16:31,32
Believe in the Lord Jesus. The salvation is for everyone who will believe, and it is for whole households as well. Now some take this sort of verse (16:31) (eg Acts 2:38) as justification for infant baptism. The case for this would seem to be a little tenuous at best. The next verse has Paul and Silas speaking the word of God to the jailer’s household. So one could just as easily take it as implying they needed to understand what they were doing. Ie supporting believer’s baptism if you want to put it in that context.
We do better to focus on what is definitely taught here. We need to believe in the Lord Jesus in order to be saved, and we are to be instructed in the word of the Lord.
16:33
The jailer took them out of the prison and washed their wounds. These were wounds from previous beatings (16:23). Then the jailer and all his family were baptised. Of course, this is used as justification for infant baptism, but we do not know if young infants were involved or not. What can be said from this and other incidents in Acts is that baptism can take place immediately on conversion. Nowadays in churches that practice believer’s baptism (and “confirmation” could be considered equivalent for this context) the normal way of doing things is for people to go through some sort of baptism class first. Now the jailer and his family had had some instruction.
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