Household Baptisms

Here at King’s Cross Church, we practice what is called paedobaptism, or infant baptism. But perhaps it could be more accurate to say that we practice household baptism. We do not believe that just any child may be baptized, but only those who are members of a Christian household, those who have at least one believing parent. 

Now we readily admit that we cannot find a prooftext in the New Testament that explicitly states a child was baptized, something like, “And then they took the child and baptized him.” But one thing that we do see in the New Testament is this – the baptisms of households. 

Whenever the gospel was received by an individual and their household was present, they too were baptized along with the head of the household. And in these multiple accounts, only once is the faith of the household explicitly mentioned. Therefore we believe that just like the Old Covenant sign of circumcision, the New Covenant sign of baptism was covenantally applied to the whole household.

And so we come now to the baptism of this covenant child. 

David is receiving this covenant sign as a member of your Christian household and because God has given you promises regarding him. By having your son baptized, you are now pledging to instruct him in the gospel, in order that by God’s grace, he will receive the benefits of his baptism by his own personal faith in Christ.

And so it is our prayer that our brother David will never recall a time when he did not know and love the God of his family, the God who baptizes him now. Amen.