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Both Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are events which were celebrated in the Old Testament as well as the New. As the apostle Paul writes:

‘For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness’ (1 Corinthians 10:1-5).

Clearly, being baptised or receiving the Lord’s Supper doesn’t in and of itself save anyone for there were many Israelites who fell in the desert. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are not so much signs of an individual’s faith but of God’s faithfulness. They are signs and seals of His covenant.

This is why they were all—adults and their children—baptised into Moses when they passed through the sea, and they all (repeated five times) ate the same spiritual food and spiritual drink. The Lord’s Supper and Baptism then are a display of God’s grace to believers and their children. As we read in the book of Psalms:

‘From everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children’ (Psalm 103:17).

All throughout the Bible we find that God relates to people not simply as individuals but as members of a household. Thus, in the Old Testament, boys were circumcised on the eighth day as a sign that even though there were not old enough to choose to follow after and obey Yahweh for themselves, they too were included in God’s covenant (Genesis 17:14-19).

As a sign of the Old Covenant, the cutting away of the foreskin in circumcision signified both God’s promise to cut off people who rejected His covenant as well as cut away the sin of the fallen, sinful nature.

God’s command that  all the male offspring be circumcised on the eighth day foreshadowed its fulfilment in Christ Jesus. This is because as the first day represents the day of creation in Scripture, the eighth day in the old covenant often represented the new creation. 

When God makes a new covenant with his people, it continues to include believers and their children. However, now the sign of God’s promise to save his people is no longer circumcision, but baptism. As the apostle Paul writes:

‘In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism’ (Colossians 2:11-12).

Baptism is therefore a visible sign of God’s promise to save. As such, it is not a sign of something we have done, but of what God himself will do through Christ. Namely, that if we believe in his death on the cross, resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven then all of our sins will be washed away. If, however, we reject Jesus as our perfect sacrifice and final high priest, then baptism is a sign not of our salvation, but of our judgment. That is, we will be cut off from the covenant.

The apostle Peter confirmed the truth that God’s promise of salvation continues to include believers and their children when he said on the day of Pentecost to Jews from every nation under heaven:

‘Repent and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call’ (Acts 2:38-39).

The fact that the promise of the Gospel includes even young children is confirmed by the Lord Jesus Christ himself when he taught that we must even become like a little child to enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 18:3). This is further supported by the practice recorded in the book of Acts where whole households were baptised and no one was excluded due to their age (e.g. Acts 16:15, 33-34; also 1 Cor.1:16).

What’s more, in the Great Commission the Lord Jesus Christ himself instructed us that we were to baptise everyone whom we considered to be his disciple and teach them to obey everything that he has commanded them to do (Matthew 28:19-20).

By baptising the children of believers, then, we are acknowledging that they are being raised as disciples of Christ. Unlike the children of unbelievers, they are ‘holy’ in that they have been set apart to God that they might hear, see and experience the goodness of the Gospel of which Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are a sign (1 Corinthians 7:14).

Thus, covenant baptism involving the children of believers is ultimately a threefold act of dedication:

First, it is a sign that we are dedicating our children to God and asking for his blessing to be poured out upon them so that the outward sign of his love might become an inward reality in their lives. 

Second, it is a sign of the congregation’s dedication to the child to help him or her to know, love and follow the Lord.

But most of all, third, it is a sign of God’s dedication and commitment to us, that he is always the one who takes the sovereign initiative to reach out to us before we respond to him in repentance and faith.

– Mark Powell