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Infant Baptism and Concept of Sacrament/Ordinance

Baptism

Pastor Albert N. Martin delivers an adult Sunday school class on October 2nd, 1983, at Trinity Baptist Church, addressing the biblical teaching concerning sacraments as it relates to infant baptism. He systematically defines a sacrament, its efficacy, and its validity, drawing heavily from Reformed theologians like Charles Hodge and Louis Berkhof, as well as the Westminster Standards. Martin argues that the Reformed and biblical understanding of a sacrament—as an ordinance instituted by Christ, symbolic of salvation, applied to believers by faith, and perpetual—is fundamentally incompatible with the practice of infant baptism, which lacks personal faith, a direct institution by Christ, and clear efficacy for infants.

1 illustration in this sermon

Summary of Incompatibility and Q&A on Validity
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Children Playing Baptism

In this part of the sermon: Martin summarizes that infant baptism is incompatible with the Reformed teaching on the definition, efficacy, and validity of a sacrament. He then opens the floor for questions…

Martin uses the analogy of children role-playing baptism in a backyard pool to illustrate that even if the correct words are used, the act is not a valid baptism without a genuine profession of Christian faith from the recipient, reinforcing the point about the validity of the ordinance.

Perhaps an illustration that will help is where kids are all the time role-playing and imitating. They observe baptisms. I can conceive in someone's backyard pool in the summertime, a bunch of our kids when they're in the backyard, they're in the backyard, they're in the backyard, they're in the backyard, they're playing together saying, let's play baptism. And one of the kids said, I'll be Pastor Nichols.

44:56 - 45:13 Read in full sermon
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