34. Children in the Covenant

We have the privilege of admitting into the covenant [child]. Each time we have a baptism of a child, I like to give a different angle on the why we do so. We have covered many passages on infant baptism, but today I want to look at it from an eagle’s eye vantage point of the place that children have always occupied in the covenant.

When I first began to understand some of the doctrines of the Reformation I attended a Reformed Baptist church in Vancouver, British Columbia. The pastor invited me to come to the Reformed pastor’s fellowship, which I gladly did. I really enjoyed the theological stimulation. One of the things that struck me with force during those years that I was wrestling with infant baptism was my Baptist pastor’s statement that he did not have a theology for children. A Presbyterian minister asked him what his theology of children was. My pastor said that he had read the baptist literature on the subject, and he didn’t know quite where children fit. He didn’t want to say that they were no different than the world. On the other hand, he didn’t want to say that they were in the church. But neither did he want to say that they were innocent. He was too Reformed to agree with that. He knew from the Scriptures that infants needed salvation too. He used the phrase that the children were in a no-man’s land. And he was referring to the strip of land between two opposing camps.

That statement got me searching on what the Bible said about children. Were they in the church or outside of the church? It had to be one or the other. And I was surprised to discover that there were only two references in the Bible to the children of believers being outside of the church, and there were many references to children being in the church. But what troubled me about that two references to the children of believers being outside the covenant community was that one was a rebuke to Moses for failing to circumcise his son (which was the Old Testament equivalent to baptism). In fact the death angel visited him, and said that he would kill him if he did not circumcise his child. You can read about it in Exodus 4:24. And the second reference was Genesis 17 which said, “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.” Both passages treated it as sin to exclude our children from the covenant.

And I began to realize that “Hey, I can’t just treat this as an inconsequential doctrine. I need to know.” I was brought into the doctrine of infant baptism kind of against my will, you might say. But now I glory in it. It’s such an encouragement to me. Anyway, that got me studying, and I came to realize that there are literally hundreds of passages which place our children in the covenant people of God; in the assembly; in the church; in the congregation of the Lord’s people, and other kinds of references. Let me just give you some examples.

2 Chronicles 30-31 makes it clear that not all Jews were considered to be part of the congregation. If they weren’t believers, or if they had defiled themselves, they were part of Israel, but not part of the congregation. But it also makes clear that believers and their children were. It describes the congregation in these words: the men, “their little ones, and their wives, their sons and daughters, the whole congregation of them — for in their faithfulness they sanctified themselves in holiness” (2 Chron. 31:18). Little ones were set apart from the world and put in the congregation. A child may later grow up to reject the covenant and to be cut off from the covenant, but when they were children the believing parents had sanctified them, just like 1 Corinthians 7:14 says happens today.

Joel 2:16 says, “Sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and nursing babes.” This says that nursing babes were part of the congregation. Ezekiel speaks of the children of believers as children born to God (Ezek 16:20; 23:37), and in one place God calls them “My children” (Ezek. 16:21). And so in the Old Testament it is clear that children were not in a “no man’s land.” They were clearly placed by the Lord in His land.

And the New Testament is no different. Christ gathered the infants and little children into His arms and said, “of such is the kingdom of heaven.” They were at least outwardly treated as being in the kingdom. Ephesians is addressed to the church in Ephesus, and in chapter 6 he talks to the children. The children were considered part of the church. They weren’t left out of the picture. Colossians does the same. We have six examples of households being baptized in the New Testament upon the profession of faith of the parents, but not one example of a child of a believer growing up and being baptized later. In Acts 2 we have the promise attached to baptism extended to the children of believers. “the promise is to you and to your children.” Children are clearly included in the church. And the only sign that admits to the church is baptism in the New Testament and circumcision in the Old.

Baptism doesn’t save a child any more than it saves adults who believe. Rather it is the covenant sign that God welcomes children of believers. Isn’t that cool? And it is also the covenant pledge of parents to raise their children to trust the Gospel and follow Christ. Just as Christ took children in his arms and blessed them and declared them to be already in the visible Kingdom, so too, I (ministering in His name) will welcome [child] into the visible church. Don’t think that the Lord’s Table is what admits people to the church. It is baptism that does so. So if the [family] would come forward at this time, we will proceed with this covenant pledge.