on cultivating family life. Married life, family industry, single life in the home, raising children, family money, happiness in the home.

We're going to just walk through the Word of God. Build, dwell, plant. I hope you can join us in St. Louis, Missouri. Also my book, The Family at Church, How Parents are Tour Guides for Joy, 20 Days to transform your local church life.

In October, we're going to kind of launch a campaign and encourage families and pastors particularly to take their churches through this book. It's 20 chapters. They're short to read each chapter, 12, 15 minutes on each chapter to read it. I'm hoping couples will read it and then apply it and help their children understand everything about how to engage local church life, preparation for the Lord's Day, engage the preaching, the singing, help your children just be immersed in the singing of the church, the fellowship of the church, all the things that local churches do, I'm here to help parents sweeten their local church life. I hope you can join us doing that, and maybe your pastor will buy a box or two of these books and take your whole church through it.

I do think there would be a Sweetening Effect. Well, Jason, we are here to talk about baptism of children again, and we have our friend Jeffrey Johnson from way out there in Arkansas, a pastor at Grace Bible Church and the head of a seminary, a really neat seminary growing, you ought to check that seminary out. And really appreciate what you're doing out there, Jeff. Thank you so much for joining us. No, I appreciate being on your program.

So, you know, we did a podcast back in January with Sam Waldron, just to talk through the whole matter of, you know, when is it appropriate to baptize children. Of course, we're not pedobaptists. We don't—we would never think of baptizing an infant. But infants grow up a little bit, and the Lord begins to work in their life, and when do you when do you baptize them? And of course Dr.

Waldron, you know, walked us through, you know, his, you know, evidences. There are no explicit examples of children being baptized in the book of Acts. You have men and women getting baptized in the book of Acts. Sam makes an argument from the age of maturity that children should have some level of independence of thinking so that they actually know what they're doing. So that's kind of a summary of some of his arguments.

But back in that podcast I was sharing, you know, that I've, you know, inflected toward baptizing children later as the years have passed as a pastor for, you know, mainly because there's so many sort of, I know it's not right to call them rebaptisms, and we haven't had a lot in our church, but we've had a few. We know where someone was baptized at eight or nine years old, and then we're baptizing them again at 18 or 20. Handful of examples of that in our experience, Jason. You know, because we've been in the same church, and then 13 years ago, we sent you out to plant a church, and we know all the same people. So that's we want to talk about that.

Well so Jeff we were in Virginia just this week talking about this and I was sharing kind of my conflict And you were kind of advocating a slightly different view from Sam. My understanding is almost all Reformed Baptist churches in America and in Europe don't baptize children either 18 or 16 or 12 years old. I mean, they have hard rules for doing that. We've never, none of us have had a sense that we should hang an age on it because people are different. So Jason, here we are again.

We're talking about it again. I'm looking forward to hear Jeff talk about his experiences. Yeah, go for it, Jeff. What are your thoughts? Well, first, I don't want to easily disagree with Dr.

Sam Waldron. He's one of my heroes. Exactly. So he's somebody that I highly respect. Amen.

And I really find myself in almost agreement with everything he says. In fact, I feel like I'm a kindred spirit with Dr. Waldron, as far as his spirit and his theology and commitment to scriptures and as a confessional Reformed Baptist, We're a whole to the same confession. But kind of that same spirit that I love, that is a warm Calvinistic spirit, which that's just something I appreciate about Sam. And, and so in preparing myself for this podcast, I went and listened to the podcast you had with him and, and appreciated his thoughts.

And I think we're all kind of having to figure out here we have children and it's not always easy to discern with small children if they really know the Lord or not. I think if we could all be convinced, if Sam could be convinced, if we all could be convinced that a nine-year-old, ten-year-old, seven-year-old, twelve-year-old, fourteen-year-old is soundly converted and we were convinced of that, I think it would be an easy baptism would be so much easier. Very true. But the difficulty on a personal practical level is children are impressionable and often they can easily be led in either through their parents or through their own desires to be saved, to have it easy. Oh yeah, I'm a Christian now.

And because they grew up with family worship and going through the catechism, they can recite all the right answers. And at an early age, it's because they haven't had a lifetime of sin. Oh, well, they have had a lifetime of sin, but it's not so evident conversion experience from a radical drunkenness or debauchery being delivered out of such rank, idolatry and sin and a transformation of their life. That's so easy to see. This can be discerning.

It is hard to discern change life young, young person. So that makes it difficult. I think that's why this is something we're talking about. And every pastor that I know and I've had my struggles with a parent come up, say, we have baptized my 70 year old and, you know, you're left like, how well do I know these parents? And how well do I know the 70 year old?

And we could do an interview. But how well am I really going to be able to discern a true work of God in a 30-minute hour interview with a child, especially if that child knows the words to repeat, if you would. Because I think we'd all would want to hear a clear gospel presentation from a child. Do you know God? And why do you know God?

And how do you know God? How are you saved? So that makes this difficult. So how do you work through, where do you go in the Bible that's really our only rule of faith? Yeah, well I have my Bible here and I was just looking at it in Acts two, we have Peter preaching on the day of Pentecost, He preaches this amazing sermon filled with the Holy Spirit.

And there's this amazing conviction that comes across, comes upon those who are listening. And the Bible says they were cut to the heart. And They asked Peter, well, what can we do to be saved? Is there any hope for us? You know, here we're guilty of the blood of Jesus.

We're in trouble. Can we be saved at all? What must we do to be saved? And Peter responded in Acts 2 38. He said, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. So here's the basic instruction of salvation, is that you have to repent and you have to be baptized. Obviously, we are not. We take that verse in the context of the analogy of scriptures with all the rest of scriptures. And so we don't take that verse to conclude that baptism regenerates.

We don't believe in baptism regeneration. We as Baptists believe there's regeneration that precedes baptism. Repentance is listed before the baptism. But I think sometimes we at least can separate baptism so far from the repentance that we forget that baptism is a part of the repentance. I think scriptures, in my understanding of scriptures, that were not regenerated or saved by the means or the merit of baptism.

Baptism doesn't do anything in cleansing. Original sin or actual sins does not bring forth forgiveness. But there is a vital role of repentance. And Paul put it this way in Romans that You must believe in your heart. And that internal belief has to be confessed with the mouth.

And that confession is vital. Jesus says, if you deny me before man, I will deny you before my Heavenly Father. So you can't be a closet Christian. You can't be a shame Christian. You have to be a Christian that confesses Christ to be a Christian.

And so it seemed like, in my understanding, that baptism is a public profession or confession for the world. And we identify it as one of the first acts of obedience. And so it's so connected to that original process of repentance. I'm turning from my identity with the world and sin, and I'm going to identify myself with Christ. I repent from my old life, and I'm expressing that through baptism.

I am willing to identify myself and take the clothes and the identity with Christ. And that needs to be publicly demonstrated and confessed before the church and before the world. To the point that I think Peter says that baptism, water baptism actually answers to a good conscience, a clean conscience. I think there's something inside of a newborn Christian that wants to, I want the badge, I want the clothes, I want to be a Christian, I want to identify with Christ. And something about his conscience is not quite right until he's able to be baptized.

And baptism is somewhat of a seal or sign of that confession. And so I don't think we need to, you know, I don't, I don't think it's a good thing to have a yearly baptism service and hold people off once they are truly repentant. And I don't, you know, I don't believe in open baptisms where it's like, hey, can we get a baptism service? If you want to be baptized, there's no interview process, there's no evaluation, there's not seeing if there's fruits of repentance. Elders have to evaluate that before we dunk people.

But it seems like when Stephen is evangelizing the Ethiopian eunuch, He comes to the knowledge that Jesus is the Messiah. And he's like, what keeps me and what prevents me from being baptized? It's like, yeah, I want to be a Christian. I want to repent. I want to identify.

And that baptism part is like the first step of obedience, is part of that confession. And so to separate baptism months or years away from that repentance seems foreign to the scriptures. In Acts chapter 8, the baptism of the Ethiopian unit, the dwell time between repentance unto life and baptism is minutes, not hours, days, weeks, months. That's right. Right, right.

Let me just read that. And The eunuch said, see, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized? Then Philip said, if you believe with all your heart, you may. So there are two things I think to draw out of that.

One is there need not be any time at all between repentance unto life and baptism. There's not here, and this is kind of New Testament pattern for us. But the second thing is Philip wants to ensure as best as he can in the moment that there is belief with all the heart. In other words, the claims of the Gospel are radical claims. This is not just intellectual assent to a few propositions.

You need to believe with all your heart in the Lord Jesus Christ." So that's really the difficulty with children. We don't want to – ideally, there's little time, no time between repentance unto life and baptism, but at the same time, there needs to be this check. Do you understand the radical claims of the Gospel? Do you believe with all your heart, and that said, this is the challenge that we're grappling with? And here's the good news for me today.

My wife called me an hour ago. I have a seven-year-old daughter. We do family worship. She had been asking about salvation for a good while now. And of course, we encourage that.

Well, Leitha, my wife, called me and says, I just got to tell you this. Evelyn is my daughter's name. Evelyn, come up to me, unprompted, and says, I think I've been saved. She goes, why? Why do you think that?

She goes, I went and prayed. I went to my room and I prayed, asked the Lord to forgive me of my sins, and he forgave me. And so my wife's excited about that. And of course, my daughter's seven years old. And, you know, I'm not, my wife or I, we don't want to rush her to the baptism of waters tomorrow or next Sunday.

We, we, we have our concerns in the sense that I'm going to talk to her tonight and things. And, but I understand that, that she's been wanting to be saved. It could be just a superficial desire. She knows that Jesus is the way of forgiveness. She goes and prays.

It could legitimately be her conversion today. It literally could be just a young girl doing what young girls do. You know, I don't know. And but it's encouraging to me that phone call was encouraging. It's not that I'm certain that my little girl has been saved today.

It's not that I want to baptize her quickly. It's like what you're saying. I think we want to know, for an older person, do you believe with all your heart it's easier, especially a youth, the open unit that's turning from idols to serve the living God. There's a it's an easier evaluation that could take minutes. No kids, I think you would want to have a greater evaluation time.

I know that's least from my sake and from my daughter's sake, I want to have that evaluation time. So I guess I'm just making that point, and it's not hypothetical. It's something that's— Right. And one of the dynamics is the last thing in the world you would want to do as a father or a pastor is to throw a wet blanket on this. That's right.

Yeah. You want her to hope in Jesus. And so – Yeah. I don't want to say you're not saved. You're too young to be saved.

You're too young to be saved. Wait a couple of years and come back to me then is the last message you want to convey. It's interesting, in Acts 8 with Ethiopian eunuch, he's baptized immediately. But earlier on in the chapter, it's Simon the sorcerer, and he gets baptized, apparently, right away. Yeah.

And I, you know, it's funny, I was with a young man this morning, and he was asking me, do you think pastors, you know, are culpable, you know, when they, when they baptize unbelievers? And I said, well, there is a weight that pastors have to try to make sure that we're not baptizing profligate unbelievers who haven't turned from their sins. But the reality is, I'm sure it's true of Jason and I, we've baptized people who've turned away from the Lord. Yeah. I think that's going to happen.

The Bible tells us that the wheat and the tare will grow together. And when they're young, when the wheat and the tares poke up out of the ground, you can't tell the difference. And sometimes you have to wait until the day of judgment to determine that. And I don't think ministers are going to be held accountable for not being able to see into the heart to be able to determine. In fact, the exhortation for us is to be careful to make too much of an evaluation unless we pull out the wheat and keep the tares, because it's easy.

And I believe this too, this is kind of crazy, but I think sometimes unbelievers externally can act better than believers. As a whole, Christians live godly lives, Unbelievers live ungodly lives, and that's true. But there are some pretty, relatively speaking, moral unbelievers. And then there are some Christians that have struggled with some pretty dark things, and have fallen into some dark things, but they're saved by grace and they're progressive. They're going into sanctification.

So we've got to be careful in our evaluation of the heart. And so I think we will baptize unbelievers, But the key is we don't baptize unbelievers knowingly. It's not like we purposefully want to baptize someone that we don't believe is a Christian. We want to do our due diligence and the best that we can discern baptize true believers. As John the Baptist says, I'm not going to baptize you Pharisees, you come back with fruits, works, meat that correspond to your repentance.

I want to see it. And I think that's true of all godly ministers. We want to be careful that we don't knowingly baptize unbelievers. But if we happen to baptize unbelievers after doing our due diligence, I don't think we're culpable or accountable for that, as long as we do church discipline when the time comes. Right.

Jeff, how do you deal with this proposition that Sam was bringing to us about the age of maturity? Do you have a sort of a threshold where you're very reluctant to baptize an age threshold, like is it five, six, seven, eight? Yeah, I mean, obviously we all have some type of age. I was going to say, no, not an age issue. I mean, one year old, two year old, three year old, obviously going to be some type of age, but it's more of a cognitive, I wouldn't say a manhood maturity, but some type of cognitive maturity and articulation of the gospel.

And is there some form of life proof of evidence, some type of work, some type of fruit to be evaluated? And I think that can be done. And youth, I don't think only adults have the fruits of the spirit, I don't think. Only adults understand the gospel. So I think that would be arbitrary to say, hey, you have to be 18.

I don't see that in scriptures. I would see that as a man made out of good motivation, a man made regulation. I wanna go, okay, what does scripture say? And let me read the rest of this passage in Acts. Peter said, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

And you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise, this is the gospel, this is to everybody, is to you and your adult children. It says to you and to your children. At the age of accountability. Yeah.

And obviously the Presbyterians use this as a means for baptizing their infants. But this is talking about those who repent. This is repent and baptize. It doesn't say baptize without repentance. But this promises to those who repent and are baptized, you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And that's not just to you adults, it's to your children as well. And as to many who are called from afar off. And so I hear, I think we have a mandate to preach the gospel to children. The gospel is to children. In fact, in some sense, we must all become like children, as Jesus says.

He says, do not prevent the children from coming to me, for the kingdom of God is made of such a these. And then he said, in one sense, children have an easier time of believing than adults. So we're almost become like children. It's a childlike faith. It's a simple thing.

Faith is. And so I think we complicate faith sometimes. And even in our explanation to our children, it makes faith so complicated to them that they begin to go, I don't know what you mean by belief. This promise of the gospel is not just for adults, it's for children. And I think that is saying, repent and be baptized and you'll be received.

So I think there is a command in scriptures to baptize children. So Jeff and Scott, you're familiar with this phrase, first world problems. I think this actually applies here. What do I mean by that? Okay, what does a baptism at our church look like?

Well, the person is baptized, they come out of the water. What happens when they come out of the water? We clap and cheer. Then the guitar plays and we all sing, and then we pray for blessing. Some people have actually even sort of thrown a reception afterwards.

I'm for all these things. I'm not against any of those things. But if you look across all the times and places of human history, that's not the normal pattern for baptism. Often in different times and places in history when you're baptized, the implication of it is your closest relationships have evaporated and are gone forever. Maybe your family disowns you.

So one of the things we say to our younger people who want to be baptized when we're talking to them before we even get to a baptism interview is, hey, understand this dynamic. The baptisms that we have, we love them, but they're not normal baptisms, just looking at what's normal across human history, and for this reason. And we don't want you to come back and ask for a baptism interview unless, if push came to shove, you would be willing to part with your dearest relationships. Because Jesus said, you can't be my disciple unless you're willing to part with father, mother, spouse, children. So this is the radical claims of the Gospel.

If you're not interested in the radical claims of the Gospel, we don't want the happiness of our baptisms to be a deterrent from you to understanding the radical claims of the gospel if you're not interested in the radical claims of the gospel come back later you know amen yeah yeah a lot of in Islamic countries if they'll it's okay if you accept Jesus You can add Jesus to your equation, but if you get baptized, once you're baptized, that's when the family alienation takes place. That's when you're an actual- It's the line of demarcation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I think in scriptures, that's the tone of scriptures too.

It's not just a cultural issue of some countries around the world. I think that was the first century pattern that being baptized, you're identifying with Christ and all the blessings that come with that, but all the negatives that come with that as well. Amen. Well, I'm delighted to say there's a little revival going on in our church among children. And they all heard the gospel through the preaching.

They come up to us after the preaching and they say, the Lord saved my soul. I want to follow Jesus. And so I'm more comfortable baptizing some of those younger people right now as a result of that. Yeah, I think what we should do, I mean, I still think there's, For me, there's still a more cautious reservation with children. It takes a little more patience, just an evaluation.

For a pastor, I rely heavily upon the parents' testimony of their life's changes. Testimony of their life changes. But I think we ought to remind all who are baptized, if it's a 12-year-old or 22-year-old or 82-year-old, that yes, you're beginning your journey, but there is this real reality of persevering in the faith and the preservation of the saints. God keeps his own, But it's not that you put your date of your salvation in your Bible. And when you're 20 years from now, when you're living in sin, you just look back at that date, take comfort that you're saved regardless how you're living.

Right. That assurance of salvation requires present faith, present faith and perseverance. And we tell that, we should remind you keep, this is, You don't just identify with Christ at the beginning and forsake your mother, your father, your personal relations and say, I have none else follows me, I go alone with Christ. But that's a lifelong process. And to remind the kids, and remind everybody, keep believing.

Right. Amen. Jeff, thank you so much for helping us out with this difficult matter. We really, really appreciate it. And hey, so check out Grace Bible Theological Seminary out in Conway, Arkansas.

Check out Free Grace Press, a lot of really neat books that Jeff and his team are publishing out there. And what's so remarkable about this ordinance of baptism is its beauty. It so graphically communicates the beauty of the gospel of death to sin, cleansing and being raised up to new life. This is the kindness of God. I praise the Lord for this ordinance.

It's a wonderful ordinance. So thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Hope to see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up.

Hope you can join us. Go to churchandfamilylife.com. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.