I did not become born again as an infant. That is not biblical. When you put your faith & trust in Christ as your Saviour & what He did on your behalf then you become born again. An infant does not put their faith in Christ. I was baptized as a baby but my whole life I lived in horrible sin untill 3 years ago when I finally saw my need for a Saviour & I made a decision to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as my Saviour. That's when I got born again. No baby ever got born again though baptism because they had no say in the matter. The bible tells you how to get born again & it's not infant baptism. The Catholic Church made that up along with a whole bunch of other false teachings. Mary was not sinless by the way. The bible says that ALL have sinned and also Mary called God her Saviour so if she was sinless she wouldn't have needed a Saviour. Only sinners need a saviour.
Jesus gives the definition of "born again" in John 3:5. It's by water and the spirit. You may have had a life changing experience, but that is not how Jesus defines "born again". Baptism removes original sin which we inherit from Adam without a conscious choice, therefore it can be removed without a conscious choice.
Conversely, provide a verse that forbids infant baptism. There isn't one. Whole households were baptized in 3 places in Scripture, with only ONE person a believer. You have no way of dealing with HOUSEHOLDS.
You can't deal with the plain meaning of
Acts 2:39 because it contradicts the Protestant paradigm. No one is ever forced into baptism, it doesn't matter if the infants of the household included half the village, the baby is baptized
based on the parents faith,
the same as a Jewish baby is circumcised at 8 days old,
based on the parents faith. Maybe you can explain to me why this parallel is so incomprehensible to Protestants when Paul is so explicit in Col 2:11-12.
Mark 16:16 - Jesus says to the crowd, "He who believes and is baptized will be saved." But in reference to the same people, Jesus immediately follows with "He who does not believe will be condemned." This demonstrates that one can be baptized and still not be a believer. This disproves the Protestant argument that one must be a believer to be baptized. There is nothing in the Bible about a "believer's baptism."
Luke 18:15 – Jesus says, “Let the children come to me.” The people brought infants to Jesus that he might touch them. This demonstrates that the receipt of grace is not dependent upon the age of reason.
Acts 2:38 - Peter says to the multitude, "Repent and be baptized.." Protestants use this verse to prove one must be a believer (not an infant) to be baptized. But the Greek translation literally says, "If you repent, then each one who is a part of you and yours must each be baptized” (“
Metanoesate kai bapistheto hekastos hymon.”) This, contrary to what Protestants argue, actually proves that babies are baptized based on their parents’ faith. This is confirmed in the next verse.
Acts 2:39 - Peter then says baptism is specifically given to children as well as adults. “Those far off” refers to those who were at their “homes” (primarily infants and children). God's covenant family includes children. The word
"children" that Peter used comes from the Greek word
"teknon" which also includes infants.
Luke 1:59 - this proves that
"teknon" includes infants. Here, John as a
"teknon" (infant) was circumcised. See also
Acts 21:21 which uses
“teknon” for eight-day old babies. So baptism is for infants as well as adults.
Acts 10:47-48 - Peter baptized the entire house of Cornelius, which generally included infants and young children.
There is not one word in Scripture about baptism being limited to adults.
Rejection of infant baptism began AFTER Luther and Calvin. Rejection of infant baptism, found only in a select number of Protestant denominations today, is a denial of the sacramental principle, and a denial of original sin. It is a 16th century invention, a false tradition of men.
It is the sola scriptura mentality that led to these denials, like stripping a car of half it's parts so it will run better. Demanding multiple proof texts for any given doctrine (handed down from Jesus and the Apostles in kernel form) in the absence of Tradition and teaching authority doesn't make sense, because there are no proof texts supporting sola scriptura. It is illogical and contradictory.
What scripture gives the minimum age requirement for baptism?
Acts 16:30-33 - it was only the adults who were candidates for baptism that had to profess a belief in Jesus. This is consistent with the Church's practice of instructing catechumens before baptism. But this verse does not support a "believer's baptism" requirement for everyone. See
Acts 16:15,33. The earlier one comes to baptism, the better. For those who come to baptism as adults, the Church has always required them to profess their belief in Christ. For babies who come to baptism, the Church has always required the parents to profess the belief in Christ on behalf of the baby. But there is nothing in the Scriptures about a requirement for ALL baptism candidates to profess their own belief in Christ (because the Church has baptized babies for 2,000 years). Belief is normative for adults, but you have no verse that says belief is a prerequisite for ALL.
Mary needed a savior to make her full of grace at her conception and their was no room for any kind of sin.
Luke 1:28 [RSV]: “And he came to her and said, ‘Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!'”
[The RSVCE translates
kecharitomene (“favored one” above) as “full of grace”]
Catholics believe that this verse is an indication of the sinlessness of Mary — itself the kernel of the more developed doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. But that is not apparent at first glance (especially if the verse is translated “highly favored” — which does not bring to mind sinlessness in present-day language).
Protestants are hostile to the notions of Mary’s freedom from actual sin and her Immaculate Conception (in which God freed her from original sin from the moment of her conception) because they feel that this makes her a sort of goddess and improperly set apart from the rest of humanity. They do not believe that it was fitting for God to set her apart in such a manner, even for the purpose of being the Mother of Jesus Christ, and don’t see that this is “fitting” or “appropriate” (as Catholics do).
The great Baptist Greek scholar A.T. Robertson exhibits a Protestant perspective, but is objective and fair-minded, in commenting on this verse as follows:
“Highly favoured” (
kecharitomene). Perfect passive participle of
charitoo and means endowed with grace (
charis), enriched with grace as in Ephesians. 1:6, . . . The Vulgate
gratiae plena “is right, if it means ‘full of grace which thou hast received’; wrong, if it means ‘full of grace which thou hast to bestow'” (Plummer).
(
Word Pictures in the New Testament, Nashville: Broadman Press, 1930, six volumes, Vol. II, 13)
Kecharitomene has to do with God’s grace, as it is derived from the Greek root,
charis (literally, “grace”). Greek scholar Marvin R. Vincent noted that even Wycliffe and Tyndale (no enthusiastic supporters of the Catholic Church) both rendered
kecharitomene in Luke 1:28 as “full of grace” and that the literal meaning was “endued with grace” (
Word Studies in the New Testament, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1946, four volumes, from 1887 edition: New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; Vol. I, 259).
Likewise, well-known Protestant linguist W.E. Vine, defines it as “to endue with Divine favour or grace” (
An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., four volumes-in-one edition, 1940, Vol. II, 171).
All these men (except Wycliffe, who probably would have been, had he lived in the 16th century or after it) are Protestants, and so cannot be accused of Catholic translation bias.
For Paul, grace (
charis) is the antithesis and overcomer of sin (RSV):
Romans 5:20-21
Romans 6:14
Romans 5:17
2 Timothy 1:9
2 Corinthians 1:12
2 Corinthians 12:9
We are saved, of course, by grace, and grace alone:
Acts 15:11
Ephesians 2:5
Ephesians 2:8-10
Titus 2:11
1 Peter 1:10
Romans 3:24
Romans 11:5
Titus 3:7
Now, the implications of all this for Luke 1:28 and the Immaculate Conception of Mary ought to be obvious by now. All of the above instances of “grace” in English are translations of the Greek
charis, the root of the word used by an angel in Luke 1:28 to describe Mary:
kecharitomene. From the above we learn two things, and they are biblically certain:
1. Grace
saves us.
2. Grace gives us the power to be
holy and
righteous and without
sin.
Therefore, for a person to be
full of grace is to both be saved and to be exceptionally, completely holy. Thus we might re-apply the above two propositions as follows:
1. To be
full of the grace which saves is to
surely be saved.
2. To be
full of the grace which gives us the power to be
holy and
righteous and without
sin, is to be
fully without sin, by that same grace.
Or, we could make the following deductive argument, with premises (#1 and #2) derived directly from Scripture:
1. The Bible teaches that we are saved by God’s grace.
2. The Bible teaches that we need God’s grace to live a holy life, above sin.
3. To be “full of” God’s grace, then, is to be saved.
4. Therefore, Mary is saved.
5. To be “full of” God’s grace is also to be so holy that one is sinless.
6. Therefore, Mary is holy and sinless.
7. The essence of the Immaculate Conception is sinlessness.
8. Therefore, the Immaculate Conception, in its essence, is directly deduced from the strong evidence of many biblical passages, which teach the doctrines of #1 and #2.
The logic would seem to follow inexorably, from unquestionable biblical principles. The only way out of it would be to deny one of the two premises, and hold that either (1) grace doesn’t save, or that (2) grace isn’t that power which enables one to be sinless and holy.
In this fashion, the entire essence of the Immaculate Conception is proven (alone) from biblical principles and doctrines which every orthodox Protestant holds.
The only possible quibble might be about
when God applied this grace to Mary. We know she had it as a young woman, at the Annunciation. Catholics believe that God gave her the grace at her conception so as to avoid the original sin which she inevitably
would have inherited, being human,
but for God’s preventive grace, which saved her from falling into the pit of sin by avoidance rather than rescue, after she had fallen in. In a very simple sense, the Immaculate Conception is God giving Mary the grace to be as sinless and innocent as Eve originally was, a thing quite fitting and not at all strange or implausible for one chosen to bear the Lord God in her own body.