THE NEW COVENANT PEOPLE OF GOD AND PAEDOBAPTISM1 (1)
June 2015
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made 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, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. 33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “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. 34 “They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”2
We have examined Jeremiah 31:31-34 and learned that God’s promise to write His Law on the hearts of His people, Israel, is fulfilled in the New Covenant church of Jesus Christ. Jeremiah 31:31-34, therefore, prohibits us from separating Israel from the Church as is characteristic of Dispensationalism. The church of the New Covenant is the Israel of God (Gal 6:16). We are also kept from disparaging the place of the Law in the life of the believer as is characteristic of Antinomianism. The morality of God’s Law is intrinsic to the “spiritual DNA” of New Covenant life. Also, unlike Arminianism, we are compelled to acknowledge that we are saved by God’s sovereign grace. God initiates gracious dealings with us in keeping with the seven I wills of our text.
In this essay, we will see that Jeremiah 31:31-34 also compels us to differentiate ourselves from Paedobaptism.3 In view of v34 which reads, they will all know Me from the least of them to the greatest, we cannot view our infants and unconverted children as members in the New Covenant community.4 Everyone in the New Covenant community is seen as being savingly united to the Lord.
I spent my early years as a Christian in a Dispensational, Antinomian, and extensively Arminian denomination. Through the course of my theological pilgrimage, I became conscientiously Reformed and seriously considered Paedobaptism, but I was unable to relinquish my Baptistic convictions. Most of us are better Christians than we are theologians, which is to say, we can be truly united to Christ by faith while holding to less than biblically cogent doctrines and practices. I admit that some in other sectors of Christ’s universal church would deem me to be “less than biblically cogent.” My general Baptist brethren are uncomfortable with my Reformed convictions and my Reformed brethren are uncomfortable with my Baptist convictions.5 As an adherent of The Second London Baptist Confession of 1689, I gratefully acknowledge our debt to our Presbyterian and Reformed forefathers. The Second London Baptist Confession is sometimes called “a wet Westminster,” because many chapters are taken verbatim from The Westminster Confession of Faith which was written in 1646. The authors of the Baptist Confession also drew upon The Savoy Declaration of 1658, particularly in Chapter 26 “Of the Church.” The Baptists contributed their unique distinctives in Chapter 7, “Of God’s Covenant,” and Chapter 29, “Of Baptism.” I am profoundly indebted to the scholarship and piety which I share with our evangelical Paedobaptist brethren.6 I cannot, however, agree with infant baptism. In this age in Redemptive History, we need to recognize Christ’s grace in individuals and His presence among His gathered people. I certainly recognize Christ’s grace in Paedobaptist brethren and His presence in evangelical Paedobaptist churches. We can all be assured that in the day of consummated glory, these disagreements will vanish. In the meantime, may the Spirit enable us all to hold our respective convictions conscientiously and graciously (Phil 3:15-16).
In The New Covenant, All Will Know The Lord
The Lord informs us that the New Covenant will not be like the Old Covenant. In the New Covenant, the Law of God is located in a new place. It is now written into the hearts of God’s people (Jer 31:33). This is language describing what occurs when God regenerates a sinner and resurrects the inner man unto a life of holiness by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit (Tit 3:5). The Law of God, which was written on tablets of stone and located in the Ark of the Covenant, is now inscribed into the living, renewed hearts of all who are in the New Covenant so that they, by the nature of their new life, are oriented to live a life of love to God and to neighbor (see Ezek 36:25-28). Now alive by the Spirit, the New Covenant believer enjoys a relationship of sonship with God as his Father, and a fraternal relationship with believers in Christ as his brethren. The New Covenant community is thus a family, born not of natural, but of supernatural descent. This supernatural life which characterizes the people of the New Covenant is further described in Jeremiah 31:34, They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, “Know the LORD,” for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. Evangelism is unnecessary among the people of the New Covenant because they all savingly know the Lord. Not only have they been regenerated, they are also justified: for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.
These soteric blessings were not universally given to every Israelite in the Old Covenant. There were those who were members of the Old Covenant who nevertheless did not know the Lord. Even priests like Hophni and Phineas, the sons of Eli, who were responsible for the maintenance of the Lord’s worship and were privileged to come into His covenant presence, were ignorant of the Lord. Now the sons of Eli were worthless men: they did not know the LORD (1 Samuel 2:12). Certainly Hophni and Phineas knew who YHWH was, and could distinguish Him from the gods of the nations, but they did not have saving, living, heart-knowledge of God. Their hearts were not alive to the Law of God. They stole from the sacrifices and defiled God’s sanctuary with their sexual sin. They needed to perceive the salvific significance of the sacrificial system, and to fear the God who was present with His people in the tabernacle. Someone, especially their father Eli (see 1 Sam 2:12-17; 22-26; 29), needed to say to them, you need to know the Lord! They needed to repent of their sin and to believe the promises of the gospel. They were members of the Old Covenant community, but they needed to be evangelized and be converted.
Samuel, on the other hand, was converted so as to serve the Lord as His prophet. Samuel was converted one night as a child, when the word of the Lord repeatedly came to him. Prior to that we read, Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, nor had the word of the LORD yet been revealed to him (1 Sam 3:7). But the word of the Lord was revealed to him, when Samuel’s ears were made alive and he was enabled to hear the voice of the Lord. He then came to know the Lord. He responded, Speak, for Your servant is listening (1 Sam 3:10).
We read of the generation of Israelites that succeeded Joshua’s generation,
All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel. Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals, and they forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves down to them; thus they provoked the LORD to anger (Judg 2:10-12).
Without knowledge of the Lord, the nation of Israel veered into covenant infidelity and idolatry. The tribal nation then devolved into a series of cycles in which the people apostatized, then cried out to the Lord for deliverance, were rescued by a judge and set on a path of national security, until the cycle started all over again. Later in the latter eighth century BC the Lord no longer tolerated that too familiar cycle. Prior to the destruction of Israel by the Assyrians, He sent Hosea to preach to an unfaithful generation. As a prophet, he was called to depict the Lord’s own heart for His people by taking Gomer the harlot as his wife. And like Gomer, Israel gave herself over to spiritual harlotry, covenant infidelity, which is idolatry.
I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from Me; for now, O Ephraim, you have played the harlot, Israel has defiled itself. Their deeds will not allow them to return to their God. For a spirit of harlotry is within them, and they do not know the LORD (Hos 5:3-4).
When we consider the history of Old Covenant Israel, we can readily see that Old Covenant Israel was filled with people who simply did not know the Lord. However, some knew Him. They are called the remnant.7 But Israel as a theocratic nation was extensively unconverted and unfaithful to the Lord. In spite of appeals made by prophet after prophet calling them to repentance and fidelity to their covenant commitments, they, as God’s Old Covenant people, apostatized. Rightly are they indicted by the Lord in Jeremiah 31:32. They broke the covenant which the Lord made with them as a nation at Sinai.
But the New Covenant is different. The true members of this covenant will not apostatize and break this covenant because, as Hebrews tells us, it is a better covenant. Along with denunciations, Hosea also prophesies of the coming covenant which will be instituted in that day, and of the covenant fidelity which will characterize this New Covenant. I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice, in lovingkindness and in compassion, and I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. Then you will know the LORD (Hos 2:19-20). As Christ’s betrothed New Covenant Bride, even before the Consummation of the ages, we now know the Lord. Stunningly Israel’s arch-enemies are envisioned as coming to know the Lord and having membership in this promised covenant. Isaiah foresees a day when God’s covenant people will be an international community, composed of Egyptians, Assyrians and Israelites. In that day the Lord will say, Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance (Isa 19:25). How will this come about? He will send them a Savior and a Champion, and He will deliver them. Thus the LORD will make Himself known to Egypt, and the Egyptians will know the LORD in that day (Isa 19:20-21). Scripture presents us with only one covenant whose members are comprised of people from every nation: the New Covenant in which we all know the Lord, from the least of us to the greatest of us.
A Matter of Interpretation: Hermeneutics
The root issue that separates Paedobaptists and Credobaptists is hermeneutics: how we each interpret Scripture. Hermeneutics is especially crucial as we move through the Redemptive History of the Old Testament and come into the New Testament. There is an immense amount of exegesis and theology which informs both perspectives. I can only make general observations which inevitably “paint with a broad brush” and which are liable to misrepresent the convictions of some of our Paedobaptist brethren for they, as we Baptists, are not monolithic in their views and practices. We are considering Paedobaptism in the light of Jeremiah 31:33 which informs us that the members of the New Covenant will all know the Lord. Our text defines the members of the New Covenant soteriologically, that is, in terms of salvation. All who are in the New Covenant are “saved.” They are spiritually alive (regenerated), and thereby enabled to exercise repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21). Because they are God’s elect, the Spirit savingly unites them to Jesus in vital union with Him in His death and resurrection. In a word, they are bona-fide, genuine disciples.
As Jesus’ disciples, we interpret everything in Scripture in the light of His resurrection. The New Covenant is thoroughly eschatological because Jesus’ resurrection and His gift of the Holy Spirit has inaugurated the age to come. All that we are and possess in the New Covenant is what the Old Testament believer anticipated as his eschatology. We already enjoy a foretaste of the age to come. We are already alive with resurrection life and given eternal blessings in Christ. Our identity in the New Covenant, as those who have received the life and gift of the Holy Spirit, is by definition, eschatological. The New Covenant is “new” in that it is defined and experienced in union with the risen Christ. All the categories and terms derived from the Old Testament by which we understand Christ and New Covenant salvation have their full significance in the resurrection of Jesus.
Our Paedobaptist brethren, who readily interpret Old Testament types8 as having eschatological fulfillment in the New Covenant, display a telling inconsistency . They acknowledge that the New Covenant temple is now the body of the Man Jesus (John 2:19-21), the body of the believer (1 Cor 6:19), and the Church (Eph 2:21-22). They acknowledge that the New Covenant sacrifice is the offering of Christ on the cross (Heb 9:13-14). They acknowledge that Christ is our High Priest (Heb 8:1) and that we, as believers, are a New Covenant priesthood, which offers to God spiritual, New Covenant sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving (1 Pet 2:9; Hebs 13:15). They also interpret the possession of the promised land as being typological of the new heavens and new earth which will be manifest in the resurrection of the body at the end of the age (Heb 11:15-16). But they are inconsistent when it comes to the seed. In this matter they retain a physical, this-age, understanding of what the New Testament interprets typologically (Gal 3:29).9 Curiously, both Dispensationalism and Paedobaptism utilize a similar hermeneutic when it comes to their respective interpretations of the seed. Dispensationalists give New Covenant privilege to the physical seed of Abraham. Similarly, Paedobaptists view their own physical seed in a manner analogous to Abraham’s seed and, simply by virtue of being born into their natural family, their children are thereby thought to be granted some kind of New Covenant blessing.10
When it comes to the church, Paedobaptists and Credobaptists evidence two opposite hermeneutical tendencies. Presbyterian ecclesiology has a tendency to look backward in Redemptive History, whereas Baptist ecclesiology has a tendency to look forward in Redemptive History. Baptist ecclesiology is self-consciously eschatological. Those who are members of a Baptist church profess to having been resurrected in the inner man by the Spirit who has united them to the risen Christ by faith. Baptists define the church in terms of the life of the future age which has proleptically broken into the present. Credobaptists pursue a regenerate church membership, expecting the Holy Spirit to build a New Covenant temple out of individual living stones (1 Pet 2:5), gifting and placing each in the church, as He wills (1 Cor 12:11). Paedobaptists, on the other hand, do not require evidence of the new birth for membership in the church, at least in the case of their infants. They view Credobaptists as having an “over-realized eschatology.” Paedobaptists understand Jeremiah 31:34 to pertain to the ae to come, the consummated age of the resurrection. As such, they do not believe that everyone in the New Covenant will have a saving knowledge of the Lord.11
Credobaptists give place to a present, spiritual resurrection as a metaphor for the new birth (see Eph 2:4-7). Credobaptists insist that the present ministry of the Holy Spirit justifies our application of Jeremiah 31:34 to the people of God in this present epoch preceding the Second Coming of Christ. The accomplishment of Jesus’ atonement, resurrection, and exaltation coupled with the gift of the Holy Spirit who unites us to the resurrected Lord, encourages us to define ourselves in terms of resurrection realities. Although we await the fulfillment of the promise of our bodily resurrection (Phil 3:20-21), we have been given the Spirit as the down-payment of that promise, and we are already alive with resurrection life which we enjoy by faith (2 Cor 1:22; 5:5; Eph 1;13-14; Rom 8:9-17). We live in a time of “the already and the not yet,” which is nevertheless the era of New Covenant blessing. Our faith, coupled with hope and love, is fixed on the risen Christ. We are therefore eschatologically oriented and disinclined to be defined in terms of typological events which have transpired previously in Redemptive History. We live in the fullness of time (Gal 4:4) and are those upon whom the ends of the ages have come (1 Cor 10:11). Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come (2 Cor 5:17). This is not to say that all who are in Christ are thereby “in the church,” nor to say that all who are in the church are thereby in Christ. Although soteriology does overlap with ecclesiology, they are distinct doctrines and workings of grace.
Paedobaptists, on the other hand, tend to view the New Covenant people of God, the church, in terms of the past, specifically the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenants. The believer’s child is understood under an Abrahamic rubric of “to you and your seed” (Gen 17:7), while the church is defined as a mixed congregation as was Old Covenant Israel, comprised of both the converted (“the invisible church”) and the unconverted (“the visible church). Here, the Old Covenant people of God are paradigmatic for the New Covenant people of God. The church is defined as a mixed congregation of the saved and the could-yet-be-saved. Therefore, it is not unusual to read or hear Paedobaptists doing what Jeremiah 31:34 says is not necessary in the New Covenant: evangelizing the members of their church. Presbyterian ecclesiology is vulnerable to view the New Covenant church in Old Covenant Theocratic terms and thus liable to mix the Church with the State.12 When we come to the matter of our children, Baptists see Paedobaptists conflating the Church and the family.
The Child, The Family, and The Church
If we were to ask, “In which of the three God-constituted human authority structures are children placed and nurtured?”13 The answer given by Scripture is, “the family.” The child is born into the family by natural birth. S/he is placed under the authority of her/his parents who, if they are Christians, are instructed to raise her/him in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). It is a biblical hope and expectation that our parental prayers, example, nurture, and Scriptural instruction, will be owned of the Spirit to bring our children into saving union with Christ. We would emulate Lois and Eunice who, with sincere faith (2 Timothy 1:5) taught young Timothy the Scriptures from his childhood. It was that living Word of God which then led Timothy to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:14-15). The believing child then is to follow Christ as a child and demonstrate his/her love for Christ by learning to love and obey his/her parents. While under the authority of the home, the child is taught to relate to all men and the other spheres of God-constituted human authority, in obedience to Scripture, being motivated out of love for Christ. When Paul speaks to the children in Ephesians 6:1-3, he is calling them to be submissive to the God-constituted authority of their parents, in obedience to the fifth commandment. It is sometimes surmised that Paul would not have addressed children unless he assumed these minors were members of the church. It seems more likely that the children were present because they were accompanying their parents who were raising them in the fear, instruction, and worship of the Lord.14 It is interesting to note that when Paul categorized the church by gender and age in Titus 2:1-10, he addressed older men, older women, young women, and young men¸ and envisioned the children in the context of the home, being loved by the young women/wives who were also being taught to love their husbands (Tit 2:4; see also 1 Tim 2:15).
There are two distinctions which are clarifying. The first is the distinction between salvation and the church. To “be in the New Covenant” is not the same as being a member of the New Covenant church.15 A person can be truly saved, yet not a member in the local church.16 In most cases, this is a matter which should be rectified. If someone is saved, they ought to be a member of the local church. The church should be comprised of true believers. Living faith is one, if not the essential, qualification for church membership, but there are other qualifications as well in keeping with the nature of the church’s duties rendered in service to King Jesus.
This does not mean that you will never discover an unbeliever in the membership of a Baptist church. Sadly, you often will. So, you might ask, “At the end of the day, do not the Paedobaptist and the Baptist end up with the same ecclesiastical situation: a mixed congregation comprised of converted and unconverted people?” Here is where two Latin phrases are helpful. The first is de jure: “by law,” by definition, what should be. The second is de facto: “in fact,” what actually is. The Paedobaptist’s church is a mixed congregation de jure, because he includes his unconverted children within the covenant community by definition. The Baptist acknowledges that unconverted people can be found de facto within the church. The Baptist church is, de facto, a mixed congregation, not de jure, by definition. The inclusion of the unconverted is contrary to the New Covenant definition of the church. That unconverted people can be within the church is more a factor of eschatology than of ecclesiology in that the tares will grow indistinguishably alongside the wheat until the final harvest (Matthew 13:24ff; see the example of Simon in Acts 8, who is said to have believed and was baptized (v13), yet after attempting to purchase the authority to bestow the Holy Spirit, Peter tells him. You have no part or portion in this matter, for your heart is not right before God – v21). The discovery of the unconverted within the church is an abnormality which should be rectified. Church discipline is predicated upon the conviction that unconverted people ought not to be members of the church. If this is the case, then unconverted people ought not to be brought into the church in the first place, even if those unconverted people are our own children. Even if we are confident that our children are converted believers, this distinction is still helpful. They can indeed be true believers in Christ, and for good biblical reasons, not yet be members of the church, the “covenant community.”
A second distinction is that between the church and the home. The family is a common-grace institution of creation, common to the converted and the unconverted. When both parents are believers who are dedicated to obey Scripture in the raising of their children, they infuse a redemptive purpose into the family relationships. The marriage is then consciously analogous to Christ’s relationship to His church (Eph 5:22-33), and parenting is intentionally reflective of our experience of having God as our Father (Heb 12:6-10). If the New Testament situates the child in the home, and we are right that the gospel calls children to believe and follow Jesus as children, then we can understand that the prescribed community in which the young believer is to demonstrate love for his/her neighbor, is primarily, and intitally, the home.17 Parents nurture the believing child to the place where s/he is exercising matured, independent judgment and can assume responsibility for his/her personal actions. When that believer comes out from under the umbrella of parental authority to interface with other God-constituted human authority structures, for example the State, we are then at a point to inquire if that matured believer desires membership in the church.
Here are a couple of pertinent questions in this matter. “Can this person assume the responsibilities of church membership independent of his/her parents?” “If this person were to require church discipline, would the church be compelled to exercise that discipline through his/her parents or directly upon him/her?” If Biblical prudence compels us to recognize that this person is still under the authority of his/her parents, then it is likely that their discipleship to Christ is to continue being displayed primarily within the home.18 Church membership, then, ought to be addressed at a later time. This does not mean that the child is not a believer, but only that the child is not yet mature enough to assume not only the privileges, but also the responsibilities and liabilities of church membership. It also does not mean that the young believer has no participation in the community life and fellowship of the church. As a believer, indwelt by the Spirit, the child will inevitably form loving, Christ-glorifying relationships with other believers in the church. But when the church is considered institutionally, the question of the child’s capacity to assume the responsibilities, privileges, and liabilities of membership is germane. A child can, and should, believe in Jesus, but he/she does so as a child. The little one is then to obey Jesus as a child. Children in Scripture are consistently told to obey the fifth commandment. When we read Jeremiah 31:33, I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it, we can say to children who professes faith in Jesus, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise), that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth (Ephesians 6:1-3), and if the child is truly regenerated and exercising living faith, we can expect to see evidence of that faith in their relationship to their parents. We should encourage the child’s faith in Christ and obedience to their parents, not only with the prospect of blessings for their life in this present age, but also with the promise of blessings of eternal life in the new heavens and new earth.
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1 This four-part series follows the main outline of A Reformed Baptist Manifesto: The New Covenant Constitution of the Church by Dr. Sam Waldron (Palmdale, CA: Reformed Baptist Academic Press, 2004). Although I follow Dr. Waldron’s main outline, I have reshaped the substance of the arguments presented in these articles.
2 I am using the New American Standard Bible. I encourage you to read the passages referenced in your own Bible so as to benefit from our study together. Let us be Berean-spirited and examine the Scriptures to see whether these things are so (Acts 11:11).
3 “Paedobaptist” comes from the Greek “pais” which means “child.” Paedobaptists espouse the practice of baptizing (actually sprinkling) the infants of believers. Baptists are “credobaptists” from the Latin “credo,” meaning “I believe.” Credobaptists baptize disciples who confess faith in Jesus Christ and evidence the fruit of repentance as requisite for membership in the church. Paedobaptists also baptize (sprinkle) believers who come to faith in Christ as adults.
4 Our Presbyterian brethren will often refer to their children as “covenant children.” On occasion, I haves asked my Presbyterian brethren, “In which Covenant are your children members?” The answer is frequently, “the Covenant of Grace,” which is a reference to Genesis 3:15 understood as a “covenant” which is then administered by the various covenants over the course of Redemptive History. The New Covenant is the present administration of “the Covenant of Grace.” As for their view of their children, the Abrahamic Covenant is paradigmatic. Dr. Mark Ross states: “that new covenant members are heirs of the covenant promises made to Abraham and are rightly regarded as belonging to Abraham’s seed… that the New Testament regards the children of believing parents as ‘holy’ in an important sense, namely, as indicating they likewise have standing within the covenant God made with Abraham. If baptism is the sign of that covenant in the New Testament, having the same meaning as circumcision did in the Old Testament, then surely the newborn infants of believers in the New Testament are to receive the sign of covenant membership just as their predecessors did in the Old Testament” [Mark Ross, “Baptism and Circumcision as Signs and Seals,” The Case for Covenantal Infant Baptism, ed. Gregg Strawbridgre (Philipsburg, PA: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2003), 107-108] As for their view of the church, the Old Mosaic Covenant is paradigmatic. With these points of reference, the child is part of “the covenant community” with the hope that s/he will eventually come to faith in Christ and become a member of the New Covenant. Unless there is evidence of rank apostasy, that faith is assumed to have been formed by the means of grace in a child by the time they are young teens, who are then “confirmed” in their faith, and brought into full membership and admitted to the Lord’s Supper.
5 I have had personal conversation with Paedobaptist brethren who see Paedobaptism as essential to what it means to be “Reformed” and therefore think that it is inappropriate for a Baptist to claim to be “Reformed.” They would prefer that we call ourselves “Particular Baptists,” the moniker of our English forebears. In so doing, we would identify ourselves by our commitment to a Calvinistic soteriology: specifically particular redemption, or “limited atonement.” However, contemporary Reformed Baptists hold to traditionally “Reformed” convictions that exceed the mere Five Points of Calvinism in soteriology. See Going Beyond The Five Points, ed. Rob Ventura (Create Space Independent Publishing Platform, 2015). Our Paedobaptist brethren tell us that “Reformed” refers to a covenantal hermeneutic of Redemptive History which is ipso facto, paedobaptistic. Reformed Baptists however, have a bona-fide covenantal heritage and a more than satisfactory covenantal theology. See Recovering a Covenantal Heritage: Essays in Baptist Covenant Theology, ed. Richard C. Barcellos (Palmdale, CA: Reformed Baptist Academic Press, 2014).
6 Evangelical Paedobaptists must be differentiated from Sacramental Paedobaptists who view the ritual as conferring saving grace upon the child. Such a practice is found in State Churches whereby the child is simultaneously a citizen of the State and a member of the State Church. Evangelical Paedobaptists sprinkle their infants in the hope that the child will come to faith in Christ. For a helpful study which differentiates Sacramentalism from Evangelicalism see Benjamin Warfield, The Plan of Salvation (1915; repr;, Boonton, NJ: Simpson Publishing, 1989).
7 The remnant of true believers gives connection and continuity consisting of living faith which connects the people of God through the course of Redemptive History and forms one of the main bridges between the Old Testament and the New Testament.
8 A “type” is seen in relation to its “antitype.” Think of a stamp pressed into soft wax. The stamp is the antitype and the wax, the type. The type takes its shape from the antitype. Typology is due to God’s sovereignty over Redemptive History. He has created all things for the purpose of glorifying His Son in redemption (Ephesians 3:8-11). His purpose is unchangeable and certain (Isaiah 46:10-11), so much so that God’s final goal retroactively shapes the unfolding of history so that we see a revelation of Christ in advance of His incarnation, atonement and resurrection. History’s ultimate antitype is the glorified Christ and His glorified people in His glorified cosmos. God sovereignly presses the firm certainty of the Son’s accomplishment of salvation and the Spirit’s application of salvation into the History of Redemption so that we can see the shape of Christ’s obedience and the blessings of His resurrection typified in history prior to His coming. The type was a bona-fide revelation of the gospel, which when believed, was sufficient to savingly unite the believer to Christ. We have it better (Hebrews’ most frequently used vocabulary word) in the New Covenant, because we see the antitype, Jesus Himself, and can now define Him accurately in terms of the preceding revelatory types and shadows which God gave to His people throughout the Old Testament. “We receive salvation ‘better,’ but not a better salvation.” (Sinclair Ferguson, “Preaching Christ From the Old Testament,” PT Media – The Proclamation Trust, Paper Number 2, 2002: 15.) This explains how it is that Christ was present and believed in the Old Testament – in types and shadows (Hebrews 10:1). But we, in the New Covenant, now have the substance: Jesus Himself, even though we yet see in a mirror dimly (1 Corinthians 13:12).
9 I first heard this observation concerning Paedobaptist hermeneutics from Dr. James Dolezal who presently is on the theological faculty of Cairn University, Langhorn, PA.
10 Peter J. Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 46-47.
11 See Richard L. Pratt Jr., “Infant Baptism in the New Covenant,” The Case for Covenantal Infant Baptism (Philipsburg, PA: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 2003), 156-174. If Credobaptists are said to have an “over-realized eschatology,” which I rather hope is biblically balanced, then can we not ask whether Paedobaptists have an “under-realized eschatology?” The challenge, of course, is to balance “the already and the not yet” blessings of the New Covenant. The resurrection of the inner man in regeneration in this age constitutes the soteriological “already,” and the resurrection of the body, the “not yet.” The “already” present workings of the Spirit compel us to understand that we are now in the New Covenant and the saving knowledge of God, spoken of in Jeremiah 31:34 pertains to the people of God in this present epoch of Redemptive History, while we await the ensuing soteriological blessing of our glorification in the Eschaton.
12 A survey of church history will show that the tare of a “State-Church” only grows in the soil of Paedobaptism in which a child is simultaneously brought into membership in the State and Church by virtue of its birth and baptism. It is significant that the Orthodox Presbyterian Church revised the Westminster Confession of Faith at several points, one being Chapter 23 “Of the Civil Magistrate.” The original wording authorized the civil government to insure that the church was properly ordered and doctrinally pure, with the right to discipline any who threatened church order as well as the power to call church synods. The American Revision restricts the civil government from intruding into ecclesiastical affairs. Some may see the revision as evidence of “Americanzation,” others would endorse the revision as a step toward a more biblically cogent ecclesiology. This revision would no doubt have pleased those Congregationalists who were present at the Westminster Assembly in 1647, but who were out-voted on the original wording of chapter 23. Could we hope to see the day when our Paedobaptist brethren, having made a wise adjustment in the matter of the Church’s relationship to the State, will make a similar adjustment in the matter of the Church’s relation to the Family and revise the practice of Paedobaptism which is practiced, essentially, as a domestic ordinance on the basis of the profession of the parent’s faith?
13 Those three institutions are the family, the church and the state.
14 That Paul expected that there would be unbelievers and the untaught who would assemble with the gathered church is evident in 1 Corinthians 14:24-25. That they were present in public worship does not presume that they were in covenant commitment to Christ and His church, having assumed the privileges, responsibilities and liabilities of church membership.
15 There is a sense in which a person is part of the “church” considered soteriologically, as the saved people of God. There is an overlap of salvation and the church, of soteriology and ecclesiology. However, we cannot equate soteriology and ecclesiology. It is true that believers and the church are frequently called brethren in Scripture, but brethren, as a familial term, is more of an ecclesiastical than a soteriological term. To equate “believers” with “the church” is imprecise and an unhelpful understanding of the church. This notion is pervasive in our day and may go a long way to explain why so many who profess faith in Christ have little if any genuine union with the church as the gathered people of God, ordered in obedience to Scripture under the authority of King Jesus. Is it possible that they read their Bibles which so pervasively focuses on the church, and when they read the word “church” they think, “those who are saved,” and, being confident that they are “saved,” they are content to continue to live at a dangerous distance apart from the local church?
16 Long with being a living body (an organism), the church is also an institution ordered under the rule of Christ. Soteriology is related to the church because the people in the church are said to be saints (1 Cor 1:1; 2 Cor 1:1; Eph 1:1; Phil 1:1; Col 1:2). However the preponderance of passages in the New Testament present the church as an institution with membership, leadership, corporate tasks and accountability to Christ. Membership not only gives one certain privileges, but also certain responsibilities, and liabilities.
17 The distinguishing trait of Jesus’ disciples is love (John 13:34-35). The command that we have love one for another requires us to live out our discipleship to Jesus in our interpersonal relationships. Ultimately, the church is the community in which Christian love is prescribed. Jesus informs us that we will evidence our discipleship to Him as we learn to love one another as a community ordered in obedience to Him, that is, as a church. The believing child is also to evidence his/her discipleship and is placed in a community in which gospel love is to manifest itself in obedience to Jesus. That community is the family. The child who by faith, obeys Jesus by honoring his/her parents and cultivating peaceable and amicable relationships with his/her siblings, evidences youthful discipleship. However, the family, even when composed of believers, is not a “little church.” It is still a family, an institution established in creation. Nevertheless, the believing members of the family are to discharge their roles and engage in domestic relationships in obedience to the Word of God. As such, they bring dynamics of gospel love and resurrection life into the family. They give the family a redemptive purpose which is not integral to the family as an institution of creation, per se. The believing child therefore, is to love his/her parents, in obedience to Christ. (The principle which is operative here is seen in Colossians 3:22-25.) We may have unbelieving, disobedient parents, and yet be believing, obedient children, and we may have unbelieving, disobedient children, and yet be believing, obedient parents.
18 At this point some might interject, “Well, what about the wife? Is she not placed under submission to her husband in the home? Should not her primary sphere in which her discipleship is displayed be the home and the family too?” Yes, Scripture does situate the believing woman who is married in the home (see 1 Tim 2:15; 5:13-14). But she is not a child. She is accountable to God’s constituted human authorities: the family, the state, and the church. The New Testament differentiates between minors and adults in their majority years. In Titus 2:1-8 and 1 Timothy 5:1-2 Paul speaks of the older and the younger believers in the church. One’s age is relevant in the community of the church, but Paul does not include references to children. When he does, he envisions them situated within the home.