WWUTT 2465 Q&A Infant Baptism, Spanking in the Bible, Responding to John Mark Comer

Psalm 45 and the Messiah in Hebrews 1

Credo Baptists and Infant Baptizers obviously have some differences about baptism, but can we still fellowship with one another? Does the Bible actually advocate spanking? And what are the problems with the teacher John Mark Comer?

The answers to some of these questions and others when we Understand the Text.

This is When we Understand the Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of God. We thank you for listening and for telling others about our program. Let them know about our website, www .utt .com, where they can find all our videos, podcast episodes and more.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky.

You're welcome.

Reading from Psalm 45 to start off here. My heart overflows with a pleasing theme. I address my verses to the King. My tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe. You are the most handsome of the sons of men.

Grace is poured upon your lips. Therefore God has blessed you forever. Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one, in your splendor and majesty. In your majesty, ride out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness.

Let your right hand teach you awesome deeds. Your arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies. The people's fall under you. Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness.

You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore, God, your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. And that's a section of Psalm 45 you might recognize from Hebrews 1, knowing that it is talking about Jesus Christ, whose throne, O God, is forever and ever.

That is our Savior. I had asked Becky before we started recording to pick a number between one and 150. And so you picked 45.

Yes, because Monday, you turned 45.

I turned 45.

There we go.

I've been doing this podcast for 10 years. From 35 to 45.

That's quite an accomplishment.

Honestly. 34 to 44, technically. But yeah, it was right up next to my birthday when we started. So anyway, when she said 45, and I looked at this, and I was like, okay, so you think I am the most handsome among the sons of men and grace is poured upon my lips?

But of course.

Oh, yeah.

Well, thank you for listening to the program. This is the Friday edition, when we take questions from the listeners, and you can send those questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com, or you can go to www .utt .com and send us a voicemail, which you can record from your phone or your computer.

I rearranged the buttons on the site so that if you bring it up on your phone, it puts the voicemail button more like right in front of you. Because the way that it was on there, if you were looking at it from your phone, it was kind of hidden.

You had to click like the more button to see voicemail. So I put the links that people most often visit more to the left side, based on my stats. And then, yeah, if you really want to read about us and our statement of faith, that's now not the first thing on there, it's closer to the last thing.

Figure if you're listening to the program, you know who we are by now.

Or you have a rough idea.

Generally. Okay, well, before we get into our questions for today, I wanted to mention a few of the episodes of Hear the Word of the Lord, which is my daily Bible reading. Few of those got dropped. The reason why they got dropped is because we had a really terrible dust storm blow through.

We've been getting quite a few dust storms lately.

We have. It's been busy.

And it really triggered my allergies.

Yes.

And because I'm doing the Bible reading, not just for that podcast, but also for Bible apps who want to, they have said they want to use my voice reading those books of the Bible on their app. I need to be as consistent with it as possible.

Yeah.

So I didn't.

With your voice.

Yeah.

I didn't want to sound congested.

So.

It would be a little awkward to hear one clear voice and then like a congested.

And then the next day. Hear the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying.

Stuffy voice.

Yeah, right.

For the next verse.

And then sniffing every third verse or something.

And then clear again.

And then suddenly he's clear. So yeah, that's why a few of those episodes got dropped. I also moved everything around in this room. We have a different desk set up.

We do.

So this happened because of renovations we did at our church. We knocked out a wall to increase the seating.

Yes.

But increasing the seating meant reducing the size of my office.

Yes.

So this desk really doesn't fit in there anymore. I mean, it would.

It would be snug.

Yeah.

It just means that if they wanted to use my office for anything else, like a meeting or a Sunday school class or something.

Yeah.

It would be a lot more difficult to get everybody in there if this desk was in there. So I've decided to do something different with my desk. This one I brought home, which means I had to get the other one out.

And that one was falling apart anyway. We knew that if we ever moved that desk again.

It was done for.

It was done.

Yeah.

That desk was not. It was kind of like we managed to finagle it in a way that it would hold together.

And it was particle board. So there's no way of fixing it, you know, like it was just going to fall apart.

Once the particle board starts falling apart, that's right. So because I had the room change set up, that actually changed the acoustics and therefore I had to make adjustments. So there were several different factors that went into why a few of those episodes got.

Dropped.

Yeah.

But just letting you know, I still try to do that daily as much as I possibly can. Right now, as you're hearing this program, I'm in Georgia.

Yes.

God willing, my plane got there.

OK.

Right.

And I'm there for the White Harvest Conference, which is primarily on Saturday. So if you're listening to this on Friday, if you're in the Atlanta area, you can still make the conference tomorrow, Saturday and go.

Northern Atlanta, right?

Yeah.

It's a little bit to the north of Atlanta. From the airport, I think it took an hour and a half or two hours to get there or something like that. Which the airport's on the southern end of Atlanta.

Yeah, it is.

So look up White Harvest, M-I-N dot com, White Harvest Ministry. So White Harvest, M-I-N dot com. And that will tell you all the details you need to know about the White Harvest Conference. Scott Klusendorf is speaking there, Jimmy Hicks from Wretched Radio, myself, Jim Osmond, Justin Peters, the three of us, rumor has it are going to take over Wretched Radio in Todd Friel's absence.

So if you're a regular listener to Wretched sometime in the near future, it'll be me and Justin and Jim that are going to be talking about various topics.

I'm curious how that's going to go.

I don't know if I'm supposed to be announcing that or not, but you could be stuck with me on three podcasts. Hear the word of the Lord when we understand the text in Wretched.

That's awesome.

Two W's.

Two W's and an H. Anyway, all right, let's get to some questions here. This first one is a voicemail that comes from John. Thank you for listening, John. And it has to do with something that I taught earlier this week out of Luke 18.

So here we go.

Hi, Pastor Gabe and Becky. This is John from New York. I wanted to leave a comment and also a question regarding a recent episode of your podcast. You're expositing Luke 18 verses 15 through 17, and you briefly talked about infant baptism and you had mentioned that you don't believe in that tradition.

I'm a former charismatic and I became a Lutheran about five years ago. One of the arguments that had prompted me to become a Lutheran was actually on the belief of infant baptism. I don't believe that the Bible says anything about the age of accountability.

I also believe that God is able to grant faith to an infant to believe. I believe that the account of John the Baptist leaping in Elizabeth's womb is an example of that. And those are the reasons that I believe in it.

And I wanted to ask for the denominations that do believe in infant baptism, are they in error? And also, just with all the different beliefs that there are regarding baptism in general, how do we know which belief is the correct one according to the Bible?

John, that was a great question.

Yeah, definitely.

And I appreciate you listening. And I want to say, I love all of my Peto Baptist brothers. I don't think that you're believing heresy or anything like that, whether you're Lutheran or Presbyterian or Anglican.

I don't know if I have any Methodist or Wesleyan listeners, but in case I have some from that denomination as well, I would kind of think that the reformed tradition side of things might sort of drive them away.

My dad grew up Lutheran. So, I do have sympathies toward that tradition. He loved Martin Luther. My dad did not really talk to me much about church history, but when he did, it was almost always Martin Luther.

Oh, interesting.

Something about the Protestant Reformation and Martin Luther. He really loved Luther, even though he himself is no longer Lutheran and he is not Peto Baptist.

Either.

So, and even on the reformed tradition side of things, he's not really there yet. Also, though he's become more accepting of it since his son is Reformed Baptist. But anyway, with regard to Peto Baptism, love my brothers, don't share the view.

Let me come back to Luke 18, verses 15 to 17. I'll read that again and then we'll go from here. Let's talk a little bit about Credo versus Peto Baptism. Now, they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them.

One of the things that I mentioned on Monday in teaching from this passage is that the reference to infants is unique to Luke. We find the same exchange in Matthew and in Mark, but it's only in Luke that Luke uses a word that could be translated babe or infant.

Okay.

So, they were bringing infants to him. The other two synoptic gospels, it's children. So, this is infants that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him saying, let the children come to me and do not hinder them.

For to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. One of the things that I mentioned about this passage is that this is one that has been used, I don't want to say against me, but kind of, yeah, in that sense.

This passage has been used.

To question you, maybe.

Right, exactly. To say, see, Jesus even said, don't hinder infants from coming to me. And so, they will use this as a proof text for infant baptism.

Okay.

But as I made the argument on Monday, you're still reading your tradition into that. I believe, just as John does, that even an infant can be a believer.

Absolutely. Oh, of course.

Yes. In our own statement of faith, it talks about how elect infants, though they may die in the womb, or though they may die in infancy, would still have entrance into the kingdom of God.

Amen.

As we read from Jesus in Matthew, and he's quoting from Psalm 8, out of the mouths of babes and infants you have ordained your praise. So, I certainly believe that is true with infants. But baptism, specifically, is a practice, an ordinance, as we call it, that is meant for professing believers.

And children, infants, do not profess belief on their own. It needs to be something that as they get older, they profess faith and, therefore, are baptized. And just because they did not receive baptism in their infancy doesn't change their status before God.

True.

Our condition before the Lord has not changed. Now, as a Lutheran, I know you believe a little bit different than that.

Oh, do they?

So, my understanding, and you can correct me on this if I don't have this exactly right, but Lutherans do believe in baptismal regeneration, or that new birth takes place in baptism.

Oh, okay.

There's something a little bit different with Lutherans and baptism that's not the same as what even Presbyterians or the Reformed, or especially us as Reformed Baptists believe concerning baptism. So, as I said, I do not share the infant baptism view.

We're going to stick with that. We'll talk about baptismal regeneration another time. Do I think that people who believe in infant baptism are in error? Yes, I do. I don't believe that means we're different in the family of God as brothers and sisters in the Lord.

You're still my brothers and sisters. Nothing about our differing views on baptism has disqualified us in the family of God. At least I believe that about you. I hope you'd extend the same courtesy to me.

But with regard to infant baptism, we don't find it explicitly mentioned in Scripture. Surely, you know the arguments about this from Baptists. I did do a pretty in-depth study of it about 10 years ago.

It would have been 2015 that I gave the most intense study to infant baptism versus credo baptism, and really came away, frankly, convinced from what the Scriptures say. There's nothing in the Bible that talks about infant baptism.

It's never mandated because it's not commanded. It can't be a sin if you don't do it. All of the examples that we have of baptism in the New Testament, especially in the book of Acts, are from people who profess faith and were baptized.

We don't have a single example of anyone being baptized as an infant. Even when you want to read households being baptized, the household of Stephanas or the household of the Philippian jailer or the household of Lydia.

If you see households being baptized and you're inferring from that, well, infants in those households were baptized. You're still reading that upon the text. There's nothing explicitly that says anything of the sort.

So in my own study of this and challenging myself in my own Baptist tradition, I came away even more cemented in my credo Baptist position than I was before. And Jeffrey Johnson has asked this particular question with regard to infant baptism.

Is Christ the federal head of your unconverted children? And if the answer to that question is no, then why are you baptizing them? If baptism is supposed to be a sign of one who has been buried with Christ and risen again to walk in newness of life and has as their federal head Christ and not Adam.

But if Adam is still your unconverted child's federal head, then why are they being baptized? Which is why baptism should be for those who profess faith, those who are children of Abraham who have faith, according to Galatians 3 7.

It is those who are faith who are the children of Abraham. And then later on, what is it? Verse 25. If you are Abraham's children, then you belong to Christ.

Well, I mean, if if they believe in the it's the rebirth, then that puts a whole different spin on things like like a different approach completely.

Right.

So, I mean, there would be more to dive into.

Yeah, there's a lot more to cover there, especially especially when we talk about the regeneration side of things. But consider this. I'm going to run down what we find in church history with regard to infant baptism and understand what I'm coming at here.

What I'm going to read here actually comes from a pedo Baptist. This is Steve Meister, who is a fellow reformed Baptist like myself. But he is summarizing a list of conclusions taken from Kenneth Stewart, who is a pedo Baptist, from his book In Search of Ancient Roots, pages 129 to 131.

Okay.

So you're kind of getting this third hand because it's not me having read Kenneth Stewart. It's reading Steve Meister who read Kenneth Stewart.

Sure.

But these summations, based on what we find in church history, come from somebody who is from the pedo Baptist tradition.

Okay.

So what can we conclude about the history of infant baptism and the early church? The biblical paradigm for baptism in the early church was Jesus' baptism, not the apostolic pattern in Acts. Jesus never commanded the baptism of infants and his blessing of children, like we have here in Luke 18 or in Mark 10, 13 to 16, was not used as a proof text for pedo baptism until the seventh or eighth centuries.

Oh, wow.

We don't have any commentary using those passages for pedo baptism until that far into church history.

Wow.

Household baptisms in Acts 16 and 1 Corinthians 1 do not bear the weight advocates of pedo baptism want them to. There can be no certainty as to the ages of any children included. There is no support for infant baptism in the Didache or the writings of the apostolic fathers.

In fact, if you were to follow the instructions in the Didache, I believe that you would come away with more of a credo Baptist understanding of baptism rather than pedo Baptist.

Okay.

Meister says no one before Cyprian in the third century connected the Old Testament practice of circumcising of infant males with the baptism of infants. Augustine later developed this idea. No major early Christian writer substantially addresses the baptism of children before Tertullian in the third century, and he was critical of the practice of pedo baptism.

So we know that it was going on then in the third century.

Right.

But Tertullian being the first early church father to write about it was critical of it. Meister says there is no biography in the early centuries indicating that any church father raised in a Christian family was baptized as an infant.

Infant baptism probably arose from infants suffering from life-threatening conditions conjoined with the belief that most Protestants would later come to reject that baptism was absolutely necessary for salvation.

Under normal circumstances, early Christian baptism followed extensive catechists and teaching, ensuring that the baptismal questions were answered by the candidates. Early Christian architecture indicates that until the fifth century, the normal sites for baptism were pools or baths supplied by moving water with baptism administered by immersion or pouring, which makes it highly unlikely that the regular tradition would.

Have been infants.

Pedo baptism.

Right.

Exactly.

So again, that list of conclusions summarized by Steve Meister was taken from Kenneth Stewart in his book, In Search of Ancient Roots. This was covered recently by Gavin Ortland in a video that he did entitled, How Did Infant Baptism Begin? A Story of Five Centuries of Church History.

And he is reading a book entitled Baptism in the Early Church by Everett Ferguson. So let me play you just a portion here in which he summarizes from church history where infant baptism came from and its roots are not apostolic in the sense that we don't find any conclusive evidence of the apostles or even the first or second century church practicing infant baptism.

Okay.

So where does it come from? And that's the question that Gavin answers right here. He kind of summarizes it in this portion of the video. Here we go.

If infant baptism doesn't go back to the apostles, how did it arise and spread like.

This?

Ferguson's argument is that we get a clue in tomb inscriptions from around this time, especially early third century, because we have a lot of these. And they suggest in many cases of infant or child baptism, that's an emergency procedure, kind of deathbed procedure.

So here's an example from the Catacomb of Priscilla. Florentius made this monument for his well-deserving son, Apronionus, who lived one year, nine months, and five days. Since he was dearly loved by his grandmother and she saw that he was going to die, she asked from the church that he might depart from the world a believer.

So that means being baptized. So the scenario is baby boy, almost two years old, sick and about to die. Grandmother requests baptism. There's lots of other examples from tombstones around this time, including with Christian.

Parents.

You find a lot of these examples that Ferguson is drawing attention to. Here's another one. Quote, her parents set this up for Julia Florentina, their dearest and most innocent infant, who was made a believer.

She was born a pagan on this day. I'm not going to give all the details here, skipping ahead. She lived 18 months and 22 days and was made a believer in the eighth hour of the night, almost drawing her last breath.

She survived four more hours. So this is obviously different from many. This reflects a theology that's different from many contemporary views, both Creto-Baptist and Paito-Baptist, that don't conceive of baptism as making someone a believer.

But it also is a challenge to infant baptism, because obviously a child who's getting baptized when they're 18 months old didn't get baptized right when they were born. And there's so many inscriptions like this.

Ferguson says, the inscriptions I propose are the key to understanding the origin of infant baptism. When we recall the high infant mortality rate of the ancient world, it is easy to understand how an emergency practice eventually became a normal practice.

Now, this strikes me as a plausible theory, though we can't nail it down with certainty. I mean, I think we have to be honest. When we get to historical data, we just have to make our case, but acknowledge the limitations.

And the historical evidence is not absolutely conclusive for different views on this.

So there you go.

Yeah.

I mean, you can find evidence from it in Scripture. And historically, we don't even see infant baptism becoming a regular practice until a couple of centuries into the church. And so for that reason, I am not pedo-Baptist.

I am firmly credo-Baptist and won't ever change, frankly. And you may feel the same way about your own pedo-Baptist leanings. Where do we land on this again as brothers and sisters in the Lord? I think you're in error in your practice of infant baptism, but that is no reason for us to not fellowship with one another.

I think it's a significant disagreement. Let me put it that way as well. So this isn't just kind of a... It's not the same as having differing views of the end times.

Okay.

Because you can still have a different view of the end times and worship in the same body of believers, the same congregation.

Oh, yes.

Yes.

But infant baptism is significant enough in a practice of the ordinances, how the ordinances are handled in the church, that I could not in conscience, in good conscience, be a pastor of a church in which infants were being baptized.

I personally would not be able to do it, nor would I be in agreement with it, because I think that it is a practice that is not reflected in scripture. We're always going to be different congregations, always going to be different denominations in that sense.

Yes.

We have pedobaptists, whether that's Presbyterian, Anglican, or Lutheran. I don't think we have anybody Lutheran, but we have people who are of a pedobaptist tradition that come to our church on Sunday nights.

Yes.

And the reason they come on Sunday evenings, because we have a Sunday night service, and their own Presbyterian or Reformed church does not have a Sunday night service. And so they come to ours.

Right.

And we've had those conversations before, like, you guys are more than welcome to come. We're never going to do the Lord's Supper and never going to do a baptism in that service on Sunday night. We actually do our baptismal services on Sunday evening, but it's at a different location.

Yes.

And we can't do it in the building that we have because we don't have a baptism.

We don't have the, yeah.

We go to a place where we can get somebody all the way under.

Yeah.

Not just sprinkling them with a bowl or otherwise.

Yeah.

So, but anyway, they're welcome to join us. If you want the singing, the prayer that we do, if you want to hear good teaching, you're more than welcome to join. But there are still significant differences between us when it comes to the proper practice of the ordinances.

That I understand why there must be different bodies and why there always will be.

Yeah.

Until Christ returns, there's always going to be Presbyterian and Baptist.

Yeah.

And that's just the way it'll be. Or Lutheran in your case, John. And I do appreciate you listening once again. And I thank you for asking your question. And I hope that was satisfactory for you. At least telling you where I come from on how I understand those things and practice them according to my Baptist disciplines.

I thought you were going to say something there.

Yeah.

What else am I supposed to say? Like I've been saying yeah a lot.

I don't know. Yeah, I know.

Let me say it again.

I know.

There was a pause where I just thought you were going to chime in with something and.

No.

I thought about it, but I held my tongue.

Okay. Gotcha.

It's on repeat. Becky's on repeat again.

Becky's still letting you know she's here. Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

All right. This was a comment that came from our video on Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child. Let me see if I can get this to play.

Okay.

Because we've been having some issues with our audio here. Let me try this once again.

Yeah. Nope.

It's not going to go.

Oh, that's a bummer.

All right. I am going to dub in the audio for this video, and then on the other side of the video, we're going to respond to the comment that we got. Proverbs 13, 24 says, whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.

Is the Bible seriously advocating spanking with this verse? Yes, it is. Physical discipline, corporal punishment, whatever you want to call it, it is a common instruction in the book of Proverbs. Because folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.

But understand the motivation behind this form of punishment. It is not anger, but love. He who loves his son will discipline him. Spanking should not ever be something a parent uses to vent their anger.

It is to lovingly teach a child. Make sure your child understands why they're being punished. This will help to bring them to an awareness of their sin, then use that to point them toward the saving power of the gospel.

The harshness of the rod in Proverbs is not spared in the New Testament. Hebrews 12 uses the same words from Proverbs to describe the Lord's discipline. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.

For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. If not for his discipline, we'd be illegitimate children. All discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

It's true that there are a lot of cultural stigmas against spanking, but do not be intimidated. Spanking is not child abuse. As Proverbs 23, 13 says, if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. In fact, when used lovingly and biblically, it will help to save your child from death when we understand the text.

So from that video, we got this comment from Berenika, who appears to be from Poland.

Okay.

That's a pretty name. She said, no wonder people have religious trauma. I'm a God-fearing and God-loving woman, and my parents disciplined me, sure, but never through physical punishment. You're going to give the kids severe psychological damage if you hit a child and then quote a Bible verse about sin.

Most people I know that grew up like that have really bad views on religion and the church. Well, Berenika, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I was spanked growing up, and I turned out just fine.

Me too.

A lot.

Now, my children, we have also spanked our kids growing up. And my kids attend a Christian school. And in our church and in the school that they attend, we get a lot of high comments about how well-behaved, polite, and adjusted they are.

So it is not true that if you spank your child, they're going to grow up with all this religious trauma.

Right.

It is quite plainly what the Bible says. And I laid out those verses. They could not be clearer than that. So, yes, there is a biblical instruction that is given about spanking your child. Now, as I have advocated regarding spanking your child, it's better to do it younger than older.