Covenantal integration and the inevitability of infant baptism

Issue #159

In the last issue, I upset a bunch of folks by pointing out that, absent a higher arche to order them, natural categories like blood and soil are arbitrary and infinitely divisible forms of identity — the same error, but opposite ditch, as modern woke individualism:

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Natural vs covenantal identity: ethnic blood & soil vs Christ’s blood & kingdom

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I argued that Clown World is inevitable when covenant is discarded as the ground of identity. Our identity, our existence, just is constituted in a body that grows from a head. We exist in and from the body; who we are follows from what we are.

This is the picture that scripture presupposes.

Hence, “onetogetherness” between individuals — the integration of the parts into a whole that is required for true society — is impossible without participation in a living head: just as separation from God leads to eternal death and hell, so modern individualism, by severing people from the commonality of covenant headship, produces hell on earth.

The only answer to this is the gospel that God, in Christ, is “summing up all things in him” (Eph 1:10). Unless natural categories of identity are integrated into Christ — iow, unless Christian identity reconstitutes and reorders our natural identity in some meaningful way — we are headed for the Old World, disintegrated by irreconcilable loyalties to elemental people, places, and spirits.

It truly is Christ or chaos.

Today, I intend to upset a bunch more of you, by building on this thesis.

The fact that identity is constituted in covenant bodies requires that we baptize our babies.

Infant baptism is not explicitly taught in scripture because it is such a natural and inevitable consequence of the fundamental pattern of covenantal integration — what we usually call federal headship — that there would actually only have been the need for explicit instruction if we were not to baptize infants.

Since such instruction does not exist, QED, etc.

But let me show the working.

Whether or not to baptize babies really comes down to the nature of the new covenant. Is it of the same integrative “format” as all the covenants of the Old Testament, into which new members were integrated by birth to existing members? Or is it something radically new?

It is easy to show the answer from scripture.

Let’s start in Jeremiah 31.

“Behold, days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when I will cut a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I cut with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, but I was a husband to them,” declares Yahweh. “But this is the covenant which I will cut with the house of Israel after those days,” declares Yahweh: “I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know Yahweh,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares Yahweh, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31–34)

This might seem like a strange place to start — because does this not describe a new covenant whose membership is radically different to the old? Are its members not integrated by faith rather than descent — by supernatural generation, rather than natural? Jeremiah seems to be saying that this new covenant is made only with those who have the law written on their hearts: it is only those who know God, and are forgiven by him, who are brought into covenant membership.

In Reformed terms, the way Jeremiah describes it, only those who are regenerate — those elected and irresistibly drawn — are considered members of this new covenant. This is explicitly set in distinction to the covenant with Moses — the one made when God brought them out of Egypt. The radical distinction that Jeremiah draws is between the covenant of Moses, where you became a member by birth; and this new covenant, where you become a member by rebirth.

Surely, then, children cannot automatically be members of this new covenant. We must rather assess them on an individual basis. (In which case, we should not give them the covenant sign, until such time as they show evidence of knowing God in the way that Jeremiah describes.)

That is the superficial impression — but let us not be superficial. We should always try to read more than just a few verses, to avoid making silly mistakes. We should at least read back a little, to get the context of what Jeremiah is saying. How does God introduce the concept of this new covenant, before he gets to the details in verses 31–34?

“At that time,” declares Yahweh, “I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be My people.” (Jeremiah 31:1)

There can be no question that when he speaks of Israel, he is speaking of the church. The new covenant is made with the new Israel, the church of God.

So by interpretation, God says in verse 1, “I will be the God of all the families of the church, and they [the families] shall be my people.”

This is a confusing way to introduce and frame the new covenant, if verses 31–34 are showing us an individualistic covenant; a covenant which is different from the Mosaic covenant in that its membership is not by birth, by family.

In a similar way, if we look at how God reiterates the blessings of this covenant in Jeremiah 32:38–39, we find:

And they shall be My people, and I will be their God; and I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me always, for their own good and for the good of their children after them. (Je 32:38–39)

Both in introducing and in summing up this new and better covenant, God says that the families and the children will be the objects of his covenant blessings. We see the same language being used in Ezekiel 37:

And My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd; and they will walk in My judgments and keep My statutes and do them. They will inhabit the land that I gave to Jacob My servant, which your fathers inhabited; and they will inhabit it, they, and their sons and their sons’ sons, forever; and David My servant will be their prince forever. [That of course being Christ.] (Ezekiel 37:24–25)

“They, and their sons, and their sons’ sons” does not sound like an individualistic covenant. If the new covenant really is made exclusively with the regenerate, how are we to understand these depictions — unless we imagine that every child is regenerate? But we know this is not the case, because Christian children do fall away from the faith. So how should we reconcile what God is saying here? How can we harmonize the seemingly individualistic language of Jeremiah 31:31–34, with the familial language of these other passages?

One option is to say that the children are not included in the covenant automatically, by birth. Rather, God just promises a typical pattern in which he will regenerate the children — so at some point as they grow up they become covenant members, and the church can continue down to the next generation. This seems like the only thing it can mean. Does not Jeremiah specifically say that this is the difference between the old covenant and the new — that it is made exclusively with the regenerate? “I will give my law in their inner parts,” and, “on their heart will I write it.” Hence, “they all shall know me, from their least unto their greatest.” How much more explicit could it be? If you wanted to say that the new covenant would be made exclusively with the regenerate, what would you say differently? How could this be clearer? Every covenant member knows God, from the least of them, to the greatest of them!

That must mean all of them without exception, right?

Well, let’s ask Jeremiah himself what this language of “least to greatest” means. It is not the first time he has used it. It begins when he is speaking of why God is sending judgment on Israel, back in chapter 6:

For from the least of them even to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for gain, and from the prophet even to the priest, everyone practices lying. (Jeremiah 6:13)

So every single person in Israel is corrupt. Every single one, from child to adult, peasant to noble, is greedy for gain.

Except, obviously that is not the best reading of this passage. What about…Jeremiah himself? He is a prophet. What about Daniel and his friends, who lived at that time? Is this language meant to be taken to condemn them also? To say that there is not a single God-fearing man in Israel at all?

Or, is it a figure of speech? Hyperbole? An expression meaning that so few are left; that the majority are corrupted; that scarce enough good people remain, that no matter where you go, no matter what level of society — whether it’s peasants or nobles, priests or prophets — you are going to find worthless men there?

I don’t think we have much choice in how we answer this, lest we make God’s word into nonsense. But Jeremiah 44 uses the same language, so let’s look there as well:

And I will take away the remnant of Judah who have set their face on entering the land of Egypt to sojourn there, and they will all meet their end in the land of Egypt; they will fall by the sword and meet their end by famine. From the least of them to the greatest, they will die by the sword and famine; and they will become a curse, an object of horror, an imprecation, and a reproach. And I will punish those who live in the land of Egypt, as I have punished Jerusalem, with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence. So there will be no one who escapes or any survivors for the remnant of Judah who have entered the land of Egypt to sojourn there and then to return to the land of Judah, to which they are longing to return to live; for none will return except a few who escape. (Jeremiah 44:12–14)

Jeremiah explicitly shows us here that “from the least even to the greatest” does not mean every single one. It is not individualistic language at all. He plainly says that there shall be exceptions. So it is not a literal universal statement, but a figure of speech meaning a lot, a majority, most. It refers to a large enough proportion that neither small nor great will be excluded. As he goes on to say in verse 28 of chapter 44, they that escape the sword shall return out of the land of Egypt “few in number.” The language is explicitly not universal.

The same Hebrew phrase also occurs in chapter 42:

Then all the commanders of the military forces, Johanan the son of Kareah, Jezaniah the son of Hoshaiah, and all the people from the least to the greatest approached and said to Jeremiah the prophet…

Very plainly, in this passage it is representatives of the people who come to Jeremiah — not every single person. So let us apply this clear hermeneutic to Jeremiah 31:31–34.

The problem with the old covenant — the problem that the new covenant solves — is not that every single individual failed to continue in it because they were unregenerate. The problem was that the people did not continue in it. And the solution to that, which the new covenant brings, is not that every single member is regenerate, but rather that the body as a whole is regenerate.

This is a very unfamiliar way of thinking to us. We live in an age that has shaped us to be almost unable to conceive of a non-individualistic way to think about the new covenant. But scripture does not speak primarily in terms of individuals; it speaks in terms of bodies and their members. Both the old and the new covenant are supposed to establish a people — “they will be my people.”

Covenants establish bodies

The problem with the old covenant was that the people did not continue in it; the body was unregenerate. And the solution, in the new covenant, is that the people will continue in it, because the body is regenerate.

We need to think very carefully about the connection between covenants and bodies, because we have a particular blind spot here. We are all died-in-the-wool individualists. We do not think in terms of bodies; but God does. So what scripture takes for granted at a deep level, is highly unintuitive to us.

We think of covenants in terms of individuals. God cuts a covenant with Abraham. Abraham is an individual. But in scripture, while covenants are certainly cut with individuals, they always establish bodies. The marriage covenant is between two individuals, but it establishes a new body, one flesh, from their two bodies. The covenant with Abraham establishes a new body, Israel, God’s son, from Abraham’s flesh. We know that under the new covenant, the church is a body — the body of Christ.

The problem, therefore, that Jeremiah describes — the problem that the new covenant solves — is a body problem, not a member problem.

Israel, as God’s body, did not function as its Head directed. It did not exercise dominion for him, let alone increase that dominion into the whole world. That is the problem that the new covenant solves; the Great Commission is directly aimed at it. It is directly aimed at increasing Christ’s dominion into the world. And it is directly aimed not at individuals, but at nations — bodies.

The church is able to fulfill this great commission because she is a regenerate body: a body indwelt and directed by God’s Spirit; a body properly connected to its Head.

But does a body being regenerate mean that every single member is regenerate? Does a regenerate body require the universal regeneration of its members? Scripture answers this question directly — but even on the face of it, the answer is obviously no. It is akin to asking: does Jesus being the savior of the world mean that every single person is saved? Does a saved world entail universalism?

Of course not. He is the savior of the world as a whole.

In the same way, the church body can be regenerate as a whole, so that few are unregenerate. And this is achieved, not by cutting children out of the covenant, but by cutting the unregenerate out. Branches that do not bear fruit are cut off and thrown away. This is the importance of church discipline.

But the branches were part of the vine for a time. To be cut out, they had to first be grafted in. And they were grafted in by covenant.

Take the first century church as an example, as a model. What do we see of the church as it grows in the New Testament? Are the majority regenerate? Of course. And are some included in the church who are not regenerate? Also, of course. Simon Magus is baptized, which means he is buried and raised with Christ, joined to him by covenant as a member of his body — and then immediately we learn that his heart was “not right before God” (Acts 8:21). We also know about Alexander the Coppersmith; about the incestuous man that Paul told the Corinthians to excommunicate; and about Diotrephes, who refused to receive the apostle John.

This side of eternity, covenant bodies are always mixed bodies

This is why we have warnings in the New Testament that directly reflect the warnings about falling away under the covenant of Moses. Consider Hebrews 10:14–31, which picks up Jeremiah 31:

For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws upon their heart, and on their mind I will write them,” He then says, “And their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy by the mouth of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded as defiled the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge His people.” It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10:14–31)

The author of Hebrews here is warning his readers about something that could happen. That is the very reason that he is warning them. He is warning them that, as the old covenant with Moses had punishments for those who broke it, so does the new — and these are worse, because the new covenant is better. A man who is baptized really is covenantally buried and raised in Christ — and so he really is made holy by that covenant. Verse 29 speaks of “the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified,” which is to say, the blood of the covenant by which he was made holy. To be made holy is to be set apart unto God; to be made his. So this man is separated from Adam, and united to Christ, and the blood of the covenant, that is, the blood of Christ is applied to him.

Yet if he does not exercise a living faith, but instead goes on sinning, there is no more sacrifice for his sins, but rather an expectation of judgment.

You see very clearly here the same distinction between external and internal circumcision that we see in the Old Testament. “Circumcise your hearts,” God tells his people. It is not enough to be outwardly circumcised, but you must be given a heart of flesh to replace the heart of stone. Paul explicitly relates baptism to circumcision in this way, saying:

and in Him you have been filled, who is the head over all rule and authority; in whom you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you being dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive with Him, having graciously forgiven us all our transgressions. (Col 2:10–13)

Baptism is the fulfillment of circumcision. Just as circumcision was a cutting off of the flesh as a sign of faith, so baptism covenantally cuts us off from our flesh, from Adam, from the curse of the law, and joins us to Christ. The circumcision of Christ was Christ being cut off on the cross — and that circumcision is applied to us through baptism. We die and are resurrected in baptism, dying to the old, rising to the new — “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature,” Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5. And again,

For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. (Galatians 2:19–20)

Because of this, he goes on to tell us the response that God requires:

And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. (Galatians 2:20)

And again in Romans 6:

…we were buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died has been justified from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:4–11)

It is impossible to escape the force of what Paul says in Romans 6. Through baptism we have become united with Christ in the likeness of his death. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it,

Baptism is a sacrament, wherein the washing with water, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, doth signify and seal our ingrafting into Christ, and partaking of the benefits of the covenant of grace, and our engagement to be the Lord’s. (WSC 94)

“Engagement” as in the thing that precedes marriage. In his commentary, Thomas Vincent further explains:

By our ingrafting into Christ, is meant our being cut off from our old stock of nature, and being joined unto Jesus Christ, whereby we come to draw virtue from him as our root, that we may grow up in him, and bring forth fruit unto him. (The Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Assembly Explained and Proved from Scripture, XCIV)

That is the expectation of everyone who is baptized — just as it was the expectation of everyone who was circumcised. And just as children were circumcised with that expectation, so children should be baptised with that expectation.

Covenants are always familial

Let me now return to where we began, and ask once again about the language of Jeremiah and Ezekiel: specifically, about God making a covenant with the families of the church; about him doing good to the sons, and the sons’ sons; about the inclusion of the children.

Where does this language come from? It does not appear for the first time in the major prophets. It is by no means unprecedented in the Old Testament. In fact, it is the normal pattern of how covenant promises are made in scripture. It is language that builds upon the existing paradigm established in the covenant with our father, Abraham himself:

“I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your seed after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your seed after you. And I will give to you and to your seed after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.” God said further to Abraham, “Now as for you, you shall keep My covenant, you and your seed after you throughout their generations. This is My covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your seed after you: every male among you shall be circumcised. And you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be the sign of the covenant between Me and you. And every male among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout your generations, one who is born in the house or one who is bought with money from any foreigner, who is not of your seed. A servant who is born in your house or who is bought with your money shall surely be circumcised; thus shall My covenant be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. But an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant. (Ge 17:7–14)

Five times God emphasizes that this covenant is made with Abraham and his seed after him. Everyone brought into Abraham’s household is made a partaker of this covenant. If they are his, they are put into covenant with God; and if they refuse, they have broken the covenant. You see they are already in covenant just by merit of belonging to Abraham — whether by natural generation, or being purchased as slaves. God, in his providence, has put them there.

He has called them to covenant by creating them in that time and place.

They are not neutral individuals who must make a considered choice about it, and decide whether they will commit to God or not. They don’t get to decide whether they will be under this covenant — they just are, because that is how covenants work. This is federal headship. Abraham is their head, so God is their head — because God is Abraham’s head. Therefore, they are given circumcision; not to come under the covenant, but in obedience to the covenant they have already come under. They are required to obey the covenant, to be men like Abraham, because they are Abraham’s. They are required to be men of faith, for that is what circumcision represents: Paul tells us that Abraham “received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised” (Rom 4:11).

Now, is this covenant with Abraham abolished in Christ — or is it brought into its fullness? Certainly it is not abolished, for Paul tells us, “they that are of faith, the same are sons of Abraham” (Gal 3:7). And he continues, in verse 14, saying that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law in order that upon the Gentiles might come the blessing of Abraham in Christ Jesus; so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

In other words, the new covenant is the fullness of the covenant with Abraham.

The sign of the covenant has changed: baptism is the new circumcision, as we have seen. But who that covenant is made with has not changed. The promises are now greater, in Christ — but their recipients have not changed. “In you shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (Ge 12:3).

As Watson pithily comments, “Certainly Jesus Christ did not come to put believers and their children into a worse condition than they were in before.”

No indeed; Paul is explicit in Romans 11 that those under the new covenant, the gentile Christians, are those grafted into the existing covenant people, Israel:

But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became a partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree, do not boast against the branches. But if you do boast against them, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” Quite right! They were broken off for their unbelief, but you stand by your faith. Do not be haughty, but fear, for if God did not spare the natural branches, He will not spare you, either. Behold then the kindness and severity of God; to those who fell, severity, but to you, God’s kindness, if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off. (Romans 11:17–22)

The new covenant people is a continuation of the people of Israel, who were a people by the covenant with Abraham. We are grafted into that covenant; and we are therefore subject to the same covenant regulations — unless God changes them. When he first makes this covenant, he puts a quintuple emphasis on its continuity through Abraham’s seed. It is a covenant with Abraham and his family. All of his household is put under this covenant. Thus every Jew’s household was under this covenant. And now every Christian’s household is under this covenant — because every Christian is the seed of Abraham (Gal 3:7).

The possibility of being broken off

Now, you may notice also that Romans 11 has brought us back to the possibility of being removed from the new covenant. Just as Hebrews 10 makes this danger quite clear, so Paul does here in Romans. Notice the warnings: he tells these new gentile Christians, who are clearly covenant members ingrafted into Christ, that they could be removed again — just as the Israelites were — if they refuse to continue in faith.

It is impossible to make sense of this if the new covenant is made only with the regenerate. Jesus himself uses a very similar analogy in John 15, saying,

I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine-grower. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He cleans it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit from itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. (John 15:1–6)

Here John tells us that many who are branches in the vine of Christ will be cast out. Yet earlier, he told us:

All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never cast out. (John 6:37)

It is quite evident that these passages cannot be reconciled if they are both about the same thing. John 6 is about regeneration, in the Reformed sense: the elect being effectually and irresistibly drawn to God, and abiding in Christ unto final salvation. They will never be cast out. But in John 15, we learn about branches abiding in Christ that will nonetheless be cast out, and thrown into the fire. So John 15 cannot be about regeneration; it must be about covenant membership, as in Romans 11 — and Hebrews 10, where those who fall away are explicitly said to have been at one time sanctified by the blood of the covenant.

Those who are elected by God from eternity, and irresistibly called to him, will always abide in Christ, and never be cast out. But those who are joined to the new covenant without receiving that election and calling, can and will lose their membership in that new covenant, and be cast into the lake of fire.

In other words, the new covenant is not a radical break from the old; it is, in fact, a continuation and fulfillment of the eternal covenant with Abraham, rather than a departure from it. It is a new covenant, not in the sense of being “from scratch,” but in the sense of being a development, and improvement, and fulfillment, and a bringing to fruition, of all the previous covenants, through Christ.

Is the stipulation of seed ever revoked?

But if the new covenant takes the covenant with Abraham and brings it to its fullness, then it must still follow the same rules — unless God changes them. So does God anywhere stop making this covenant with the children? Does he anywhere forbid us to any longer give them the sign of the covenant? Does he ever reject them from inclusion in the covenant with him?

Does he overturn the principle of federal headship?

Jeremiah and Ezekiel don’t think so. Nowhere in the New Testament is such a thing said. True, the sign has changed; its form is different. But both signs represent the same thing: circumcision was a seal of the righteousness of the faith which Abraham had — and so is baptism. If circumcision was a sign that God required Abraham to give to his infant children, and circumcision is fulfilled in baptism and represents the same thing, then certainly we should expect the same rules of covenant inclusion to be in place — unless God explicitly revokes or changes them.

But he does not do that; he does quite the opposite. The very first gospel presentation, at Pentecost, explicitly says:

Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself. (Acts 2:38–39)

This language is explicitly echoing the language of the Abrahamic covenant: “you, and your seed” = “you and your children,” while “all the families of the earth” = “all who are far off.” Peter is alluding back to this…and to an entire Old Testament’s worth of promises in which the children were always covenantally included, thanks to this pattern established with Abraham.

The promise is for the children, because the children are members of the covenant. That is what this language means in scripture — that is what it would mean to Peter’s Jewish audience: that the promise is just like the promise to Abraham.

If Peter had wanted the Jews to understand that their children were not to be baptized, that they are not automatic covenant members, he would have needed to say completely the opposite of what he did say.

In fact, if children were not to be treated as covenant members, it would have been an unprecedented, radical change in the very nature of the covenant itself — and there would have to have been explicit and lengthy treatments of this change in the New Testament; just as there were with regards to the dietary laws, and other markers of covenant inclusion. God’s people would certainly have needed instruction on such an enormous paradigm shift, and an explanation of his rejection of the seed that he had always included within his covenant dealings.

Such a cutting off could not have been made without explanation and record.

The fact that there is no such record is not an argument from silence. It is, rather, an argument that such silence could not exist, given the nature of every other covenant previously made in scripture.

It is true that we have no explicit command to baptize children. In much the same way, we have no explicit command to serve women the Lord’s Supper. Yet we know that women should take the Lord’s Supper for the same reason that we know children should be baptized: the patterns of God’s dealings with his people require it. Absent an explicit rejection of covenant seed, the clear, repeated, consistent pattern of scripture is that children are heirs of the covenant, inheritors of the promises — and so must be given the covenant sign. It would be unseemly and contradictory to do anything else.

Such as deny their children baptism, make God’s institutions under the law more full of kindness and grace to children than they are under the gospel; which, how strange a paradox it is, I leave you to judge. (Thomas Watson)

Until next month,

Bnonn

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