I still have some clear memories of what was prob­ably my first serious encounter with that question when, just out of seminary and in our first parson­age in the southeastern corner of Texas, we enter­tained a Presbyterian and a Baptist minister. It was not long before the two veterans were giving the newcomer an introduction to what must be one of the most debated religious questions in that Baptist land. The Baptist had just appealed to his classic text, Mark 16:16, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned" to establish his principle that the only pos­sible way in which anyone can be saved is by believ­ing, that to be followed by being baptized. The Pres­byterian countered with the question: "Suppose that you had a baby who died in infancy; would you say that that child is saved or lost?" The other hes­itated, but finally answered, "Saved." "How can you say that?" was the retort. "Didn't you just tell us that the only possible way anyone can be saved is by first believing?" "Because the baby hasn't rejected Christ yet," was the somewhat reluctant expla­nation. "Oh, then you also have another way of salvation, haven't you?" was the response. That ended the argument.

This Baptist embarrassment about the proper role of children in the Christian faith has serious practical implications. Some time later we were din­ner guests in a home in which the mother was a Bap­tist and the father a Lutheran. The mother brought up a question of conscience which troubled her. She wondered whether she was right in teaching the chil­dren to pray, "because they are not Christians yet." If one teaches someone who is not a Christian to act like one, is she not teaching hypocrisy? As a good Christian mother she was teaching her children to pray, but she had difficulty in squaring that with the logic of her religious conviction about baptism.

Why do we baptize infants? In Reformation times the Reformers were ready and often eager to answer that question to anyone who would question or challenge the practice. Some years ago some re­search in the early Dutch Reformed Church history showed how the 16th-century Reformed church leaders were ready to debate this and related ques­tions with their Anabaptist critics to the extent of prolonging one such debate into 156 sessions! ¹ To­day it often seems that many of our enthusiastic Baptist friends are more eager to try to give Biblical arguments for their denial of infant baptism than our Reformed people are to explain the Biblical grounds for practicing it. On this point, as regarding other questions about our Christian faith and life, we ought, like our forerunners, to "be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a rea­son of the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15). In response to a request to deal with this subject let's face the question, "Why do we baptize infants?"

God's Revelation⤒🔗

We baptize infants because the Lord included them in His gospel, covenant and church. Does the Bible teach this? Let's recall some of the evidence for it. As we have already observed, many people ob­ject to baptizing infants because they say that the Bible teaches us to baptize only believers in Christ, little children cannot understand and believe, and therefore we may not baptize them. What does the Bible really say?

Family Baptisms←⤒🔗

In Acts 16:30-34 we are told how the missionaries encountered the desperate Philippian jailer who asked, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" Notice that the question was individual and personal. It is the more significant that the answer included much more than the question. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved, you and your house­hold." "And they spoke the word of the Lord to him together with all who were in his house. And ... im­mediately he was baptized, he and all his household. And he ... rejoiced greatly, having believed in God with his whole household" (NAS). Notice how re­peatedly and emphatically the "household" or family is included. We observe the same phenomenon ear­lier in the chapter as it tells of Lydia. "The Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul. And when she and her household had been bap­tized, she urged us..." (vv. 14,15). Several times the New Testament speaks of the baptism of such "households" (1 Corinthians 1:16). Critics may argue that the record does not state the age of the children. True, but the point is that the whole families of believers were baptized.

The Church Included Children←⤒🔗

Are there any clear indications that little children were included in the churches? Yes, there are. Con­sider the Letter to the Ephesians addressed to "the saints who are at Ephesus, and who are faithful in Christ Jesus" (1:1). "Saints," the "separated from the world and dedicated to the Lord" was the stand­ard New Testament term for Christians. Among those saints addressed in the letter were "Children" who must "obey your parents in the Lord ... Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise)." Correspondingly Christian parents are enjoined to "bring them up in the disci­pline and instruction of the Lord" (6:1-4). 1 Corin­thians 7:14 makes it plain that this "holy" or "saint­ly" status of children as church members even holds if only one of the parents is a believer. It leaves no doubt whatever of their being included in the Lord's church. The New Testament knows nothing of the conscientious scruples of our Baptist friend against teaching them to act as Christians "because they are not Christians yet."

Powerfully reinforcing this clear Biblical teaching that children of believers must be regarded and treated as members of the Lord's people was the Lord's own correction of his apostles. The Lord was involved in a discussion of the evidently much-de­bated questions about marriage and divorce (Matthew 19:3-15; Mark 10:3-16; Luke 18:15-17). When parents brought their children (Luke reported "babies") to Jesus, his followers felt that this was an interrup­tion of much more important business and rebuked the parents. Mark reported this as one of the very few times when Jesus became "indignant" with his followers. "Permit the children to come to Me;" He said, "do not hinder them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it at all."

The disciples, like present-day objectors to chil­dren's baptism and their being considered members of the Lord's church and people, assumed that their in­volvement required that they be able to understand and act. Therefore their inability necessarily ex­cluded them from a proper place in these matters. The Lord's angry correction showed that the disci­ples' assumption was not just a minor mistake but a radical misunderstanding of the nature of the Lord's work and kingdom. The Lord's gospel and kingdom were not in the first place matters of man's decision and activity (as the Pelagians and Arminians of every age have misunderstood them) but of the Lord's initiative and action. Man's response, though required, is secondary. If the Lord has decreed that children of believers, even the "babies" are to be in­cluded, His blundering followers must not be per­mitted to keep them out. That is clearly the signifi­cance of His angry rebuke.

Pointing in the same direction as these scriptures is the conclusion of Peter's sermon explaining Pente­cost (Acts 2:38, 39). "Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgive­ness of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children, and for all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God shall call to Himself."

Fulfilment of Old Testament Promises←⤒🔗

In my early experiences with Baptist views it very soon became apparent that the basic difference between their understanding of these matters and ours was a result of their radical separation of the Old Testament from the New so that the Old Testa­ment was really regarded as no longer valid for us. "New Testament Christianity" was and is for many of them a common description of our faith. Any care­ful reading of the New Testament, however, makes it plain that although there is a difference between the Old and the New there simply is no such radical break between the two as they assume. The Bible, constantly quoted by the Lord and His Apostles throughout the New Testament as God's Word, was the Old Testament. I have a New Testament pub­lished some years ago for evangelistic work among Jews in which quotations from or references to the Old Testament appear in bold-faced type. It might surprise many readers to discover how large a part of the text is in such bold-faced type. To get any comprehensive understanding of our Christian faith while restricting oneself to the New Testament is about as difficult as understanding a novel when reading only the last third of it, or as difficult as understanding our nation's laws while disregarding the U.S. Constitution.

Even more prominent in God's Revelation than the Constitution is in our nation's laws is God's "Covenant." That word, largely ignored in most church circles today, appears about 300 times in the Bible. Although most of them are in the Old Testa­ment over 30 of them are in the New. It refers to the relationship which God established with His People. It is not merely a personal relationship but one which He defined in words, in promises and com­mandments. The Bible is God's "Book of the Cove­nant" — our English Word "Testament" is an alter­nate word which can just as accurately be translated "Covenant." The Bible in both Old and New Testa­ments is constantly referring back to the earlier, basic, establishment of God's covenant as a kind of "constitution" of His relationship with His people. Peter appealed to that on Pentecost, "For the prom­ise is for you and your children...." It is especially to the covenant as God made it with Abraham and his children that the New Testament, as well as the Old, appeal.

Someone might ask, "What proof can you give that the Christian faith is to be understood in this way?" The plainest explanation of the gospel as the working out of God's covenant with Abraham is the explanation of it in the third chapter of Paul's letter to the Galatians. As the Apostle had to correct the Galatians' misunderstanding of the gospel, he re­ferred to Abraham. "Even so Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. There­fore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, 'All the nations shall be blessed in you.' So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer" (vv. 6-9). Paul went on to explain how Christ fulfilled this promise by His suffering and death "in order that in Christ the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the prom­ise of the Spirit through faith" (v. 14). If men's con­tracts must be maintained, even more must God's covenant be fulfilled to the letter (15ff.). Thus he led to the conclusion, "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with. Christ." "And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to prom­ise" (vv. 26, 27, 29).

Romans 4 also speaks of Abraham as the father of all believers, both Jew and Gentile. It reminds us that, as such, Abraham "received the sign of circum­cision, a seal of the righteousness of faith" (v. 11). That sign of the covenant relationship to God given to Abraham the believer, the Lord also commanded should be given to his infant children (Genesis 17:7ff.). Paul in Colossians 2:11, 12 shows that this Old Testa­ment sign of circumcision had the same meaning as the New Testament sign, baptism, does for us, ex­pressing and assuring to us our saving relationship with the Lord.

Our Obligations←⤒🔗

In order to appreciate and profit by God's cove­nant revelation to us and our children, symbolized and assured by baptism, we always have to bear in mind the commands and obligations included in it. One of the most common and destructive errors among God's people in both Old and New Testa­ments has been the neglect of this part of God's rev­elation. The covenant revelation to Abraham in­cluded duties as well as promises. He must (Genesis 18:19) "command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him."

Throughout the Old Testament one of the most common complaints of God's prophets was that His people, usually ready to reassure and even pride themselves in His promises, neglected and diso­beyed His command to believe in and obey Him. They had to be warned that they were "breaking" His covenant and depriving themselves and their children of His blessing.

The same warnings recur in the preaching of John the Baptist and of our Lord. Those who prided them­selves on their status as covenant children of Abraham but lacked Abraham's obedience of faith were deceiving themselves (Matthew 3:9; John 8:33, 39-44), and needed to be called to repentance.

Our Baptist friends have often found fault with the practitioners of infant baptism for filling their churches with unbelievers who think they are saved because they were baptized. Their objection does not hold, as they think, against infant baptism, which we have seen is a Biblical doctrine, but it is valid against the only too common misuse of infant baptism. It often seems that the misuse of infant baptism has been encouraged in our Reformed cir­cles especially by the mischievous notion of "pre­sumptive regeneration." This is, to state it simply, the idea that infant baptism assumes that all of these children are already "born again" and there­fore need neither regeneration nor conversion. We may safely assume therefore according to this idea that everybody in the church is already certainly saved and that therefore no one needs to trouble himself about that. One wonders how much this way of thought and life has contributed to the apostasy of our old mother churches in the Netherlands. There can be little doubt that it is contributing to our own.

But doesn't this doctrine of the covenant's inclu­sion of the children of believers and their corresponding baptism make the preaching of repentance and conversion in the church superfluous? The Lord and His apostles certainly never taught us that it did. The Lord warned his followers, "Unless you re­pent, you will all likewise perish" (Luke 13:3, 5). Similarly Paul addressed the Corinthian church, "We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God," "And working togeth­er with Him, we also urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain..." (2 Corinthians 5:20, 6:21).

We must be on guard against letting the "sign" and "seal" of the "righteousness of faith" be perverted by our faulty practice into an encouragement to unbelief and disobedience. Therefore in our tradi­tional "form" for infant baptism, parents must prom­ise to instruct their children in the Christian faith to the "utmost of their power" before baptism is given to their children. And everything possible must be done to lead the children to Christ, for that is the way in which the Lord designed to convey to them their heritage in His kingdom (Mark 10:14). While gospel and sign are a God-given encouragement to faith for believers and their children, if they are abused to justify unbelief they will call for more se­vere judgment (Luke 12:47, 48; 10:10-14).

Why baptize infants? The Heidelberg Catechism nicely summarizes the Biblical argument. "Infants as well as adults are in God's covenant and are his people. They, no less than adults, are promised the forgiveness of sin through Christ's blood and the Holy Spirit who produces faith. Therefore, by bap­tism, the mark of the covenant, infants should be re­ceived into the Christian church and should be dis­tinguished from the children of unbelievers. This was done in the Old Testament by circumcision, which was replaced in the New Testament by bap­tism." And the catechism was carefully drawn up to help give those children a thorough Biblical training in order that the promise of the gospel and sacra­ment might become their experience in the way of obedient faith.