I have been paedo now for like 3 months and was convinced based on all the NT evidence and the so close resemblance of circumcision, but like so many others i was looking at the sign instead of why a covenant sign was given in the first place. Now I realize thee reason. I know it has been obvious to the rest of you but it just hit me tonight(it probably took me this long since I came out of dispensationalism)

It is that we are Abraham's children so obviously we continue in administering the sign as it was commanded of Abraham!!!!

a sign of an everlasting covenant of promise made of God being the God to you and your children.....
and then both circumcision and baptism fit with Romans 2:25-28 wooooo!!!!

Oh and by the way, I am not trying to teach you guys anything, you already knew this, I just can't believe I was that slow, I must have read that point several times but it just never hit me lol.

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Philipians1:29(KJV) For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake;

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do you guys think that since faith is circumcision of the heart to us that in a way its kind of like Abraham is circumcising us, since he was the reciever of the promise? or is that tooo far?

Wouldn't go that far, personally. Congrats on the lightbulb-moment, though!

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The man who is disposed to think of his sin as a great calamity, rather than as a heinous crime, is not likely either to reverence God or to respect His law. - John Kennedy, 1873
Meg
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Member, Intown Presbyterian Church,PCA, Portland, OR

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I agree with Meg. Abraham is given the honor of being designated the father of the faithful but, even as as the administrator of circumcision to his own he was acting as a "minister" of the Covenant of Grace. He did not impart faith or infuse grace into his household but announced the promise of God to save and instructed his household that the cutting of the flesh signified God's promise to save those who had faith.

Being sons of Abraham has two senses even as being in Israel has two senses in Romans 9. In fact, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob form a Covenantal unit in one sense so that the family itself represents the personal nature of the CoG to save a household of faith. There is both the sense of being externally united to this household and having the same promises announced that are received with faith and then there is the sense of really being sons of Abraham (or of Israel as it were) for those that actually possess Christ through grace by faith.

When we are baptized, we are brought into the household of faith - regardless of ours or others knowledge of our real possession of faith (since God only knows). The point is, however, that the children in the household are taught the house rules and that this house trusts in the Lord and we're expected to be like our fathers who trusted the Lord alone and did not consider friendship with this world a thing to be grasped. Hebrews 11 is a picture of the inside of that household with a panorama of pictures as it were that remind us what faith in that house is like and how it lays hold of Christ.

Hence, as in Romans 4, we are able to connect our baptism and the promises therein all the way back to believing Abraham and see how our father believed that life could come from death. We see what faith in Christ produces. We see how it clings in the most trying of circumstances. We see how powerfully the sign not only encourages but seals true believers against all the storms and trials of this world.

I'm not sure how adequately I phrased it but this is my appreciation for Abraham as my father. I'm not saved by him but, just like my son is looking to me and how I turn to Christ through thick and thin, I look down a vast hallway of my fathers and, especially, to my father Abraham.

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Rich
PCA, Northern VA
Student, New Geneva Theological Seminary

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well said