Park Cities Presbyterian Church (PCA)

Why we baptize babies

by Skip Ryan

August 17, 2003

Genesis 17:7–13; Matthew 3:13–17; Matthew 28:18–20

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“And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. And God said to Abraham, ‘As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He that is eight days old among you shall be circumcised; every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house, or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he that is born in your house and he that is bought with your money, shall be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant’” (Genesis 17:7–13).

“Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying,  ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased’” (Matthew 3:13–17).

“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age’” (Matthew 28:18–20).

It is a good thing for us as a church family to review occasionally why we do one of the principal acts that marks us and our particular tradition as Presbyterians—the baptism of infants.

A commitment to infant baptism is not required to be a member of Park Cities Presbyterian Church. You do, however, have to be willing to allow me to preach a sermon to you once every seven or eight years on baptism and to listen to the teaching that we believe shapes this critical part of our understanding of the covenant of God’s grace. Elders and deacons of our church do have to say that they eagerly support the sacrament of infant baptism.

Infant baptism does not seem immediately evident on the face of scripture. It requires that we do a little work bringing together some threads from both Old and New Testaments in order to best understand this marvelous truth.

Baptism is a sacrament. How does an act of worship, baptism in particular, rise to the level of sacrament? First, Jesus commanded that it be performed on every believer. For example, marriage is not a sacrament because Jesus does not require that every believer be married. But He does require that every believer be baptized.

Second, a sacrament is to be done perpetually. Jesus commanded only two actions be performed perpetually, until He comes again: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. For example, Jesus commanded His disciples to wash one another’s feet, but He did not indicate that they were to it do perpetually. Some churches today practice footwashing. That is fine, but it is not required by Jesus until He returns.

Third, and most important, baptism is an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible reality. So the question naturally arises: of what inward and invisible reality is baptism the outward sign? The answer in the Bible is the covenant of grace.

Now covenant is a word that is familiar to Presbyterians. Generally it means “relationship.” It is that relationship which God has initiated with His people. Many times we will speak naturally and understandably of “my relationship with God” or “my relationship with Jesus.” That is perfectly fine, but biblically the most accurate way to speak of relationship between God and us is the relationship that God has with us before the relationship we have with Him.

God initiates this covenant relationship throughout the Bible. At the very beginning it is God who addresses Adam in the garden. It is God who comes to His people, and the covenant comes to its first real descriptive fulfillment in the initiation of the relationship that God made with His servant Abraham.

You see these words in Genesis 17:7: “And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your [offspring] after you.”

Essence of the covenant

Three elements are contained in the covenant: “I will be Your God, you will be My people, and I will dwell among you.” We can rightly say that God is our Great Possession.

God tells Abraham that the covenant is everlasting. It is not made just with Abraham alone. God intends that it go on forever with His people. And then He names those people—the children of Abraham, and the children’s children, and the children’s children.

Right away we come to understand that God is interested in families, and that His covenant is with successive generations. God anticipates even before their births that He will have a covenant with Isaac and with Jacob, and with Jacob’s sons after him, that He will be their God, and they will be His people, and He will dwell among them.

Immediately after this promise, God tells Abraham to circumcise male infants on the eighth day. Not only is the covenant with Abraham and with his children, but a sign goes with it—an outward and visible sign of the inward and visible reality of this relationship that God sustains with His people.

Did circumcision indicate that when Abraham obeyed God and had his son Isaac circumcised, that Isaac believed in God? No. We know that belief is central to the covenant of grace. Belief is the instrument by which we apprehend and receive God’s goodness. In fact, it says in this context in Genesis that Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. But Isaac was a baby. He could not have faith in that way. So circumcision does not indicate the faith that Isaac has. Rather, it indicates that by virtue of who his daddy is, he is included in the covenant family—those who are the objects of God’s promise.

It is interesting that the word in Hebrew which we translate “to make a covenant” literally means “to cut a covenant.” And the word circumcise means “cutting with blood.” The word points forward to another time when there was a cutting with blood. Yes, circumcision is intended to point forward to that greater shedding of blood that took place on the cross of Calvary, which, after all, is the only way that this covenant can actually work itself out for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all of us. The only way that God can ultimately say, “I will be Your God, and you will be My people, and I will dwell among you,” is because there is a covenant Mediator whose blood was shed in order to ratify that covenant, in order to make it good and effective.

Signs and seals

Circumcision, and baptism after it, are signs of entrance. They are not signs of faith in infant children that receive them but signs of entrance into that covenant community with which God sustains His faithful promises that He makes to them.

Do you remember in high school how you got a stamp on your hand at the prom? It was invisible, and you had to hold your hand under the infrared light to make it visible if you went out and wanted to come back into the dance.

Circumcision was a visible sign, but baptism is an invisible sign. But is it not like that stamp? Under the light of God’s scrutiny, He knows those who have been the recipients of that covenant sign. And He recognizes them as His own.

Baptism is not only a sign; it is a seal of belonging in this covenant family, like a signet ring or a seal that is put on a graduation certificate. The seal on that diploma is what authenticates its meaning, verifying that what it says is actually true. The seal authenticates the promise of God in the eyes of God’s people. So there is an authentic entrance by which the Hebrew meant that the child belonged to the covenant community and to the family of the Lord.

The key idea is family. That is why we call the church a family. We are a family of families, all of whom have this covenant with the Lord. And together, as a church family, we have this covenant with the Lord. The Lord works in families, and He works in successive generations.

Family ties

American evangelicals commonly think of “my relationship to Jesus” or “Jesus’ relationship with me,” and we think of this relationship as unilateral. But the scriptures speak much more often of His relationship with us. Even as we prize the wonder that Jesus knows me and that I know Jesus, we must also remember that He knows me as part of the covenant family—my people, my parents, my children, and all of us together in a church as a family.

Sometimes we want to skip over the genealogies in the Bible, but do you know how important the genealogies are to the Lord? It’s a bit like when the name of your son or daughter is in the newspaper for something special they have done. I don’t know about you, but we go out and buy 10 copies of that newspaper because it is so wonderful to see our child’s name in print. I think God rejoices that His children’s names are in print and that we say those names out loud from time to time.

This everlasting covenant surely includes us as well. We are also the sons and daughters of Abraham. So what has changed from the time of Abraham until now?

Certainly the temporal perspective has changed. In the Old Testament Abraham looked forward to the coming of the covenant Mediator, Jesus, the One who would make it all real and make it happen. We look back in time to the coming of the covenant Mediator. So the temporal perspective has changed, but the essence of the covenant itself has not. God still promises, “I will be Your God, you will be My people, and I will dwell among you.”

The sign also changed. In the gospels circumcision recedes into the background very quickly. Oh, it is mentioned in the New Testament, sometimes even critically, but it no longer has the importance that it had before. Instead, from the outset, we see this remarkable event where Jesus comes to John the Baptist in the Jordan River for baptism. John asks, “You come to me for baptism? I should be coming to You.” Jesus says, “No, it is fitting for all righteousness,” which is an enigmatic way of saying, “I am identifying with the sins of My people.”

Jesus didn’t need baptism, but He was identifying with the sins of His people who did. Right away in the New Testament we see this crazy figure, John the Baptist, out in the wilderness baptizing. Where did he come from?

The transition of signs

In the Old Testament there is hardly any mention of anything that looks like baptism. Baptism is a rite that grew up between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New, that period of about 400 years when there were a lot of people in surrounding countries who wanted to identify with the Hebrew people because they admired their God. The practice of water baptism to signify a repenting from the sin of the pagan nations was instituted so the people could become Hebrews.

Why did the sign change? We don’t know. There is no verse and chapter that tells us exactly why the sign changed. We can speculate, and we can infer a few things. One, water is used, and that is a water that cleanses from sin. Since baptism clearly refers to the promise of the cleansing of sin, water is a very appropriate means to indicate that. Second, since Christ is the final and complete Sacrifice, it does not seem appropriate that after the shedding of blood on the cross there would be a sign that would further shed blood. There is no more need for shedding blood. And, third, little girls as well as little boys can be baptized.

In the Old Testament little girls were included under the sign of their brothers and fathers. But in the New Testament Jesus and Paul make it explicit that in Christ there is neither male nor female, by which they don’t mean their distinctions are not important; they are simply affirming that women as well as men, girls as well as boys, have every right to belong in the covenant family. This is demonstrated more effectively by a sign for little girls as well as little boys.

So just as the Lord’s Supper fulfills Passover and replaces it, so baptism fulfills circumcision and replaces it. The covenant in the Old Testament included the children of believers. The covenant in the New Testament includes the children of believers. The covenant in the Old Testament had a sign performed on the babies of believers as well as on adult converts. The covenant in the New Testament has a sign to be performed on the babies of believers, just as it was in the Old Testament. The sign has changed, but the sign is still to be performed on the babies and children of believers.

Questions and answers

I think it is clear by now that baptism means something different to us than it does to our brothers and sisters in the Lord from baptistic traditions. With good intent and with sincere integrity reading the scriptures, they come to different conclusions about the meaning of this sign. But the difference could not be more striking. It really is about a 180-degree difference.

Our Baptist brothers and sisters love the Lord and are going to heaven, but they would say, “Baptism is a sign of my faith. I believe in Jesus, and then I am baptized.” I believe that the scriptures do not teach that baptism is not a sign of my faith. It is a sign of God’s faithfulness in the covenant, His promise that it is His ordinary intention to bring these infants to Himself over time as the parents stay faithful to their obligations to raise their children as those who know Him. It is a sign of God’s faithfulness of entrance into the covenant community, of including children in this covenant family.

Let me move to some questions that arise for many of us. I will give you just a few questions and some answers to chew on.

Question: Does baptism make my baby a Christian? Clearly, the answer is no. Baptism does not make any baby, or any adult for that matter, a Christian any more than a wedding ring makes me married. I could take my wedding ring off, and I would still be married. Similarly, if I was not married, I could wear a ring, but it would not make me married.

Baptism does not make salvation happen. It signifies and seals the promise that God will in due course work in this child’s heart, because this child is my child, and I am a believer. If you are a believer in the covenant promise of God, a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, His promise is that He will extend His saving work to your children in due course.

It is a serious error to assume that if we were baptized as an infant or at 12 or at 20, or at 50 for that matter, that we are automatically Christians. Grace makes you a Christian, working through faith. There isn’t any sign that signifies it. Only the gospel makes us Christians. Baptism is not fire insurance. It is a sign of entrance into the family, a sign of God’s promise, a promise that will come to flower in the lives of those who are raised in a home where the things of Jesus are talked about.

Question: Babies don’t have faith yet, so what does their baptism mean? It means that they are recipients of a promise. The parents take a vow after being asked, “Do you claim God’s covenant promises on your child’s behalf?” The parents are taking the vow, not the child. The sign does not indicate the child’s faith. It indicates that the promise extends to those children by virtue of who their parents are.

This is what you might call the presumption of the covenant. We presume that children will grow up knowing Jesus when they grow up in a house where Christ is honored.

Question: Should my child or I be rebaptized if we profess faith later on life? No, because it would compromise the meaning of that original baptism. The sign has already been given. There is no need for repetition. The faith my child comes to later is signified by his or her standing up in front of a congregation of God’s people and professing faith in the Lord.

Here’s a silly illustration: you are a rancher with a herd of cattle, and one of your little calves was branded and then wandered off into a neighbor’s ranch and was gone for many years. Then it comes back, and you recognize your calf now grown up. Would you rebrand it? No, you wouldn’t. The meaning of the original brand was being fulfilled by the calf coming back to you. That is what happens when young people at 12 or 15 or 50 profess faith. They are fulfilling the meaning of the promise that was made on their behalf when they were baptized.

Question: Why are there no examples of infant baptism in the New Testament? I have already had to make an argument from the Old Testament to the New because there are only scant inferences or suggestions of infant baptism in the New Testament. Why? The New Testament was a first-generation situation, addressed to adult people who were hearing the gospel and believing for the first time. They needed to be baptized at the point of belief. But imbedded into the words of Peter at the beginning of the church of Pentecost is that the promise is for our children and our children’s children.

Question: I was baptized as a Roman Catholic as an infant; does this count? Yes, as long as it was Trinitarian baptism—baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The effectiveness of baptism does not depend upon the spirituality of the person performing it or upon the spirituality of the parents who bring their children for baptism. It is God’s sign, not our sign.

I was baptized in a church in Connecticut as an infant that believed, as far as I can tell, almost nothing about the gospel. And I believe that the minister who baptized me understood almost nothing about the gospel. And I know my mom and dad were not Christians. I never once saw them in church until I was 27 years old. But I would not be rebaptized because it was Trinitarian baptism—The name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit was said over me. It is God’s sign, not the sign that belonged to that church, to that pastor, or to my parents.

Question: If my child were to die in infancy, would he or she be in heaven, whether or not he or she was baptized? If you were a professing Christian and member of this church, and, tragically, your child were to die in infancy—as your pastor I would come to your home, look you in the eye and say, “Your baby is in heaven.” I would not say that because there is an age of presumed innocence from infancy until six or seven. Any of you who have had children between infancy and six and seven know that there is no such thing as an age of innocence! Indeed, David said sin was conceived in his mother’s womb when he was conceived. No, the reason that we would say that a child of believers tragically dying in infancy is in heaven is, again, because of the presumption of the covenant. Christian parents have a covenant right to believe that God’s sovereign electing purposes would be worked out in their child’s life even before the child could make a profession of faith.

Is our Bekah going to be in heaven? Bekah cannot speak. She cannot understand the gospel the way you and I do. But she is our daughter, and we have every covenant right given by God to believe that she will be in heaven.

Question: What about the different ways of doing baptism? Some immerse, some sprinkle, some dip, some throw water. There are actually three methods. They are all good methods, and they all mean something very rich. Immersion symbolizes burial with Christ and resurrection with Christ. Effusion or pouring, practiced in Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, signifies the running water that washes away sin. And sprinkling, our tradition, signifies the sprinkling of the blood of the covenant upon the mercy seat of the altar in the temple and tabernacle. There is only one way by which we may come into the holy of holies and the presence of God—the blood of Christ. Sprinkling, the best of all three methods, signifies that central truth by pointing us again to the cross, and making the cross the center of our understanding of how we can come to God and how the covenant is fulfilled.

Grace and responsibility

Two things to think about: One, every baptism reminds us of the grace of God. The covenant is initiated by God to Abraham and by God to us. We are recipients, not initiators. We don’t choose ourselves to be in a covenant family. God draws us into the covenant. Babies are passive about their baptism. Some even sleep right through it. And so, too, are we in a certain way to understand ourselves as passive. God is the One who must work before we may respond. Baptism reminds us that we are completely dependent upon God.

Second, baptism reminds us of our responsibilities as parents to do everything we are called to do in obedience to raise our children to know Jesus. Parents take this vow: “Do you unreservedly dedicate your child to God and promise in humble reliance upon God’s grace that you will endeavor to set before your child a godly example, that you will pray with and for your children, that you will teach them what it means to be a Christian, and that you will strive by all the means of God’s appointment to raise them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord?”

I know one pastor who, when he is baptizing the younger sibling of a brother or sister he previously baptized, asks the parents, “Have you so kept the vow you answered before God with your previous child, that you can take this vow with a sincere and clear conscience?”

Parents, there is no more solemn responsibility you have than to fulfill your covenant obligations by enabling your children to see the promise of God fulfilled in Jesus Christ. There is no more important thing that we as a church do together as a family of families, as a covenant family, than answer the question, “Do you as members of this church undertake the responsibility of assisting the parents in the nurture of their child?”

I know one man who refuses to answer that question because he says that by the end of the service he can’t even remember the name of the child. How can he fulfill that promise? I understand what he is saying, but I think he is wrong, because when you take a turn in the nursery, or teach Sunday school, or have kids over to your house for a picnic with the youth group, you are fulfilling that vow.

There has been no greater joy in my being your pastor for the last eleven years than in seeing many of your kids grow up with my kids, having them in my home and sharing with you the responsibility for their growth in the things of Christ. What most breaks my heart about a son going off to college is that his friends aren’t in my house and in my refrigerator at every hour of the day and night. Rejoice when those kids are in your kitchen. Take charge of your responsibility you have with your kid’s friends. It is a great and solemn responsibility. And it is a great joy to be the covenant family of the Lord called Park Cities Presbyterian Church.