Why wasn’t the Savior baptized when He was eight?
Question
Dear Gramps,
Why wasn’t the Savior baptized when He was eight? Since we are to follow His example this is confusing. It is my understanding that baptism was around even before the Savior’s time. If it was, then at what age were people baptized? Just wondering. Thanks.
Jean
Answer
Dear Jean,
Jesus was to be baptized by John, and they were the same age. Should Jesus at age eight have been baptized by another eight-year-old? The law is not that we should be baptized when eight years old, but that the age of eight is the minimum age at which we should be baptized. Rather than focusing on the example of chronology, we should follow the Savior in the example of the kind of life he lived.
Gramps
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I almost always find myself agreeing with the answers I read on “Ask Gramps”. In this case, though, I have to disagree with the first part of the answer. I don’t think it would have been a problem at all in the eternal scheme of things to allow John to be born a few years earlier in order to baptize Jesus when he was 8. I would say to that question – we just don’t know. It could be that it was a cultural thing, it could be that Jesus didn’t need to be baptized for the remission of sins, it could be that it marked the beginning of his ministry or something else.