Believer Baptism and Mental Disabilities
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00:00:06.000 | Ben writes in to ask this, "Is it right to baptize my severely autistic friend?
00:00:11.000 | If so, how can I explain the difference to infant baptizing friends and family?"
00:00:15.000 | This is a question we get on occasion, Pastor John, and it's a question our friend John Knight has asked us to address on APJ in the past.
00:00:21.000 | John is a dear colleague of ours, a desiring God.
00:00:24.000 | And so, Pastor John, with severe cognitive impairment in those in our churches, young men, young women who cannot articulate a testimony,
00:00:33.000 | what's the threshold a Credo Baptist church would hold to in deciding whether or not to baptize such an individual?
00:00:41.000 | I'm really glad parents have sent this in.
00:00:45.000 | I'm glad John Knight underlined it for us.
00:00:49.000 | And here's—it gives me a chance to just say a little bit of a wider picture.
00:00:53.000 | So let me start general and get right down to the specific of, say, a child or a young adult who's mentally disabled.
00:01:03.000 | I want to say first that a church that's about to tackle this and either baptize or not baptize a person with cognitive impairment
00:01:17.000 | needs to teach widely on baptism, faith, disability, so you don't spring this on your congregation.
00:01:24.000 | It shouldn't come out of nowhere.
00:01:26.000 | This is a golden opportunity for a pastor to bring the sorrows and the joys of these families before the church
00:01:33.000 | and put the whole question in the bigger context of God's sovereignty and His goodness
00:01:38.000 | and His ability to take the hardest situations and show His all-sufficiency in them.
00:01:44.000 | So that's the first thing I'd say is put this issue in the bigger context of disability and God's sovereign goodness in your church.
00:01:53.000 | And then the second thing I'd say is deal with believers' baptism before you try to deal with a marginal issue in believers' baptism.
00:02:05.000 | We believe, we Baptists believe, that before Jesus inaugurated the new covenant, in His blood,
00:02:13.000 | the people of God were identified through a physical line of Jewishness,
00:02:17.000 | and therefore it was fitting that the sign belonging to this people, the sign of the covenant belonging to this people,
00:02:25.000 | was given to their physical children, the Jews, and that sign was circumcision.
00:02:29.000 | But with the new covenant, God's saving focus is no longer on any ethnic group,
00:02:37.000 | but is defined most essentially by identification with Jesus the Christ through faith.
00:02:45.000 | And thus the new sign of this new covenant is no longer circumcision but baptism,
00:02:51.000 | and no longer given to physical descendants but to spiritual descendants, that is, to those who have faith.
00:02:57.000 | That's the fundamental picture of believers' baptism.
00:03:01.000 | And here are two texts. This is not an APJ about baptism mainly, but about what about these kids.
00:03:09.000 | But here are two texts for people to think about.
00:03:11.000 | 1 Peter 3.21, "Baptism, which corresponds to this, the flood, now saves you."
00:03:17.000 | Sounds kind of dangerous. Sounds like baptism or regeneration, but listen,
00:03:21.000 | "saves you not as a removal of dirt from the body," so I'm not talking about saving you by the effectiveness of the water,
00:03:30.000 | "but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ."
00:03:35.000 | So baptism is pictured here as an event in which the baptismal candidate is making an appeal to God for a good conscience
00:03:43.000 | through submitting to this water baptism symbolic of his death and resurrection with Christ.
00:03:49.000 | And so that's a conscious act of the candidate, and hence we don't do it to children who can't make that—
00:03:57.000 | little infants who can't make that appeal.
00:03:59.000 | Or here's one other text, Colossians 2.12, "Having been buried therefore with him in baptism,
00:04:04.000 | in which you were also raised with him through faith."
00:04:09.000 | That was so big for me when I was in Germany trying to battle with these Lutherans in all my classes.
00:04:15.000 | I was the only Baptist in the group, and this text was hugely important for me.
00:04:20.000 | "Having been buried therefore with him in baptism, in which," in baptism, "you were raised with him through faith."
00:04:25.000 | So I say it was through faith that we were raised with him.
00:04:29.000 | So those are two texts that point me to believers' baptism.
00:04:35.000 | Now, which leaves us asking, what about those with severe cognitive impairment?
00:04:40.000 | Both the inability to, say, grasp ideas at the front end and the ability to express them at the back end.
00:04:48.000 | And I think the first thing we should do is make clear that if a family moves forward with baptism,
00:04:54.000 | it's not because these young people belong to a Christian family, either by birth or adoption.
00:05:03.000 | That would signify a wrong theology, namely, connectedness by flesh is spiritually saving.
00:05:10.000 | So if you're saying, "Well, the reason this baby should be—I mean, this child should be baptized,
00:05:14.000 | this 18-year-old should be baptized is because he's in my family and I'm a Christian," that's a bad theology.
00:05:19.000 | We're not saved by belonging to families.
00:05:23.000 | Another thing to make clear is that we don't believe that someone who, for reasons beyond their control, is not baptized would therefore be lost.
00:05:35.000 | The thief on the cross was not baptized, and Jesus said, "Today you'll be with me in paradise," because there was an extenuating circumstance.
00:05:43.000 | And so we shouldn't communicate that we've got to get this person baptized,
00:05:47.000 | because if they're not baptized, they may not go to heaven. That would be a wrong view of why we might want to move with these young people towards baptism.
00:05:56.000 | So here's my counsel—very practical. And I can imagine godly, biblically-informed pastors taking a different approach than me, so I'm not absolutizing this.
00:06:06.000 | I would say, if the child or the young adult gives evidence that he is perceiving the love of God in Christ,
00:06:17.000 | if he's sensing in some way his own sin and need and responding with some signs of humble gladness because of Christ,
00:06:27.000 | it would be fitting to trust the perceptions of the mature believers closest to him and baptize him or her.
00:06:37.000 | If I were the pastor, I would give serious thought and preparation to the liturgy, the words that will be spoken over the child,
00:06:47.000 | so that everyone knows how seriously this has been considered and how it is being understood.
00:06:53.000 | And then I would say, finally, if the child is so impaired that the child or the young adult has no perception of spiritual things,
00:07:05.000 | no perceptible signs of response, I think those who are responsible for him should not pursue baptism.
00:07:14.000 | But the mindset of the parents or the caregivers should be this—and this is very important—
00:07:21.000 | they should say, "It's not because he's not saved." Don't say, "It's not because he's not saved."
00:07:29.000 | Rather, it's because the integrity of baptism would be preserved rather than giving the impression that it's a magical ritual.
00:07:39.000 | "Well, he's got to be baptized, even though there's no evidence."
00:07:42.000 | In this case, it seems to me we would not be upholding baptism if we didn't baptize him, but we would be upholding grace.
00:07:54.000 | The parents should continue to bathe the child, the young adult, in word and prayer and trust that God, in his mercy,
00:08:04.000 | will work savingly in ways that no one but he can understand.
00:08:08.000 | Yes, excellent. Thank you, Pastor John, for those thoughts.
00:08:11.000 | Disability is a central topic for us at Desiring God, and we produce an e-book on the subject titled Disability and the Sovereign Goodness of God.
00:08:18.000 | You can download the e-book free of charge right now at DesiringGod.org.
00:08:21.000 | Click on the tab that says "Books" and look for the title, Disability and the Sovereign Goodness of God.
00:08:26.000 | We will be back tomorrow with another episode in the Ask Pastor John series, and we're talking about God, guns, and biblical manhood.
00:08:34.000 | Specifically, is it necessary for a Christian man in his divine calling to protect his wife and children, to own and be willing to use a gun?
00:08:42.000 | Hmm. That should be a very interesting episode. I'm your host Tony Reinke. We'll see you tomorrow.
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