Before we go further, we must be clear about what baptism actually is — because what many practice today bears little resemblance to what the New Testament describes.
The English word “baptism” is not a translation. It is a transliteration — the Greek word baptizo carried over into English with its spelling changed but its meaning left behind. The Greek word means to immerse, to submerge, to plunge beneath. It does not mean to sprinkle. It does not mean to pour. It means to put completely under.
And the Scriptures confirm this in the way they describe it. Paul wrote:
“Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
— Romans 6:4
Buried. Not sprinkled on. Not dabbed. Buried. You do not bury someone by scattering a handful of dirt on their head. You bury someone by putting them completely under. Baptism is a burial in water and a resurrection out of it — the old man goes down, the new man comes up. That is the picture Paul paints, and it only makes sense as full, complete immersion.
When Philip baptized the Ethiopian eunuch, the text says “they both went down into the water” and then “came up out of the water” (Acts 8:38–39). They did not stand on the bank while Philip sprinkled him. They went down into the water together.
When Jesus Himself was baptized by John, He “came up immediately from the water” (Matthew 3:16). He was in the water. He came up out of it.
And this is why John was baptizing at a specific location: “John also was baptizing in Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there” (John 3:23). If baptism were sprinkling or pouring, any small vessel of water would do. John needed much water — because baptism requires enough water to immerse a person completely.
As for infant baptism — there is no command for it, no example of it, and no hint of it anywhere in the New Testament. Baptism requires belief: “He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16). It requires repentance: “Repent, and each of you be baptized” (Acts 2:38). An infant can neither believe, nor repent, nor confess Christ — and an infant has no need to. Baptism is for the forgiveness of sins, and an infant has committed no sin. Sin is not inherited. Sin is a deliberate act of transgression — “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4) — and a child who has never known the difference between right and wrong has committed no transgression. Every conversion in the book of Acts involves a person who heard the gospel, believed it, and chose to be baptized. Baptism is a conscious act of obedient faith — and it always has been.