The following explanation is from the sermon "Why Shouldn't I Be Baptized?" given by Alistair Begg. You may listen to the sermon in its entirety by clicking here>
Who do we baptize?
1) We baptize those over the age of 13, and 13 is arbitrary. There is no biblical basis for it. The closest we can get to it is the bar mitzvah from a Jewish background. We’ve chosen to so that because we’ve discovered over time that if you baptize children under a certain age, you will baptize a great flood of them, many of them very tender-hearted, very sincere, very desirous of doing the right thing. And yet by the time they get to 17 or 18, they’re absolutely nowhere in relationship to what happened to them in their tender ages. And so as a mechanism for protection and guidance for church families, we have chosen to do this.
2) We baptize those who understand what baptism isn’t. What isn’t it? It is not the washing away of sins. The washing away of sins only takes place as a result of the shed blood of Jesus. And so what takes place in baptism pictures that, but does not perform it.
These individuals also know that baptism is not the way to become a Christian. One does not become a Christian as a result of someone, albeit a religious professional, doing something to us. Rather we become Christians by grace, through faith, as we turn in repentance and in childlike trust to Jesus who has died on behalf of sinners.
These individuals, who we baptize, know what baptism is not, and they also know what baptism is. That it is a confession of personal faith; that the very symbolism itself is the issue. In much the same way that a wedding ceremony is, in and of itself, a picture of Christ’s love for the Church. In the same way if you think of this pool as a grave, you will be on track. You remember when Paul writes, he says, “What I received as of first importance, I delivered to you that Christ died for sins, that He was raised from the dead,” and so on. And it is this very picture which is here in the baptismal pool. When these individuals come through this water, what they’re saying is, “I believe that Jesus died for me. In His death there is the forgiveness of my sins. I believe that Jesus is alive forevermore. And I know Him as my living Savior.” That is what is being portrayed in the picture of dying with Christ and being raised with Christ. Again, it is picturing that which He in His grace performs.
