Ask FGBC #20: How can I clearly explain credo baptism to teenager who grew up paedo?

Jim Butler

Credo-baptism (believers' baptism) rests not on implication or covenant inference but on the plain order Scripture establishes: discipleship, then baptism, then ongoing instruction. The Great Commission and the pattern in Acts present baptism as a willful, obedient act that signifies union with Christ in his death and resurrection — something an infant cannot confess or perform. Paedo-baptist arguments from household texts and Abrahamic circumcision are weighed and found insufficient, and the discussion models how to walk a younger person from simple biblical texts toward the deeper covenantal questions as their theological capacity grows.