SAVED WITHOUT BAPTISM.
JESUS don’t say, “He that is not baptized shall be damned.” Suppose he does not. Baptism is a commandment. To do a commandment is an act of obedience. To refuse to do a commandment is to refuse to do an act of obedience. The Lord will take vengeance on them who know not God, and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. But our friend says, “I believe if a man willfully and stubbornly refuses to receive the ordinance of baptism, that man will be lost.” What, then, of all those people who have the Bible in their houses, printed plainly in their mother tongue, and know that baptism is commanded, or may know it, as certainly as they know their names, and will not be baptized? And what of the preachers who encourage them in it? The Lord’s will is that they should obey—be baptized. They refuse to do this. They know his will and do it not. Will they be saved?
But there are cases in which baptism is impossible. There are cases where the gospel can not be administered. Where the gospel can not be administered, we can not have the promise of the gospel. But will they not be saved by the atonement? The atonement is the reconciliation, and reconciliation is by the Mediator, or by the belief and obedience of the gospel. But what of those who can not hear the gospel? They are not gospel subjects. The gospel can not be administered to them. What will you do with them? Nothing. Where the gospel can be made known preach it to the people. Where they can believe and obey it, urge them to do it, that they may be saved. Gospel salvation is the only salvation we have anything to do with. It is freely and graciously offered to men who believe and obey the gospel. The work of the preacher is to preach the gospel to all and exhort all to obey it, showing that “God commands all men everywhere to repent,” and that this repentance is in view of the judgment.
But what of infants? Gospel salvation, or the salvation of the commission, is salvation from sin, or remission of sins. Infants have never sinned, and need no remission of sins. They need nothing only precisely what a saint needs—to be raised from the dead, changed, immortalized and glorified.