Can the Persistent Sinner Be Baptized?

What if someone has an active intention to receive baptism and yet still chooses to persist in or cling to a sin?

Can such a person be baptized? The answer depends on what we mean by “can.” 

If by “can” we mean, “Will the person be validly baptized?”, then the answer is yes. Aquinas teaches that such a baptism would be valid insofar as it communicates the “seal” or “indelible mark” mentioned in previous chapters (cf. CCC 1121)—that’s to say, the individual would be regenerated and marked as a child of God the Father. 

However, the effects of the seal, such as the communication of sanctifying grace and the remission of sins (and everything involved with sin, such as temporal punishment due to sin), would not be produced in the soul. And only once the person repents of the persistent sin (ordinarily through the sacrament of reconciliation), which at the time serves as an obstacle to the effects of the baptismal seal being produced, would such effects in fact be produced. 

Now, if by “can” we mean, “Should someone be baptized if he persists in a sin?”, then the answer is no. There are three reasons. 

First, baptism incorporates us into Christ. Paul says, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27). For a person to persist in sin is to set his will against being united to Christ, given that union with Christ and sin are mutually exclusive (“What partnership have righteousness and iniquity?”—2 Cor. 6:14). 

Secondly, baptism in this scenario would become a performative contradiction, an act where the agent performing the action intends something contrary to what the act is naturally about. For example, if I say, “I am dead,” the very utterance of the sentence falsifies the meaning of the words. Or if someone engages in the sexual act, which naturally is ordered to the generation of children, and yet actively thwarts the achievement of such a goal or end, then he falsifies the meaning of the act itself. Given the irrationality built into these actions, reason recognizes that we ought to avoid them. 

Similarly, the will to persist in sin while voluntarily getting baptized thwarts baptism from achieving one of the ends or goals to which it is ordered: the remission of sin. As Aquinas puts it, “no one having the will to sin can, at the same time, be cleansed from sin . . . for this would be to combine two contradictory things.”  One ought not to engage in such perverse behavior, especially when it comes to sacrosanct things like the sacrament of baptism. 

Thirdly, we shouldn’t lie. The very act of someone presenting himself to the waters of baptism visibly signifies that he is voluntarily seeking the cleansing and remission of sins. Yet, insofar as he wills to persist in sin, he is not seeking the cleansing and remission of sins, since the two are mutually exclusive. Now, as Aquinas puts it, “a sign is false if it does not correspond with the thing signified.”  Since in this scenario the sign of a man presenting himself for baptism doesn’t correspond, or map on to, what it signifies—namely, repentance of sin—we have a bearing of false witness, which is something that we ought not do. 

For believers and nonbelievers alike, Baptism Now Saves You is the go-to source for understanding this ancient and essential practice—and for explaining it to friends and loved ones.