These are the principal passages which treat of the subject of baptism. There are a few other passages in which baptism is merely mentioned, but not explained. There is not one passage that teaches any thing different from those quoted.
All we now ask of the reader is to examine these passages carefully, to compare them one with the other and to ask himself: What do they teach? What is the meaning which a plain, unprejudiced reader, who has implicit confidence in the Word and power of God, would derive from them? Can he say, "There is nothing in baptism?" "It is of no consequence." "It is only a Church ceremony, without any particular blessing in it." Or do the words clearly teach it is nothing more than a sign—an outward sign—of an invisible grace?
Look again at the expressions of these passages. We desire to be clear here, because this is one of the points on which the Lutheran Church to-day differs from so many others. Jesus mentions water as well as Spirit, when speaking of the new birth. "Make disciples, (by) baptizing them." "Be baptized for the remission of your sins." "Be baptized and wash away thy sin." "Baptized into Christ." By baptism "put on Christ." Christ designs to sanctify and cleanse the Church with "the washing of water by the Word." "Washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost." "Baptism doth also now save us." The language is certainly strong and plain. Any principle of interpretation, by which baptismal Grace and regeneration can be explained out of these passages, will
overthrow every doctrine of our holy Christian faith.
Our Catechism here also teaches nothing but the pure truth of the Word, when it asserts that baptism "worketh forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and confers everlasting life and salvation on all who believe, as the Word and promise of God declare." Our solid and impregnable Augsburg Confession, also, when in Article II. it confesses that the new birth by baptism and the Holy Spirit delivers from the power and penalty of original sin. Also in Article IX., "of baptism they teach that it is necessary to salvation, and that by baptism the Grace of God is offered, and that children are to be baptized, who by baptism being offered to God, are received into God's favor." And so with all our other confessional writings.
The question might here be asked: Is baptism so absolutely essential to salvation, that unbaptized children are lost? To this we would briefly reply, that the very men who drew up our Confessions deny emphatically that it is thus absolutely necessary. Luther, Melanchthon, Bugenhagen and others, repudiate the idea that an unbaptized infant is lost. No single acknowledged theologian of the Lutheran Church ever taught this repulsive doctrine. Why then does our
Confession say baptism is necessary to salvation? It is necessary in the same sense in which it is necessary to use all Christ's ordinances. The necessity is ordinary, not absolute. Ordinarily Christ bestows His Grace on the child through baptism, as the means or channel through which the Holy Spirit is conferred. But when, through no fault of its own, this is not applied, He can reach it in some other way.
As we have seen above, He is not so limited to certain means, that His Grace cannot operate without them. The only thing on which our Church insists in the case of a child as absolutely necessary, is the new birth. Ordinarily this is effected, by the Holy Spirit, through baptism, as the means of Grace. When the means, however, cannot be applied, the Spirit of God can effect this new birth in some other way. He is not bound to means. And from what we have learned above of the will of God, toward these little ones, we have every reason to believe that He does so reach and change every infant that dies unbaptized. The position of our Church, as held by all her great theologians, is tersely and clearly expressed in the words, "Not the absence but the contempt of the sacrament condemns."
While the Lutheran Church, therefore, has confidence enough in her dear heavenly Father and loving
Saviour, to believe that her Lord will never let a little one perish, but will always regenerate and fit it for His blessed Kingdom ere he takes it hence, she still strenuously insists on having the children of all her households baptized into Christ.