Back when I was willing to debate who should be baptized,¹I don’t engage that debate any more. I’ve found that it generates a lot of talk and little understanding. Though I have clear and strong convictions on this, I chose to leave the topic alone, especially on the Internet. I often ran into an argument for the baptism of infants based on Acts 2:39:

For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.

“The promise is for you and your children so baptize your children, that’s how the people who originally heard this promise would have responded to it after all.” I’ve written on this a bit tongue in cheek here²I need to redo the formatting on that post. but as I was preparing to preach on this passage, I again saw how really weak that argument is. No, not weak, inappropriate.

First of all, in context, the promise is not baptism or the covenant but the Holy Spirit (cf. Luke 24:49; Acts 1:5, 8, 2:33). What Peter is offering them is to receive the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38). So if infants automatically receive the promise because their parents did, then our children are automatically Spirit-filled. If they have received the Holy Spirit, they received the seal and guarantee of the New Covenant (2 Cor. 1:22, 5:5; Eph. 1:13-14, 4:30). Surely that’s more than what most paedobaptists are arguing for from this verse, but it does follow. So what did Peter mean by “for you and for your children”? Keep reading. The promise is also “for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” And that was exactly Peter’s point at the beginning of his sermon. People were confused as to why, listening to these Galileans, they could “hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God” (Acts 2:11). Peter’s answer is that the Holy Spirit has been poured out on all flesh, not just judges, kings, and prophets, just as the prophet Joel said He would be (Acts 2:17).

Second, there is explicit reason in the immediate context to say that only those who professed faith were baptized:

So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. (Acts 2:41)

It is a huge “yeah-but” to say that it was they and their children when the verse is clear that it was “those who received” Peter’s word.

The entire point of chapter 2 is the arrival of the Holy Spirit on “all flesh” because of Jesus’ resurrection. To extend it to support infant baptism really misses the point. The tremendous promise is that Jesus received the Promise of his Father and has given that promise it all who believe in him. You can receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.