A position paper issued by the conference declared that Methodists who were baptized as infants should never be baptized again. The document explicitly stated:. While on his third missionary campaign, the apostle Paul came to the city of Ephesus. There, he encountered twelve men who formerly had been baptized with the type of baptism administered by John the Baptizer.
One might be inclined to conclude, therefore, that the apostle would have accepted these men as they were and merely organized them into a church. But such was not the case. After questioning them as to the nature of their earlier baptism and determining that their pre-baptism instruction on the previous occasion had been lacking in essential details, Paul immersed these men into Christ see Acts A simple understanding of the text reveals that their first baptism was deficient in some way.
And here is an extremely important implication of this case of re-baptism. Otherwise, the act of baptism is a meaningless exercise and not based on faith Rom. Once a person has been baptized according to the full complement of scriptural instructions, he or she never has the need to repeat this new-birth process cf. After a person has entered the family of Christ through baptism 1 Cor.
The new Christian has access to all of the spiritual benefits of the in-Christ relationship Eph. As a son or daughter of God within that sacred environment, the Christian prays to the heavenly Father for his or her personal needs by means of prayer see Acts , 24; cf. Those corruptions invalidate a baptism and make it of none effect. In genuine faith, he should submit to the command in the proper way.
But it was still an act of God and our salvation. Thus, the baptism should not be renewed. A person who has taken a second baptism has done wrong. Whoever has done wrong, has the opportunity to confess the deeds to God and to ask for His forgiveness.
And God forgives those who repent and believe that Jesus has reconciled all the sins of all people. Show Navigation Hide Navigation. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
Here we can see that one of the reasons we are to perform communion regularly is because we are to examine ourselves regularly. Again, you cannot lose your salvation, therefore we should not be baptized more than once in life. However, we are often in need of forgiveness, cleansing, and examining ourselves before the Lord. We are saved by the gospel once, but we are in need of the gospel day by day, moment by moment.
Most people desire to be baptized again after they turned from the Lord but then came back to him. While their motivation is certainly right, the Bible does not instruct us to be baptized again every time we backslide but repent.
Communion is the right sacrament to partake of after we have repented and turned back to the Lord. The only scenario where I personally would feel comfortable baptizing someone for a second time would be if there was evidence of them not being saved during their first water baptism. Life is messy. Oftentimes people think they are saved, but then they reject God and prove that they were never really saved to begin with.
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