believer's baptism

Using John Piper’s sermon, “How do Circumcision and Baptism Correspond”, here is why I believe in adult baptism. There are five general reasons and then a focus on Ro 4.9-12 to establish that baptism is a sign or seal just as circumcision but it is for the children of faith, not those of flesh.

The first five reasons:

1. In every New Testament command and instance of baptism the requirement of faith precedes baptism. So infants incapable of faith are not to be baptized

2. There are no explicit instances of infant baptism in the entire Bible. The three "household baptisms" mentioned (household of Lydia, Acts 16.15; household of the Philippian jailer, Acts 16.30-33; household of Stephanus, 1 Co 1.16) no mention is made of infants, and in the case of the Philippian jailer, Luke says explicitly, "they spoke the word of the Lord to him together with all who were in his house" (Acts 16.32), implying that the household who were baptized could understand the Word.

3. Paul (in Col 2.12) explicitly defined baptism as an act done through faith: ". . . having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God." In baptism you were raised up with Christ through faith - your own faith, not your parents' faith. If it is not "through faith" - if it is not an outward expression of inward faith - it is not baptism.

4. The apostle Peter, in his first letter, defined baptism this way, ". . . not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience - through the resurrection of Jesus Christ" (1 Pe 3.21). Baptism is "an appeal to God for a good conscience." It is an outward act and expression of inner confession and prayer to God for cleansing, that the one being baptized does, not his parents.

5. When the New Testament church debated in Acts 15 whether circumcision should still be required of believers as part of becoming a Christian, it is astonishing that not once in that entire debate did anyone say anything about baptism standing in the place of circumcision. If baptism is the simple replacement of circumcision as a sign of the new covenant, and thus valid for children as well as for adults, as circumcision was, surely this would have been the time to develop the argument and so show that circumcision was no longer necessary. But it is not even mentioned.

But many of the Reformed tradition still endorse infant baptism because

…there appears to be in the New Testament a correspondence between circumcision and baptism. Just as circumcision was given as a sign to the "children of the covenant" in the Old Testament, so baptism - the new sign of the covenant - should be given to the "children of the covenant" today. For example, in Col 2.11-12 there seems to be a connection between circumcision and baptism: "In Him [Christ] you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism . . ."

The argument is that baptism replaces circumcision as the sign of the covenant and that it should be applied in the church the way it was applied in Israel, namely, to the children of the covenant members -Israelites then, Christians now. The children of Christian believers today belong to the visible church by virtue of their birth and should then receive the sign and seal of the covenant just as the eight-day-old infants of Israelites did in the Old Testament.

In Ro 4.9-11, Paul reminds us that Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness and that this happened before he was circumcised. Justification was not through circumcision but through faith alone. Circumcision is a sign or a seal of the righteousness of faith. In the same way, baptism is a sign and seal of the righteousness of faith.

And, if both signify the same thing, then why can’t baptism be for infants if circumcision was (Ge 17.10-12)? Both are God’s covenant, a sign and seal of righteousness.

The difference is in the assumption about the people of God in the Old Testament and the people of God today. The way God gathered his covenant people, Israel, in the Old Testament and the way he is gathering his covenant people, the Church, today is not the same. And therefore the signs of the covenant (baptism and circumcision) cannot be administered in the same way to both peoples.

In Ro 9.6-8 we see that there were two "Israels": a physical Israel and a spiritual Israel. The covenant people in the Old Testament were mixed. All of physical Israel were circumcised, but only the remnant were the true children of God. He gave them all the sign of the covenant, circumcision, but he worked within the group to call out a true people for himself.

The New Testament Church is not a continuation of the larger mixed group of ethnic, religious, national Israel. It is the continuation of the remnant of the true sons of Abraham who are children of God by faith in Christ. We are a Spirit-born, new covenant community with the law of God written on our hearts and defined by faith (Gal 4.22).

The Church is not to be a mixed heritage like Abraham's seed. The Church is not to be like Israel - a physical multitude and in it a small remnant of true saints. The Church is the saints, by definition. The Church continues the remnant. As verse 28 says, the Church is "like Isaac, children of promise."

The people of the covenant in the Old Testament were made up of Israel according to the flesh - an ethnic, national, religious people containing "children of the flesh" and "children of God." Therefore it was fitting that circumcision was given to all the children of the flesh.

But the people of the new covenant, called the Church of Jesus Christ, is being built in a fundamentally different way. The church is not based on any ethnic, national distinctives but on the reality of faith alone, by grace alone in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Church is not a continuation of Israel as a whole; it is a continuation of the true Israel, the remnant -not the children of the flesh, but the children of promise.

Therefore, it is not fitting that the children born merely according to the flesh receive the sign of the covenant, baptism.

The church is the new covenant community - "this cup is the new covenant in my blood" (Lk 22.20; 1 Co 11.25). The new covenant is the spiritual work of God to put his Spirit within us, write the law on our hearts and cause us to walk in his statutes. It is a spiritually authentic community. Unlike the old covenant community it is defined by true spiritual life and faith. Having these things is what it means to belong to the Church. Therefore to give the sign of the covenant, baptism, to those who are merely children of the flesh and who give no evidence of new birth or the presence of the Spirit or the law written on their heart or of vital faith in Christ is to contradict the meaning of the new covenant community and to go backwards in redemptive history.

Sorry…Piper got too good at the end there so I had to simply quote the whole thing…

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