After having considered why the covenant God made with Abraham is still valid today and why the Christian church is of the same spiritual lineage as Abraham’s descendants and the nation of Israel, we must now look at the initiatory rite that God established for us under this covenant.  In Genesis 17 we find that God established circumcision for this purpose and that it was to be given to “every male child among you” and “every male child in your generations, he who is born in your house or bought with money from any foreigner who is not your descendant.”  The Lord was very specific about who was to receive this sign of the covenant and it is clear He took this signatory rite very seriously.  In verse 18, the Lord states, “And the uncircumcised male child, who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.”  Surely, the sign of His covenant with Abraham was not to be taken lightly.

Well, if we, the church, are under the same covenant then it would only stand to reason that we would partake in the same sign of the covenant unless we were instructed to do otherwise by the Lord.  “But wait a second!” you might cry.  “Didn’t Paul and the church in Jerusalem confirm that circumcision was no longer necessary?”

Indeed they did.  In Acts 15, verses 1 through 15, we read:

Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: "Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved." This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. The church sent them on their way, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted. This news made all the brothers very glad. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them.

Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, "The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses."

The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: "Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are."

The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. When they finished, James spoke up: "Brothers, listen to me. Simon has described to us how God at first showed his concern by taking from the Gentiles a people for himself. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written: 'After this I will return and rebuild David's fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it, that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things, that have been known for ages. "It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath."

In Galatians 2:3, Paul wrote, “Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek.” And, later in the book, Paul reaffirmed that circumcision is no longer necessary:

Those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. Not even those who are circumcised obey the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your flesh. May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation (Galatians 6:12-15).

Well, now we have a bit of a dilemma on our hands, don’t we? On one hand we have God telling Abraham that the covenant He is establishing with him is eternal but, on the other hand, we have the apostles in the early church abolishing the rite that God ordained would be the sign of His covenant.

So, if the covenant was eternal, how could the apostles completely dispose of its initiatory rite? The answer is actually simple. Jesus, before leaving earth, ordained baptism as the new sign of the covenant.  As Louis Berkhof wrote in his Systematic Theology:

In the new dispensation baptism is by divine authority substituted for circumcision as the initiatory sign and seal of the covenant of grace. Scripture strongly insists on it that circumcision can no more serve as such…If baptism did not take its place, then the New Testament has no initiatory rite. But Christ clearly substituted it as such…

In fact, most theologians throughout history have maintained that is exactly what Christ did before he ascended into Heaven:

And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.  (Mark 16:15, 16)

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.  (Matthew 28:18-20)

Clearly, Christ is instituting baptism as a sign to enter into His covenant of grace.  Circumcision was no longer necessary because it had been supplanted as the sign of the covenant by baptism.  Furthermore, as Louis Berkhof explains, baptism “corresponds with circumcision in spiritual meaning. As circumcision referred to the cutting away of sin and to a change of heart…so baptism refers to the washing away of sin…and to spiritual renewal.”

We have already established in a previous post that baptism does indeed symbolize the washing away of our sins and, using the Bible, we understand why circumcision held a similar meaning for the Hebrews in the Old Testament era:

Therefore circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer. (Deuteronomy 10:16)

And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. (Deuteronomy 30:6)

Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, And take away the foreskins of your hearts, You men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, Lest My fury come forth like fire,  And burn so that no one can quench it, Because of the evil of your doings.”  (Jeremiah 4:4)

“Behold, the days are coming,” says the LORD, “that I will punish all who are circumcised with the uncircumcised — Egypt, Judah, Edom, the people of Ammon, Moab, and all who are in the farthest corners, who dwell in the wilderness. For all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart.” (Jeremiah 9:25, 26)

When you brought in foreigners, uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh, to be in My sanctuary to defile it—My house—and when you offered My food, the fat and the blood, then they broke My covenant because of all your abominations. And you have not kept charge of My holy things, but you have set others to keep charge of My sanctuary for you.” Thus says the Lord GOD: “No foreigner, uncircumcised in heart or uncircumcised in flesh, shall enter My sanctuary, including any foreigner who is among the children of Israel. (Ezekiel 44:7-9)

One cannot help but see that circumcision in the Old Testament held virtually the same spiritual meaning as baptism does in the present day and age.  It was far more than a carnal, or physical, rite, as some Baptists have supposed.  Finally, in Colossians, Paul makes it abundantly clear that baptism has indeed replaced circumcision as the seal of the covenant:

In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. (Colossians 2: 11, 12)

Belief that the rite of baptism has replaced circumcision is the only way to consistently reconcile the Old Testament covenant with the Christian church.  This is seen by examining what the requirements for admittance were for each church in its respective time period and discovering that they are exactly the same!  In his Systematic Theology, Charles Hodge wrote:

The terms of admission into the Church before the Advent were the same that are required for admission into the Christian Church…Those terms were a credible profession of faith in the true religion, a promise of obedience, and submission to the appointed rite of initiation. Every sincere Israelite really received Jehovah as his God, relied upon all his promises, and especially upon the promise of redemption through the seed of Abraham. He not only bound himself to obey the law of God as then revealed, but sincerely endeavoured to keep all his commandments… All this is true in reference to the Church that now is. The Christian Church requires of those whom it receives to membership in visible communion, nothing more than a credible profession of faith, the promise of obedience to Christ, and submission to baptism as the rite of initiation. There has, therefore, been no change of the terms of admission to the Church, effected by the introduction of the Gospel.

Indeed, if baptism did not replace circumcision why would Paul call Jesus Christ “a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God” in Romans 15:8?  Verses like this one simply make no sense when isolated from the belief that baptism is the new sign of the covenant.

It is easy enough to see where I’m going with this. If infants were to be included in the economy of the church in the Old Testament (remember God explicitly commanded infants only eight days old to receive circumcision) then why would they not be included in the Christian church today unless there was a specific command to not do so.  Of course, there is no such command.  Furthermore, while there are clearly some differences that God has instituted in His covenant since the time of Abraham (changing the sign of the covenant from circumcision to baptism is just one of them), in every way these changes have made the covenant more inclusive.  In fact, Christ commanded His disciples to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”  No such command was ever given to the Hebrews before the coming of Christ.  To be sure, other people did come under God’s covenant during this time but there was nothing that resembled the emphasis placed on missions and evangelism that has characterized the church since Christ gave His “Great Commission.”  Yet Baptists would have us believe that, in this one area, the new covenant is inexplicably more exclusive.  This flies in the face of everything God has established in His covenant with His church.

Hopefully this explains why Karen and I decided to have our son, James, baptized recently. We gave it much thought and consideration and reached the inescapable conclusion that the only way we could faithfully obey God as Christian parents was to have him baptized.  This does not conclude my series on baptism.  I fully intend to answer some commonly held questions and objections to infant baptism but, thus far, it is my sincere prayer that I have defined the paedobaptist view adequately.