Display your confidence in God’s saving grace with this durable vinyl sticker, challenging your baptist and non-denominational friends to ask you about your own conversion experience in baptism.
What do you say when someone asks you how long you’ve been a Christian? If you grew up in a Lutheran household, this can be a stressful question to answer—especially if you don’t feel confident defending why you don’t need to be re-baptized as an adult.
If you were baptized as an infant, and taught from a very young age about what Jesus’ death on the cross means, it is entirely appropriate to point to your baptism as your own conversion experience.
Be ready, though, for friends to fire back the accusation that you couldn’t have possibly understood the Gospel at 1 week old. You can respond to them by asking if they are saved by their own IQ score. Or ask them if the severely mentally handicapped or the unborn can receive salvation. After some uncomfortable looks, they may answer that God gives grace to whom he chooses—at which point you can agree with them.
In addition to promising his grace and forgiveness in baptism, Jesus’ attitude toward children is clear. “Let the little children come to me,” he says in Matt 19:14, “for to them belongs the kingdom of heaven.” This word for “children” in Greek includes infants. Jesus was so adamant about this command to his disciples that he chastised them for preventing children from receiving his blessing. He makes it clear that childlike faith—even infant-like faith—is enough to receive the kingdom of heaven.
We are not saved by good works, but instead through admitting our own helplessness. For many of us, this was initiated by God’s own blessing of grace in baptism.
If Jesus didn’t turn away little infants, we would do well to follow his example.
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