WHO SHOULD BE BAPTIZED?
1) EVERY PERSON WHO HAS BELIEVED IN CHRIST.
- “Those who believe and accepted His message were baptized …” Acts 2:41
- “Simon himself believed and was baptized …” Acts 8:13
- “But when they believed Philip as he preached the Good News … and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.” Acts 8:12
The position of Radiant Life Fellowship is that baptism should only be administered to those who are old enough to recognize their sinfulness before God, mature enough to understand what the death of Christ on the cross really means, and responsible enough to make a solid decision to trust Christ and to follow Him. A person only needs to be baptized once. There’s no evidence in Scripture for a need to be re-baptized. If a person wants to re-commit their life to following Jesus, then there’s other mechanisms in which that can be communicated to the church community.
A GREAT QUESTION: What if I was baptized as an infant?
Some churches baptize infants. At Radiant Life Fellowship we don’t. We dedicate our infants (very young children) to the Lord.
We only baptize those who have made a decision to believe in Christ’s death as the payment for their sin. In the Bible, men and women were baptized following their belief in Jesus and their commitment to follow/trust Jesus with their whole life.
The custom of infant baptism began about 300 years after the Bible was completed. It’s a ceremony intended to emphasize a commitment between the parents and God on the behalf of the child. During this ceremony, the parents promise to raise their child in the faith until the child is old enough to make his own personal confession of Christ.
At Radiant Life Fellowship, we will have lots of dedication services for infants and children that emphasize the parent’s role in raising a child to follow Christ. Therefore, if you were baptized as a baby, we encourage you to be baptized by immersion as a believer.