Good Baptism – sinful Pastor?

For this edition of Theology Thursday, I want to look at a question I was asked a few weeks ago by a wonderful and faithful member of the church.  Her question revolved around her own baptism.  She was baptized as an adult, by a pastor, but the circumstances surrounding the baptism itself did not conform to the requirements of the church.  The church ‘guidelines’ have said that baptism needs to be done in a public worship service, as a public sign of faith, and her baptism was not done this way, so does that make her baptism invalid?

I had someone else, several years ago, ask to be rebaptized because the person who performed their baptism turned out to be having an affair and was active in this affair during the time the person was baptized.  They wanted to be baptized again thinking that their baptism was invalid because the person presiding over the baptism was actively sinning. 

My answer to the person who wanted to be rebaptized was, and still is, no, you don’t need to.  My answer to the church member who asked about her own baptism because it didn’t follow the church guidelines is similar – you don’t need to fix it or have it done again.  Thankfully, the power of the sacrament of baptism and the Lord’s Supper does not have anything to do with the life of the person presiding over the baptism itself.  If pastors had to be completely sinless to be able to preside over the sacraments, there would be no sacraments celebrated because we are all sinners.

Baptism is not something that we have come up with ourselves so that we then have to figure out how to make it work.  Baptism comes from God, and it works because of God’s power in and through it, not our own.  As the theologian R. C. Sproul put it, “The validity of baptism does not rest upon the character of the minister who performs it or the character of the person who receives it.  Baptism is a sign of the promise of God of salvation to all who believe in Christ.  Since it is God’s promise, the validity of the promise rests on the trustworthiness of the character of God.  Because baptism is the sign of God’s promise, it is not to be administered to a person more than once.”  He goes on to say that when we are baptized more than once, it implies that God’s promises were not good enough the first time.  Somehow it didn’t work so we need to do it again, but that is saying that God messed up the first time, which we know can’t be the case.

I am not saying that if you were baptized as an infant and then come to Christ later in life we should not celebrate it, because we should!  It should always be a wonderful celebration when someone accepts Christ as Lord and Savior, but it still doesn’t mean you need to be baptized again.  I am also not saying that we don’t need to pay attention to how baptism is done, where, or by who.  It is still a sacrament of God, that we are commanded to do in Scripture.  We need to give baptism the honor and respect that it deserves and follow the how, where and by who that God commands.   But we need to remember that regardless of the life of the person who presides, or the exact circumstances surrounding it, God still works through baptism so that it is effective and accomplishes exactly what God created it for.

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”  Matthew 28:19-20