Does so-called infant baptism
count as baptism?
Jesus commanded all people who believe in him to be baptized. Baptism is a solemn event that confirms the beginning of the new life of a spiritually regenerated person. In order to be baptized, it is imperative that the person wi-shing to be baptized has accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and wants to follow him of their own free will. Associated with this is a determined heart-turning from one's own sins as well as the willingness to live according to God's Word and his command-ments. This in turn requires the person to be baptized to be of maturity and to be aware of their own guilt, which is only possible from a certain age.
At the time of the first Christians, it was common for people to be baptized in rivers or standing water. Baptism took place by completely immersing the person being bap-tized in water in the presence of one or more believers. Some traditional churches now have special baptismal fonts.
Sprinkling infants and underage children with water, as is done particularly in the Protestant and Catholic regional chur-ches, does not meet the criteria of a biblical baptism and can therefore only be viewed as a blessing. This practice is based on the in-correct assumption that baptism is crucial for a person's spiritual salvation. Although baptism has important significance, it is not a guarantee of whether a person is saved or not. Rather, the Bible teaches that what mat-ters is faith in Jesus and the believer's perso-nal lifestyle, which must agree with God's commandments.
The so-called confirmation, in which a per-son who was “baptized” as an infant subse-quently publicly confirms their faith and is blessed by the church, is also not a biblical procedure. For first comes faith, then bap-tism; not the other way around. Regardless of this, it is the task of believing parents to raise their children in faith from the very beginning on the basis of God's command-ments. But only under the above-mentioned conditions does a baptism fulfill its inten-ded purpose and can be recognized as such.