Abraham was commanded by God to place the sign of this covenant upon the male infants of his household (Gen.17: 10). This he did in faith, placing on them a sign of the promise,and not of the law (Gal. 3:18). Abraham's physical descendants were required by this to follow in the footsteps of their covenant father, Abraham. This they did, but in two divergent ways (Rom. 9:6-7,13). Some of them simply mimicked Abraham's external actions, showing themselves really to, be nothing more than children of the devil (John 8:39,44). They, boasting in their physical lineage from Abraham alone, gathered themselves into assemblies that were actually synagogues of Satan (Rev. 2:9; John 8:39,44).
But others, children of the promise, imitated Abraham's faith, showing themselves to be his true and faithful offspring (Rom. 4:12). The Bible teaches that only those Jews who are of faith are true heirs of the gracious promise to Abraham (Gal. 3:7). A true Jew was the man who was circumcised in his heart (Rom. 2:2 8:29). The children of the promise, characterized by faith, are those who remain in the covenant forever (John 8:35). Because they are elect, they can never fall away from salvation (Rom. 8:33). However, it is possible for the non-elect to have covenantal obligations before God, and to fall away from that covenant (John 14:5-6, Gal. 5:4, Heb 6:4-6). These children after the flesh remain in the covenant only for a time, until God judges them for their covenantal disobedience and unbelief (Rom. 11:20). As it was for professing Israel then, so it is for "professing" Christians now (Rom. 11: 2 1). We must remember these warnings, for we Gentiles were grafted into the olive tree of Israel, and are warned that the same judgments may befall us (Rom. 11:26-27).
On the issue of infant baptism, much confusion is caused by the assumption that the New Covenant set aside everything found in the Old Testament. But the New Testament teaches that there is an important distinction between the promise given to Abraham and the law given to Moses. Circumcision was the sign of the promise, i.e. it was the sign of the gospel. When the levitical law came through Moses, hundreds of years after Abraham, it came in partial fulfillment of the covenant with Abraham (Ex. 2:24-25). It was a temporary administration of shadows, ceremonies, and types, all designed, when rightly understood, to prepare the way for the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. Abraham had been shown the blueprints of a great house, and he believed that God would in fact build it (Gal. 3:6,8). Throughout the Old Testament, the house promised to Abraham was in the process of being built, and the Levitical administration of the law was a God-given, but temporary, scaffolding designed to aid in the construction of the everlasting house (Heb. 8:13). That scaffolding was not ever intended to be a part of the permanent house (Col. 2:16-17). And of course God did not intend to tear down the Abrahamic house when He tore down the Levitical scaffolding.
Moses understood this, and was a faithful servant in the house of Christ. As the Son was faithful over the house, so Moses was a faithful servant in the house (Heb. 3:5-6). Moses, we are told, embraced the reproach of serving Christ (Heb. 11:24-26). Those who were baptized into the name of Moses were given the tremendous covenantal privilege of drinking from Christ in the wilderness (1 Cor. 10:4). Those who had faith were greatly blessed (Heb. 11:29). Those who were blinded by unbelief had their bodies scattered over the wilderness (Heb. 3:16-17; 1 Cor. 10:5). They fell because they had tempted Christ (I Cor. 10:9). For this reason, Christians are to take special care in how they participate in the covenantal meal of the New Covenant (1 Cor. 10: 14-16). This is because the Lord of Israel then is the Lord of Israel now, and God is not mocked.
But as the centuries progressed, there were many of Abraham's physical and genetic descendants, blinded by sin, who came to think that as God's chosen and covenant people they had an automatic right to the blessings of the covenant John 8:33). They thought that the Jews were God's people, period, and that physical descent from Abraham was alone sufficient to secure their place. But the Word of God stood against them from first to last (Acts 7:5 1). Our Lord was astonished that a teacher of Israel did not understand that it was absolutely necessary for Jews to be born again (John 3: 10). God can make sons of Abraham out of rocks (Matt. 3:9), and considering the stone-like hearts of unbelieving Israelites, that is exactly what He did whenever He regenerated any of them (Ez. 11:19).
The stock of true Israel has always been the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He alone is the Root of Jesse (Ez. 11: 10), the trunk from which all true spiritual fruit grows. But as the tree of Israel grew out from Christ, developing in history, it became increasingly apparent that many of the branches in covenant with Him were fruitless. God solemnly warned them that fruitlessness was intolerable (Matt. 3: 10; 21:43). They had forgotten their dependence on the Root; in their moral idiocy, they thought that He was dependent upon them (Rom. 11: 18). As is true of all fruitless branches, they had no permanent place on the vine (John 15:6). Because of their unbelief, they were cut away from the olive tree of Israel (Rom. 11: 17). We know that nothing can separate a man from God's election to salvation (Rom. 8:29-30). So they were not removed from God's saving decree; they were removed from His covenant (Rom. 11:7).
But how had they come into this covenant, from which so many of them were now to be removed? The sign of this covenant had been placed on them when they were only eight days old (Gen. 17:12). Prior to the advent of Christ, the vast majority of Jews had come into their covenantal connection with this one olive tree in their infancy. They had grown on this one tree. And those branches which had borne fruit had, by faith, remained on this one tree, while fruitless branches were removed and destined for the fire of judgment. The Gentiles who believed were grafted into this same tree. Gentiles were brought in alongside faithful Jews who had been there since infancy. God did not plant a new tree; He has been cultivating the same tree since the time of Abraham.
In the first century, God began to bring in large numbers of Gentiles, in just the way He had promised to Abraham (Gen. 12:3; Gal. 3:8). Gentiles were now being grafted into the covenanted olive tree of Israel (Rom. 11: 17). These Gentiles were grafted in alongside believing Jews who had been there, in that same tree, since infancy. While leaving the substance of the covenant itself untouched (we must remember it was an everlasting covenant), our sovereign Lord determined that He would alter the external sign of the Abrahamic covenant. Before, that sign had been circumcision. Christ now declared that the means of sealing the nations promised to Abraham (Rom. 4:13) was to be accomplished through baptism (Matt. 28:19).
Now this new grafting technique of baptism was unsettling to some zealous Jews who had believed in Christ (Acts 15: 1). Surely, they thought, the Abrahamic covenant would have to be sealed in circumcision! The apostolic response to this objection was that Gentiles were to be brought into Israel by means of baptism. By one Spirit both Jews and Greeks were baptized into the body (I Cor. 12:13). Anyone who was baptized into Christ, whether Jew or Greek, had put on Christ (Gal. 3:27-28). And if someone was baptized into Christ, then he was an heir to Abrabam's promise (Gal. 3:29). Baptism was therefore sufficient for Gentiles; circumcision was unnecessary (Acts 15:24). The middle wall of partition had come down (Eph. 2:14), and the Gentiles had been brought into the commonwealth of Israel by the blood of Christ (Eph. 2:11-13). They were now one with believing Jews because there was Just one Lord, one faith, and one baptism (Eph. 4:5).
But this nevertheless resulted in no small controversy among the saints. Should not the Gentiles be required to come into Israel the proper way, the way that had been practiced since ancient times? The answer was no; circumcision was unnecessary, because baptism had replaced circumcision as the sign of the covenant (Col. 2:11-12). Baptism is the initiatory rite for the Christian church (Acts 2:41), which is the New Covenant community (2 Cor. 3:6). Baptism is therefore the initiatory rite for the New Covenant community. It is therefore obviously a covenantal ordinance.
This ancient controversy among the saints, now long settled, is still instructive for us today. The Gentiles had been included with the true Israel (Gal. 6:16). They were now citizens of the Jerusalem above (Gal. 4:26). They had been borne by the barren woman who was now giving birth to a new world (Gal. 4:27). But this inclusion happened in such a way that many believing Jews were greatly unsettled by the external change from circumcision to baptism. There was therefore a great controversy over this, one that dominates New Testament history.
This should make us pause. Suppose the Lord had made more than just the administrative change from the knife of circumcision to the water of baptism. Suppose God had decreed that under the New Covenant, the people of God, Jew and Gentile alike, were required to begin excluding their newborn children from the covenant community. No one disputes that the Lord could have done this. No one of us deserves a place in that covenant community; we have no right to demand it, for ourselves or for our children. But if the Lord had done this, it would have marked a profound and fundamental change from how He had dealt with His people from the time of Abraham on. Such a change is conceivable; the Lord made other changes. But whenever He changed the administration of His covenant, He informed His covenant people of the change. And even when He informed them of such administrative changes, they were still difficult changes to bring about in the church.
So if the Lord had chosen to make this change of excluding infants from the covenant, He would have taught us on it. And if He had taught it, there would have been considerable turmoil throughout the pages of the New Testament in the apostolic attempts to get the saints to understand and accept it. But the New Testament is silent on both counts. According to the baptist understanding, a profound change in the conditions of the covenant was made, a change which for the very first time excluded children, without any instruction from God on it, and without a ripple of protest from any professing Christians. But the Bible says that not even human covenants can be changed or added to in such a fashion (Gal. 3:15). The modem supposition that the believers of the first century were so astonishingly docile on such an issue reveals how far removed we are from their covenantal presuppositions. The modern individualistic mindset does not comprehend the critical scriptural importance of faithful covenantal children, and faithful covenantal descendants.
We can see throughout the New Testament the controversy caused by the inclusion of believing but uncircumcised Gentiles (Gal. 2:11-12). Where is the controversy caused by the exclusion of the circumcised infants of believing Jews? There is no such controversy. But is it reasonable to suppose that those who so loudly objected to the inclusion of uncircumcised Gentiles would somehow not object at all to the exclusion of their own circumcised children? Were the saints really being taught that additions to the olive tree were now all to be made by grafting alone, and that no one grows on the tree any more? Not at all (Rom. 11: 17).
There is continuity in this everlasting covenant, from Abraham to the present. There is continuity with the people who were created by that covenant, from Abraham to the present. God has said throughout all Scripture that He will be our God, and we shall be His people (Ex. 6:7; Lev. 26:12; Jer. 7:23; 11:4; 30:22; Ez. 36:28; Hos. 1:9; Rom. 9:25-26). This is a central promise. There is no reason to believe the New Covenant has made God's people childless and barren. The prophets said that spiritual fruitfulness would increase under the New Covenant, not decrease and vanish!
With this contextual understanding, we should turn to consider what parents under the New Covenant are expressly taught concerning their covenant children. It is true that the New Covenant nowhere excludes the children of believers, but what are some express indications of their continued and ongoing inclusion in the covenant?
The first Christian sermon cut the listeners to the heart. They cried out, seeking what to do. Peter told them to repent and be baptized, and that the promise was to them and to their children (Acts 2:39). We are taught that children of at least one believing parent are holy. The word used by Paul is hagia, which when applied to persons is almost always translated saint (I Cor. 7:14). Little children and infants are included by Christ in the kingdom of God (Luke 18:16). Children constitute one of the recognized subgroups of the church, to be taught along with the rest of the saints in the church (Eph. 1: 1; 6: 1; Col. 1:2; 3:20). Little Gentile children are taught that the covenant promise made at Sinai applied to them, just as it had to Israelite children from infancy on (Eph. 6:1-3). We are taught that one of the features of the New Covenant was to be the restoration of the covenantal father/child relationship, not the dissolution of the covenantal father/child relationship (Luke 1:17). Ephesian children were commanded to obey their parents in the Lord (Eph. 6: 1).
We also know that, in the New Testament, circumcision continued to be a sign of a true evangelical relationship to God (Rom. 2:29). Christian Jews continued to apply that sign to their infants (Acts 21:2 1). Such circumcision meant that such children were members of their parents' synagogue, and we know believing Jews assembled in Christian synagogues (Jas. 2:2). These were also considered Christian churches Jas. 5:14). Therefore we know that certain first-century churches had infant members.
The gospel, we are taught, is for the families of the earth (Acts 3:25). It is therefore not surprising that the normal mode of evangelism and baptism in the New Testament was household by household (Acts 16:14-15). The point is not that such are narratives of infant baptisms. The point is that they are narratives of household or family baptisms (1 Cor. 1:16).
And last, one of the most precious doctrines of Scripture for believing parents is the teaching of covenantal succession from one generation to the next (Ps. 102:28). Faithful parents are promised that their children will follow the Lord (Dt. 7:9). Moreover, the blessings of this covenantal succession were prophesied as coming into a glorious fulfillment under the New Covenant (Ez. 37:24-26; Is. 59:21; 65:23; Jer. 32:38-40). The responsibility for the reverence and faithfulness of children is therefore quite properly delegated to parents (Eph. 6:4; 1 Tim. 3:4; Titus 1:6). Under the New Covenant, our children's children are truly included (Ps. 103; Luke 1:48-50).
Does Old Testament (OT) circumcision and baptism point to the same spiritual realities? If they do, and one is required for infants regardless of their cognitive abilities, then the other cannot be denied to infants on the basis of what it signifies. Yet the baptistic argument requires us to withhold baptism from infants precisely because of what it signifies and the infant's inability to grasp that significance.
Both rites point away from me to what Christ has done; it emphasizes His action on my behalf instead of what I have done. Hence they both are objective signs as opposed to subjective signs. Both point to the fact that salvation is found in the righteousness of another!
In Titus 3:5, Paul tells us that baptism signifies regeneration – Christ is our regeneration! In Romans 2:28-29, Paul says circumcision points to the same thing.
Both signify justification by faith – and Christ is our justification! See Mark 16:16 and Romans 4:11-12.
Both signify the removal of the “old man” – and covenantal union with Christ is our “death and burial.” See Romans 6:3-7 and Col 2:11
Both signify citizenship in Faithful Israel. See Gal 3:26-29 and Gen 17:14.
Both must be take seriously – both blessings and curses attend both
rites. See I Cor 10:1-12 and Rom 2:25.
Ramifications:
Q: If a Jewish Christian couple presented their
circumcised infant son to the elders of the church for baptism, on what
grounds could they be denied?
A: Baptism signifies a heart felt appeal to God and your child has not yet personally done this.
Q: Yet circumcision signifies heart religion as well (see Rom 2:28-29); was it thus wrong to circumcise him?
A: According to Phil 3:3, circumcision is a sign of true worship
of God in the Spirit. An infant is incapable of this sort of true worship.
But this is not a problem, in regard to infants and circumcision, in either
the OT or the NT.
Q: So how can you apply this problem to infants and
baptism? Well, why administer baptism and circumcision to a Jewish
infant?
A: Because during this transition time, God required both of
Jews: Baptism was required to display unity of believing Jews with
believing Gentiles (Eph 4:5) and circumcision was required to show unity
of believing Jews with the faith of Abraham (Rom 4:11-12).