Evaluating Your Child’s Profession of Faith

By Adam Nesmith | April 5, 2023

As my second son’s due date rapidly approaches, I have spent the past few weeks trying to understand the Bible’s theology of family and children. Inevitably, this led me to the question of baptism. After reading and listening to John Calvin, Charles Hodge, John Murray, John Gerstner, R. C. Sproul, and Doug Wilson on infant baptism, I can say (at this point) I still affirm the 2nd London Confession’s summary of baptism over the Westminster Confession’s. However, the next question to naturally come out of this study is “when should Reformed Baptist’s baptize their children?” And essentially this question is dependent on the further question “how do you evaluate your child’s profession of faith as a parent?” It is this question that I want to think through in this article.

The logic of the Christian family

Why is this question of evaluating your child’s profession of faith so crucial to examine? I think it comes down to the crucial realization that children growing up in a home with one or two Christian parents are in a privileged position. A full examination of the privileges of children growing up in a Christian home deserves its own separate post. But I think the point is evident when you examine the following logic:

Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17)
Children in Christian homes should be exposed to the Word of God constantly and at an early age if the Christian parent is being obedient (Deuteronomy 6, Ephesians 6:4)
Therefore, Christian parents should not be surprised if Children profess faith at a far younger age than children who grow up in homes without Christian parents

In other words, children in a Christian home are privileged to have exposure to the ordinary means by which God saves sinners from a young age. If parents are faithful in their God-given duty to train their children in the Lord, it seems logical to conclude/expect/not be surprised when (pick your favorite word) your child professes faith when they are young. And the question facing Christians with a Reformed Baptist view of baptism is how do you evaluate that child’s profession of faith to determine if they should be baptized?

How do you evaluate?

Option 1: “Am I confident that my child is truly saved?”

I think the overwhelming tendency in Reformed Baptist Churches that I have come in contact with is to try to evaluate a child’s profession with some form of the question “am I confident that my child is truly saved/regenerate/repentant?” For many, the only safe way of answering this question is to delay baptism until a child is an arbitrary age (18, 15, 12, I have read many different opinions). This is viewed as the safe option since you do not want to “inoculate” a child to the Gospel or give them false assurance that they are regenerate when they are not. Oftentimes, the “final defense” given of this position is that it is simply the wise thing to do to withhold baptism from children until they are mature and “standing on their own two feet” as it were.

Although there is a lot I can respect with this position, I fundamentally disagree on several points (in no particular order):

Why does an arbitrary age suddenly mean you are confident that a child’s profession is valid?
No matter how you spin this position, you are practically saying “I have reservations about your profession” to your child until they are a certain age
The Biblical data strongly indicates that children that professed faith were baptized into the Church and considered part of the Church (even if the children’s exact age is debated)
Baptism in the New Testament follows profession of faith and repentance, not a period of testing
The standards of evaluation applied to children in a Christian home seem higher than what a Church would use for a former pagan professing faith
In the absolute best case scenario of this position, you actively withhold from a truly regenerate child the blessings of baptism, communion, and Church membership until they are an adult
Even if it is not explicitly said, this position functionally says “Church membership is not for children”

In short, although this position has the best of intentions, I think it falls short of what is laid out in the New Testament and violates many principles of family laid out in the Old Testament. There are a number of counterarguments that could be made against my points above, but for the sake of time, I will continue to what I think is a far better question to ask of your child’s profession.

Option 2: “Are there any specific reasons that cause me to doubt my child’s profession?”

If your goal is to wait until you are 90-100% confident that your child is regenerate, you will necessarily wait a long time to baptize them. After all, the longer you wait, the more fruit you will hopefully see if your child is truly saved. But baptism in the Bible does not seem to follow a long period of fruitfulness or cross-examination by the Church. The pattern repeats across the New Testament: a person is exposed to the Gospel. They repent and profess faith. Then they are baptized.

So when evaluating your child’s profession of faith, I think a better question to ask is “are there any specific reasons that would cause me to doubt my child’s profession?” Is there a pattern of unrepentance? Does your child demonstrate an understanding of the Gospel? Is there an indifference to Christ or spiritual things? I think what is helpful about his question is it shifts the evaluation from asking “is my child a mature Christian?” to “are there signs of spiritual life and repentance or not?” And I think you and I practically do this with adults all the time. If an adult professes faith, you don’t immediately expect them to exhibit every fruit of the Spirit and then baptize them. Rather, you ask some questions and see if there are any major inconsistencies with their profession (ex. not willing to repent of a known sin) and then you welcome them into the Church, disciple them to maturity in Christ, and warn them of the dangers of departing from the faith.

As discussed in the previous section, it is logical to assume children in Christian homes will generally profess faith earlier than 18 or 21.They are still young and still have much to learn and grow into, but if they understand the Gospel and you can’t point to specific reasons to withhold baptism from them, then you should welcome them into the Church, disciple them to maturity in Christ, and warn them of the dangers of departing from the faith. Now, what specific reasons for saying you don’t affirm there profession will vary. But several I think are self-evident:

Can they accurately explain the Gospel?
Are they active in family worship?
Do they exhibit a desire for salvation?
Do they see themselves as a sinner in need of a savior?
What is their attitude towards parental discipline?
(This one is more nuanced) Are they trying to please you as parents or is there peer-pressure because other kids at Church/family are professing?
(This one is also nuanced) Do they believe anything anyone tells them? or is there some level of discernment in their thinking?

This list is not meant to be authoritative or exhaustive. And the critical reader will read these and say “aha! From this list, you seem to exclude kids from age 0-4 at least!” Perhaps that is true. My point is that your each child’s profession must be evaluated separately since each child is different and learns and grows differently. It seems reasonable to assume that even within a given Christian family God could save one child younger and one child older. If you have little to no specific reason to doubt a child’s profession of faith, Biblically I think you must baptize them. If you do have specific reason to doubt, then delay. But to operate as if you should not baptize anyone until they exhibit a high level of maturity or until they reach an arbitrary age is, in my opinion, a well-intentioned error.

Who is doing the evaluating?

The next question to answer is who is primarily responsible for evaluating you child’s profession of faith? I think a Biblical view of the household leads to the conclusion that the primary person responsible for this evaluation is the father. Fathers are the heads of the home and it is to fathers that Paul says “bring up your children in the training and instruction of the Lord.” So the responsibility, Biblically, rests first with the fathers. In other words, when your child first professes faith, your first step is not rushing them off to the Elders at your local Church to get their feedback. As head of the household and the one who is responsible for training your Children, the duty of evaluating your child’s profession of faith rests with you.

Now, does that mean you never get your Elder’s opinion? Should you go baptize your own kids as soon as you are affirm their profession? Of course not. Ideally and normally, it is your Elders who should be doing the baptism within the context of your local Church. But you as the father should be able to go alongside your child and be a witness to the Elders that there is no reason to doubt your child’s profession. Your Elders should trust your evaluation in this matter and you should submit to any questioning or concerns the Elders have. But fundamentally, you cannot “outsource” the responsibility for evaluating your child’s profession of faith to the Eldership. You either affirm your child in the context of the home and then go to the Church leadership. Or you do not affirm your child’s profession and continue to teach them.

What is at stake?

Finally, after reading this long post, you might ask “what is at stake with all of this?” Is it really a big deal to simply wait until a child is a teenager or grown to baptize them? I personally think it is. Beyond the reasons already discussed, my chief concern is that you and I don’t treat our children as worse than an unbeliever in our attempt to guard Church membership or avoid the trap of easy believism. Can God save children? Does God save children? Could God use the faithful obedience of Christian parents to save children at a young age? If the answer to this question is “yes” than to withhold baptism is to treat a professing child as worse than a pagan off the street who professes faith. In the case of the latter, as long as there is no reason to doubt that person’s profession, baptism and communion are not withheld. So why would you wait to baptize you child and welcome them into the Church if you have no reason to doubt his or her profession?

Will there be false professions? Of course. There are plenty of false professions among adults and the New Testament gives clear instructions for how to deal with them. Is our job to try to catch every false profession or withhold means of grace until we personally are assured of someone’s regeneration? Should our Church practice be based on risk mitigation or obedience to the text of Scripture? You and I are not God and, to riff off of Spurgeon, people don’t walk around with “Elect” written on their foreheads. If that were the case, deciding which children to baptize and when would be easy. But since that is not the case, the best you and I can do is carefully, prayerfully, and thoughtfully evaluate our child’s profession. And if there is no cause for alarm, we should baptize them into the Church and continue to disciple this child in the faith who also happens to be an actual child.

For more of my assorted reflections on a myriad of topics, click here. If you found this post helpful, please share on social media below and subscribe. For a helpful external post discussing baptism with links to various positions, click here.