QUESTIONS and ANSWERS
11

BAPTISM BY WATER

What it is, what it is not and
How it helps

Last time, we pursued the second of three areas evoked by BAPTISM.

We dwelt on BAPTISM BY FIRE.

Now we come to BAPTISM BY WATER.

(See also News 51, Excursion, End-note1, and 
The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 5)

These things are real issues with Biblical answers, relating not to superstition, presumption or preference, but to the expressed mind of Christ. There is a right way to bring up a child, and this is part of it . There is a right approach to the things of God, and that is to follow what is written. Do it right and be pleasing in His sight.

Q: What is Biblical water baptism ? Why is it done, when should it be done, what does it signify, what does it do ? In short: What is the pith, point, purpose, time and theme of baptism with water ?

A: In turn, or suitable order, let us take these points. Biblical Baptism with water is something which means a dipping, immersing, sprinkling, pouring.
 
 

HOW IS IT DONE ?

Jay Adams, in his Meaning and Mode of Baptism, notes R.W. Dale's work, Classic Baptism, in touching on what the frequently used, underlying Greek word found in the New Testament,
b a p t iz w  CAN mean. It may mean all these things, and to dye, plunge, tinge, sprinkle. Its MAIN use is not immerse. In fact, an essential component of its meaning comes to be: anything which can thoroughly change the nature of a thing, with dyeing one way of doing this. (Adams also cites research on usage of another term used quite seldom in the New Testament, with somewhat similar breadth of meaning - pp. 2-3 op.cit., though this has little relevance here.)

In the Bible itself, Hebrews 9:10 refers to various baptisms, using this word in the Greek. It then illustrates: the blood of goats and calves, bulls, heifer's ashes. Now in these Old Testament cases, sub-cases of various gifts and offerings, in a context of purifying (9:13), we have the facts. The ashes would be sprinkled, the blood was sprinkled by Moses on the book and the people (Exodus 24), the sprinkling was a norm in purificatory rites. In 9:13, sprinkling is indeed specifically mentioned. Immersion was, as John Murray shows in his Christian Baptism, not the mode for cleansing.

There is no warrant whatsoever for immersion. Pouring is suggested perhaps in consecration, as of a king - take David and Samuel (I Samuel 16:13). The day of Pentecost, Acts 2, was a case of "baptism" in which flames SAT UPON the heads of those concerned. This could relate to sprinkling or pouring, but not to immersing. In I Corinthians 10:1-2, the Israelites passing through the Red Sea are said to have been "baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea". Of course, as far as the sea was concerned, IMMERSION WAS PRECISELY WHAT DID NOT AND MIRACULOUSLY COULD NOT occur! There may have been some spray...

Adams makes the point that BAPTISED INTO MOSES shows up a central feature. It is in effect a submission, a rendering, a coming under authority, like a dyeing in one way: a seal, an acceptance, an undertaking and a rendering. This transforms the situation, so taking care of one fundamental meaning of the term. He also notes John 3:22-25, in which we find an argument about purification related to BAPTISM. Purification is endemically, in the Old Testament, a sprinkling issue: that is the norm. Exodus 24:8 shows the classical, basic case of sprinkling with the blood, to which Hebrews, as we saw, also refers.

Similarly, Jesus Christ made quite an issue of the point with Simon Peter. Wanting to wash Peter's feet, Christ was met by Peter's protestation. Not my feet only, but also my hands and face, said he. At first, he did not even want Christ to wash his feet at all, then he compromised in his reverential concern, by having face and hands too. Christ refused.

"He who is washed does not need except to wash his feet, but is entirely clean; and you are clean, but all of you." That is in John 13:6-10. There you have it. It is symbolism, and it is not necessary to pretend we are dealing with hygiene per se, with lustratorysignificance, when it is merely symbolic. Otherwise, of course, confusion could arise as if it were principally medical, or the extent of body surface paralleled the extent of cleansing and other asinine errors. Not so. Sprinkling had been the norm; part had been the issue; part remained the point.

Feet had also been a washing item in the priesthood, along with hands (Exodus 30:19, 40:31) and this was a parallel to that. Sacramentalism was obviously far from the line, as Christ made the feet sufficient, while referring to the disciples as not ALL being clean: that is, even in the work of washing feet, there was an emphasis that pre-empted, one fixing on the actual state of the heart, which was, as always, what mattered. Christ Himself, for that matter, overcame John the Baptist's protest about it being wrong to baptise Him, not by acknowledging He was a sinner (as I Peter 2:22 denies), BUT byindicating it was necessary to FULFIL ALL RIGHTEOUSNESS. Why ? What does the Bible show ?

Levites were sprinkled with water as part of their official induction, and Christ adapted this to Himself, our Great High Priest: the water of sanctification. You find this rite in Numbers 8:6-7. Here the mode is stressed and singular. It is sprinkling, all sprinkling in the signification of purity. Christ thus COULD not, as a non-sinner, be baptised to repentance, but WAS baptised as a setting apart from all common things (cf. John 17:19, "I sanctify myself for their sakes, that they might be sanctified through the truth"). And that ? It was, as noted for the priests, sprinkling. Not a word is said about any change of mode, when John the Baptist baptised this non-sinner.

Indeed, sprinkling in sacrificial modes is seen in multitudes of cases, as found for example in Leviticus 8:19, 24,30, in the last case referring to blood and oil sprinkled on the clothes of Aaron and his sons. In the case of leprosy, likewise, it was a sprinkling occasioned by the purificatory ceremony - Leviticus 14:7; just as on the great annual day of the atonement, it was a sprinkling on the altar in the Holy of Holies which was the acceptable, indeed authorised mode - Leviticus 16:19.

Interestingly, following through Christ's own enormous emphasis on taking symbols as symbols, not actual substitutes for reality, we have Moses putting, presumably by touch, blood on the right ears, and thumbs of right feet, great toes of right feet of Aaron's sons.

Q. SO WHAT?

A: Could you clarify that ?

Q: What is the summary of what we have found so far ?

A: Baptism is in purification as a norm, sprinkling, and it is not immersion. Sprinkling is of vast usage in most varied situations dealing with purity, purification, vocation, calling to work for the Lord. Symbols are symbols, not realities, and the part can and often or even normally did stand for the whole. Christ was super-emphatic about that. Christ's own baptism - since John characterised his own baptising as for repentance - was not, and could not have been for repentance, or therefore of that type.

Hence John protested, but Christ changed the ground of it to fulfilling all righteousness, which implies divine declaration, and the only Biblical one fitting is priestly vocation, into which indeed He was proceeding, being witnessed with the voice from heaven, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, this His acceptance as sinless but priestly in vocation.

Q: Where does it indicate that John the Baptist was baptising in terms of repentance of sins ?

A: In Matthew 3:2, it characterises his message, focussing repentance; and in Matthew 3:6, we learn that many "were baptised by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins." His language and messages were exceedingly biting and piercing, in exposing sin, and his call to repentance was anything but merely theoretical.

Christ's baptism could not fit into this mould, so John protested; at which Christ re-organised John's thinking. At this, John ceased to protest, and so executed the baptism. Indeed Luke, shortly after the account of Christ's baptism, note s the age of the Messiah - about 30, which was needed, for the priesthood in the Mosaic law.

Q: You talked of being baptised into Moses. I am interested in that concept. Is there anything else of this kind in the Bible ?

A: In Romans 6, we learn that those "baptised into Jesus Christ were baptised into His death." It then uses the word THEREFORE in verse 4 to preface three expressions of this fact. Thus, the TOPIC is being baptised into His death. The figures or features of it follow the THEREFORE, and include

1) one's own life being buried as He was buried,

2) being crucified with Him as He was crucified and

3) being planted with Him, as He, placed in the ground arose like a germinating plant, exuberant and victorious from apparent defeat, with a body far more splendid than before.

But let us consider now the phrase "baptised into Christ".

Q: What does that mean ?

A: Baptism implies - as we saw - a subordination, or transmutation, an acknowledgment and a change. "Baptised into Moses" meant this: he was their leader, with whom they suffered, with whom changes were experienced, who provided a new kind of living in the presence of God. So too here, being baptised into Jesus Christ implies a change, a transmutation indeed, an acknowledgment of His leadership, in fact Lordship, of His saving graces, that His provisions are just and true, that His diagnosis is sound and correct, that His mission and ministry is authoritative and divine*1.

For the adult, it directly means that what He required to be found in Him, IS being found in Him; that what He claimed to be, on account of which one could come to Him, HE IS, and that one so proceeds. It implies further that in so doing one is entering in the New Covenant, the one in His blood, and belongs to Him.

Q: But does not the verse I see here in Romans 6:4 indeed talk of being buried with Him in baptism. Is that sprinkling, or anything like it ?

A: Hardly. Nor is planting (6:5) like it, nor is being crucified (6:6) particularly like sprinkling or immersion. Actually, it is usually as well to see what an author is talking about.

Here Paul is speaking not at all of any sacrament, but of the reality. The issue is this: sin or not? And Paul is saying this: No! a thousand times no, leave it, demit it, resign from it. Be planted together with Christ, as if buried, sharing in the death He died for you by having your own old life buried with His sin-bearing life. Be buried with Him by having your old life put right away like a corpse. Be crucified with Him, in the sense that your old life is like a criminal condemned and exposed and dealt with. DO NOT carry on with the old life; but be infilled with the new.

What is it saying ? This: Be transformed under Christ's leadership by being identified with Him in His death: this is the thematic meaning. Be baptised (Romans 6:3) INTO Him, as the Jews at the Red Sea, into Moses (see II Corinthians 5:14-16 to amplify here, as well as I Corinthians 10:1-2).

The topic is, after all, sanctification, and as John Murray points out eloquently in his Christian Baptism, if you wanted to be literal about one figure of speech, you would need to apply each of them consistently, ending in nonsense sacramentally: not surprising, since that is not the topic. We are dealing with alignment in spirit with aspects of His life, under various botanical or penal or grave-yard aspects.

This is what it means to be BAPTISED INTO CHRIST vitally (I Corinthians 12:13), by the Holy Spirit brought into Christ. This is spiritual not symbolic. It is gloriously spiritual, not comically sacramental. The New Covenant is in His blood (Matthew 26:28), and thereby you share in its provisions, so gaining its effects - and THAT is the theme of Paul here: living and looking like a Christian in actual spiritual reality, dynamically indwelt and realistically transmuted, and not being merely formal and dysfunctional. Not only is it not sacramental, it is an antidote to sacramentalism; he is showing the deeper spiritual significance of what you do, not talking pictures about what is inadequately realised.

More bluntly, it is saying this - (the KEY Romans 6:3):-

• When you are "baptised into Christ", it is into His DEATH you come - you die, the sinning personality, and come to life anew: so baptism is into His burial, into this and not into licence. Life starts with planting with Him, and He, not libido, is Lord; with crucifixion with Him, the present and effectual remedy to sin, as He also is its atonement. The issue is CHRIST, the living Son of God in His strength and His amazing remedy, not symbols in their weakness - you'll see the apostle dwelling on this sort of issue further in Romans 8:3. Of course, as Paul tells the Corinthians (1:25), the WEAKNESS of God - His self-imposed vulnerability on the Cross - is stronger than men.

It is His modus operandi, and there, incidentally, you see more on ... POVERTY OF SPIRIT.

Thus NOT ONLY is the topic nothing to do with sacraments; it transcends them in a reality teaching that is explicit; and not only is this so, the topic is a specific about Christian development, not beginnings; and more than this also, the figures are varied, and not at all possessed of a common denominator which fits any concept of the way to baptise. This is gross irrelevance; and past that, totally inapplicable in any case, to any idea of anyone at all, if treated fully.

Q: Is there more on this mode ?

A: Indeed yes. In Isaiah 52:15 and Ezekiel 36:25, when (see SMR Ch.9) the Jews come in numbers to the Lord, the mode of application is SPRINKLING.

That is partly because, you see, purificatory mode and sprinkling are all but synonymous in the formal emphasis of the matter at Old Testament level, and this pictures, where not fulfilled, apply. Isaiah 52:15 is especially interesting, as it says: SO SHALL HE SPRINKLE MANY NATIONS.

The thought is immense: the JEWISH MESSIAH, rejected for the time (Romans 11 - only a time) by His own people, becomes a light to the Gentiles (Isaiah 49:6) and so, as if they were part of it all, HE sprinkles them (Gentiles of all people! the thought might have been - see Isaiah 65:10-13).

What then ? HE sprinkles ... THE GENTILES! the OTHER nations - those of them who believe (Isaiah 53:1 brings that out acutely). It is the Gentile nations who now in significant measure become accessible and receive this spiritual surgery at His hands. That is, the "sprinkling" with His blood is obviously, and biologically, necessarily symbolic; but it is a salvation "in the body of His flesh through death" - Colossians 1:22, which they receive. As to the mode, it is one of sprinkling with blood; just as the Jews, coming at last to Him, whose blood is once for all shed, so that there is NO MORE SACRIFICE (Hebrews 9:12,25) are sprinkled at reception in that time - with WATER!
 
 

WHAT DOES IT MEAN ?

Q: I am convinced about this least important part: HOW it is done. I am clearer about the more important part, WHAT it means. BUT WHO get it ? You see people storming away about believers' baptism, infant baptism, and there seems quite a division.

A:There is. In the Reformation, the Baptist or believers' baptism position was not in favour at all, and anabaptists, as they were called, had rather a hard time. They insisted on being baptised again, after perhaps being baptised as infants, and so had it twice. Many felt this rather gross; and various anabaptist movements were associated with rash and untimely apocalyptic ideas, so that the movement had less favour than many of its exponents have now.

Q: Where then can we find the answer ?

A: Where indeed, if not from the Bible (II Timothy 3:16) to which we are directed to turn, and which, being the word of the Lord (Isaiah 8:20, II Peter 3:16, see Appendix D SMR), is the final word.

Q: What then is the fact ?

A: The fact is this. In Colossians 2:11-12 we are informed that if one has been baptised, then one has been circumcised - indeed, circumcised with "the circumcision of Christ" - that which the unchanging Saviour (Isaiah 43:11) imparts... Obviously, this is not literal, as water does not perform a surgical operation, whether sprinkled or poured. It is the MEANING of the one which is thus Biblically INCORPORATED in the MEANING of the other.

Baptism is the circumcision of Christ, we thus learn, and HE has acted as the LORD of the Old Testament (John 8:58, Philippians 2:10). WHAT however is that meaning in the case of circumcision ? It is easy to take a Biblical Concordance, such as I suggested earlier you should obtain, and simply follow many instances of the use of the concept of circumcision in the Old Testament.

One of the most striking is this: You are uncircumcised in heart! God protests to Israel, meaning that they lack purification, transformation, cleansing and unity with Himself. That is found in Jeremiah 9:26, and it is repeated by Stephen, as recorded in Acts 7:51, where it is joined with "stiff-necked", signifying by indirection, that being circumcised in heart would mean, being biddable, devoted, willing in the presence of the Lord, acknowledging Him and being activated by Him in loyalty. This, moreover, is in the context of a call for glorying in the LORD HIMSELF ONLY, and KNOWING Him in His life. Thus (Jeremiah 9:23):

"Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches, but let him who glories, glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises loving-kindness, justice and righteousness, in the earth; for in these things I delight, says the Lord."

In fact, Paul's remonstrance that if you are "baptised" into Christ, you are crucified with Him in Romans 6, is precisely to the same effect in its kernel. HOW be circumcised when your hearts are alert to sin, dull to hear, slow to believe, inclined to stray from covenantal directions: what in the world is such a circumcision as that! is the cry of Jeremiah. UNCIRCUMCISED IN HEART! comes the divine irony through the prophet. The clash is total: all is required.

"Circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked. For the LORD you God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God... who does not regard persons, nor take reward", cries Moses in the midst of the rehearsing of the covenant history, in Deuteronomy 10, before the face of the Almighty. There are no formalistic exceptions in whom the realities of the covenant are assumed though they are forsaken, where God is mocked in specious spirituality.

So Paul in the New Covenant asks: DID YOU NOT KNOW that as many of you as were baptised into Jesus Christ were baptised into His death!" - and also into His life, living into the very presence of God (Romans 6:1-11). BAPTISM, says Peter (I Peter 3:21) is NOT a matter of clean bodies but of GOOD CONSCIENCE towards God through the resurrection of Christ!

The outward rites are inward wrongs, redoubled, when they find people happy to "belong" but unwilling to live in the manner to which GOD would have them accustomed! The clash is total. Colossians 2 carries the case to its direct format, even stating that if they are BAPTISED, then they ARE circumcised without hands. Same doctor, same case, same intention: all is required.

Q: What then does this show us to the point ?

A: This: that circumcision (and you can verify this in scores of Old Testament sites as well) means just what Christian baptism does. God has not in fact changed (He stresses this in Malachi 3:6), and His covenant, Old or New is just the same in this, that sin, sacrifice, love and mercy are in place from the same God for the same purpose.

In the Old, animals took the picture as sacrifices, in the New, Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Yet, as Romans 4 makes stridently clear, the gospel which Abraham believed is just the same as that at present. The law was a teacher to make our sin seem as serious as it is; but the grace, love, mercy, sacrifice which no man can provide, but God only: all this is precisely the same and has never changed throughout this time.

In fact, justification by faith is just the same, and remains immutable (Hebrews 6:17, 9:26-27 cf. Psalm 32, cited by Paul in Romans 4:7-8, and used by David around 1000 B.C., long after Abraham). What does Paul say of Abraham ? This which we read - Romans 4:20-25:

• He did not stagger at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God, and fully persuaded that, what He had promised, He was able also to perform. And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness. Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him, but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on Him who raised up Jesus, our Lord, from the dead: who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification."

Baptism, circumcision is the way in, and it symbolises what you come to, your arrival location and situation, your grant-making sovereign, your life providing Lord: God in His covenant of new life, through penalty bearing provisions (Genesis 22:11-14, Leviticus 17:11, 16:15ff., Isaiah 53:1-6), and His own power to save,

• who is "mighty to save" (Isaiah 63:1), and
• in whom is that word, which is to be followed, in unity of spirit and heart with Himself, who covers you with His faithfulness, and leads you with His goodness (Deuteronomy 12, John 14:21-23).

It is time to summarise a little, and proceed at the same time, to the next questions.

Q: What then are these ?

A: To whom is baptism to be given, and when ?
 
 

TO WHOM IS IT DONE ... and WHEN ?

Q: Why don't you expound the thing now more fully with overall conspectus?

A: Very well.

So then, circumcision is an introductory rite for the SAME type of covenant as that for which BAPTISM applies (Acts 3:38-39). They have the same meaning, and the covenantal meaning of circumcision included God's desire for this formal application of the covenant sign and seal to a child, so much so indeed, as seen in Exodus 4:24-26, that he threatened Moses with death, if he declined so to put this authorised seal on his young son. Paul expressly parallels the two, and indeed goes much further.

He asserts the content of the one to incorporate, to include that of the other. BAPTISM has all the content of circumcision; it is "the circumcision of Christ" (Colossians 2:11). The realities of the one are implicit in the realities of the other. So far from divorcing in ANY way the meaning and structure of circumcision from that of baptism, Paul goes to the extraordinary and in one way bold length of alluding to the whole burial, planting, crucifixion with Christ on the part of the Christian, in terms of "the circumcision of Christ".

The concepts are allied to the point of identity of core, message, meaning; and to invoke what you wish to put to death, substituting for it with a central qualification of new restrictions, is hardly the way to do it! If children are to be excised, removed, abstracted, dealt a void hand in this thing now that the New Testament has shown God's face in Christ Jesus, then to invoke it in the NEW tender mercies which are so far removed from their symbolism in children, and the force and necessity of that symbolism, would be to invoke a blunt instrument for a surgical operation.

SYMBOLS are NOT here removed; they are replaced. They ALWAYS had a meaning, and a place of operation, and the meaning always symbolised what was to come when faith came to the one now in infant of days. Here the identity of MEANING, of what the symbols represented, is made clear. If however the POINT OF APPLICATION of the new SYMBOL is to be such that the CHIEF recipient of old time,  is to be EXCLUDED, it would be more than confusing to use the two terms in this interchangeable way, after the practice of thousands of years, while without saying so, removing the place where it must chiefly be placed - the infant, from what it was to what it is now assumed by Baptists to be!

IF the principles were to be so changed that the symbol now COULD not and SHOULD not be used to represent these things as the basis for life, where before they HAD TO BE USED as a CRUCIAL MATTER for that same purpose, then the very content would vary. God would be a different God, of a different mind, another attitude, variable principles, and equivalence would be hence denied for that very reason. Yet it is affirmed! Moreover, as to Him, His ways are everlasting (Habakkuk 3:6), there is no shadow of variation in Him (James 1:17).

What then ? as to this circumcision here in Colossians 2:11ff., it is true that this is speaking in terms of meaning; but then, that is our point. The MEANINGS are identical to the point at least, that baptism has all of circumcision in it, with NOTHING left over.

If when the one is done, you HAVE the other, this has to be so. Otherwise, when you had the one, you would NOT have the other. It is even spoken of, moreover, in terms of Christ's circumcision! There is a medley of equivalence if you wish!

Against any such views of variability of priniciple, the apostle however affirms this:

• that when you have the one you DO have the other. The nature of the one is the nature of the other; the function of the one is the function of the other; the place and status of the one is that of the other.

Indeed,
 

• you CANNOT exclude the first if you have the second, or excise circumcision if you have baptism without doing violence to the words of this master builder of the church of Jesus Christ (I Cor. 3:10). Some say, it looks better this way; but looks often seem better for some stuffy substitute of flesh for truth, human will for divine sovereignty, human contrivance for divine command. The simple covering of sprinkling is enough, and speaks not of some dirge like dripping mass arising anti-triumphant to 'new life', but of a overall oversight and complete envelopment. As Christ said of the foot-washing occurrence, illustrating the principle:
• "He who is washed does not need except to wash his feet, but is entirely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you" - John 13:10. Undue attention to the ceremony can conceal the necessity of what it conveys! The sprinkling began in blood and continues in water, all the necessary blood having been spilled in that of Christ, infinitely capable as it speaks of His life given in sacrifice, and when it is HIS, it IS sufficient! Being more liberal with water for the sake of its cheapness or new concepts of its washing - as if the thing were a bathroom exercise (against I Peter 3:21) merely misses the point, innovates and distances from the real concept of covenantal acceptance of the whole person, with ALL the beauties of the covenant, not some one merely taken apart. Indeed, this often leads all too well, to the concept of free-will as if God were an object in a super-market to be bought when one wishes, on demand, by one's own methods and desire, not a gracious sovereign to be received gratefully at HIS!

Both the concept of innovation and that of alienation to be newly aligned compete for mastery in these human contrivances. Though the symbols are not the end of the world in themselves, the attitude of invention conveys so readily a philosophy of one's own, far removed from the realities of the outrage of God mercifully met in Christ, who covers one in that gracious goodness which cost so much and is applied by a miracle of mercy. True it is but symbol; but the symbol is placed to reach and to teach, and WHAT it teaches is crucial. ALWAYS when God teaches, it is essential to listen and to be still! (Habakkuk 2:20).

Foolish presumption can lead not merely to unauthorised change, but express and forward incorrect attitudes and THESE in turn can readily assist alien views to grow and so invade the vigour of the faith, erode the teaching and interfere, like pollutants in good, with the growth and even the health. That in its turn can molest the church, facilitate its turning to new thought from MAN instead of TRUE thought from God, compromise its testimony and impede its testimony of, to and through the truth.
 

• Such developments do not help the world to see Christ. This is indeed therefore a just domain of Christian Apologetics.

What do we have then ? Spiritual equivalence is asserted to this point, so that baptism has incorporated circumcision. What is invoked is applied; but it is invoked with indeed a flash of drama! The principle is asserted, be the applications what they will! Nothing is novel, nothing is denied; all is affirmed and all is fulfilled. Such is the way when it is the word of God with which one deals (Proverbs 8:8, Isaiah 45:26, Matthew 5:17-29).

NOT ONLY is there the whole portmanteau of spiritual principles which the Lord SO OFTEN reviewed and enforced in the Old Covenant days, what Paul calls the ROOTS of the olive tree in which the Jews lived, and into which we Gentiles have been "grafted": and these are clear on the collective character of the family unit before the Lord in the covenant, as an operating unit, in addition to individual significance; but there is ALSO this further feature which commands our attention.

THIS area IN PARTICULAR is displayed by Paul as to the meaning and place of CIRCUMCISION/BAPTISM: that baptism conveys circumcision now that it is in its New Covenant place. Circumcision? Something expressly and chiefly for CHILDREN, for INFANTS of days is invoked by Paul as JUST WHAT baptism is saying, is featuring, is focussing. Is it to be imagined, then, that the Lord of all clarity is saying this? To express it is to deny it: for it would be an absurdity and a horror indeed! Let us consider just where it leads, to follow the ANTI-infant baptism line. It would be as if the Lord were to speak in some such way as this:

·       Oh, I am indeed unchanging, and have in the most emphatic manner possible made it clear that the family, the household MUST receive the emblem of the covenant at or near the time of BIRTH, in a symbol. NOW however I say that BAPTISM really INCORPORATES this CIRCUMCISION. Let us however not imagine that I still approve of those principles of circumcision; for in fact I do not like any more the whole idea of doing such things to the young. {This however is not only change: it is TRANSFORMATION of principles.}

·       Where before I INSISTED that the males be circumcised for THIS PURPOSE OF IDENTIFICATION AND DISPLAY AND TESTIMONY of the whole specialised core of the covenant, now that the covenant has FLOWERED from the Old Covenant into the New one, I really somehow feel it differently. It just does not take me, any more; I guess I have changed my mind or feelings or something. {This would be flat contradiction.}

·       It WAS a matter of PRIME principle, but now I am averse to it! Oh! I am not telling you of this spectacular change of heart or mind or both which somehow has just happened in Me; on the contrary, I am paralleling circumcision and baptism to the last degree. Somehow you may work it out. Whereas before I threatened death to Moses if he did NOT see it and do it faithfully, before all and without fear, now you will just have to understand WHILE I so intimately parallel both the two rites and the two covenants, in their meaning, that I am NOW throwing out the main part of the one which I am paralleling, and a kernel element of the other; and do NOT, repeat NOT want you to continue as if I had ever said anything on the subject before! {Double contradiction.}

God however is not so mocked. Our God foreknows all, understands all, is clear and uncontrived, keeps His words, and changes not. Such changeability, inefficiency and misleading as would here be implied in terms of such mutation: it is far from Him.

He does NOT state cardinal principles of the UTMOST importance, ONLY to junk them. He does NOT junk them without saying so. He does NOT, in the face of such things, so speak while telling us that the old and the new are a case of fulfilment and NOT abrogation, or dismissal of the old. He does NOT then tell us that the one SPECIAL covenantal feature in view is DISMISSED in the New version, while affirming that NOTHING is contradicted or removed from its place, but ONLY fulfilled.

He does NOT, then, tell us that the two SPECIAL features, circumcision and baptism, NECESSARY as SYMBOLS but NOT AT ALL having salvation within them, are parallel so that having one is to have the other, while secretly and in complete contradiction of the whole essence of the one, removing it from the parallel, WITHOUT SAYING SO! God is not a mocker, is not confused, is not variable, nor is there any flicker in Him; nor is He available with a mouth into which we put artificial teeth. It is our EARS we need to exercise when He speaks, not our hands, to make up our thoughts and to supply them to His mouth. "DO NOT ADD TO HIS WORDS LEST HE REBUKE YOU AND YOU BE FOUND A LIAR!" is startling relevant here (Proverbs 30:6).

Let us then face it. Does this allow the view that the infant component of the COVENANT is irrelevant now? Does this identification of covenantal meaning allow a reduction in a MAJOR feature of it? Or does the specification of this particular aspect allow a reduction in a major feature in it, which God expressly parallels, incorporating the one in the terms of the other?

NOT in the case of baptism, or it could not incorporate circumcision. The principles would be averse, converse, juttingly contrary the one to the other. To pursue such a case, one would be insisting on rules unknown in the Old Covenant, on particulars CONTRARY to its whole role and procedure. However, we are not treated to a novelty: far from it. The RITES are paralleled, composed, compounded, conjoined. Let not man put asunder what God has joined! Further, in Acts 2, already cited, we find this: that the promise is "to you and to your children". The general is a fulfilment, the particular is a fulfilment, and the one incorporates and does not reject the wisdom or roots of the other. There is therefore no option. Infants MUST be baptised.

Of course, we realise that some things take reflection, so that this is not REQUIRED in Presbyterian churches of members; for it is important that people ponder and develop and understand, not being merely jostled into conformity at the outset, except in the things essential. That is where the more sacramentalist approach will often be seen, in undue emphasis on this or that at the outset. Nevertheless,  the TEACHING is clear and assured, lest we fail anyone, and it is NOT made to appear uncertain. Omission of it is omission of sound doctrine, and we look for all to grow, though of course there is no FORCED growth. We leave it to the Lord, having made it clear in teaching.

That reference of Peter to children in Acts 2, moreover, where "the promise is to you and to your children" would have been singularly unfortunate if it had meant that the children were now to wait long before the covenantal involvement became theirs, whereas previously, in the Old Testament 'shadow' for which Christ is the Substance (Hebrews 8-10), there were not only immediate beneficiaries, but primary and utterly essentiallly so. It would be in the utmost degree contradictory, to affirm this were it to be implied that  the excision of children was in mind for the application of the New Covenant:  if indeed it was to indicate that their part was to be truncated, that the scope of the covenant's formal impact by rite, was now circumscribed to the exclusion of ... children, that their coverage was drastically reduced. This would rather resemble the Mad Hatter's Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland, where nothing, nothing at all means what it seems.

 'Fulfilment' - Matthew 5:17-20 - would that be such a thing ? Quite the contrary, this would be abortion, not consummation! To abort the law, however, is PRECISELY what Christ said He had NOT come to do! If one "makes" Him do it, then one does it alone, mouthing an effect without other author than oneself. With Him, this is far from wise, for no man ever manipulated or will manipulate HIM! Inclusion  of infant children from the sacrament of baptism is both necessary and beautiful. As always, the sacramental, covenantal impact of this introductory rite is to STAMP the child with the SIGNIFICANCE of what is necessary for salvation. Circumcision NEVER saved; it was a symbolic remonstrance, and offering of identity for the child of a GODLY family, fearlessly unashamed in an often hostile world, to be marked as belonging while merely under the parental roof, to a family of the Lord's people in their covenantal relationship to God.

Reference to Rome's horrid, anti-scriptural,  ex opere operantis concept of MAKING the child  a Christian by baptism (or regenerating, with automatic expunging of precedent sins, with significant carry-over to Lutheran concepts of baptismal regeneration,  despite the irrevocability of  I John 3:9, the denunciations of Isaiah 1 and the correlative phenomenon of many baptised not becoming Christians) is no more excuse for refusing to obey the testimony of scripture, than would be the removal of the Lord's Supper, because some have transformed it horribly into an idolatrous 'Mass' (cf. SMR pp. 1086, 1088Cff).

Such is an irrelevant remonstrance based on a pathology from which the scripture has most carefully removed both baptism and circumcision (cf. I Peter 3:21, Jeremiah 9:25-26).

In Deuteronomy 29:11-12 (cf. 1:39) , we find ALL the people brought together for the covenantal assemblage, even the children and little ones too, "who had no knowledge of good from evil" to the issues in hand; and the words are addressed to all. Whether conscious of it or not, cognisant of it or not, able to appreciate its portent, or not: they are ALL involved in the requisitioned covenantal assemblage. It is an assemblage for covenantal purposes, and the children are not there for convenience, but by command.

They bear of course the covenantal seal, for how would they fail to have what God had engendered marked on their flesh, and how would they come as if mere prayer or hope were to the point. It is a people of the Lord, and even infants must, repeat, as Moses learned (Exodus 4), MUST have that divine seal and stamp of public testimony, whether they yet know good and evil, or not. That is explicit. The covenantal people so assembled, were so met by the seal and so were relevant to God as such.

The failure to see this point has perhaps been partly a result of political democracy, where individualism may hold sway to the point that everyone does his or her own thing; but family reality before the covenant commanding God, whose New Covenant is in a NEW BLOOD, but not for a new God: this is by no means removed by such preference and cultural invasion, intrusion or irrelevance.

GOD is dealing with us, not we with Him! HE it is who is the commander. God has with vigour, address and energy COMMANDED the seal on the Old Covenant child, and equated the significance of baptism with circumcision to the point that if the latter applies, then so does the former in this respect.

The command is not removed, but the equivalence is asserted. If God had desired to remove the relevance of children, then He might have indicated in Acts 2, that the promise was to the adults only, an innovation in formula, and that it would apply also to their children when they were at some relevant age, so that in essence no more would they be children. He might have done this, to remove the insistence of centuries; but He did the precise OPPOSITE. It was to them and to their children; and so it always had been in terms of the seal, the covenantal application, and the non-saving nature of this symbol, while it was a testimonial necessity.

The normal completeness of the family, indicated as in Acts 16 as for Abraham, concerning the covenant whether of circumcision or baptism, is "household". That term remains for the household of the newly converted Philippians gaoler. A saved household does NOT (and a godly home never did) MEAN that all were converted; but it DID mean that the children, not yet knowing good or evil, were SANCTIFIED as in I Corinthians 7. The family as a unit were in the right relationship with God, with the symbol on all, and the reality to which it referred in some. Nothing was excluded from the divine covenantal eye; and it was essential that this should be so. It is not that the sacrament saves, but that its omission saves the word of God from application. The call is there.

It remains so. When God alters His word, He says so; His understanding of mankind ? Never. He does not change and truth is His domain, while Christ IS the truth. His ways do not change.

His wishes are clear; and they are  not touched. What HE has said in principle and practice, in form and formula, remains except in this, that NOW it may be administered to ALL. Males are no more by the nature of the action the only ones included. Male and female are all one in Christ Jesus, and the promise is not merely, in its applications, to the male children, but to "YOUR CHILDREN."

ALL that is touched in the effort to exclude the children is the obedience to the biblical concepts and fixities, and the willingness to understand once and for all that when God does NOT mean household to be understood, but adults, He is perfectly well able to say so; and when He DOES wish to indicate a major change in attitude to the impact of covenant on children, He does not indicate the promise as to adult and children alike, or the relevance to household in precisely the fixed and millenium-old manner.  Such is to defile the purity of His word, and the clarity of His utterance in favour of simple variation in thought on the part of the reader, then attributed by misled confusion to the Lord! Such a change however He has never said, but rather has He insisted on the equivalence which checking of the meaning of both sacraments independently shows.

There are some ways of being contrary, and to assume that continuity of phrase and expression, and emphasis on children in the entry mode relative to the New Covenant as in Acts 2, Acts 16,  together is an index to a vast and total overhaul so that what was once MEANT for children CHIEFLY  (circumcision - adults added in the 'rare' cases of their not having been there when young, or new conversions) was now not NOT ALLOWED TO COVER THEM at all: this is one of the best.

That is to say, it is one of the worst defilements of liberty so to enact in the face of the face of the Lord, and His mouth! REMAIN UNLESS FULFILLED, is the command of Christ (Matthew 5:17ff.), and NOTHING is fulfilled about God's attitude to children by symbolic venue in terms of the equivalent conceptions of circumcision and baptism to which Paul so emphatically refers. The blood is fulfilled in Christ's, but the child is not fulfilled in His death. It remains not knowing good or evil, but covered symbolically as before. We do not change what God has not changed, or make an excuse of a fulfilment, to excise what is not so.

This bring us to Joshua, who learned that the Lord is indeed the COMMANDER (Joshua 5:13ff.).

The same situation occurs likewise in Joshua 8:30-35, where we read that

• "Joshua built an altar to the Lord God of Israel .. and they offered on it burnt offerings .... and there in the presence of the children of Israel, he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses .... The all Israel, with their elders and officers and judge, stood on either side of the ark before the priests ... And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessings and the cursings, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law. There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded which Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, with the women, the little ones, and the strangers were living among them."

Again, in II Chronicles 20:13 is the same participation in explicit presence (along with "strangers" expressly noted in the Joshua case), as a whole covenant people; for after all, it happens to one, then to all if the battle fails; and many is the battle fought with liberalism, modernism, neo-evangelicism and the unruly hordes of revisionism, often imported direct from "abroad", outside the kingdom, from the current whims of the world, and allowed to infest the thinking of the people.

Here in trial, Jehoshaphat the godly king is confronted with an evil assault on his people, and he rehearses with eminent reasonableness before the Lord, the case of the situation, and how it has come. "Judah gathered together to ask help from the Lord ..." We read in this case that

• "all Judah, with their little ones, their wives, and their children, stood before the Lord. The Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel" who announced, "Tomorrow go down against them...You will not need to fight in this battle. Position yourselves stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, who is with you" - from II Chron.20:4-17.

A difference is made where immaturity prevents understanding, indeed, and a crucial one in this case of responsibility for errors: but nothing alters the covenantal assemblage, seal, overall totality of the people. Relating in different respects to the covenant, they are all embraced, nevertheless, ex officio, and pro forma and in terms of the reality of families as bearing in their midst the young, whose futures are so closely related, as a stamped, sealed and called people.

To be sure, many are called but few are chosen; but the assemblage speaks for itself. To this body, God addresses Himself by covenant. Christians too are as to church, a "special people", and a "holy nation" (I Peter 2:9) not differentiated by alteration, but conjoined by language to the attitudes God has expressed so eloquently, constantly and categorically. God, as it were, goes out of His way to emphasise this continuity of approach BY the very use of such terms as those just quoted.

The "circumcision of Christ" (Colossians 2:11), then, is that which effects the stated results, the spiritual activity correlative to circumcision; and this does NOT need to be circumcised, but taken just as it is! The interplay of the two Old and New, is so intense and so constant and so central and so peripheral that it is a matter of the same language, "shadows" yielding to "substance" (Hebrews 10;1), but let us emphasise, it is to the substance which cast the same shadows! Children do not evaporate but come into their more substantial involvement in both genders, in a covenant now consummated at Calvary.

This does NOT imply, as Deuteronomy 29:18 made very clear, any sacramentalistic ideas. IF there were unbelief, then there was NO benefit; rather indeed, it was worse, for the negatives of the covenant were intense and at times extreme. There never was any benefit then, for fraud; there never has been, never is and never will be! Treachery is never appreciated. Being near with the lips but far in the heart is never acceptable (Isaiah 29:13)! Reality counts and it was and is required.

Thus if baptism is to incorporate circumcision at the level of meaning, then ONE part of the covenant to which circumcision was unquestionably the sacramental and essential entry, in terms of procedure, was this TOTALITY concept for ALL. The circumcision of Christ cannot be invoked if it involves a radical surgery on the whole concept of circumcision; for otherwise, this would be an invitation to disaster, an activation of ruin, a focussing of the misleading. Indeed, circumcision was not merely APPLICABLE to children: THEY were its CORE and basic CONTENT for operation. It ALWAYS was more direct for the proselyte who could understand, on becoming a Jew; it NEVER was exempted because the young of the believers could not comprehend.

This included those who were merely the infants of those who were actively and consciously involved. Indeed, DAYS OLD ONLY was the normal PRESCRIPTION FOR IT! God does not change. Unless therefore HE says differently, His principles, ideas, attitudes and preferences remain as binding as the sun as a source of heat! Prescriptive details may vary; substantial principles do not. Shadows are fulfilled; their substance then ARRIVES, and is not at all NEGATED! The circumcision of Christ will lack nothing in intent, in coverage, that the original held. It may extend - it does not contract. It may amplify, it does not suppress.

Literally, Colossians is this: In whom you are circumcised ... having been baptised. The point here: the CONCEPT of COVENANTAL OBLIGATION AND ENTRANCE WAS SECURELY ALLIED AND ALIGNED WITH CIRCUMCISION, AND IT IS NOW THE CASE THAT WHAT THAT DID, BAPTISM NOW DOES. NOTHING in the nature of the realities does it bring about per se. It signifies. But WHAT IT SIGNIFIES in the one case, the old one, as in the other, the new one, is such that the new one swallows up all of the old. They are correlative concepts - we have indeed, correlative covenants, correlative concepts, correlative initiatory rites under the sovereign eye of the unchanging God who tells His mind to His people, and reproves those who tell their minds in His name! (At the limit, we have Jeremiah 23:21,28-29.)

If however children were now emphatically NOT to receive the covenantal emblem, then equally emphatically these twin terms would NOT be equivalents at all. They would rather signify an extreme division, departure and change. There would be covenantal rupture, schism of rites, disruption of the divine assertion both of non-abrogation of the law (Matthew 5:17-19) and of divine preference in specific covenantal commitment.. There would be, as it were, war in heaven, and those ideas of REQUIRING impact covenantally on babes on the 8^th day after birth, would be now those REFUSING it till the 14^th year or so. INSTEAD of having a babe unable to know what was going on, yet COVENANTALLY INVOLVED BY SYMBOL, in the Old Testament (God's unquestionable and emphatic desire), you would have a vast multitude of the now covenantally uprooted REQUIRED to absent themselves from such a provision, in the New...

No more would this covenant seal constitute an emblem for all the family, and a message to all, and an indication for all of the ONLY way in which God would deal with men. Now on this strangely imagined basis, in the New Testament, with the "promise to you and to your children" ringing in their ears, the Jews would have to understand this, on this model: that God had changed His entire disposition about families, about totality, about the need to have infants participate as a part of the household in the formal and authorised covenantal symbol of entry.

Themes would be scattered, conceptions ruptured, approaches brought into twentieth century democratic concepts instead of divine sovereignty ones. We would modernise Christianity till God was a different God. His ideas on education, on the covenant in it, would be radically transformed. But it is God who transforms us, not we called to transform... Him! God does not develop or evolve, but swears in Malachi:

• "I CHANGE NOT!"

Q: Do you then think that some people deliberately deny this privilege to their children?

A: No! let me be clear. I am not saying that this sort of exclusion and denial to children is the intention of those who refuse to place this seal on their children. It may be; it may not. It is an area where they do not see. I am saying this: that this does deprive the children of what God has once and for all made clear is His will for children, whatever the format; and God has formally paralleled the two seals, saying that if you have the one you have the other.

Q: Could you then expound the concept of the parallel further for me?

A: Yes! and let me do it, first of all, in terms of a question. Does He parallel them BY saying so, in order to mutate the one WITHOUT saying so! Parallel explicit, is this licence for innovation? The standard of reference having been stated, are we then despite all, to disperse the discipline, subtract the coverage and render anaemic the fulness of what is invoked? Or mutate for our convenience what God has once stated, and that in principles of the utmost rigour?

HOW! If you had the one, you would have ONE set of beliefs, and if you had the other, you would have the different set of beliefs, and they are enormously divergent in idea, in ideology and in practice. One approach refuses God's formal action when the child is not consciously aware of CHOICES and so on; the other approach however states that "YOU HAVE NOT CHOSEN ME, BUT I HAVE CHOSEN YOU" IS WHAT Christ in fact said (John 15): so that this 'YOU MUST CHOOSE CHRIST" concept, as a criterion, is not only a mutation of the concept of God, but a rejection of it.

If however this contradiction of Christ is not the ground of this abortion of God's stated desires, then that merely makes it worse in this, that it is even more uncalled for, however wrongly.

Baptism is "circumcision made without hands" (Colossians 2:11), but not without comprehensive coverage. The two covenants are not only correlative but in perfect unison (Romans 4), preach the same justification by faith, and relate in the same principial way to their beneficiaries. If God wished to rethink it - let Him tell us! (cf. Amos 3:7, Proverbs 30:6). Yet to assume He would rethink these basics, is perhaps as much a derogation of the divine splendour as to assert that He did! Those are the first and second errors: HE did not say so; and to ASSUME He has done so is in its implication, little short of lèse-majesté.

The evidence is of neither of these negative things about God. It is expressly the contrary. Let us not imagine His words at all, far less in derogation of the divine One.

Q: Do we then have to listen with attention rather than extrapolation and intervention, to the word of God?

A: When it comes to doctrine, let GOD be the teacher, and then indeed, great shall be the peace of your children (Isaiah 54:13). THIS however requires that they be "TAUGHT OF THE LORD", NOT OF THE FLESH. When God speaks, it is well to listen, not to invent. What then, when God ALSO cardinally and categorically aligns not only the covenants themselves as in Romans 4, Hebrews 10 (where shadows become substance and the same faith is affirmed in the same salvation) in their teaching and principles, but goes further... He in fact even uses this very feature of circumcision-baptism as an express parallel, so that the one INCORPORATES the other

or entrains it

or is synthetic with it, as two brothers, or as husband and wife,

so that the one is found meaning the other ?

What then? This - in view of these things:

to render this null is DOUBLY to nullify what God says. This then is the third error; and as to the mistake made:

• 1) it is to invent,
• 2) it is derogatively to invent and
• 3) it is to invent in the face of express confirmation not only of the covenantal realities but of the twin-ship of the modes in view, in particular.
   

It is nothing less than this - a treble division from the word. The basis of the departure from the word may be a fear of the error of baptismal regeneration, or of church salvation; but these things are abhorrent in any case, and if taught, should be fought: but what should not be fought is this, that the word of God so teaches, always did, and has never changed this approach to the young.

No! Let us turn and if need be return to what HE declares!

Let me add this: Luke 1:21-24 shows Jesus being presented at the Temple. There is an entire covenantal structure into which He is entering. A sacrifice of a pair of turtledoves is made. THAT is internalisation of the covenant if anything could be. The child is AMIDST the procedures, not AWAITING THEM! He is part of the household and hence part of what the people of God believe and want and do; and whatever the future, this is the present, this is the child, these are the parents, and this is the pictographic, and indeed sacrificial reality. So GOD HIMSELF elected to be used when in infancy, by HIS OWN PRESCRIPTION. And as to Him ? HE IS the TRUTH!*2

Let us emphasise this, that just as prescriptively, Christ STATED with SEVERE SOLEMNITY that He had NOT come to abort or destroy the LAW, but to fulfil it. "Fulfilling" this aspect is not to reject it! and removing this is to destroy it. Again, the same result, we are not free to fiddle with the divine covenantal and conceptual structure re sins, families, sacrifices, relevances, involvements. As they were in principle, so they are. There the word of God rules; there the stated purpose of Jesus Christ is HONOURED, and not dishonoured. Indeed, whatever WE do, HE will act on it; for He is Lord.

HENCE the Philippian gaoler's HOUSEHOLD, exactly the word used in the Old Testament Hebrew equivalent, is baptised, and so is Lydia's (Acts 16:15,30-33). HOUSEHOLDS were and remained the notional entity in this case. THEY REMAIN AS THEY WERE: HISTORY AND THE CONTEMPORARY IN WEDLOCK IN THE TESTAMENTS. To assume that what was meant was this: that only older persons were present, is to assume in excess of the word of God. It uses the term always used, with doubtless the traditional meaning ESTABLISHED IN A MULTITUDE OF REFERENCES INTERNAL TO THE BIBLE, THE WORD OF GOD, THE OVERALL CONTEXT. If we take it as it comes, not adding to the concept or subtracting, not enforcing contrary and novel concepts but using the cultural, religious and emphatic norm: then households mean whatever there are, just as they always did. They are the units explicitly invoked for the baptism.

Thus, not only does God swear by Himself that He does not change; He equates the concepts, parallels the significance of the rites and uses the same terminology that applies to what was the Old Testament insistence which He made, in the New Testament. And as to God, He is a CLEAR writer, in H