We have the opportunity today once again to participate in and celebrate the baptism of a covenant child, and the Session thought it might be useful to spend a few minutes this morning reflecting on the status of our children and how our covenant theology informs our parenting and nurture of these children. This is an important topic. Infant baptism is not merely a doctrine and practice to be debated. It is a commitment that flows out of a particular theological vision and that extends far beyond the moment of application. If we apply covenant baptism but do not practice covenant nurture, then we are failing to be faithful to what the Scriptures teach and to be consistent with the theology we claim to believe in.
How do we think about our children, as parents, as members of the church? Every time we baptize a covenant child we say:
“As [this child] is baptized into Christ and becomes a member of his visible church, the whole congregation is obligated to love (him/her) and receive (him/her) as a member of the body of Christ. For "we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body," and therefore are members of one another. Christ claims this little child as his own and calls you to receive (him/her) in love and commitment. Therefore, you ought to commit yourself before God to assist [this child] and (his/her) parents in (his/her) Christian nurture by godly example, prayer, and encouragement in our most precious faith.” –OPC Directory for Public Worship
Do we believe these words? Do we recognize them as real members of the Church? Do we think Christ claims them as his own? Or do we think their membership is second-class, honorary, but not actual? Do we consider that Christ’s possession of them is only potential, something we hope will be true someday, but that it is not really true unless and until they make a public profession of faith?
What do our children think, and are we helping them understand their true status or causing them confusion, stress, or fear unintentionally due to our own ignorance? These are the issues we will take up today, not so much a defense of infant baptism, but an exploration of the theology that undergirds it and an exhortation to the covenant nurture which ought to flow from it.
The Status of Covenant Children
To read and listen to some Reformed theologians talk about our children, you might think the Reformed Church has a robust doctrine of Purgatory. We don’t believe that dead souls go to limbo; we believe our covenant children are there right now! Maybe they will be saved, maybe not. We hope they will, but we really can’t be sure. After all, not every child of a believer will be, so we have a lot of doubts and fears about our own kids as a consequence. We know that we are not saved by works, but we’re pretty sure they will have to be. We were not saved because we were intelligent, but until we know their prefrontal cortex is working just fine, we will remain in doubt about their salvation. They are children of the Church, to be sure, and they are members of the Church, sort of, at least with some kind of junior status. Theirs is one of those trial accounts that expires after thirty days. We’re hoping they will decide to purchase a full subscription, but until they have the catechism memorized and can explain why they are infralapsarian or supralapsarian, we must remain in doubt.
What do the Scriptures tell us about the children of believers? More than we can address in a single lesson, but let’s summarize it. Yahweh promises to be God to believers and their kids. This is stated explicitly to Abraham (Gen. 17:7), but it begins earlier than that. The Lord puts Noah’s family on the ark with him during the flood, not because each member of the house was personally righteous but because they inherited covenant blessings through the faith of their father. Earlier still we see hope appear in the aftermath of the Fall in two acts: promise (Gen. 3:20) and sacrifice (Gen. 3:21). The Lord threatened that on the day Adam ate of the forbidden tree “dying you shall die,” but after the Lord confronts the man and woman, Adam names his wife Eve because she will be “the mother of all the living.” There will be life after death; there is resurrection hope, and that hope is revealed through offspring, the birth of children. Reproduction in covenant households is not a reason for uncertainty, anxiety, or despair. It is an instrument of salvation and blessing.
Does this remain true in the NT? Certainly. Jesus says in our sermon text: the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. He does not say, “To ones like these but not these.” That would make no sense. The kingdom belongs to these and those like them. And who are these? There are the infants (τὰ βρέφη) of believers. Who is bringing their little children to Jesus for blessing? Not the Pharisees. Not the household of Herod. Not Pilate. These are the infants of disciples. The children cannot come on their own, and that is the point. This is how you and I enter the kingdom. We do not come in our strength, by means of our rationality, or through our choice. We are brought to Jesus in order to receive a blessing. The Holy Spirit draws us to him, and we have no power in ourselves to come to him (Jn. 6:44).
On the Day of Pentecost, Peter says to the multitudes: Repent, and let everyone of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call. All through the OT we read language like this—to you and your children. How would a crowd of Jewish men understand that statement? Would they interpret it like individualistic Americans? “The promise is to you and to your children when they reach the age of maturity if they make a good decision and choose to believe in Christ and be faithful, even if many of them probably won’t.” Is that how they were to understand it? Or would they understand it in terms of the OT context and the Abrahamic promise?
The New Covenant is greater in every way. It has better promises, a better Mediator, a more inclusive administration. It includes Gentiles and women, rich and poor. It also excludes the children of believers who have been included in the Church for more than 2,000 years?! Does that make sense? Is that how we are to understand the “greatness” of the New Covenant?
In 1 Corinthians 7:14 Paul says: For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy. He does not say the unbelieving spouse is saved by the believing spouse, nor does he say that the child of a believer is automatically and unconditionally saved. They will be saved through faith, just like us. What he does say about the children of a believer—not the spouse, NB—is that they are holy (ἅγιά). This is the same word translated saints throughout your NT. Holy does not mean elect or regenerate. It means consecrated, set apart, sanctified by covenant. The children of believers belong to God. They are saints, i.e. Christians. We do not baptize our children in order to make them Christians. We baptize them because that is what they are.
In Ephesians 6 the Word of God instructs the kids in the Church: Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. There are all kinds of hilarious interpretations people make of this passage. They say that in the Lord means “your parents who are in the Lord;” apparently God does not expect children whose parents are not believers to obey them. Others say in the Lord means in all lawful orders, which means if a 5 year old’s parents tell him to go get Dad his twelfth beer of the evening the little tyke is expected to raise a conscientious objection. This command is in Ephesians—you remember that letter, right? It’s the one where in him, in Christ, in the Lord is the recurring phrase that helps us understand the theme. We have every spiritual blessing in Christ, are chosen in him, trusted in him, made alive together with him, are built together for a dwelling place of God in him, have heard and learned how to walk in him, submit to one another in him. In ch.5 Paul begins telling each member of the household their responsibilities. Wives, husbands, children, parents, slaves, masters, and then all believers: put on the armor of God. Children, obey your parents in the Lord. What does that mean? It means children in the Church are in the Lord.
Of course, it could just mean that children who have reached an age of accountability and made a decision for Christ are to obey their parents. Maybe all of the younger children are simply to obey their parents on the authority of natural law. Or maybe you’re simply hoping your children will decide to start obeying you when they choose to become Christians. No, you are supposed to teach your children that they are Christians, and then help them understand how to act like it.
The Mission Field That Never Was
You can find many references in print and online to the idea that a Christian’s family is their “mission field.” I understand what they mean and don’t want to disparage it. If one means that a Christian’s first responsibility is to share Christ with his household: yes, and amen. God forbid that I share Christ with this community or teach the Bible diligently to this congregation but fail to teach my children the love of God. If we mean that a stay-at-home mom doesn’t need to feel negligent in reaching the world for Christ because she is on the front lines every day as she trains her children: yes, and amen. We should see the nurture of our family as the first sphere of Christian service. But there is a problem with thinking of a believer’s family as a mission field. It isn’t, and never was.
A believer’s children can choose to become unbelievers. They can be disobedient. They can abandon Christ and walk in the ways of the world. What they cannot ever choose to be is a non-Christian. They are saints, holy ones. If baptized, they are members of Christ’s Body. They can be excommunicated. They can become apostate Christians. But they never can be a naked cannibal who has never heard of the Lord. There are no naked cannibals in the Church’s nursery.
Many teachers, even faithful and (otherwise) helpful Reformed ones, have spoken about the need to “evangelize” our children. Certainly we need to share the gospel with our kids every day, but this is no different than all the rest of us. Every one of us needs the gospel every day. We are not merely converted by it but sustained and sanctified by it! If you mean by “evangelizing” your children that you speak to them of Christ and his Lordship, righteousness, and saving work in the context of life together, then well and good. If you mean that you continually call your children to repent and trust in Christ, then well done, but be sure you are telling yourself the same thing. But if you are having altar calls during family worship, stop it. If you are speaking to your children as if their relationship with Christ is in doubt, knock it off. Your children are Christians, God’s saints. The kingdom of God belongs to ones like them. You may have doubts about your own place in the kingdom of God, but you should not communicate any doubts to them that they belong there.
Our children do not need to be evangelized as if they were unconverted—unless you have clear and persistent evidence that your adult children are. What they need is to be discipled with the gospel. They need covenant nurture, to be trained in the discipline of grace as sons and daughters of God, members of the Body of Christ, recipients of his promise. The promise is not “Christ can be yours if one day you choose to believe,” but “Christ has given himself to you and for you, now embrace him, reverently and gratefully, by faith every day.”
What Baptism Means
We’re baptizing a child today (and more soon to come!), so let’s reflect for a few minutes about what baptism means, what it says to us and about us, and what it signifies. Our Directory for Public Worship, in instruction we read at every baptism, affirms the following:
“The Lord Jesus Christ instituted baptism as a covenant sign and seal for his church. He uses it… for the solemn admission of the person who is baptized into the visible church… also to depict and to confirm his ingrafting of that person into himself and his including that person in the covenant of grace….He uses it to witness and seal to us the remission of sins and the bestowal of all the gifts of salvation through union with Christ. Baptism with water signifies and seals cleansing from sin by the blood and the Spirit of Christ, together with our death unto sin and our resurrection unto newness of life…. The time of the outward application of the sign does not necessarily coincide with the inward work of the Holy Spirit which the sign represents and seals to us…. In our baptism, the Lord puts his name on us, claims us as his own, and summons us to assume the obligations of the covenant.”–OPC Directory of Public Worship III.B.1.b.(2) (cf. WCF 28.1)
Listen carefully to those words. What does baptism mean? It means salvation. It does not signify a possibility of salvation, a potential salvation. It does not say this person might be saved or we hope they might be someday. Baptism marks a person as belonging to Christ, being united to his Body, being a recipient of the benefits of grace, including the forgiveness of sins, adoption into the family of God, consecration by the blood of God’s Son, and the promise of everlasting life.1 OPC minister Charles McIlhenny notes regarding the statements on baptism in the OPC’s Directory of Worship:
“(1) Here the candidate for baptism is included in the covenant of grace before receiving the sign of baptism. So until the parent has reason to believe the contrary (apostasy, excommunicating discipline of the church), the child is to be received as included in Christ —not temporarily included or possibly not included. (2) The baptism ritual means ‘remission of sins and the bestowal of all the gifts of salvation’ and nothing less. The sign means that the child has remission of sins, as much as is promised to the adult receiver. (3) ‘Claimed as His own,’ in this context, refers to the candidate truly belonging to Christ until evidence to the contrary contradicts the sign. The candidate, no matter what his age, is baptized because he is a member of Christ. He or she is not baptized so that he or she would become a member of Christ.” –To You and Your Children, 188
Baptism means the same thing for adult recipients as for our children. There are not two kinds of baptism; it does not result in two different classes of membership. Baptized children are not lesser Christians, they are not second class members, they are not potential candidates for salvation. Baptism signifies salvation; it confers privileges and responsibilities as members of the covenant; it seals the authenticity of God’s promises to his Church received through faith.
Children, God placed you in a Christian family, and that means you are in covenant with him. You are members of the Church, and the Lord expects you to think and speak and act like a Christian, because that is what you are. That means obeying your parents, helping your brothers and sisters, praying for the Church, repenting of your sins, and loving Christ. It means learning to pay attention during the preaching, learning the psalms and hymns, reciting the creed and prayer of confession, and saying Amen when we finish a prayer or a song. Raise your hands when we sing the Doxology—Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, And bless the LORD (Psa. 134:2). You are not waiting to be saved when you profess your faith in Christ. You are professing your faith each and every day in how you live and every Lord’s Day as we worship God together. You are saved, if you trust in Christ. You are a Christian. You are God’s child. So believe in Jesus, and rejoice.
Covenant Succession and Covenant Nurture
Infant baptism in Reformed churches is based upon the idea that our children are included in God’s covenant, that their place in Christian families is not an accident, and that they are to be marked as members of the covenant by visible signs and their outward conduct of life. Closely related to this is another doctrine that some (not all) Reformed saints affirm: covenant succession.
“The doctrine of covenant succession presents the Scriptural teaching that the children of believers (covenant children) are expected to succeed in the faith of their parents, and this is accomplished through the divinely ordained means of covenant nurture.”2
We do not baptize our children because we assume that they are elect. We baptize them because we believe Scripture teaches us to do so, whether they are ultimately saved or not. But we should believe that our children are elect unless and until we have convincing evidence otherwise. Baptist churches either assume that our children are not converted until they make a profession of faith or that we cannot know whether they are saved or not. That is not our operating assumption nor the teaching of Scripture. We do not baptize our children because we assume they are elect, but we do assume they are elect. We do not assume that our children are regenerated by the Holy Spirit the moment they are baptized, but we do assume they are regenerate. After all, what does baptism signify and seal? Regeneration (WCF 28.1; cf. Acts 22:16; Rom. 6:3-4; Tit. 3:5).
We should believe that the Lord plans to save our children through the ordinary means of biblical parenting, sincere prayer, family worship, and participation in the local church. Faith is the condition of justification. It is not the sole condition of salvation. God works through means, and we do not expect (or hope) the means of our children’s salvation will be dramatic conversion after years of teenage rebellion, drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, and a suicide attempt. Some kids may be saved through such circumstances, but we hope and pray and parent in the firm conviction that our children are saved and will be saved through ordinary, boring, faithfulness.
“That’s not to say that the regeneration work of the Spirit is not needed in the life of every covenant child. Nor is it to conclude that there is no need for repentance and faith in the life of the growing child. Nor is it to say he does not need to commit him or herself personally to Christ…. We should expect our covenant children, as they grow up in the faith, to follow through with owning up to the promise and the responsibility of covenant membership. We should expect, though not presumptuously, that the blessings of the covenant will follow the child throughout the rest of his life. Such an expectation expresses itself by the faithful prayers and diligent nurturing of the believing parent or parents.” –McIlhenny, 186
Too many Reformed Christians have too little confidence in and expectations of their kids’ salvation. They fear that such confidence will lead to presumption, apathy, and an unregenerate Church. But what does Scripture promise? What should we expect? The Philippian jailer was told: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household (Ac 16:31). The promise was not, “Believe and you will be saved and make it more likely that one day your kids might believe and then be saved too.” The Lord said of Abraham: I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him (Gen. 18:9). Notice that God’s promises would be fulfilled through commanding his children to keep the way of the Lord. Israel was taught to fear Yahweh that it might be well with them and with their children forever (De. 5:29). Scripture promises: Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it (Pr. 22:6), but perhaps we have so qualified that promise that we do not believe it means much of anything anymore. God reassures his people that in the New Covenant, not just the Old: I will pour water on him who is thirsty, and floods on the dry ground; I will pour My Spirit on your descendants, and My blessing on your offspring (Is. 44:3).
The children of believers are members of the covenant, and in their baptism they are made members of the Church. Church members can be lost through unbelief and disobedience. That is what we see in Israel’s experience described in Hebrews 3-4. But that does not mean they were not members of the Church or that they never were part of the community of the saved.
“Those who want absolute certainty can never dispense any sacrament. The question is only whether the certainty that in dealing with the children of believers we are dealing with believers is the same as the certainty we possess concerning those who confess their faith as adults. We do not need and may not demand another or stronger kind of certainty. Scripture offers a clear answer to the question thus framed.” –Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics IV.526
Conclusion
There are many different explanations and excuses offered since the Great Awakening for how we are to think about our kids. Some say no promise is made to them at all, only to whatever few among them might be elect. Some follow Thornwell and Dabney in claiming that the promise is of covenant privileges, not salvation. One wonders how this differs at all from a Baptist view, or if it is correct, why we baptize them at all. Many follow Hodge in thinking the promises are only a generality, describing a potential salvation without any real certainty. But that is not what the Bible says. God promises to be the God of our children and to save them, in part, through the faithfulness of their parents. These promises, like all others in the Bible, must be received by faith. You cannot save your children by works. God saves them through faith, first yours, then theirs. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household. Amen.
--JME
1 “The one who receives the ceremony of baptism is designated by what the sign ascribes to him. Baptism means salvation, but baptism does not cause salvation. Baptism is the sign and seal of regeneration; regeneration is not the ground of baptism. Thus those that receive it are to be sincerely considered saved.” Charles McIlhenny, To You and Your Children, 180
