In
a recent post examining John 1:12-13 it has been proposed that John was positing “a qualitative difference between the constitutional makeup of the Old Covenant people of God...and the New Covenant people...”, in that “[God] has indicated through the pen of His inspired apostle that warrant for inclusion within His ‘covenant household’ (see Eph. 2:19) is predicated on faith and the new birth, no longer on natural descent.”
Thus averring the New Covenant revelation ceased the inclusion of infants, as natural descent
had been the ground of it, but was no more.
The author of these remarks, Dr. Bob Gonzales, in another post (#14) on this same thread, stated,
I agree that this text does not by itself forbid infant baptism. It does positively teach that legal warrant for membership in the New Covenant community is no longer predicated on one's blood ties to Abraham (v. 13) but on one's faith in Jesus Christ (v. 12). So it does provide positive warrant for believer baptism. Of course, the mere absence of a prohibition against infant baptism is not warrant for the practice according to the RPW.
The concept of “legal right” (from the Greek
exousia in John 1:12) plays large in Dr. Bob’s view:
The passage predicates the divine conferral of a legal covenantal status no longer on natural descent but on supernatural descent, the fruit and evidence of which is saving faith in Jesus Christ. (Post #57)
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The real question is one of divinely bestowed legal warrant (John 1:12). What the Credobaptist avers is that this demand for a credible profession of faith as the warrant for inclusion within God's New Covenant family is not a substantial continuation of the state of affairs under the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants with, of course, a few minor changes, like the switch from circumcision to baptism and from the Passover to the Lord's Supper. It is, rather, a new state of affairs from a redemptive-historical standpoint. Hence, the church and her leadership is no longer warranted by God to include physical seed in the covenant by virtue of mere blood-ties to believing parents. To those who receive Christ and to those alone does God grant de jure the privilege of New Covenant member status. [All emphases BG’s] (Ibid.)
Before I begin my comments I would like to show two more statements by Dr. Bob:
[W]hat once characterized only a remnant within God's Old Covenant family will now be the rule characterizing the members of the New Covenant family.
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I differ somewhat with Paedobaptists, however, in my explanation for the presence of non-believers in the New Covenant community. I hold that non-believers may be members of the New Covenant community de facto but not de jure. That is, they have no warrant to be in the covenant family because the spiritual promises of the New Covenant do not belong to them. Once their true colors show (via apostasy, heretical teaching, scandalous sin, etc.), they should be removed. With regard to infants, since they are unable to provide any credible evidence of a profession of faith in Christ, which is elsewhere in Scripture represented as a sign of regeneration and a prerequisite for baptism, I do not believe I have the warrant to grant them entrance into the New Covenant community though they would have had warrant for entrance into the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenant communities. (Post #83)
I appreciate Dr. Bob’s well-thought-out and irenic presentation of the believers-only-baptism position.
What I would like to start with is a look at the status of “God’s Old Covenant family”. Dr. Bob has stated that there is
a qualitative difference between the constitutional makeup of the Old Covenant people of God...and the New Covenant people...”, in that “[God] has indicated through the pen of His inspired apostle that warrant for inclusion within His ‘covenant household’ (see Eph. 2:19) is predicated on faith and the new birth, no longer on natural descent.
And,
The passage predicates the divine conferral of a legal covenantal status no longer on natural descent but on supernatural descent, the fruit and evidence of which is saving faith in Jesus Christ....the church and her leadership is no longer warranted by God to include physical seed in the covenant by virtue of mere blood-ties to believing parents. [Emphasis BG’s] (Post #57)
I remark that it was
never the case that God included “physical seed in the covenant by virtue of
mere blood-ties to believing parents”! [my emphasis –SMR]
Looking back on Abraham and his seed, Paul in Romans 4:12 says of Abraham that he was
...the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised. [emphasis mine –SMR] (AV – all Scripture quotes are from the AV unless otherwise noted)
NASB: “…who are not only of the circumcision, but who also follow the steps of the faith of our father Abraham...”
ESV: “...who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith...”
Paul in Romans 9:6 and 8 famously says,
For they are not all Israel who are of Israel....That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.
And again, in Romans 2:28 and 29,
For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:
But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.
The significance of these sayings is that
those physical descendants of Abraham who were not believers were not counted as “the seed”, nor were they counted as Israel, or as Jews! Concerning those who live as breakers of the law, their “circumcision is made uncircumcision.” (Ro 2:25)
In Jeremiah 9:25 and 26 it is written,
Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will punish all them which are circumcised with the uncircumcised;
Egypt, and Judah, and Edom, and the children of Ammon, and Moab, and all that are in the utmost corners, that dwell in the wilderness: for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart.
In the
uncircumcised-in-heart house of Israel, which God did not recognize as His people, there remained a believing and faithful remnant, which was Israel indeed.
Scripture is clear that those who were unbelieving, who were without faith, though they were the seed of Abraham after the flesh, were not the seed.
So when I see it asserted that warrant for membership in New Covenant Israel is no longer based on blood ties of natural descent as per the old dispensation, but strictly on faith in Christ and the new birth, I must object and answer that inclusion into God’s house has always been by faith, and not natural descent. Those who were but Abraham’s seed after the flesh were not included in His covenant household, though they may have appeared to be.
Those who were not of faith had neither
de facto (as a matter of fact) nor
de jure (as a matter of right) membership in the Old Covenant house of God. When the LORD spoke through Moses saying to the multitude of Israel, “Ye are the children of the Lord your God....For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth” (Deut 14:1, 2), He was not addressing those whose father was the devil, who were the reprobate, though they were among the house of Israel. What they had was
an appearance of being the
tekna Theou (children of God), but in fact rotten grapes on the vine of Israel. This is the purport of the apostle Paul’s making distinction between true and false Jews, being Israel or merely
of Israel.
Will it be said that they were
de facto members by virtue of their presence in the camp? And that they had the right to enter the temple to worship? They were imposters, known to God, and were considered by Him uncircumcised, as it is written: “For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh” (Ro 2:28), and, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord” (Prov 15:8), even his thoughts and prayer are abomination! (Prov 15:26, 28:9). No, their presence in the camp, and names on the scrolls of their tribes, are as vessels in a great house, some for use unto honor and some unto dishonor (2 Tim 2:20), some unto mercy, and some unto wrath, these latter “endured [by God] with much longsuffering” (Rom 9:22, 23). Just as the Jewish state of our day is an imposter “Israel”, so these reprobates were imposter Israelites. The Israel of God was holy.
The unbelievers within the house of Israel had membership neither by right nor by fact. They were tares among the wheat, or to switch metaphors, but chaff. So things did not change regarding membership in the New Covenant house of Israel. It was the same. Only those of faith are counted as the seed.
Note that the house of God in the New Covenant is the house of Israel, our king sitting on the throne of David. In Amos 9:11–15 the LORD speaks through the prophet concerning the latter days,
In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old:
That they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which are called by my name, saith the LORD that doeth this. (verses 11, 12)
In the remaining three verses there appear to be prophecies concerning material blessings and promise pertaining to the land, but in Acts 15:13 ff. where James is addressing the Jerusalem council, we see him applying the Amos passage to the
spiritual blessings given the New Covenant house of Israel and the Gentiles which had been included into it. This hermeneutic principle shows that the material blessings promised to Israel under the Old Covenant were typical of the spiritual blessings awaiting the New Covenant house of Israel.
The material blessings, and the land promises, never were realized by Old Testament Israel – save for those periods of prosperity under David and Solomon, which themselves were types of the blessings to be received in the kingdom of David’s greater Son – and we are not to say that God’s promises failed, but that they were pictures, shadows, of the spiritual blessings promised Abraham. The church of God in the Old Covenant (Acts 7:38) was essentially the same as the church in the New, and all the promises were spiritual, painted in temporal garb.
Lest anyone object to the OT people of God being called the church (
ekklesia), which is easier, to call old Israel the church, or to call the new church Israel? They are one body, one people, saved the same way – regenerated, justified by faith, through grace; in Galatians 3 it shows old Israel as a child under tutors, and then as a man after being renewed in faith in Christ – he is one person. When Paul speaks, he speaks as a bridge between the two ages of Israel: “...the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ...after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster” (vv, 24, 25).
When Peter was preaching on Solomon’s Porch (Acts 3), reiterating Moses’ warning in Deuteronomy 18:19, that whoever did not heed the Prophet (Messiah) would “be destroyed from among the people”, at that moment God revealed His judgment: as with a great cleaver cutting gristle from meat, He cut off from the people of Israel all those who in wicked unbelief denied Christ. Israel was now constituted of those who bowed the knee to the resurrected king, be they Jew or Gentile.
This is why Paul can use the terminology he does in Ephesians, telling the Gentiles that in time past they were “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel”, but now, having cleaved to Christ, they “are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God...” (Eph 2:12, 19). And again, in Hebrews 3, he says that it is one house, Moses being a servant in it, but Christ the Son and builder – “whose house we are” (Heb 3:2–6).
To sum (for the moment): God’s Israel in the Old Covenant was spiritual, with the promises of material and land blessings pictures of the spiritual blessings that would be theirs in Messiah.
We in Israel today “circumcise” our children according to the command given our father Abraham. The sacraments of baptism and circumcision “are God’s word to his elect by which God signifies and seals the promises of his covenant....[they are] instituted by God to be added to the preaching as signs and seals of the truth of the gospel.” *
Is not the promise of the Old Covenant the same as that of the New? Listen:
And 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. (Deut 30:6)
In the Israel of God we rejoice in this word even today, in 2008.
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* From Herman Hanko's
We And Our Children: The Reformed Doctrine of Infant Baptism (RFPA 2004), p. 54.