A Sermon by Charles J Brown
Acts 2:39. The promise is unto you, and to your children.
If we would get a firm grasp of our subject we must try to apprehend the true relation between the scriptures of the Old Testament and of the New, and more particularly the relation between the old covenant – or the old dispensation of the covenant of grace – and the new. In either case, it is a relation of substantial oneness, with diversity in the circumstances.
It is not two Bibles we have, but one – one revelation of the living God in different periods. Some seem to speak as if the New Testament alone were the rule of faith and life to a Christian – as if the Old was now obsolete. Certainly Jesus Himself did not so speak, nor His apostles. The truth is that neither Testament is complete without the other; one complements the other. I have a very learned friend who was once asked by a student what he considered the best book on the Old Testament. “O,” he answered at once, “the New.” It was a beautiful reply. I have long thought that the converse holds also: the best book on the New Testament is the Old.
We oftener speak of the New Testament as the key to the Old. But the Old is, in many ways, just as much the key to the New. The New is scarcely intelligible without the Old, so continual are the allusions to it in the New. I venture to go even further: without the Old Testament, our code of worship and moral law are not complete. Apart from the Psalms, for example, or the Ten Commandments, with the command about the Sabbath, where would our code of worship be? Apart from the book of Leviticus, where would our code of, for instance, marriage relationships be? The scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are together our one rule of faith and life. You might consult such passages as: “Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone”; “Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.”
But now, more specifically, observe the relation between the old covenant and the new. It is not two covenants of grace, substantially different, but one, under different dispensations. Here also the relation is one of substantial identity, with diversity in the circumstances. True, Paul speaks in Ephesians of the “covenants of promise”. But these are not separate, substantially different, covenants (as the covenant of works, for example, differed essentially from the covenant of grace), but to different dispensations of the one covenant of promise, which has existed from the beginning.
1Taken, with editing, from Brown’s little book, Infant Baptism.
Take, for example, the covenant of promise which God made with Abraham. It is clear from the scriptures that, for substance, it was the same covenant under which we live. Turn to the song of Zacharias in Luke 1, at verse 68: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He hath visited and redeemed His people, and hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David; as He spake by the mouth of His holy prophets, which have been since the world began; that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember His holy covenant; the oath which He sware to our father Abraham, (of course, this is the covenant of grace under which we live) that He would grant unto us, that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our life.” This is declared to have been the “holy covenant, the oath which God sware to Abraham.”
I have referred to some who speak as if the New Testament is the only rule of faith and life to a Christian. They speak as if God’s covenant with Abraham was almost exclusively one of temporal blessings – about Canaan, a temporal kingdom and, at best, having spiritual blessings only by way of allusion and type. But this is a serious mistake; the very beginning of the covenant with Abraham, “I will be a God to thee”, is the soul and sum and essence of the covenant of grace (see Jer 31:33, Mt 22:31,32, Heb 11:16, Rev 21:3,7). So Paul calls circumcision the initiatory sign of the Abrahamic covenant, “a seal of the righteousness of faith“, at once showing what he held to be the essence of that covenant.
Or take his great words in Galatians: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree; that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith”. Or his words in Hebrews: “When God made promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no greater, He sware by Himself, saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee . . . Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath; that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.”
Let this then be our first position, and let us plant our foot firmly on it, that the covenant which God made with Abraham is the same covenant in substance under which we now live. True, there are great circumstantial differences. The grace of the covenant is now in many ways expanded, but the substance is the same. Let me refer you here to the words of our Confession of Faith
in the chapter on God’s Covenant with Man: “This covenant [of grace] was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel: under the law, it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all foreshowing Christ to come; which were, for that time, sufficient and efficacious, through the operation of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah, by whom they had full remission of sins, and eternal salvation; and is called the old testament.
“Under the gospel, when Christ, the substance, was exhibited, the ordinances in which this covenant is dispensed are the preaching of the Word, and the administration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper: which, though fewer in number, and administered with more simplicity, and less outward glory, yet, in them, it is held forth in more fullness, evidence and spiritual efficacy, to all nations, both Jews and Gentiles; and is called the new testament” (7:5,6).
My second position is: as the infants of the Church were embraced within the old covenant, occupying a very special place in the covenant made with Abraham, so we have abundant Scripture evidence that they still occupy substantially the same place in the covenant under the new dispensation. Note that I am not yet speaking of the signs of the covenant – of circumcision or baptism. As to the place of children in the old covenant, it may be enough to remind you of the promise to Abraham: “I will establish My covenant between Me and thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee” (Gen 17:7), and of Deuteronomy 30:6: “The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live”; and of Isaiah 44:3: “I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground; I will pour My Spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring”.
Yet the promise in Isaiah belongs more especially to gospel times; and a glance at the context will show that the words in Deuteronomy refer to a period in the future – that of the final conversion and restoration of Israel. But turn to Mark 10:13: “They brought young children to Him” – we know that, at least, there were infants among these children, for Luke uses the word infants – “that He should touch them: and His disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, He was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God.” Christ declares that the children of His people occupy substantially the same place in His new kingdom as they did in the Church of Israel – the same place in the new covenant as in the old.
What does Peter say in our text? Exhorting an assembly of Jews to accept Christ and submit to the ordinance of baptism in His name, he enforces the exhortation by telling them, in effect, that their children should hold the same place under the gospel as they had under the law: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost: for the promise is unto you, and to your children”. A few years later, Peter was reporting the angel’s words to Cornelius: “Who shall tell thee words, whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved” (Acts 11:14). The answer of Paul and Silas to the jailor of Philippi was – in circumstances where one might have thought the overwhelming importance of the man’s own case would have left no room for mentioning even his nearest and dearest – “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house”.
But most important of all is the only other passage I refer to here: “The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy” (1 Cor 7:14). Paul declares that the children of one Christian parent, the other remaining a heathen, were holy because of their connection with that believing parent. But what does he mean by holy? We know he cannot mean that they were all personally holy, regenerated by the Holy Ghost. But the least he can mean is that they were within the sacred enclosure of the Church and of the covenant; that, in some sense, they were separated, dedicated to God, members of the Church. It is a very strong expression to intimate, at least, that the children of one believing parent still occupied the same place in the gospel covenant as children had done under the law.
In order to avoid the force of this passage, an attempt has been made to interpret the word “unclean” as equivalent to illegitimate, and “holy” as meaning born in wedlock. But the heathenism even of both parents never made children born in wedlock illegitimate. And the words cannot be so translated. Undoubtedly the meaning is that the children of believers occupy the same place, substantially, in the gospel covenant as under the old.
There are two further important points here. One is that Paul assumes all this – he does not formally assert it – as something well known in the Church in Corinth: “but now”, as you know, “are they holy”. The other point is that, in writing to a Gentile Church, he uses the well-known phraseology of the ancient Church of Israel, “as if thereby designing to teach the Gentile Christians of Corinth that they had come into a Church of long standing, whose fundamental principles, amidst all changes of life and form, continued unchanged”.2 Paul speaks of “the mystery, that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the
2He is quoting his brother, David Brown, from The Restoration of the Jews.
same body”. It is Israel’s old olive tree (as he teaches in Romans 11) onto which the Gentile Church has been grafted, the Jewish branches having been broken off. The reference cannot be to the invisible Church, for no branch can ever be broken off it, but to the Church as an organised, visible community. This second position is that, as the infants of the Church were embraced within the covenant of old and occupied a special place in the covenant with Abraham, we have abundant evidence in Scripture that they still occupy substantially the same place in the covenant.
My third position is simple: there is a standing initiatory sign of the covenant under the gospel, even as there was under the law. Our Baptist friends will not dispute this. I might put it thus: as there were two great signs of the covenant in Israel, circumcision and the passover, so two have come in their place, baptism and the Supper. Undoubtedly the latter came in place of the passover. And it is evident that baptism occupies the place of circumcision, from Paul’s words: “In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; buried with Him in baptism” (Col 2:11-12).
Note that Paul has Judaising teachers in his eye who sought to persuade the Colossian believers that they could not be saved unless they submitted to circumcision. Paul reminds them that they had already received a nobler circumcision, “without hands”. But then the Judaizers were ready to answer that Abraham too enjoyed that nobler circumcision, and yet he had to submit to the outward one. Therefore Paul reminds the Colossians that, in so far as the Lord had seen fit still to unite the inward grace with an outward sign, they had that sign in the ordinance of baptism.
A fourth position will complete the argument. It follows that the initiatory sign of the covenant must now, as of old, belong to infants unless Christ has expressly forbidden administering the new sign to infants – which assuredly He has not. Or, to express it slightly differently, if no express statement on baptizing of infants can be found in the New Testament, yet, since children occupy the same place in the covenant now as they held of old, it follows unavoidably that the initiatory sign also belongs to them. Having the greater thing, they must be entitled to the lesser, especially under a dispensation of more extended privilege – unless Christ has expressly declared that baptism is not to be administered to them, or there is something in the nature of the new sign which makes it inapplicable to infants.
Here the first question is, Do we have any express statement in the New Testament about baptizing infants. Our argument does not depend on the answer, but it is of high importance. I think we have, to say the least, something very like an express statement of the baptizing of infants, in Acts 16:
14,15, “A certain woman named Lydia . . . heard us . . . And when she was baptized, and her household . . . .” Our friends say here: You assume that there were infants in her household. But we might say to our friends, You assume that there were none; for, if there were any, Paul certainly baptized them. You must assume the same about the Jailer’s household, he “was baptized, he and all his, straightway” (Acts 16:33). And Paul writes of a third household: “I baptized also the household of Stephanas” (1 Cor 1:15).
But the strength of the argument seems to me independent of that question of fact, which cannot be settled definitively. It seems to me to lie in the form of the statement, “She was baptized and her household.” Note the incidental way in which the baptism of the household is stated. After the narrative of Lydia’s conversion it was natural that her baptism should come in as a matter of course. But will any candid Baptist say that the conversion of a whole household is so matter-of-course, after the mother has been converted, that the historian might be supposed, on the sole footing of their separate conversions, to say, “She was baptized and her household”? I think not. To me there seems to be a clear reference to the old, unchanged principle of the children’s place in the covenant, and so there is an unchanged right to its initiatory sign. It seems to me the counterpart of those other expressions, “He shall tell thee words whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved”; “The promise is unto you, and to your children”; “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house”.
I would add three things here. First, supposing this to be the case, there was no need to mention specifically the baptism of the infants if there were infants in the house and they were baptized. The natural mode of expression was just what Luke uses here: “She was baptized, and her household”. Only assume that the administering of the sign to infants continued as under the law, and the comparative silence of the New Testament about their baptism will appear quite natural. Second, can our Baptist friends produce a single instance in the New Testament of anyone who, at his birth, was the child of Christian parents but was baptized as an adult after making a personal profession of faith? That nothing resembling this is found, in the whole period of apostolic history, is surely very like a virtual statement that the children of the Church’s members were all baptized in infancy. Third, had it been otherwise, how does it come to pass that the baptism of households is spoken of repeatedly in the New Testament, while we never hear of such a thing as the baptizing of households among our Baptist friends now?
But our argument is really quite independent of that. The position is that, supposing no statement of the baptism of infants can be found in the New Testament, yet, since infants still have the same place in the covenant as of
old, it follows that the initiatory sign must also belong to them, unless the Lord has positively excluded them from it. Our friends demand of us a New Testament statute for the baptizing of infants. But it is ours to demand of them a New Testament prohibition of their baptism – a repeal of the ancient law. No new statute was required to sanction their simply retaining what they had. Mere silence could only leave matters where they were before.
It required a new statute, of course, to change the sign from circumcision to baptism – which we have. But if the Lord intended to exclude children from the new sign, a further statute was required; and such we certainly do not have. The matter is analogous to the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week. The anti-Sabbatarian demands of us where in the New Testament it is commanded to “remember” the first day of the week “to keep it holy”. We answer that, in its whole substance, the Fourth Commandment remains the law of Christ, with only the circumstantial change of the particular day; for which change we have sufficient evidence in the New Testament.
The place in the covenant, which children still have, is by far the greater thing, and the sign the lesser, to which therefore they must much more be entitled. Further, those circumstantial differences between the old covenant and the new are all in the direction, not of restricting the grace of the covenant, but of expanding it! Christ did not come into the world to narrow the privileges of His people, but greatly to enlarge them. If Paul had refused to baptize children, how certainly would the Judaizing teachers have pleaded this as an argument of great weight in support of the continued obligation of circumcision in the Christian Church! But we read of no such argument.
Suppose some Jewish mother, who had received baptism at Peter’s hands on the Day of Pentecost, had soon afterwards taken her infant child to him for baptism, and he had told her: As a minister of Jesus Christ I can only know your child as a heathen, until he come to years of discretion and then comes to repentance and faith. Might she not have answered, I understood that the promise was to us, and to our children; and a year ago, when I brought the same little one to the Master, He took him up in His arms and put His hands on him and blessed him and said to His servants, “Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God”. Would the reply have been easy?
We have every reason to believe that it was God in the person of the Son who said to Abraham: “I will establish My covenant with thee, to be a God to thee, and to thy seed after thee”. Can anyone witness the same Son of God in our nature much displeased with His disciples for rebuking those Jewish parents, and easily believe that He intended to withdraw the initiatory
sign from those little ones to whom He there so lovingly granted a continued place, which is only confirmed by the sign?
Still, all that must give way, if it could be shown that the Lord has anywhere expressly prohibited the baptizing of infants. But neither has He done this in words or by making the new sign of baptism inapplicable to infants. What our brethren tell us about baptism being so often and expressly associated in Scripture with believing, and infants being incapable of faith, is no doubt quite true. But it is its own answer. Is everlasting life not still more frequently and expressly associated with believing? And infants are incapable of faith. But are they on that account incapable of everlasting life? Our friends will declare their confident persuasion that their infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved. How, since Scripture so expressly associates salvation with faith? They will answer, as we do, that this association presupposes a capacity of faith, which their dear departed children did not have. But they have thus met their own argument. The Scripture statements about baptism and faith apply only to those capable of faith – to adults only.
We may not close without solemnly recalling the words of Paul about circumcision in Romans 2:28,29, which may be, with a slight change, applied to baptism. We may say, He is not a Christian who is one outwardly; neither is that baptism (at least to any saving purpose), which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Christian, who is one inwardly; and baptism is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter.
Note also those words of John the Baptist, “Think not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father” – we have been baptized, we enjoy various outward privileges – “for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit, is hewn down and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but He that cometh after me is mightier than I . . . He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the garner, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
It is possible to be saved without baptism – where there is no wilful contempt of Christ’s authority. But it is not possible to be saved without the things which baptism signifies – without the blood of Jesus applied and the regeneration of the Holy Ghost. It is possible to be saved without baptism, because the ordinance is not necessary from anything in its own nature, but only because Christ appointed it. It is not possible to be saved without forgiveness and a new heart, which are indispensable from their very nature. It is too easy,
— it happens every day — to perish with baptism: to be baptized, and go to the Supper too, and perish miserably after all. Have you been born again? Have you been washed in the blood of the Lamb? If not, privileges can only increase your guilt and aggravate your doom? “Flee from the wrath to come.” “Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain lest thou be consumed.”
To my young friends I would say, now that you are no longer infants but able to understand me, your infant baptism can be of no use to you unless you make it your own by coming to Jesus and beginning to serve Him. I will remind you of the beautiful story in the chapter which speaks about Christ taking up the little children in His arms: “As He went out of Jericho . . . blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus sat by the highway side begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, Jesus Thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried the more a great deal, Thou Son of David have mercy on me. And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called. And they call the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, rise; He calleth thee. And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto Him, Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way.”
“Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near.” He calls you also, each of you, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me”. “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see!”
Christians know but little of that they should know; they know but little of that they might know; they know but little of that others know; they know but little of that they desire to know; they know but little of that they shall know when they shall come to know even as they are known. And yet these weak and imperfect glimpses that they have of God and heaven here are infallible pledges of that perfect knowledge and full prospect that they shall have of God and heaven hereafter.
Christians, you must remember that it is one thing for God to love you, and another thing for God to tell you that He loves you. Your happiness lies in the first, your comfort in the second.
Thomas Brooks