Being re Baptized

All, I can tell you is we had a sister who was a member for 50 years or there abouts and came forward at the end of service and said that she had need to be baptized again for she didn't feel the first time she was right with God. It is a personal thing Mishelly; and no one can answer that but you. Being saved is something you are willing to die on and is witnessed by the Spirit of God for His Spirit bears witness with our Spirit that we are the children of God. My dad was a preacher but died very young but I have been told he always preached "make it as sure as you can, for you only pass this way but once."raying:

 

If you were saved when you were first baptized, there is no need for a re-baptism. If you were not saved then, by all means be baptized.

If you have recently recovered from falling into sin, then maybe a rededication might be useful as a public restoration.

If your age is the only concern, I would suggest that instead of a public rededication, maybe you should keep it between you and God, and if you want to talk to someone about it, maybe include some close Christian friends/family members or a spiritual mentor.

In general, I'm not behind the public "rededication" concept. I'm not saying this is your motivation at all, but I know that an emphasis on frequent public rededication could attract excessive attention to the "rededicator."

But, if your heart is right, and you strongly feel God leading you to do this, by all means, go ahead with it. I would suggest seeking God's will through prayer in this matter.

EDIT:Mishelly, I want to make sure that you know that I am not accusing you of having wrong desire in this. This is just my general (not specific to any individual) approach.

 

Amen. Go for it.

 

I think faith often comes and grows in stages during your relationship with Christ and you may well be feeling strong growth. So if your heart says to profess your obedience to Christ once again, I would say go for it and would guess God will be smiling at you.

 

Mishelly,

If it makes you feel any better, you are not alone. I have had the same thought for quite a while now (that I needed to be baptized again). I was 9 years old when I was baptized, and quite frankly, I did it because the older kids were doing it. I had no idea what I was doing.

Between the ages of 9 and 12 I "asked Jesus into my heart" probably a hundred times, "just to make sure".

At age 35, as far away from God as I think I could personally get, I was soundly saved.

So, like you (except for the fact that I don't believe I was saved when I was first baptized), I've been thinking seriously about being baptized again.

As far as "not having a testimony" goes, I used to think exactly like you are thinking, that I don't have a testimony. Mine would have been "My Mom took me to Sunday School and Church where I learned about Jesus, and one day I asked him to come into my heart". (That would have been my testimony in my teenage years.)

Now, at age 41, I could add a lot more to that. But I don't think I would worry too much about being able to get up in front of the Church and give a 30 minute testimony. I mean, if you have put your trust in Jesus and have repented of your sins, you are just as saved as someone who can talk for an hour about how "bad" they were or how bad their life was messed up before they got saved.

 

If you believe that you had no sin at 13, you may need to ask yourself at what age you recognised yourself as a sinner in need of salvation? Perhaps you need to determine when you called on the name of the Lord, for forgiveness of your sin.
(Being brought up in a Deacon's home you may have been saved at a young age. Yet there is cause for concern, for we cannot claim the Saviour if we claim we are without sin - even as a child.)

If you know you were saved before you were baptised, that is the way it is meant to be.

 

I have written about this topic before, but without very much agreement, that I think this whole subject gets silly as to putting so much pressure on people, especially young, to come forward and make a public decision for Christ and then know you are saved... and then to do much to try to convince those who did that a long time before that they need to do it again, based on falling into sin, going atray, all these terms to indicate one must not be saved.

Obviously you have coercion from some source to go through the procedures again; from preacher, teachers, friends, or maybe just yourself. If you think you must be rebaptised, that's a strong indication you think either baptism saves you, or else that it's a Baptist method going into the confessional. In either case, many of us may want to be baptised every day if we really took a serious approach to its importance in leaving no doubt, for us or for anyone, that we really mean it about repenting and displaying our faith. But if that would be a misuse of what baptism is about, why wouldn't it be the same to go through with it even a second time, if you were sincere (as you say) the first time? If it were a matter of learning as we grow, that would still give us a dozen, or a couple of dozen, baptisms each, as we take more steps.

A person who was a believer when baptised need not be baptised again.

 

Baptism is public by nature. At least one other person is going to be involved.

Remember this: Baptism symbolizes the inner reality. If you want to dedicate yourself to God, you don't have to be baptized again for that. God knows your heart. You have been saved through faith. You were obedient in submitting to baptism. You don't have to go back to those. Baptism isn't a ritual/ordinance/sacrament (whatever term you use) designed for repetition.

 

Look at it this way.
If you buried that which died (symbolised in baptism), why dig him up to have another burial? Why smote the rock twice as Moses did and break the picture God has put forth.

Your idea to have a baptism to show devotion to God (if all was in order the first time) is more self indulgent on your part. If you feel guilty for backsliding in the past, the baptismal waters is not the place to make amends.

Having said that, a baptism done without Scriptural authority is just getting wet.

 

I think you need to examine the fact, as already noted by StefanM, that baptism is not a private act.
It is a church ordinance done in obedience, that pictures our relationship to Christ. Partly as a witness to the church and the world.
It is not a private devotional act.

 

I, too, see no need for 'rebaptizing'.

We only baptize once in our church and that is to make public the inner decision of our heart. It is an outward showing (to people) of what has already happened on the inside.

Baptism will not cleanse you anymore than it will save you.

You can rededicate yourself to God by simply going to the altar or even just telling God. That is usually done when one has just come back to the Lord from being backslidden (not lost).

Baptism pictures the death, burial, and ressurection of Jesus Christ, as well as our 'old' self because in Christ, we are new creatures.

If you were truly saved when you first got baptized - a second baptism will do nothing.

 

Mishelly, your early childhood experience is the lynchpin in all of this. If you were saved before you were baptized, then that baptism was valid and going through it a second time would not be "baptism." Since it would not be "baptism," it would be the same as creating your own religion instead of the one in the Bible, and I know that you don't want to do that.

On the other hand, your childhood experience is shrouded in uncertainty. The Bible does not give us any reason to think that any child is born "already saved." He is born lost, and must become born again at some definite time. That can occur when the child is very young, and it may have been so with you; but there's no way to really know that (from what you've said). Even pagans can have heartfelt experiences of religious devotion to their idols. How much more might one who has heard of the true God and his son Jesus and the cross and the resurrection?

It is quite possible that you were never born again as a child. If you are uncertain, then a public profession of faith and baptism would be proper. But if you cannot in your heart cast doubt on that childhood experience, then baptism is an event in your history that cannot be undone or repeated.

The craving of an outward act to express an inward disposition is deeply ingrained in human nature. That's why Baptists have rituals like the altar call, Act of Rededication, and the dedication of babies. Such rituals are not strictly prohibited, but they have their dangers (not to be discussed at this time). But any man-made ritual must avoid contradicting scripture, and using baptism as an act of rededication would contradict scripture.

 

Jesus said in Luke 9:23, "And He was saying to them all, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me."

Following Christ is a daily submission, a daily event.

 

Well, let me share my own experience. It might or might not be helpful, but I think we benefit from looking to one another for insights.

I was baptized at 14 in an indoor baptistry, pretty standard for Baptists. However, I had grown up going to my grandmother's Old Regular Baptist church and she often ridiculed the notion of getting baptized in "a bathtub" as she would put it, and that stuck in my mind. One day, I was visiting another church and they had a baptism out at a river that afternoon. When all the planned baptizing was over, the preacher asked if anybody else wanted to follow the Lord in baptism and I felt a strong urge compelling me to step forward, and so I was baptized a second time at age 15.

Well, several years later I fell away from the Lord and stayed in that condition for more than 20 years. Was I saved as a teenager? I have asked myself that many times. I certainly felt the Lord's conviction and I sincerely believed and repented as I understood those things at the time. So when I returned to serving the Lord many years later (still flawed, but trusting Him) I considered whether I should be baptized yet a third time. I decided not to because I believed in my heart when I was baptized before that I was stepping out in obedience to my Lord and Master, and was baptized with a pure heart. What ever I did after that did not erase the work the Lord did in my life and continued doing in my life even as I lived a life of sin.

If I am wrong, and should have gotten rebaptized, I believe the Lord will forgive my wrong as He has forgiven so many other wrongs. But I just don't feel led to do it again. It might be very very different for another person, and I think each person has to respond to what the Holy Spirit puts into their heart. As scripture tells us, we look on outward appearances and God looks at the heart, so only He can direct us in the end.