What about a person who doesn’t repent until after his baptism?
Question:
Dear brother,
Thank God for your good work.
Please, if an unrepented person who concealed his sin then gets baptized and he later comes to his senses, what must he do? Or when the church finds out, what must the church do?
What I understand, based on the steps to salvation, Acts 2:47 and many other Scriptures, is that such a person was not added to the church, so he must be baptized again. But what do you say about this?
Thank you.
Answer:
"What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?" (Romans 6:1-2).
Repentance from sin is required in order to be saved from those sins. "I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish" (Luke 13:3). Thus, if brethren learn that someone in their midst is involved in sin, then it is their duty to help him change his attitude toward sin and his behavior.
If a person is baptized without faith, we realize that the baptism signified nothing (Mark 16:16). In the same way, a baptism without repentance would not lead to rising from the water as a new creature (Acts 2:37; Romans 6:3-7). A child of God does not remain in sin. "No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother" (I John 3:9-10).
When a person truly turns from his sin and wishes to serve God with his whole heart, then he needs to be baptized for the forgiveness of his sins. This doesn't mean that he will never sin again, but that he is determined not to remain in his sins (I John 1:5-2:1).
