Today is All Saints’ Day–when Christians remember the saints that came before us. It’s a perfect day to celebrate our son’s entry into visible membership into God’s family through the sacrament of baptism! You can watch it in the video above.

I wasn’t raised witnessing or agreeing with infant baptism. I grew up as a Bible Belt Southern Baptist (and pretty much all my relatives continue in that tradition). As a child, infant baptism was seen as a strange Catholic thing that went against the doctrine of salvation through grace.

But over time, my perspective changed as I found myself drawn into another tradition within Christianity–one that views baptism in a different way that I’ve found incredibly meaningful and beautiful.

(Side note: if you are skeptical or curious about this view, this book is hands down, the most accessible, gracious, and comprehensive explanation and defense of infant baptism.)

The biggest shift for me was seeing that baptism is all about receiving and celebrating God’s commitment to me, rather than my commitment to him. It is a recognition that God has chosen me, moved towards me, and has been gracious and faithful to me, even before I had a thought about him.

The New Testament tells us that God’s work and promise in the world still moves through families. Because of this, in Luke’s baptism, we’re honoring that God’s promise has been extended to him. It’s a recognition that God has already shown him grace by placing him in a Christian family where he will be loved, taught, and guided as he grows in faith.

Since Abraham, God has said that his covenant people need to have a family mark to distinguish them as his. In the Old Testament, that was circumcision. In the New Testament, that has been broadened into baptism (Col. 2:11-12).

Infants were circumcised before they could ever choose to be an Israelite and that didn’t take away their choice or responsibility to follow God’s law and live according to his commandments later in life. It just meant that they bore in their own flesh the mark that God had chosen them even before they could choose it for themselves.

One irony of having been raised thinking infant baptism was a weird Catholic thing is that some of the most beautiful statements about it are from the first couple of generations of Protestant Reformers. They broke away from Catholicism to return to what they saw as the pure core of Scripture—and they still held tightly to infant baptism.

The original Protestant, Martin Luther, struggled with crippling depression, anxiety, and spiritual doubt his entire life. And in these moments, he kept himself sane by telling himself and others: “remember your baptism!” For Luther, that was his infant baptism. For Luke, we plan to tell him the same.

As he grows up and has doubts and struggles, as he is hurt and hurts others, and if he doubts that he deserves love, we will tell him to remember this day. Cling to it. We’ll tell him that no matter what thoughts haunt your mind, or what feelings of inadequacy or failure cling to your soul, those things are not what is most true about you.

What’s most true about you is that before you could make any decision for yourself, God marked you with the waters of baptism as his own and brought you into his family, apart from anything you did. That was Martin Luther’s hope, and I pray that it becomes Luke’s. To that end, just as I’ve done for myself, we will celebrate Luke’s “baptism birthday” every single year.

So while I appreciate my family members who watched this baptism while secretly telling themselves it was merely a “baby dedication”, it really is so much more. If baptism were only a commitment we were making as parents—our dedication or our own will to raise Luke in the faith—we would be setting ourselves (and Luke) up for disappointment. Parenting is imperfect; our efforts fall short every day. If baptism relied on our strength or our consistency, we would fail.

But thankfully, it doesn’t. Baptism is rooted in God’s promise, which doesn’t change with our successes or failures. It’s a gift we receive rather than a goal we achieve. And so, as an act of obedience and celebration, we let our child go through the waters of baptism, being baptized into Christ’s death and rising to new life.

Baptism is not simply a reflection of any one moment, decision, or turning point in faith. It is a lasting sign of God’s eternal, unchanging love for Luke, marking him as his own and bringing him into his family, bearing “Christian” as his spiritual last name.

Luke is now a Christian–and he has to learn to live into that name and make it his own. And through it all we’re going to love this kid with the love of God, treating him as the brother in Christ he is, and trusting that God has loved our child since before time began–and even into eternity.

Happy All Saints’ Day. Selah.