Parents who believed Jesus was the Messiah brought their little ones to Jesus to be blessed by him (Matthew 19, Luke 18).
The disciples objected (this is the closest anyone in the NT gets to being Baptist.)
Jesus override their objections: “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”
Jesus declared the children of those who believed he was the promised king to be kingdom members themselves. Covenant children are Christian children. The kingdom is theirs. The covenant is theirs. The blessing of Jesus is theirs. They belong to Jesus and Jesus belong to them. We must treat them accordingly.
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Baptist parents cannot (or should not) pray with their children. Their children are not Christians, and all prayers by unbelievers are offered to idols.
If Baptists say, “But I do pray with my children in order to teach them,” this is an inconsistency – perhaps a blessed inconsistency, but still an inconsistency. The child has no basis for saying “Our Father…” because, as a non-Christian, he has Satan as his spiritual father.
To be consistent, Baptists have to treat their children as non-Christians. They cannot pray with them. There is no basis for including them in Christian celebrations like Christmas and Easter – you cannot tell your children “we are celebrating the birth of OUR Savior,” because he is not their Savior. If a child dies in childhood, before he has a conversion experience, the only consistent thing to do is to say he went to hell. They cannot sing “Jesus Love Me” with their children because there is no reason to think it’s true. And so on.
Now, I have known many Baptist parents and many of them have done a wonderful job raising their children. But they did it in spite of their theology and by being inconsistent with their theology. Many Baptists raise their children quite covenantally minus the paedobaptism; in reality, paedobaptism would have a put a foundation under their practices. All Christian parents are instinctively covenantal. Baptist parents have Baptist theology in their heads but in their hearts and in their practices, they know better – they know God loves their children, that their children are different from the world’s children, that their children are special, that their children should be brought up as Christians.
Everyone is either a Christian or a non-Christian. There is no third category for Baptists to put their children in. If they are Christians, baptize them and raise them accordingly. If they are not Christians, be consistent with your conviction – but I think most Baptist parents will find that very hard to do.
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The missing piece in the argument above concerns the nature, meaning, and efficacy of baptism itself. Baptists view baptism as a way of professing Christ. It is how someone makes a “decision” to follow Jesus. But Scripture NEVER says this is the meaning of baptism –it is entirely made up. Scripture repeatedly describes baptism as God’s work, God’s claim, God’s gift. Baptism is how manifests his decision to claim us. Baptism is an adoption ceremony; it is a wedding; it is an ordination. It is an “effectual means of salvation,” as the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it. So the debate between Baptists and paedobaptists is not merely over who should be baptized, but the meaning of baptism – is it our work or God’s gift, our way of professing faith or God’s way of expressing his covenant faithfulness across generations?
Consider what the NT says about the meaning and efficacy of baptism:
•We are united (or married) to the crucified, buried, and risen Christ (Rom. 6:1ff), though we can be cut off (or divorced) from him if we are unfaithful (Rom. 11:17ff; cf. Jn. 15:1ff)
•We are forgiven (Acts 2:38, 22:16; cf. the Nicene Creed)
•We receive the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38)
•We are cleansed (Eph. 5:26)
•We are regenerated and renewed (Titus 3:5)
•We are buried and resurrected with Christ (Col. 2:11-12)
•We are circumcised in heart (Col. 2:11-12)
•We are joined to the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13)
•We are clothed with Christ (Gal. 3:27)
•We are justified and sanctified (1 Cor. 6:11)
•We are saved (1 Pt. 3:20-21)
•We are ordained as priests with access to the heavenly sanctuary (Heb. 10:19-22)
Baptists lile to say they read the Bible “literally.” But when it comes to texts about baptismal efficacy, they most certainly do not read it literally. I do — in every one of these texts “baptism” means “baptism.”
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I wish Christian parents in the South were as covenantal about baptism as they are about their college football loyalties.
My point: Christian parents in the South have no problem imposing a college football allegiance in their children from infancy. They dress their baby up in clothes with their school logo. As the kids grow up, they teach them the fight song and other traditions. They teach them history of their team. They make pilgrimages to the stadium. They watch games religiously on Saturdays. But “impose” a religious identity and loyalty on the child? That’s crazy, right?
To take it further, parents impose a name on their child. They impose the English language. The child is an American citizen without getting to choose. They impose piano lessons and phonics and algebra. If parents can impose all these things on their children from an early age, why not a Christian identity, given in the waters of baptism?
God says, ‘I will be a God to you and your children after you.” God claims out children — not by nature but by grace. Our children should know they belong to from the earliest of ages. They should be taught that God has brought them into his family, and they owe him full allegience.
The church is called a “holy nation” in 1 Peter 2. Nations always include children as citizens. Our children are citizens of the holy nation of the church, and they should know this about themselves. They should be raised accordingly.
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