Thursday, July 31, 2014

Why infant water baptism is both wrong and powerless to save:


Why infant water baptism is both wrong and powerless to save:

One ought to know they are saved, why and how, before being baptized. Infant baptism may bind by covenant (as a vow)  the adult congregation to the infant, but does not necessarily bind the infant to the adult congregation. Baptism can only be meaningful to the one baptized where the Grace of God in the Messiah has been first understood and received by the one being  baptized. That GRACE saves and delivers one into the true and invisible church. What it creates between those baptized in the flesh 1  and the church on the earth today is known to God but not always to men. Not all who say there are the Messiah’s have faith2. God’s grace and faith have by the power of the Messiah’s blood to save even the undunked. 3  The real error is how much we believe the water saves while it is the Blood of the Messiah and the (immaterial) Spirit of God which does save! This is the substance of the New Covenant.   There must be sentient reconciliation between the person and the Persons of God! Then he or she will know they are saved even if no one other than God does!

When we are saved into the New Covenant though faith by Grace we are reconciled to God and to all who are and will be reconciled to Him. This is the effect of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which the water baptism ceremony celebrates and memorializes. Regrettably this ceremony is undertaken where the one being made wet has not the ability to know the works of God in the Messiah and the Holy Spirit, and the ones dunking have precious little knowledge (intimacy)  either of (/with) the Messiah or  of (/with)  the Spirit. If they did they might speak in tongues, lay on hands and heal, or discern and cast out demons. Nevertheless they quite likely have yet the prerogative  to become sons/daughters of God4.

God by grace forgive the believer in the Name of the Messiah forgiveness for all their sins!

BUT, this is a result of the vertical covenant wrought by God in His Son’s flesh and BLOOD on the cross!

John 12:32 And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself.

Is not so that Jesus draws men UP (vertically) unto Himself? Certainly He is from above and we are not5, or not yet6. Our horizontal reconciliation to our fellows or to any man or woman can be meaningful and eternal ONLY by the vertical reconciliation that faith by Grace in the Jewish Messiah accomplishes. We are reconciled to God by God not by water baptism. We are reconciled to  men by God and preserve our reconciliation and unity by faith and our continual forgiveness of each other. It is agape which endows7 one with faith and enables faith to operate8.

We simply must allow God ALONEl to save our children and our children to be saved by Him alone without our meddling in the process. Nurturing and admonishing them in the Lord is not meddling, but sprinkling them with water before they can speak or read and calling them saved is meddling. They must be saved by God and their own faith, not the faith of their parents or their parents’ faith in ritual baptism of which they themselves have NO UNDERSTANDING. Infant water baptism DEPRIVES the child of both the knowledge of John’s baptism and the Holy Spirit baptism of the Messiah! Instead the child is called saved by what man did to him when he was unable to say yea or nay to what was done! Meddling may well be a mild adjective, robbery might be better!

If there were a case for parental influence for salvation it would be from this by Paul:

1 Corinthians 7:14 For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy.

Yet this seems to do with the present condition of a believer’s child compared to an unbeliever’s child.

We must beware what our own thoughts can bring forth without the knowledge and presence of God.

 

1 Galatians 2:20 American Standard Version (ASV) I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.

2 2 Thessalonians 3:2 and that we may be delivered from unreasonable and evil men; for all have not faith.

3 Luke 23:43 And he said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.

4 John 1:12 But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name:

5 John 3:31 He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is of the earth, and of the earth he speaketh: he that cometh from heaven is above all.

 

6  Ephesians 2  American Standard Version (ASV)
1  And you did he make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins,
wherein ye once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience;
among whom we also all once lived in the lust of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest:--
but God, being rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved),
6 and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus: that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus: for by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, that no man should glory.

 

7 Ephesians 2 American Standard Version (ASV) 4 but God, being rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved),

8 Galatians 5:6  American Standard Version (ASV) 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love.