The inclusion of children in the sacramental life of the covenant community is no minor theme in Scripture. Again and again, we see that God includes the youngest children in the rites and rituals of the church. Children are included when the people of God gather. Children of believers are counted and treated as members of God’s covenant people until and unless they prove otherwise.
For example in Joel 2, even infants are included in the congregation that is to be consecrated.
Gather the people.
Consecrate the congregation;
assemble the elders;
gather the children,
even nursing infants.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
and the bride her chamber. (Joel 2:16)
In the book of Exodus, when Pharaoh and Moses are in negotiations over the release of the Israelite slaves, Pharaoh’s advisors suggest he let the adults go, but not the children. Moses refuses the offer. The children must be set free too, or there is no deal. The children must share in the exodus. But the rationale Moses gives for refusing to leave without the children is interesting. It’s not that parents love their children and would be sad to separate from them – though no doubt that was true. Moses gives the rationale in Exodus 10:9:
Moses said, “We will go with our young and our old. We will go with our sons and daughters and with our flocks and herds, for we must hold a feast to the LORD.”
Note the “for” there. They cannot leave the children behind because they are going to have a religious feast, a sacramental meal, in God’s presence. And (apparently) everyone knows, you can’t have a sacred feast without the children present. Moses was so committed to the old covenant form of paedocommunion that he would not leave the children behind. And anti-paedocommunionists are on Pharaoh’s side in this particular story because they think sacramental meals are complete without children.
The principle of covenant inclusion for children is seen in other ways. Children in the old covenant were subject to the same system of clean and unclean as everyone else in Israel. This means children were regularly washed/baptized (including a baptism after birth; cf. Ezekiel 16:4), assuming the Israelites kept the Levitical code. Children in Israel could partake of every sacrificial/sacramental meal their parents could eat. The children were never left out of anything. The child of an Israelite got to share in father’s portion of the peace offering; the child of a priest was welcome to eat from the same priestly portion as his father. And so on.
There is nothing in the NT that suggests children are no longer participants in the sacramental life of the church. Just the opposite, in fact. Children are still children of the promise (Acts 2). Households are still baptized. Children are still addressed as members of God’s people and God’s kingdom (Matthew 19, Ephesians 6). Nothing in the NT, rightly understood bars them from sharing in the Lord’s Supper. They are members of the body of Christ and so should eat the body of Christ. To exclude them is to fail to discern the body; it is to divide the body.
All of this is simply an outworking of the principle “grace restores nature.” The church is presented in Scripture as God’s new humanity. But if it excludes children, it isn’t a new humanity, as a whole segment of humanity is excluded.
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