Echoing Clark's statements, I do not find the Acts passage at all troubling, even supposing that "those who received his Word" may only be confirmed as adult, male listeners in the audience. They would have been predominant, given the setting, however I do not assume that no women (for example) were among the number converted.
And, because we interpret the text contextually (as do baptists
), we wouldn't want to exclude v39-40, one which verse appropriates the language of the covenant of Grace as first given, Gen.17. So, we ask how those first hearers/ believers/ baptized would have understood Peter's promissory language?
As for Col.2:12:
We don't make the assumption that for a valid baptism, faith must be present at the time of the baptism or else the person wasn't baptized. Faith is absolutely necessary for a baptism to be "efficacious," meaning that the sign be accompanied by the thing signified. Faith is allowed to come afterward, but when/if it is present, then the sign teaches unto faith the gospel it proclaims.
All this to say, that baptism is only complete when faith believes in the promises made. We do not believe in "bare-sign" application, or spiritual possession conferred by an outward act. What God chooses to do at the time of a baptism (adult or infant!) is his business. His Spirit blows when and where it will. Sometimes he works before a baptism, sometimes after, sometimes in the midst. Who are we to monitor his moves?
The questions: "what does baptism teach" and "what does MY baptism teach ME?" are conceptually distinct. Baptism teaches concerning union with Christ, which includes believers being "raised up with him." If I, as an adult, recognize NOW that God made those promises to ME, even before I was cognitively aware of such in my baptism, I do not thereby discount my baptism since those early days (until such recognition); but rather I recognize that God was the initiator of those promises, particularly to me, and he did so long before I was fully enriched by them.
What about the non-elect recipient? Well, we say God doesn't make a promise to save JoeSmith at baptism (infant or adult). He makes a promise to save every believer (including JoeSmith, as believer or when believing) who trusts Christ completely all the way to glory. The baptism becomes "JoeSmiths" at the time he believes in what it signifies. The fact that he may have had the promise before (sometimes long before) he believes it, only teaches the electing love of God is prior to anyone's appropriating it for himself. If JoeSmith refuses to believe what baptism teaches, then he will get the same thing he gets when he rejects the other gospel-words that come his way.
So, the faith signified in an outward baptism is the faith of believers, only. It may be proleptic (or not) in the case of an infant. It is only supposed to be represented in the faith of believing parents who present the child (infant baptism is not for children of non-church members, professors). And it signifies the faith of the church, and the faith of all the participants and observers who watch, see, understand, and believe the message of the gospel presented in baptism.
