For those considering a second baptism because of a later, more tangible conversion experience, rest assured that your original baptism, which signifies coming into new covenant membership, is efficacious based not on the strength of your conversion experience, but on the power of God in conferring grace to new covenant members in his own time.

 
Lynda M. from Northern Ireland asks,

I was baptized at the age of 13 before I was really walking with the Lord. It came as a result of covering the topic in a youth Bible class after which we were asked if we would like to be baptized, and considering the majority of the class were doing it, I decided to as well. I recall at the time being too embarrassed to even tell my school friends about it, never mind ask them to come.

The Lord really worked in my life at the age of 20, and that’s when I would say he really opened my eyes to what following Jesus was all about. Ideally that’s when I would have been baptized, but obviously I already had been. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on getting baptized for a second time, and if you feel that would be necessary.

We posed the question to Jared Oliphint, regional coordinator and a ThM student at Westminster Theological Seminary. He studied philosophy at Gordon College and earned his MAR at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 2005. And you can also read the credobaptist answer from Bobby Jamieson.

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I would humbly encourage anyone thinking through these issues first to talk to his or her local pastor. These kinds of questions are rarely disconnected from broader ministerial needs in one’s Christian walk, but maybe we can get pointed in the right direction here.

How one addresses the question of re-baptism depends on how one understands baptism as a whole. So let’s start where the apostles start—in the Old Testament. We might first ask whether there was meaning behind and precedent to using water as the sign of the new covenant in the New Testament. The first time Scripture uses water as a covenantal sign occurred long before the New Testament era. Recall 1 Peter 3:20-21:

. . . when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ . . .

God chose water judgment in the form of a flood as the means for separating the covenant mediator (Noah) and his covenant people (his family) from rebellious, non-covenant people.

Years later, God used water judgment again as the means for separating the covenant mediator (Moses) and his covenant people (Israel) from rebellious, non-covenant people. Paul writes in 1 Cor. 10:1-2, “For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.”

In both cases above, these Old Testament baptismal events included not only covenant children but also unbelieving covenant members. God brought Noah’s son Ham through the baptismal flood, but Ham’s family line was eventually cursed (Gen. 9:18-27). Likewise, some Israelites who escaped the Egyptians turned out to be unfaithful covenant members (Ex. 32:25f; see also Joshua 3, the second exodus of Israel passing again through waters, this time in the Jordan River under the mediator Joshua. Later the true Joshua, Jesus, would be baptized in the same waters).

Fast forward a few centuries and we see another judgment warning from none other than John the Baptist, the Elijah prophet figure, accompanied by water baptism. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). Something new, yet precedented, had happened (Christ’s coming) that demanded a new, yet precedented, covenantal sign of judgment (water baptism). Jesus himself, the fulfillment of Israel, would also pass through the baptismal waters (Matt. 3:13-17) just as Noah, Moses, and Joshua did as typological mediators before him.

Natural Reading

During the beginning of this new covenant era, it would have been expected that anyone—Jews, Gentiles, and, yes, their covenant children—who had faith in the new covenant mediator, Christ, would receive the new covenant sign of baptism. While we’re short on biblical evidence in the form of a verse that says “You shall baptize covenant children” or “You shall only baptize converted adults,” Scripture as a whole may read more naturally if we assume one view over another.

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