TPW 41 Good Questions About Infant Baptism Answered

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But, just like after the coming of Christ, the covenant community is not exclusively made up of the regenerate.
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It can't be, because we're not infallible. So there is a visible church, and then there's the invisible church.
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Welcome to the
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Protestant Witness. I'm your host, Pastor Patrick Hines, here in Kingsport at the Pastor Ridwell Heights Presbyterian Church, and today
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I wanted to do a program on a very thoughtful email I got from a fella who's got some questions about paedo -baptism.
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What is paedo -baptism? Well, it's the idea of infant baptism. The way I like to describe it, it's not really believer's baptism versus infant baptism, because I believe in believer's baptism myself.
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And I would not baptize an adult unless they made a profession of faith. But the question before us here is, what about this idea of households?
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I believe in household baptism. And the questions that this fella asks here, and I asked his permission to do a video on this, they're really good questions.
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They're actually questions that I myself had a while back, many years ago now. And he said here,
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Hi, I have three issues with the paedo -baptist view that I'm hoping you can help me sort through. Number one, as I understand it, paedo -baptists argue that the children of believers are members of the new covenant.
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If so, wouldn't that mean the federal headship over them is transferred from Adam to Jesus simply by virtue of their physical birth?
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And wouldn't this mean there are unregenerate people under the federal headship of Christ? If so, doesn't 1
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Corinthians 15 make it clear that all under Christ's federal headship are saved? The answer is no. One of the things
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I've noticed to the issue, are the children of believers members of the new covenant? No, they are not. One of the things
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I've noticed in a lot of Baptists that I've talked to over the years is that there really, there seems to be almost no understanding at all of the distinction between the visible and the invisible church.
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It's almost like it's just not part of their thinking at all. If you're baptized, you have to be in the new covenant.
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Now if you, if pastors said, we will not baptize you unless you're in the new covenant.
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That would mean you never baptized anyone because you would not be able to know for sure if they are or not.
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So we don't argue that our children are members of the new covenant. We make a distinction, because the
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Bible does, between the invisible church, all of the elect of God across all the ages of time, from the beginning to the end, those chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, and the visible administration of the covenant of grace.
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There's a distinction between those two things. And the fact of the matter is, people have said to me, well what covenant are your children in?
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To me, that's the same as asking, well, what covenant was Esau in? What covenant was
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Ishmael in? Esau, God did not establish his covenant with Esau. God did not establish his covenant with Ishmael.
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Both were circumcised though. And both were raised as part of the covenant community, because they were part of Abraham's household.
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But neither of them, although they bore the sign, neither of them were in the Abrahamic covenant. And this is the thing that I've noticed, especially among reformed
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Baptists, that I don't see them really seeing this at all. The Abrahamic covenant and the new covenant are essentially identical.
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They are essentially identical to one another. And because both of them are only with the elect, only with the elect.
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You're not in the Abrahamic covenant by birth. You received the sign by birth, yeah.
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You received the sign and were raised in the covenant community. But just like after the coming of Christ, the covenant community is not exclusively made up of the regenerate.
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It can't be, because we're not infallible. So there is a visible church, and then there's the invisible church.
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And so no, we don't believe our children are in the new covenant any more than anyone prior to the coming of Christ would have assumed that their children were in the
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Abrahamic covenant. Remember what Jesus and John the Baptist dealt with was people who thought that very thing.
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We have Abraham as our father. Remember what Jesus said to them at the Feast of Tabernacles in John 8, I think it's in You are of your father, the devil.
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Do not think that you can say we have Abraham as our father. You're of your father, the devil, and his will you want to do.
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And who are the true children of Abraham? It's Jews or Gentiles, anyone before or after the coming of Christ that believes in the promise of God.
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Of course, they were looking forward to the coming of Jesus. We now look backward to the coming of Jesus. So there's not two separate covenants here.
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There's one gospel, Galatians 3 .8, Abraham had the gospel preached to him.
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I remember Archibald Alexander Hodge pointing that out in his commentary on the Westminster Confession when I was working through this baptism issue years ago and thought, wow, the apostle
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Paul says that Abraham had the gospel preached to him. The gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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How could that have been preached to Abraham? But you see, that's what covenant theology is all about.
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As Jesus himself says in John 8, Abraham looked forward to seeing my day, Jesus said.
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He saw it and was glad. What was Abraham's faith ultimately in? The coming seat of the woman. The one who would fulfill that covenant promise with all of the elect.
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So as Jesus teaches us, you could no more be born into the Abrahamic covenant than you could be born into the new covenant.
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Because they're essentially identical to one another because both of them are with the elect. And here's one of the biggest mistakes
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I see made. Greg Welty makes this error over and over again. Fred Malone in his book, The Baptism of Disciples Alone, which is really misnamed.
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The book should be called The Baptism of Professing Disciples Alone. But anyway, the error that they make constantly is they really do treat the
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Abrahamic covenant as if it is the old covenant. It's not. The Abrahamic covenant is not the old covenant.
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The Abrahamic covenant is completely distinct from the old covenant. Completely different from the old covenant.
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Look at Galatians 4, 21 -31. Paul explains that one is a covenant of gratuitous promise.
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The other is a legal covenant. Look at Galatians 4, 21 -31. I've preached entire sermons on this topic to help people see that if you fold the
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Abrahamic covenant into the old covenant, you're going to have a massive problem. A massive problem.
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Because Paul's entire discussion of how we're made right with God really doesn't even make reference to the new covenant.
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It refers only back to the Abrahamic promise. Every time someone is a believer, every single time, before and after the coming of Christ, they fulfill the oath that God swore to Abraham in Genesis 15 -17, where the smoking fire pot passed between the pieces, where God told him, look at the stars and count them if you can, so shall your descendants be.
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How is that promise fulfilled? In the elect coming to faith. Every star that he saw, figuratively speaking, is a true believer, one of the elect of God.
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So the Abrahamic covenant is an effectual covenant only with the elect. The new covenant is an effectual covenant only with the elect.
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Okay, and that's going to get into this next question here. I realize this is a more common objection, but I have never heard a sufficient response.
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What about the quotation of Jeremiah 31 in Hebrews 10? He means Hebrews 8, but he said Hebrews 10, that's just a typo on his part.
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Doesn't that seem to indicate that all those in the new covenant will be regenerate? Yes. Everyone in the new covenant is regenerate.
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Just like everyone in the Abrahamic covenant is regenerate. You couldn't be born into the Abrahamic covenant, but you could be born into the covenant community.
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You can't be born into the new covenant, but you can be born into the covenant community. See, and here's the thing.
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There is the elect. God has his elect. He knows who they are. And then there's the visible church.
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The visible church has always consisted of those who profess faith in the true religion, or in our case, since we're after the coming of Christ, those who profess faith in Jesus Christ and their households and their children.
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That's the visible church. Now, so we look at our children as part of our church, but they're non -communicating.
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It's a very interesting thing. People will say, well, if you're going to baptize them, then they should be able to take communion too. And that's just not the case at all.
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If you look at Exodus chapter 12 at the institution of Passover, I believe it's verse 36. No, no, no.
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When the people do the Passover and their children would ask, what is the meaning of this service that you're doing?
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What does this mean? In the Passover? If I can find it here,
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Exodus, anyway, it's in Exodus chapter 12, it might be verse 26,
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I believe. Exodus 12, yeah, there it is. Not 36, 26.
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Exodus 12, verse 26, listen closely to this. And it shall be when your children say to you, when they're taking the
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Passover together as a household, what do you mean by this service? Now note, it's very clear there. The Hebrew is very, very clear.
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They're not asking, what is the meaning? What do we mean by this service? Remember, what is the
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New Testament parallel to the Passover, the Lord's Supper? It seems to me, it looks very clear to me, children did not participate in the
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Passover, the Passover meal, although they were there present for it. Now they were circumcised and part of the community and their parents had to embrace their covenantal duties.
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Think about Deuteronomy 6, you shall speak, these things shall be in your heart and you shall teach them diligently to your children.
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You shall speak of them when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up, when you sit in your house, et cetera, et cetera.
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So all of these things are part of the covenantal responsibilities. Those same duties are for parents in the
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New Covenant era as well. They have the very same commands, Ephesians chapter six, verse four, fathers, raise your children in the paideia of God and the nurture and admonition of the
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Lord. And so those very same commands, think of Genesis 18, where God said of Abraham, I have known him in order that he may command his children and his household after me, after him to know the
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Lord, to do justice and righteousness, et cetera. And so all this stuff about, well, what do you think about presumptive regeneration?
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And I don't believe in presumptive regeneration. Because the call of parents to evangelize their children is
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Old Testament teaching and New Testament teaching. There is no, well, you just assume they're Christian. No, you don't do that.
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But you embrace those covenantal duties to, um, to teach them to obey
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God and to believe in Jesus Christ, to open the hymnals and to sing the hymns and everything else.
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But let's look at Jeremiah 31 here. Jeremiah 31, as it's quoted in Hebrews, um, chapter eight, um, is a very common text.
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Look, they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest. This is a passage I used for a very long time before I finally saw that I was misusing it.
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Well, it sounds like everyone in the new covenant is regenerate. They are. The new covenant is with the elect just as surely as the
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Abrahamic covenant is with the elect. That's not a new thing. And this is, this is where, you know, if you actually think that the new covenant, the fact that it's an effectual covenant only with the elect is a brand new idea that has never been thought of before and never been seen in the history of redemption, then
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I have to wonder what your understanding of the Abrahamic covenant is. How did the New Testament writers understand the
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Abrahamic covenant? How did Jesus understand the Abrahamic covenant? It was an effectual covenant only with the elect.
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This is what made the, the Baptistic view eventually die in my own thinking. You can't treat the
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Abrahamic promise as if it is the old covenant. Now, before you get to Hebrews eight, there's Hebrews chapter six.
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Hebrews chapter six has a very important discussion of the Abrahamic covenant of the Abrahamic promise.
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Look at Hebrews 6, 13 and following. Listen carefully to the passage. For when God made a promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no one greater.
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He swore by himself saying, surely I will bless you and multiplying. I will multiply you.
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And so after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise for men indeed swear by the greater and an oath for confirmation is for them and end of all dispute, excuse me.
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Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise, the immutability of his counsel confirmed it by an oath that by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie.
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We might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us.
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This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the presence behind the veil where the forerunner has entered for us.
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Even Jesus having become a high priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. Again, then Hebrew seven is a, is a lengthy discussion of Melchizedek and the fact that he has no genealogy when he sort of steps out of nowhere in the book of Genesis and is spoken of for just a couple of verses.
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And then he disappears, but he's a type, he's a type of the superior priesthood that would, that would last for eternity.
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And that's why Jesus and his resurrection body holds that priesthood, the term in Hebrew seven, 24 is untransferable.
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That's why there's only one priest. That's why you have pastors and elders. You don't need priests anymore because there's only one priest,
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Jesus. So you have that lengthy discussion there, but the Abrahamic promise in Hebrews six, 13 to 18 is critical.
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It's immutable. It's immutable. It's unchangeable. The Abrahamic covenant is still in effect right now.
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That's why every believer is called a child of Abraham. We are the children of Abraham through faith in Jesus Christ.
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How many times does Paul say that? I mean, read Romans and Galatians and it's everywhere. He says it repeatedly, emphatically.
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We are the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant, just like Isaac was, just like Jacob was, just like all believers,
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David, King Hezekiah, all of the godly Israelites, Elijah, Elisha, the 7 ,000 that refused to bow their knee to Baal, et cetera, et cetera,
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Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. All of them were fulfillments of the Abrahamic covenant because that is an effectual covenant only with the elect, but it had a visible administration that very often included people who were not elect because the visible church has always consisted of those who profess the true religion and their children.
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It has never been the case that people believe in Jesus and then they go to church and leave their kids at home.
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That just doesn't happen. Our kids are to be considered part of the visible church and we have the same duties, although the
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Old Testament people gave the sign of circumcision to their infant children and they did not assume they were saved, which is why
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God told Abraham in Genesis 18, verse 19, I think it is, you are to command your household after you to know the
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Lord, to do righteousness and justice, just like we have the same responsibility today, to teach our children, to evangelize them.
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And that's why I always tell people you see two tendencies constantly in church history and you see two tendencies among the
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Jewish people with regard to circumcision and everything else. One tendency is to basically see it as worthless and almost a waste of time and why even do it.
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The other is it automatically saves you. It means you're going to heaven because you're circumcised. People did the same thing with baptism.
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Some people sound like they almost wish God hadn't even given us baptism because, oh, it's just too complicated and there's all these divisions over it.
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And if you baptize babies, you're just asking for people to assume that they're Christians.
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No, no, you're not. No more than God giving that sign to infants prior to the coming of Christ would have caused them to assume that their children were part of the
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Abrahamic covenant or that they were automatically going to heaven. If we listen to the word of God, we're not going to make those kinds of mistakes.
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So anyway, listen back to Hebrews 8 and Jeremiah 31. So in Hebrews 6, prior to the discussion of the
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Melchizedek priesthood in Hebrews 7, you have this discussion of the Abrahamic promise, this oath, which is a reference back to Genesis 15, 17, the smoking fire pop between the pieces.
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God's saying, surely I will bless you. Multiplying, I will multiply you. And this is an immutable promise. This is an unchangeable promise.
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These promises are still in effect right now. He uses the term promise. Okay, uses that term promise.
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Now, we get to Hebrews 8. It talks about a contrast between the new covenant and the old covenant.
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Now, for the longest time, I thought that what he was making a reference to here was, well, the new covenant is different from everything in the old
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Testament, meaning the Abrahamic covenant and the old covenant. And folks, you got to hear this.
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Listen to the words of the citation from Jeremiah 31. It starts in verse 8. Because finding fault with them, he says, behold, the days are coming, says the
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Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers.
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Listen carefully. The covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt.
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What covenant is that? Is that the Abrahamic covenant? Of course not. That's the Sinaitic covenant.
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That's the Mosaic covenant. And the Mosaic covenant is a legal covenant. Three times, three times from Exodus 19.
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In Exodus 19, it's once. Exodus 24, verses 3 and 7 have it two more times. The people swear an oath of obedience to the old covenant, to the giving of the law through Moses.
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The covenant that God made when he took them out of the house of Israel, or took them out of the land of Egypt. When he took them out of the land of Egypt, that was the giving of the law.
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In Exodus 19, the people swear, we will do everything that Yahweh our God has said. In Exodus 24, 3, we will do everything that the
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Lord our God has said and be obedient. Exodus 24, 7, we will do everything the Lord our God has said and be obedient. That's the old covenant.
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That's the old covenant. And it says that the new covenant is established on better promises. It says, look at what it goes on to say here.
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Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant.
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You see that? This is not talking about the Abrahamic promise. This is not talking about the Abrahamic covenant. We already saw earlier in Hebrews chapter 6, the
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Abrahamic covenant is immutable. It's enforced right now. It is an immutable oath and is the very foundation of our consolation of our knowing that we're going to heaven is that oath that God swore.
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So this covenant cannot be a reference to the Abrahamic promise. You have to keep the Abrahamic covenant and the old covenant separate.
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They are not the same thing. And yet Fred Malone, Greg Welty make that error constantly in their stuff on this issue.
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They treat the Abrahamic covenant and the old covenant as if they're the same thing. And yet the book of Hebrews will not allow for that.
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Think about that. The apostle Paul says that the Abrahamic promise in Galatians 3, 8, the Abrahamic promise is the gospel.
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Hebrews chapter 4, verse 2, Israel had the gospel preached to them.
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The Abrahamic promise is the gospel. Look at the last verse of Hebrews 8, Hebrews 8, 13. In that he says a new covenant, he has made the first obsolete.
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Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. If you include the Abrahamic covenant as the old covenant,
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Paul says that the Abrahamic covenant is the gospel. So I guess the gospel is obsolete and is growing old and vanishing away.
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Obviously that's a massive error. The Abrahamic covenant is immutable. It is still in force right now.
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The Abrahamic covenant is an effectual covenant only with the elect. So this idea, well, the new covenant, they will all know me.
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That's the Abrahamic covenant too. It's identical to it. And yet the new covenant has a visible administration that obviously includes households just like it did before the coming of Christ.
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See, this is the issue here. What you don't see after the coming of Christ is a change in this concept.
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You see an individual believes and a household is baptized. An individual believes and a household is baptized.
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Now, when I was still a Baptist, I was very comfortable. Just pitch every one of them to me.
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Acts 10, I can answer for you. Everyone heard. Akuo means understand. So babies could have understood.
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Okay. Then Acts chapter 16 and Lydia and her household. There's a way you could understand it that would not necessitate babies or infants or toddlers or anything like that.
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And it's like passage after passage. I was comfortable dealing with them individually and eventually became a little bit disillusioned.
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Why do I have to come up with a way of diffusing all these passages? What's very clear here is that the concept of household solidarity with regard to the administration of the covenant of grace has not changed.
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The visible church is still, it is still those who profess to know
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Jesus Christ and their children and their families. And so they are part of the church just like they were before the coming of Christ.
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And they were to be instructed by their parents. Deuteronomy 6, Genesis 18, 19. Deuteronomy 11,
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Deuteronomy 17, Deuteronomy 21. I mean, how many times does it say father's instructed children? When you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up over and over and over and over again,
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Psalm 78, we will not hide them from our children that they may put their hope in God. The command to evangelize your household is
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Old Testament and it's New Testament. The inclusion of entire families in the visible church is
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Old Testament teaching. That's New Testament teaching. It hasn't changed. See now what I would expect to see if in fact there has been this change, and it would be a very significant change to say now the visible church is only professing adult believers and their kids, their households, they're not part of the community anymore.
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They are to be excluded. And I would think, okay, prayer, prayer is something only a
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Christian can do. And yet everybody teaches their kids how to pray. Whether they're
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Baptists or Paedo -Baptists, right? I mean, when your children sin, don't you teach them how to pray, how to confess that sin and ask the
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Lord's forgiveness and share the gospel with them? I mean, everyone prays with their children. Every Christian person who is conscientious is going to teach their children how to pray.
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And yet if you're consistent with this Baptistic idea, you would have to say, well, until we see some signs that you're really regenerate prayer, all you're doing by praying is provoking the wrath of God because you're not praying with a mediator.
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And yet we all know to train up our children to behave as Christians. And yet all along the way, we're calling them to repent and believe the gospel.
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And to sing the hymns too. As soon as my children, and I have a big family, as soon as my children could hold a hymnal, they were not allowed to sit in church and draw on stuff and putter around.
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They were to be participants. We in this household, in this family, you are going to show proper respect to God and you are going to participate in worship.
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And as soon as you can hold a hymnal and find the page number, you are to turn there and to sing God's praises.
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And it would never have occurred to me to say, well, we need to wait and see if you're regenerate or not. Because only a
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Christian can worship God. Isn't that true? Only a regenerate person can really worship God. Unregenerate people can't worship
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God because it's just hypocrisy then. And yet every parent, Christian parent, instinctively knows
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I need to teach my children how to behave like Christians. And yet I know that they still need to be regenerated and born again, just like before the coming of Christ.
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So it is today. Fewer things are clearer in scripture than the fact that the gospel has not changed.
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Paul belabors the point. Genesis 15 and six, Abraham believed in God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. And he says it wasn't just written for him, but for us as well.
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It shall be imputed to us, Romans 4, 22 and 23. And so we are the ones who, together with Old Testament believers,
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New Testament believers, are justified by faith alone. We believe and are accounted as righteous. And yet the visible administration of the covenant of grace is not infallible.
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And you don't have a perfectly regenerate church and we never will. It has always been professing adult believers and their households and their families.
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And that's why, boy, I tell you, if this really has changed in the new covenant, aren't the New Testament writers pretty sloppy?
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I mean, wouldn't you want to be careful about saying so -and -so believed and then their household was baptized?
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And Paul talks about the first fruits of Achaia in first Corinthians chapter one. I baptized the household of Crispus and Gaius and I don't know if I baptized any other.
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And clearly he means any other households. Wouldn't you think that if this has changed and the household principle is terminated now, which is what the
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Baptists are saying, that concept is out of the new covenant. Wouldn't you think that they would say so -and -so believed and was baptized, end of story, move on to the next account.
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Why talk about a household being baptized? Isn't that pretty sloppy? Well, I think that the implication is quite clear.
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Covenant theology, recognizing that the Abrahamic covenant is not the old covenant and that it's still enforced right now, that it is an effectual covenant only with the elect and yet it had a visible administration that often included the non -elect.
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And the thing is people will say, well, you're saying circumcision could rightly be given to someone, a horrible man like Ahab and all these terrible, horrible, awful
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Israelites. Well, much like the New Testament church, the Old Testament church failed very often to practice church discipline and throw people out.
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I mean, read through the Old Testament. There were measures in place to excommunicate people and to get them out.
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And very often they didn't do that, just like the church today very often doesn't. And so church discipline is real important, but the way that God has gathered his people has not changed.
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It's always been adult believers and their children. You don't assume they're believers, but you don't assume they're reprobate too.
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Every time a Baptist asks me, what's your view on presumptive regeneration? I always fire back with, well, what's your view of presumptive reprobation?
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Do you assume all of your children are reprobates, that they're never going to come to Christ and that they're hell bound?
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Well, no, of course not. Well, I don't assume that they are, that they're going to heaven. What do I assume? Here's what I assume.
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I'm supposed to obey the scriptures. I am to teach them diligently the gospel, call them to repentance and faith and to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the
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Lord. That is what I assume. Now, what do we see in scripture? Very often, the normal way
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God works is through the family unit. Think of Malachi 2 .15. Why does God make the two one?
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He desires a godly offspring. God desires us to be fruitful and multiply and to have children and to embrace children as a gift and to raise them to know the
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Lord. And I've been, by the grace of God alone, very, very blessed. None of my kids have shown any signs of rebellion against God, none.
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It's been one of my greatest fears and I know that that could happen, but I have not seen any signs of rebellion in them.
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And it's not because I'm infallible. I'm anything but infallible. It's not that I've done everything perfect or that my wife and I have done everything perfect.
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We've made plenty of mistakes, but we have obeyed those commands and we've taught them the catechism. My four older children know the entire
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Westminster Shorter Catechism from memory. My younger kids, I'm working on it with them and we read the Bible every single day and we talk about the things of God every single day.
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We do family devotions and family worship every single day. Every morning, I get my older kids out of bed, read a chapter of the
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Bible to them. Every evening, we get together and do it again. No matter what's going on, with ruthless consistency, people need to do this because those are our duties before God.
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And if we're so busy that we can't do that, then our priorities are messed up. Okay, so this very thoughtful email, he says, doesn't this seem to indicate,
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Jeremiah 31, it's a citation in Hebrews chapter eight. Doesn't that seem to indicate that all those in the new covenant are, will be regenerate?
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Yes, it does. And everyone in the new covenant is regenerate just as everyone in the Abrahamic covenant was regenerate too.
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Cause it's an effectual covenant only with the elect. Just as Jesus taught us, do not think you can say we have
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Abraham as our father. John the Baptist, do not think you can say we have Abraham as our father.
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God can raise up children to Abraham from these rocks. You are not an heir of that covenant promise without faith.
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And yet you could be born into the visible church, the visible community. Well, why would
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God command circumcision to be given to infants who can't make a profession of faith? Because that's what he said to do.
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See, think of Romans chapter four, verse 11. Here's a passage that I had a real difficult time trying to come up with a response to.
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Romans 4, 11, what does circumcision signify? According to the apostle Paul. It is a seal of the righteousness of the faith, which he had while still uncircumcised.
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So circumcision was given to Abraham after he believed in Christ as a sign of his faith, as a sign of his justification that he had by faith.
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And yet God commanded the sign of justification by faith to be given to babies. Well, that doesn't make any sense because they can't make a profession.
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Obviously, if you think that way, you're not thinking biblically. God's concerns are not your concerns.
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God said to do this, they did it. It's the same thing with the new covenant. It's the same thing. I don't see any signs at all that this is now different.
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And listening to the responses to Romans 4, 11, you know, I've got the pages dog -eared and marked with sticky tabs in my copy of Fred Malone's The Baptism of Disciples Alone.
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He makes the incredible statement that circumcision signified justification by faith to Abraham.
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There's no denying it. It's right there in Romans 4, 11. And he says, and it never signified that to anyone else ever.
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So circumcision signified something to Abraham that it never signified to anyone after him.
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I remember thinking there is no possible way that that's true. When you look at Genesis chapter 17,
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Genesis 17, verse 10. This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you.
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Every male child among you shall be circumcised and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins. So all the infants, every male child, and you too,
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Abraham, shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.
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I see no evidence whatsoever that circumcision meant something to Abraham that it doesn't mean to the children. Where is that?
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Does the Old Testament say it? And Abraham, just this once for you, circumcision will mean salvation.
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It'll signify and seal your justification by faith. But it's never going to mean that again to anyone else. Now I have a question.
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Was David a believer? Yeah. Was David justified by faith alone? Yes. Romans 4, 6.
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Just as David speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works, and then he quotes Psalm 32, 1 and 2.
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Was David a believer? Yes. Was David justified by faith alone? Yes. Did David have a sign and seal of the righteousness that he had by faith?
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Yes. What was that sign? Circumcision. When did he receive it? When he was an infant.
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Well, shouldn't there be an opportunity to be re -circumcised upon a profession of faith?
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No, that's not the way God does it. And here again, I remember years ago going through this, every argument
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I come up with, everything I say, everything I can come up with, if it's valid against infant baptism, then it would have to count against infant circumcision too.
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Because baptism and circumcision signify the same thing. Salvation. Justification by faith. And so I understand why
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Fred Malone would say that, well, circumcision means one thing for Abraham. This one time. And then it never means that again after that.
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And I just say, there is no indication anywhere in the Old Testament or the New Testament that circumcision meant anything other than the same thing for everyone it was ever given to.
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And so I have a big problem with that. Okay. So to answer the second question, doesn't it indicate that the new covenant, everyone in it is regenerate?
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Yeah, it does. And everyone in the new covenant is regenerate. And that's a true statement, but it's also irrelevant to the issue of what is the visible church?
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The visible church has always been those who profess faith in Christ and their families. Before the coming of Christ, it was those who profess faith in God and the promise of God together with their children.
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And the thing is, all of the attempts, and I remember working through this argument two years ago, well, it was just a sign of Jewish identity.
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You know, circumcision was a sign of genealogical connection to Israel. That's also perfectly false.
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Listen to Exodus chapter 12, beginning at verse 43. Listen.
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So people who were not the descendants of Abraham, people who were not genealogically connected to Israel would be circumcised and then they could take the
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Passover. What does that remind you of? When you're baptized, you can take the Lord's supper upon profession of faith.
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And of course, I've already pointed out, children did not participate in the Passover. They would ask their parents, just like children ask their parents now.
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Why are you eating bread and drinking wine? Why are you doing that in church? I've heard my own kids ask my wife that.
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I've heard them asking that and I've heard her explain. It's a great witnessing opportunity, just like it was in Exodus.
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But listen to the passage continue. Verse 45. And the congregation of Israel shall keep it.
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That term, kahal, congregation. Or edah, edah, the congregation, the assembly.
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The church, okay. The church is not a new covenant thing. The church is there in the wilderness, Acts 7, 38.
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The ekklesia in the wilderness. Okay. When a stranger, listen to verse 48. Exodus 12, 48 is key.
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Listen. Okay. This is a non -Israelite, a stranger, a foreigner.
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Let all his males be circumcised and then let him come near and keep it, the Passover. And he shall be as a native of the land, for no uncircumcised person shall eat it.
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So those who were not genealogically descended from Abraham or Israel could keep the
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Passover if they went through the initiatory rite of circumcision. What does that sound like?
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Baptism, doesn't it? Same thing. And households were circumcised to the Lord. Households are baptized over and over.
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Where is the evidence that this is the new covenant is now this entirely different thing that has no analog at all in the
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Old Testament. This is totally new thing. Where's the evidence of this? I don't see it in the New Testament.
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And if it has changed where now it's only professing adults, their children, their households are not part.
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They are not part of the visible church anymore. Where's the evidence of that? Where's the evidence of it?
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I don't see it in scripture anywhere. Okay, Galatians 3, his third question.
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In Galatians 3, Paul says those of faith are the sons of Abraham. So if the promise is to Abraham and his offspring,
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Christ, and we are included because we are in Christ through faith, wouldn't that mean it is to those who are the spiritual descendants of Abraham, not the physical?
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Yes. Exactly correct. If so, shouldn't that lend itself to the baptism of believers only since only believers would be heirs according to the
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Abrahamic promise? No, no more than that would necessitate only believers prior to the coming of Christ should be circumcised.
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That you have to look and wait for signs that that person is actually a true believer because God commanded it.
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You see, the question assumes, it assumes that there is no effectual covenant only with the elect prior to the coming of Christ, and that's just not the case because the
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Abrahamic promise is that. It is that. So, yeah. All right, so the last paragraph here.
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And just to show you that I'm not trying to play some sort of gotcha game, I can see potential flaws in the Credo Baptist argument, which
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I have brought to my pastor to try to help me work through. The foremost problem I see is that 1 Corinthians 7, 14 really does seem to be using covenantal language to describe the children of believers.
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I commend you for that, for sure. Because the interpretations, yeah, and he even says, none of the
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Credo interpretations of that passage I've heard have been satisfactory to me. I agree they're not satisfactory. I've heard people say, in fact,
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John Gilligan says this, and there's another fellow, Brian Borgman argues that, or Malone argues this.
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Actually, I think Malone argues one of two things here. Anyway, the two main things I've heard from that side are, this is referring to a
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Christian influence that holy, as opposed to unclean, means you have a Christian influence in your life, which is clearly not the case.
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The terms are covenantal terms. They're taken directly from the Septuagint. There's, I think it's 150 times clean versus unclean, meaning inside the camp versus outside the camp in Leviticus and the
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Old Testament law. The other one, the other interpretation is that this is referring to the legitimacy of births, that God does not recognize children as being legitimate unless both parents are believers.
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And I remember hearing that thinking, how could anyone seriously think that that's what he's talking about here? So God doesn't recognize if two non -Christians are married, their children are still illegitimate in God's eyes?
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But that's an awfully high price to pay to just, is that the thing is the passage, I don't think, I think there's implications there for the issue of baptism, but it really isn't even talking about that issue.
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But yes, they are holy, hagios, that is speaking in covenantal terms. I agree completely.
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Okay, so he says, so I'm not just trying to find a way to hold up to my traditions. I have a three -year -old son and wish to be obedient to our
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Lord regarding whether or not I should be giving the covenant sign to him. So this is more than an intellectual exercise in theology to me.
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Obedience to our Lord is at stake, and I understand the gravity of that. Okay, very, very thoughtful email. Obviously a very sharp guy.
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He knows, he understands the issues and has studied them. I hope this has been helpful. I think the key issue, what
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I've noticed again and again in my discussions with very sharp Baptists over the years has been, there almost seems to be, it's like there's no doctrine of the visible versus the invisible church.
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It's like the visible church has got to mirror the invisible church as closely as possible. We've got to try our best to make it mirror that.
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And I say, look, the indications that we see in Scripture is that the gospel has not changed.
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Only how much we know about it has changed. So it's not a difference in kind. The new covenant is not a difference in kind.
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It's only a difference in degree of knowledge. We know a lot more. We know a lot more about the seat of the woman, the coming
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Messiah than Abraham did. And yet, as Jesus says in John 8, I think it's verse 56 and following,
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Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day. He rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day. He saw it and was glad.
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David was looking forward to the same hope as well. Job was looking forward to the same hope. I know my
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Redeemer lives. And so they were all looking forward to the same thing, to the Redeemer, to the man who would come and rescue his people from their sins.
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And the visible administration of the one covenant of grace has always been professing adult believers in their households.
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And that wasn't just a Jewish thing. Circumcision is not a sign of ethnic identity or Jewish identity.
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Circumcision has a provision in Exodus chapter 12. If a foreigner, someone who is a pagan from outside of Israel wants to join the community and partake of the
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Passover and has an interest in the one true God, their household is to be circumcised and then they can be brought in and to be treated as a native of the land.
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Doesn't that sound so much like baptism? Now I remember reading the subordinate documents to the 1689
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London Baptist Confession and they try to make this argument that circumcision is just about Jewish identity. I just think that is clearly not the case.
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Circumcision, according to Paul in Romans 4 .11, is a sign of personal salvation. And yet it was given to infants who could make no profession of that.
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And so the association of baptism to faith is not an argument against the practice of infant baptism.
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So I hope that's been helpful. I hope this fellow will correspond some more. I hope this video has been helpful to him.
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I appreciated his email. I've been corresponding with a number of folks. I preached a couple sermons on this.
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I'll link to them in the description of this video. And people have told me that they have found those sermons and I put the manuscripts up in PDF form on Sermon Audio so you can download them and look at them that way if you'd like to.
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People are welcome to correspond on this issue. I think it's a very important issue. It's an issue that I started really studying in earnest
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I wasn't raised in Reformed churches. I was raised in Baptistic circles. I was never a Reformed Baptist, but I became
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Reformed in my soteriology. And as I was working through covenant theology, I remember discovering, man, most
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Reformed denominations practice infant baptism. Why do they do that? And then understanding the structure of biblical covenants, the very close tie between the
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New Covenant and the Abrahamic promise and understanding the Abrahamic promise is not the Old Covenant. And so when Hebrews chapter 8 cites
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Jeremiah 31, well, the New Covenant is different from the Old Covenant. Yeah, it's different from the legal covenant at Sinai where the people three times swear an oath of obedience.
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That covenant was not a promise covenant like the Abrahamic promise was. The Abrahamic oath was.
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So the Abrahamic covenant is not the Old Covenant. So when you read the citation from Jeremiah 31 in Hebrews 8, that's not contrasting the
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New Covenant with the Abrahamic promise. And especially because in the very same book of Hebrews, two chapters earlier, he says the
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Abrahamic covenant is immutable. It can't change. And it's always in effect. So the
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New Covenant is enacted upon better promises, meaning those Abrahamic promises, which is why
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Paul in his entire discussion of justification in Romans 4 makes reference to Abraham and the promises made to Abraham.
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Every single time someone is a true believer, they are a fulfillment of that promise. And that was prior to the coming of Christ and after the coming of Christ.
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This is Pastor Patrick Hines of Bridwell Heights Presbyterian Church, located at 108 Bridwell Heights Road in Kingsport, Tennessee.
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And you've been listening to the Protestant Witness Podcast. Please feel free to join us for worship any Sunday morning at 11 a .m.
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sharp, where we open the word of God together, sing his praises and rejoice in the gospel of our risen Lord. You can find us on the web at www .bridwellheightspca
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.org. And may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.