Should a person ever be baptized a second time?

Well, hey everyone. The last few weeks, we’ve had a few different baptisms that we’ve had the privilege of doing here at the church, but then also at our beach service recently. And the question comes up, uh, often, and I think it’d be good to address here in this setting. When or should a person ever get rebaptized? Okay?

So they’ve been baptized, they want to get rebaptized. Should that happen? And if so, under what situation or circumstances should that happen? And so I just wanted to share a few thoughts about it because I, I’ve gotten those questions a lot of times. Even in my younger days, I’d even thought about it for myself as I kind of, I had been baptized at an early age and wondered if maybe I should get rebaptized as I got a little bit older. It’s a very, very common question.

Here’s a couple different thoughts though that I’d love to share with you. I just want to remind us of what baptism symbolizes. Baptism is not something that a person does in order to become a Christian. They do it as a symbol of having already placed their faith in Jesus and become a Christian. They’re already part of the family of God when a person gets baptized.

That’s the idea. The outward symbol of baptism is potent. It’s beautiful. It’s something that has been happening for generations of believers who are now part of the family of God. It’s an expression of my sins have been forgiven because I’m placing my faith in Jesus as my sin bearer. His death on the cross paid the penalty for my sins.

But it’s also this symbol of I’m now being placed into this new community of faith with other brothers and sisters, and we’re all part of the body of Christ under the headship of Jesus. And it’s in a beautiful expression. So, should a person then ever get rebaptized? There’s one particular situation that I think to me stands out as very common. And that is if a person was baptized as an infant or as a child and has not been baptized since that point, since, for instance, having professed faith in

Jesus, then I think we could say that what scripture indicates is that, yes, it would be appropriate for that person to get baptized as they get older and have professed faith in Jesus on their own. Because infant baptism is most often an expression of the parents’ faith for that child, and praise God for their faith.

It’s a, it’s a, it’s the parents’ desire to bless their children in a significant way, but that individual, when they become of an age of accountability where they are responsible for professing their own faith in Jesus, it would then make sense for a person to make that decision to follow Jesus and then to follow that up with baptism.

I know sometimes people who’ve been baptized as infants feel like, well, but wouldn’t that dishonor my parents? And I understand that that’s a tricky question. My thought would be is that it’s actually a way to really honor your parents because your parents’ issue and desire was to bless you and to see you come to become a part of the family of God.

So that’s actually a beautiful way to honor their desires when you were little. Now that you are of an age that you can make that profession of faith and follow Jesus. But let’s say that you got baptized when you were younger, but not necessarily as an infant, and you remember getting baptized, but then you’ve come to a place in your life where you feel like, well, did I really understand what I was doing back then?

And so therefore, should I get baptized now that I’m a little bit older? And there’s not a hard or fast answer to that. Here’s what I would say, is that if you are absolutely convinced and convicted that when you were baptized, you didn’t understand the symbolism of baptism, perhaps you were coerced into it, maybe your motives were wrong, maybe somebody kind of twisted your arm into doing it, and you did it just to kind of go along.

And you’re now reach a place of saying, I was not truly a believer at that moment, not because of baptism, but just because of the circumstances around that. But now you understand the gospel more and you are saying, I want to symbolize it with baptism. Then that would make sense to go on ahead and also go on ahead and get baptized a second time because now it would really symbolize your understanding.

But I would say that in a lot of cases, and I certainly fall into this category, just because you didn’t fully understand all of the ramifications of following Jesus when you were younger, doesn’t necessarily negate the legitimacy of your decision. I was seven years old, and now that I look back over many years, I see that in many ways, those earlier experiences are so much more dim for me personally by comparison.

But just because they are dimmer, we are all going to have moments in our life, our journey of walking with Jesus, that are going to seem the past is going to pale by comparison. We’re all going to have moments of defining, uh, moments in our lives of connection and reawakenings in our lives. And so I would just encourage you to think about how the possibility that that baptism represented a sincere profession of faith, but now you are continuing to grow further along. And in that case, I don’t

think you necessarily need to be rebaptized. That doesn’t, um, negate what happened earlier. It’s just that you are in the process of being more and more conformed into the likeness of Jesus, as that’s supposed to happen. So, the validity of a person’s baptism, the validity of a person’s faith is not so much about the intensity of feelings you may have had when you initially made that first decision.

The validity of it is, are you persevering in it and continuing in it today? In whom today are you placing your faith for salvation? And so those might have just been the early stages of your faith journey, and so I don’t ever want to encourage somebody to to make less of baptism than what it is. It is a significant symbol.

If you are a follower of Jesus and you’ve never been baptized, you need to be to be baptized. I want to encourage you to do that. Let’s not minimize the symbolism of it, but let’s also not make so much of it that it becomes sort of an idol where we begin to feel condemned about it. It’s not as if we’re talking about a combination lock that if you get it out of order here, you are somehow relegated to a lesser part of heaven that is reserved for people.

Well, you got this out of order here. I think that in God’s grace, he draws us to himself. And so we can feel the freedom of being part of the family of God, that knowing, yes, we are going to continue to progress in our faith, and if you have indeed been baptized when you, you know, were younger and you’re growing in your faith, praise God for that.

If you did not make a sincere profession of faith at that time and you are now making that sincere profession of faith, go on ahead and get baptized. So, I hope that we feel the freedom that comes along with this and the grace of God. I hope that this has been helpful to you as we just sort of process through this together.

We praise God for the symbolism of baptism, and we’re so thankful for those who’ve gotten baptized recently. We want to encourage all people who may be watching this and have never been baptized, place your faith in Jesus as your sin bearer, and put your trust in him for salvation, and then symbolize that with the body of Christ through baptism.

Thanks so much for joining us today.