Today’s reading: 1 Kings 5; Colossians 2
I'm not even going to try to dive into the whole discussion Dr. Michael Heiser goes into on the topic, but I found this podcast episode from The Naked Bible Podcast super helpful in thinking well about baptism: https://nakedbiblepodcast.com/podcast/naked-bible-231-colossians-211-12/
I don't know about other people, but I grew up in a church that taught baptism as a required part of salvation, which I would now say goes against the clear teaching of Scripture on salvation. After coming to faith in Christ and spending a lot of time studying the Bible, I still felt kind of fuzzy on what the point of the ritual of baptism really was. A lot of churches teach that is is merely a public declaration of your private faith, which doesn't impinge on teaching about salvation, but also doesn't fully seem to match with the weight baptism is given in certain New Testament passages. So for a long time I could say confidently that baptism was not required for salvation, but that it is a prescribed New Testament ritual, but that was about all I could comfortably say about it.
After listening to Heiser address the issue in this episode, as well as in the earlier podcast episodes he references in this episode, I personally feel much more settled on the function/role of baptism.
Thinking of baptism as the New Testament analog of circumcision, baptism is the mark of alignment with God's people and allegiance to Him. Baptism, like circumcision does not save you, but it does mark your membership in the people of God, among whom you are best situated to hear and respond to the truth.
With this understanding of baptism, I also feel much less concern with whether a given church favors infant baptism or waits to baptize someone until they have made a personal decision for Christ. Circumcision was performed on infants in Israel because they were part of God's people and would grow up in that community, exposed to His Word and worship, and so too, an infant in a Christian family should be growing up exposed to God's Word and worship, and be in the best place to respond to the gospel. On the flip side, when you come to faith in Christ, that is when you would truly be counted among the people of God, and so baptism at that point makes sense as well.
It's kind of interesting to me that I used to have much stronger opinions of the infant/adult baptism question when I had less clarity on how I should think about baptism, and now that I feel like I have more clarity, I don't really feel strongly at all about how it is practiced in that regard.
So not a very substantive post today, but that podcast episode is definitely worth a listen if it's a topic you're interested in understanding a little better.
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