Baptism Explained for Young People

Perhaps you are a young person, or you know a young person, who is interested in getting baptized, but isn’t sure why or how or what the consequences might be.  Here is a resource that will help parents and youth workers to explain the how and why of baptism. A more in-depth look at Biblical baptism using Bible references can be found in the study on baptism also on this site.

Should I be Baptized?

You may already know that baptism has something to do with becoming a Christian.

When you become a Christian you are adopted by God into his family. You don’t lose the family you have now, but you become part of another family – God’s own family. You have his name and He calls you his child. You represent him to the world. You get to live with him forever. But the decision to adopt you is God’s decision to make, not yours. And the way that you become his child, the steps you have to take, are also decided by God, and no one else. Because God is God, he gets to make the rules.

Here is some really good news. God loves you very much and because he loves you so much he has made a way for you to be forgiven for all your wrongdoing and he has invited you to join his family. He wants to adopt you. He wants you to belong to him and to have a wonderful life and to live forever with him.

Some people don’t want to belong to God’s family. They want to go their own way. Maybe they don’t believe there really is a God. Maybe they think they’re smarter than he is. Maybe they’re just selfish and full of pride and don’t want anyone telling them what to do. God still loves those people, but he won’t force them to be a member of his family. Long ago, God decided that everyone gets to choose.

If you choose to become a member of God’s family, you just need to follow his plan. The first step in God’s adoption plan is that you would believe. When I say believe I’m really talking about a special kind of believing that the Bible calls faith. You see, just believing that God exists is not enough. Even the devil and his demons believe that way. Faith means that you believe not only that God exists but also that he keeps all the promises he has made.

The greatest promise is the promise of eternal life. Jesus said that his life was stronger than death and that even if evil people killed him (he called it tearing down the temple) he would not stay dead but would come back to life. He wasn’t talking about some kind of zombie, rotten, brainless monster life. He was talking about real life – just like he was before he was killed and even better. And Jesus promised that his life could bring life and forgiveness to you. This belief that God is a good, loving, promise keeping, stronger than death, able to keep us safe, forever God, this faith, is so important to him that he says without it, it’s impossible to please him.

The first step in God’s adoption plan is mostly about you knowing who he is. The second step is more about you knowing who you are. Oh, I’m sure you know your name and address. You know how old you are and how tall you are. You probably know your favorite food and your favorite color. You know a lot about you. Do you also know you made yourself an enemy of God?

Among all those things you know, you know that certain things are right and certain things are wrong. And when you do wrong, you are going against God. Every time you lie, every time you are selfish, when you are mean, when you cheat or steal, when you say and do hurtful things, when you are disobedient to your mom or dad, then you are setting yourself against God. You should not be surprised that the enemies of God do not get to be a part of his family. The death of Jesus on the cross and his power to come back from the dead are enough to forgive all of the wrong things that we’ve done. But even though God might forgive us, we might still be his enemies, going our own way and doing whatever bad things we feel like doing. So the second step in God’s plan to bring you into his family is that you have to be sorry for the bad things you’ve done, and decide that you’re going to let God be in charge of your life. Sure, you might still do bad things sometimes, but they will be slip-ups and mistakes, because the whole direction of your life is now to become more and more like Jesus. Your heart is changed and you love Jesus more than anything, even yourself. The Bible calls this turning around and changing your heart “repentance.”

In the Bible, this change of your heart and change in the path of your life is always followed by another kind of knowing.  Now, the world needs to know. You know who God is and believe what he says.  That is faith.  You know that your own choices have made you an enemy of God and you decide to change your heart and live to please him.  That is repentance.  Now, you need to let the world know.  The third step in God’s plan to adopt you into his family is baptism.  Baptism is a word that means to “be immersed in water,” so your whole body is put under the water for a moment. When you have faith in Jesus, and repent and are baptized, then your sins (acts that make you God’s enemy) are forgiven and the Spirit of God comes to live in you and you become one of his children – he adopts you into his family.

Baptism, the third step of God’s adoption plan, makes a picture of many of the spiritual things that are happening to you.  You are imitating Jesus in his death, and burial (when you go under the water) and return to life (when you come up out of the water).  It is a picture of being born into a new family.  It is a picture of being washed clean of all your sins.  It is a picture of being completely in Christ, covered and clothed with Jesus.

And, most importantly, it is your first public act of obedience to Jesus, who you are declaring to be your king and your very life.