My buddy at church asked a great question today. So I’m gonna do a final post on Baptism to do a better job of answering him. I hope this comes out making sense and is of value to someone.
1. It’s already true whether we like it or not!
Children in a family headed by either both or one believing parent are by their temporal disposition in the covenant. They are, unlike the children of unbelievers, being raised in the church under the Word of God. Therein they are receiving the Law and the Gospel, the training in righteousness, the fear and admonition of the Lord as if they really are a part of the covenant community. They have the benefit of being raised in the church, the covenant people of God and to perceive or treat them as anything other than actually as part of the visible covenant people of God is to be inconsistent with all of our teaching.
How can we hold our children to the Law and Gospel warnings and promises consistently if we cannot honestly warn and promise them? It’s a logic problem! And if it makes sense that our children do partake in the covenant community, then they should be initiated into that community. The Church Visible should claim her own as soon as they can be claimed and waste no time doing so.
2. It is integral to our corporate identity!
Baptizing our children is commensurate with upholding the idea of a covenant people. Visibly, tangibly giving our children to God and so to the Church through this ceremonial cleansing and identification puts us all under oath to do just what God has commanded for our spiritual government. Parents are to raise their children and the church is to guard her people for the Lord. We have marching orders from God to do so. Just as the church has membership to provide for accountability, believer to elder and vice-versa, baptism puts an entire family into the sphere of membership.
To fail to baptize our children is to deny the total package of the sovereignty of God. His law and Gospel are applicable to all who are in His church. When we come to worship on Sunday, we are corporately involved in preparation, confession, absolution, exhortation, , intercession and benediction. Can we say that the entirety of worship is wasted on young ears? If we say it’s worthy for all ages to come, let’s embrace them fully. Children in the covenant underlines the vitality of the high view of the Church as God’s minister of the entire covenant.
I wanna make clear first: This is not a big old apologetic of scholasticalisticity. I’m putting out what really hits me about the value and place of Household Baptism. By the way, I think we get too hung up on “Infant Baptism”. That’s not the model in the Bible. It’s Household Baptism from the OT to the NT, which includes infants. Anyway, Here you go:
3. It makes their place real and secure!
Baptizing our children sets them on the path to belief and repentance from the beginning. In baptism there is the tangible application of cleansing and identification that they can know, from their earliest memory. It connects them, personally with the body of Christ from the start. It is a means of demonstrating the gravity and importance of setting foot in the church. It also gives them a seal of belonging. They belong. I don’t think this can be stressed enough. They aren’t just told they belong, something very significant has been done, under the solemn administration of the Church of Christ, under God’s very cognizance, to bring them into the protection and grace of God’s people!
What a woe it must be for children to be excluded from the fullest relationship with true Israel. I’m sure it isn’t often considered or carefully, but seriously think of how we can provoke our children to wrath by telling them they belong by preaching and teaching, calling for confession and then forgiving all within the confines of the Church of Christ and then with the other hand proclaiming that they are still outsiders, to be identified with the gentiles who carry on in the world without a clue about Christ and His work of redemption.
February 14th, 2011 at 11:43 am
That’s a very interesting point. I doubt that any Reformed pastor would (or should) respond to just any baptism request from off the street, “Pastor, I’m not baptized, I don’t go to church, but [insert reason here] can you baptize my baby for me?”
For me, the #1 argument for paedobaptism is Gen 17:18-19. Abraham has special revelation direct from the mouth of God that Ishmael is not the child of promise, even in some sense not a “covenant child” — and yet Abraham is required to circumcise Ishmael (as well as all of his household). This demolishes any attempt to connect the covenant sign with presumption of regeneration.
February 14th, 2011 at 11:50 am
RIGHT! Exactly. That passage is on the money and really makes a good starting point for the whole thing. Thanks, Reuben.
February 14th, 2011 at 1:54 pm
Although credos typically discount that approach as hopelessly O.T., but at least it puts the burden on them to demonstrate that in this respect the new covenant is different than the old covenant (which usually leads to Jer 31:31– and its usage in Heb 8 and 10).