While the debate about whether to baptize infants or not has raged for five centuries, we can and should seek unity as brothers and sisters in Christ.  Baptism actually unites us by identifying us as part of the visible people of God, so let the world see our unity rather than division as we approach any differences with love, humility, and submission to Scripture.

Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”Acts 2:37-39, ESV
Who should be baptized?  This question has sparked intense debate amongst Reformed Christians ever since the early days of the Reformation.  As someone who has attended baptistic churches until I recently joined a pedobaptist church (where infants are baptized).  In order to become a deacon I needed to be able to accept the Westminster Confession of Faith which meant accepting the pedobaptist position.  I entered that study believing that the Presbyterian version of pedobaptism—referred to as covenant baptism—was valid and biblical while believer’s baptism was preferrable.  I came out of that study with a reversed position: believer’s baptism is a valid and biblical position but covenant baptism better aligns with what the whole of Scripture teaches.  My purpose in this post is not to convince Baptists to begin baptizing their infants but to explain simply what covenant baptism is, why it is biblical, and how we can maintain unity in the Body of Christ regarding this topic.
What Covenant Baptism Is and Isn’t
First, it is important to define the actual question we are addressing.  The question is not whether to baptize believers or infants, since Scripture is very clear that we are to baptize believers.  Every example of baptism we see in Scripture is of new converts, so a church must baptize them and require of them a profession of faith in order to be biblical.  The question is not whether to baptize infants or believers but whether or not to baptize the infants of believers.  Scripture gives no clear examples of infants being baptized or being excluded from baptism, so there is room for genuine Christians to differ on this and still practice baptism biblically.  To paraphrase Romans 14, the church that baptizes infants does so in honor of the Lord and the church that refrains does so in honor of the Lord.  Let not the one who baptizes infants look down on the one who refrains, and let not the one who refrains cast judgment on the one who baptizes infants, for God has welcomed both!  So contrary to the perception of some Baptists, pedobaptists do not reject the baptism of converts following a profession of faith.
Another major difficulty Baptists have with pedobaptists is the assumption that baptism is considered part of salvation or a guarantee of salvation.  They would be correct in this regarding the Catholic and Lutheran pedobaptist views (baptismal regeneration), but not covenant baptism.  It is absolutely vital to differentiate between the two.  Covenant baptism of infants is not part of salvation and is not seen as a guarantee of salvation.  Instead, covenant baptism refers to the view that both believers and their children should receive baptism as the new covenant sign of entrance into the visible people of God.  It largely mirrors circumcision as the sign of entrance into the visible church and is therefore separate from actual regeneration.  Churches that faithfully practice covenant baptism make this distinction very clear in their baptism liturgies.  In these ways, covenant baptism answers two of the biggest Baptist objections to pedobaptism.
Why Covenant Baptism is Biblical
But is covenant baptism biblical?  Baptists often fail to see pedobaptism as biblical because pedobaptists often do a poor job of proving it from Scripture.  They often point to examples of entire households being baptized—of Cornelius (Acts 10:48), Lydia (Acts 16:14), the Philippian jailer (Acts 15:33), Crispus (Acts 18:8), and Stephanas (1 Corinthians 1:16)—which would include any infants.  But this argument is unsatisfying since the text does not mention infants in any of these households.  Pedobaptists then point to passages about the inclusion of children, such as Jesus calling little children to Himself and saying that the Kingdom belongs to them (Matthew 19:14, Mark 10:14, Luke 18:16) or Peter at Pentecost saying the promise “is for you and your children” (Acts 2:39).  They also point out the similarities between baptism and circumcision, but Baptists often have difficulty seeing a strong enough connection to justify pedobaptism.  All of these individual bricks are therefore easy for the Baptist to topple, giving the appearance that pedobaptists are grasping at straws for anything in the Bible to support their position. This is because pedobaptists have failed to establish the foundation on which all of these bricks rest to form a biblically-sound structure.
That foundation is covenant theology, which we have examined in recent posts.  We saw that all of the covenants are corporate in nature and included children.  We then saw the nature of shared responsibility and how that relates to the generational nature of the covenants and the role of representation.  Last time we saw how those the Bible calls worthless were members of the covenant people of Israel but were ultimately unregenerate.  From all of this, we see that families—as the central focus of God’s work—have always entered into the covenants, with parents (specifically fathers) representing their children, so they were all considered to be part of the people of God.  Some of them were faithful while others were not.  For the faithful, the covenant sign signified their inclusion in the invisible church, being united with Christ and therefore guaranteed to inherit the blessings of the covenant.  For the unfaithful, the covenant sign signified that they were not part of the invisible church, being separate from Christ and therefore guaranteed to inherit the curses of the covenant.  This was the context into which the New Covenant came, so it should come as no surprise that we see similar language in the New Testament.  From the earliest days of the Church, the covenant was for those who placed their faith and trust in Jesus Christ and their children (Acts 2:39).  In both Testaments, we see households joined the people of God.  Throughout the Old Testament we see the visible people of God containing those who are faithful and those who fall away: righteous Seth vs. unrighteous Cain, Shem vs. Canaan, Isaac vs. Ishmael, Jacob vs. Esau, etc.  During the exodus, we see the whole nation entering into the covenant, but many fell away:
For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.1 Corinthians 10:1-5, ESV
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Written by Kenneth J. Turner |
Sunday, April 23, 2023

At the Passover “party,” God’s people regularly shared fellowship and food, remembering God’s redemptive work and his care for the weak. The festival provides an important backdrop for our regular remembrance during the Lord’s Supper. As we come to the communion table, as we gather and worship together, may we reflect on the blood of the Lamb shed for forgiveness as the centerpiece of salvation history. Let’s not neglect the Lord’s Table. Let’s celebrate in remembrance of him.

Jesus loved a party. Besides enjoying a good meal and fellowship, Jesus used local gatherings and banquets to proclaim his gospel of forgiveness, to show inclusiveness to those deemed unworthy, and even to perform miracles (Matt. 9:10–13; Mark 2:15–17; Luke 5:29–32; 19:5–10; John 2:1–12).
When the New Testament describes Jesus’s participation in the Jewish festival calendar, the Gospels focus on Passover.
Luke gives us a unique glimpse into a young Jesus, who amazes the temple teachers during his parents’ annual trek to Jerusalem (Luke 2:41–52). John uses Passover time stamps to point to various points of Jesus’s ministry: the cleansing of the temple (2:13–22), the feeding of the 5,000 (6:1–15), and several events during Passion Week—Jesus being anointed by Mary (12:1), him washing the disciples’ feet (13:1), his trial before Pilate (18:28, 39), and the crucifixion (19:14). The Synoptic Gospels describe the Last Supper as a Passover meal (Matt. 26:17–19; Mark 14:12–16; Luke 22:1, 7–15). This then serves as the background for the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:17–34).
If we want to understand communion, the new covenant ceremony Jesus instituted, it’s important to first understand the Passover festival that lies behind it.
Passover Was Regular
In addition to weekly (Sabbath) and monthly (New Moon) holy days, the Torah identifies an annual festival calendar linked to the agricultural cycle (Ex. 23:14–17; 34:18–23; Lev. 23; Num. 28–29; Deut. 16:1–17). Three feasts stand out because they involve pilgrimages to Jerusalem for a time of communal sacrifice and celebration. 
Passover begins the repeated cycle in the spring, on the 14th day of the first month. The day is just before of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (days 15–21 of the first month), at the beginning of the barley harvest and lambing season. The Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, is seven weeks later in the summer, at the height of the barley harvest and the beginning of the wheat harvest. Finally, the Feast of Booths is in the winter (in the seventh month), at the end of the wheat harvest.
Passover Was for Remembering
Though the feasts were related to the agricultural calendar, festival worship went beyond praising God for his bountiful blessings.
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When someone is going through unspeakable suffering they often do not need your arguments. They will not benefit from your theological exercise of sense-making. They need your presence so they do not have to bear the burden alone. They need you to hope for them when their hope is lacking. And they need you to be able to stand under the weight of their pain and doubt when it feels like they can’t stand for themselves.

“Wait, what happened?” my eyes widened as the pastor shared details of the tragic death of a young man in our church. It was senseless, completely preventable, and tragic. His mom had been in the small group I was leading, so I felt like I should do something. But what could I, a 25 year-old seminary student with no kids, possibly say or do to comfort his grieving parents in the middle of an unspeakable tragedy? “Just show up,” an older minister encouraged. Obediently, I did though I didn’t completely understand why.
The scenario above hasn’t exactly repeated itself, but everyone is acquainted with senseless violence, tragedy, or unexpected illness/death. It’s completely natural for those suffering in such circumstances to ask questions like, “Where is God in this?” “If God is so good, then why…”, or “How could a loving God allow…” and countless other versions of the question. It’s also completely natural for committed Christians to feel like their role in these circumstances is to try to help the suffering understand God’s role in or plan through the tragedy. We say well-meaning things like, “God surely has a plan,” or “Trust God’s goodness” that often come across as salt in the wound rather than balm for an aching soul.
Without thinking, well-meaning Christians play the role of  Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite from the story of Job.
When Orthodoxy isn’t the Point
After a brief prologue (Job 1-2), much of the book of Job is structured around a series of speeches. Job makes a speech complaining about his unjust suffering to which one of his friends responds with a defense of God and an insistence that this is all because of Job’s sin, to which Job responds with a refutation, followed by another friend tagging in to pick up the argument, and around and around we go for almost 30 chapters. Then, a younger man named Elihu chimes in for 5 chapters worth of speeches in which he rebukes everyone but takes up the argument of Job’s friends.
We’ll come back to what happens next shortly and try to identify where this all goes so sideways, but for now I want to point out something that is often missed in conversations about Job. If we skipped the prologue which describes events occurring in Heaven and approached the book with only the knowledge of the human actors, we would likely agree with Job’s friends. While we may not go so far as to insist that Job’s suffering is because of his sin, the strategy of many North American evangelical Christians when someone is in the midst of suffering is to attempt to defend and exonerate God.
This is exactly what Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Elihu do for more than half of the book of Job. Their arguments appear orthodox. Their reasoning makes sense and feels more objective than the emotional decrees that Job makes. If we removed the knowledge we gain from the first 2 and final 5 chapters, we might find ourselves nodding along with much of what they say and cringing a bit when Job speaks.
But we shouldn’t remove the knowledge we gain from the first 2 and final 5 chapters. Because what we learn there means everything to how we understand Job’s story.
He Said What, Now?
Imagine you’re Eliphaz. You’ve been going round and round with him for a while now and no one seems to be making progress. Job is entrenched in his position that he’s innocent and insisting on having an audience with God. You’re entrenched in your position that God doesn’t afflict righteous people unjustly. No one is making progress.
Finally, God shows up. It appears that Job is having a conversation with God (Job 38-41:6), but you’re unprepared for when God turns his attention to you.
What are you expecting? Are you scared out of your mind? Maybe you’re expecting a “Well done” from the Lord.
Instead, God says:
7I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has. 8 So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. —Job 42:7-8
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