What is Lutheran baptism? When you read Augsburg Confession, it appears that it is not much different than Roman baptism. Art 9.1-2 say, “Of Baptism [our churches] teach that it is necessary to salvation, and that through Baptism is offered the grace of God, and that children are to be baptized who, being offered to God through Baptism are received into God’s grace.” 9.3 adds, “They condemn the Anabaptists, who reject the baptism of children, and say that children are saved without Baptism.”
It has always seemed to Baptists (Reformed or Anabaptist) that Luther did not go far enough with the logic of his Reformation. For, if he was known for anything it was his doctrine of justification by faith alone. Yet, the Lutheran view of the sacraments is not merely that they confirm faith (all Reformed Protestants agreed with this), but that it “awakens” faith (13.1).
Without trying to blow down a strawman, it is difficult to separate this Lutheran baptism from Rome. In Rome, baptism clearly creates faith; in Lutheranism it awakens faith. Apparently, the difference is that in the latter, faith is asleep but extant. The Lutheran then believes that salvation comes through means, a chief of which is baptism as consecrated through the word. No wonder so many Lutherans grow up believing that they are saved by baptism alone.
As Reformed Baptists, we do believe that baptism is a sacrament—a sign and seal of the righteousness that we have by faith. But this is precisely why we do not baptize infants. I would not deny that an infant can be granted faith (John the Baptist leaping in the womb at the sound of Jesus?), but they cannot confess this faith; and since confessing the faith always goes hand in hand with baptism in the Scripture, we may not baptize infants. We also believe that baptism is necessary for salvation, but this baptism is not immersion in water, but Christ’s death-baptism applied at regeneration, i.e. the sprinkling of the heart to make it clean, and pouring out of the Holy Spirit at the moment of faith. Immersion in water baptism remains related, but separate. While it signifies what has happened to us at regeneration, its chief function is to ordain the Christian into the priesthood of the believer. It is as separate of an event from salvation as circumcision at the beginning of a priest’s life was from his baptism at age 30. Luther should have remembered his own words and applied them properly in Lutheran baptism, “All Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them except that of office… whoever comes out of the water of baptism can boast that he is already a consecrated priest,” because, “We are all consecrated as priests by baptism” (Luther’s Works, 44:127, 129).
