Acknowledging One Baptism

The creed tells us, “We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” This clause emphasizes a teaching of the ancient Church that would later be denied by the rise of anabaptism. Anabaptism taught that infant baptism was a waste of time and said that you must be baptized as an adult in order for baptism to be valid. It maintained that the only thing that baptism really counts for is a sign showing you are serious about following Christ. In short, anabaptism teaches that baptism is something we do for God, not something he does for us. So it insisted that those baptized as infants needed to be re-baptized as adults since they couldn’t have made an intelligent profession of faith as infants and therefore baptism could not have done them any good.