In the Scriptures there are the covenants of promises (plural) in the Old Testament and the covenant of salvation (singular) in the New Testament, breaking thing down neatly as Jesus is promised and Jesus arrives. The covenants of promise prepared His people to accept and understand His appearance, while the New Covenant is the fulfillment, the salvation that was spoken of. Take as proof Jeremiah 31:31-34 which says:
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord:
[1] I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.
[2] And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
[3] And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.
[4] For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
In the Old Testament God promises to Jeremiah that a New Covenant is coming, and that unlike the Old Covenant He made with them at Sinai which the people subsequently broke, their unfaithfulness will be replaced with perfect faithfulness this time around. Previously God’s people were born into a breakable Old Covenant and automatically received the sign of circumcision to show it, but now in the unbreakable New Covenant God’s people enter by faith and receive the mark of baptism to evidence their covenant participation. The meaning of baptism then is attached to the moment you’re born again and not the moment you exit your mother’s womb, it represents a once-for-all forgiveness of sin brought on by identifying with Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection by faith. As a syllogism it looks like this:
P1: Only those who are in the New Covenant should receive baptism.
P2: Those in the New Covenant have received forgiveness by faith.
C: Only those who have received forgiveness by faith should receive baptism.
Premise one is granted by the paedo-baptists, so we don’t need to defend it. Premise two is carrying the weight of the argument, so that’s what we need to convincingly establish if we want to win the conclusion. But the beautiful part about this argument is that we can simply appeal to the text of Jeremiah and have the Scriptures make the case for us. Look above, starting at the sentence denoted by [4]. It’s an explicit, straightforward promise about how God will forgive the iniquity of those within the covenant. The text of Scripture literally becomes the second premise of the argument—taking it beyond the ability of the paedo-baptist to question.
/Aside:
That’s pretty open and shut, but I think it’s good to walk backwards through the rest of it anyway to show how it’s directly applicable to buttressing the second premise.
Promise [3] is speaking regeneration, a work of grace exclusive to the elect, for regeneration is by definition a permanent change of the heart brought on by the Holy Spirit which cannot be reversed. This helps flesh out our understanding of baptism a little better, because it tells us that baptism is connected to God’s people being born again into a living hope by the renewal of their wills. It indicates that the regenerate (those who have their affections fixed to serving God forever) should receive the sign of baptism. And how do we know who the regenerate are? Because they bear fruits which are in keeping with repentance. Because they confess Christ and walk with Him by faith.
Promise [2] concerns what the New Testament calls adoption—although it’s couched in Old Covenant terminology because until Christ the Fatherhood of God is not fully revealed. This promise is the outworking of forgiveness found in promise four; it’s the direct result of receiving the pronouncement of ‘not guilty’ from God, and it teaches us that at the moment of faith the elect are not only forgiven but reconciled, and drawn into a right relationship with the Father. As it says in Rev 21:7, “He that overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.” It teaches us that baptism is for those who have been adopted into God’s family by faith.
Finally, promise [1] regards our sanctification which is accomplished by the Holy Spirit living within us. After we have been justified, adopted, and regenerated we are made a fit place to live for God. By faith we abide in Him and walk willingly with Him in joyful obedience. So baptism is for those who have the Holy Spirit, as demonstrated by Cornelius in Acts 11.
These four promises show that in the New Covenant God is going to cause His chosen ones to obey His law, be born again, become His people, and be forgiven of their sins. And because we know that these are all closely tied to faith, it must be the case that the entirety of the New Covenant is reserved for, and concerns, the faithful. That’s what baptism is about.
/End Aside
In sum, those who are in the New Covenant by faith have the forgiveness of sin, therefore, those who have the forgiveness of sin should be baptized. When paired with the Inductive Argument these two arguments together make a strong case that baptism is not to be administered to infants, but should be reserved only for confessors.
Now for the fourth and final argument for credo-baptism, the idea that baptism is for adults in the Old Testament and not for infants, and that the New Testament should reflect that.
Next: the Continuity of Baptism Argument for Credo-Baptism
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