sprinkling

Great Commission Baptism and Infant Baptism Part 1

“Buried unto death in Christ, rise again to walk in newness of life.” – my pastor when I was baptized thirty-four years ago at the age of thirty-one.

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And, lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” – Jesus Christ giving the Great Commission to His church in Matthew 28:19-20.

THE BEAUTIFUL PLAN – THE GREAT COMMISSION (MATTHEW 28:19-20)

Almost four years ago, on December 20, 2021, I had posted an article (Post #471) presenting the beautiful picture given to us by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 28:19-20. In these two short verses, known as the Great Commission, Jesus instructs His church of their responsibilities in making disciples and thus in building His church to the end of the age. The picture is simple and elegant. First, the church is to proclaim the gospel “in Jesus’ name to all the nations” (Luke 24:47), “even to the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Those who respond in repentance and faith are to be publicly baptized as a testimony of their faith and are then to join themselves to a local church to be taught all that Jesus commanded. And this same pattern of proclamation-unto-faith and then baptizing and then training in righteousness is to continue through the church until the Lord returns. This is the basic blueprint for how Jesus is going to build His church (Matt. 16:18). The purpose of Post #471 was to reveal that blueprint and then display the beauty of Jesus’ disciple-making plan in operation in a local church. (It might be helpful to read that post before reading this one.)

BAPTISM OF DISCIPLES AT THE CENTER

At the very center of this Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20), this divine plan for making disciples of all the nations, is the command to baptize disciples. The risen Lord Jesus, to whom has been given all authority in heaven and on earth (28:18), commands His church to baptize disciples. This article will not take the time to explain the reason that Jesus commanded the baptism of disciples, but we will insist on the fact that Jesus commanded the baptism of disciples. The Lord of the church has told us to baptize (i.e., immerse) those who confess Jesus as Lord and our obedience to Jesus requires that we do so.

A DISTORTED APPROACH

Despite the unambiguous command in the Great Commission to immerse disciples, there are many in the Christian church who do not obey the Lord’s command regarding baptism but instead practice a man-made alternative. In this article (Post #719), I will critique one of these “other plans,” namely paedobaptism, which is more commonly known as infant baptism. We will see that ignoring the beautiful pattern that Jesus gave to His church in the Great Commission distorts the entire task of disciple-making. We will also see that an erroneous practice of baptism produces much confusion about salvation.

PAEDOBAPTISM (INFANT BAPTISM)

First, we consider the unbiblical way in which infant baptism (IB) is practiced. (NOTE: I will use the abbreviation “IB” when referring to infant baptism.) As we noted in Post #471, IB is a foundational practice in all Catholic churches and all Protestant denominations that descend from the Catholic Church. In this practice of IB, a minister of the church sprinkles a little bit of water on the head of an infant (or young child) being presented by its parents. After invoking the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the minister declares that the passive, unaware, and sometimes unconscious infant has now been “baptized” and is therefore a member of the church. All of this ceremony is done without the slightest participation by the infant and is done without any biblical warrant.

Now, regardless of how this practice of IB is justified by the church (and the ways of justifying the practice of IB vary widely between denominations and even within the same tradition or denomination), it should be observed that violence has been done to the Great Commission. The pattern for making disciples that Jesus gave His church in Matthew 28:19-20 was “Go and evangelize unto faith and salvation” followed by baptism followed by teaching by the church. But the pattern for the church that practices IB begins with something they call “baptism” and ignores or overlooks the critical starting point of the faith and salvation of the disciple. Having thus ignored Jesus’ prescribed pattern for making disciples (Matthew 28:19-20) and invented their own (Romans 10:3), the church is now also on their own for the other steps in the disciple-making process.

QUESTIONS RAISED BY IB IN THE CONTEXT OF MATTHEW 28:19

In Matthew 28:19, the risen Lord Jesus unambiguously commanded the baptism of disciples. But this command provokes significant questions for the church that “baptizes” (sprinkles) infants. For example, since Matthew 28:19 is explicitly about the baptism of disciples, we should ask the IB church, “Is the infant being presented for ‘baptism’ a disciple?” For if the infant is not a disciple, then, according to Matthew 28:19, this sprinkling-as-baptism ceremony is meaningless, for this is a ceremony which only baptizes disciples. But if, on the other hand, the infant is deemed to be a disciple by the IB church and is therefore eligible for “baptism” (sprinkling), we must ask, “How and when did they become a disciple?” Were they born as a disciple? If they were not born as a disciple, then the infant must have become a disciple between birth and their sprinkling ceremony, because, as we have already seen, Matthew 28:19 is only for the baptizing of disciples. What occurred between the infant’s birth and his sprinkling ceremony that changed him from not-disciple to disciple? There are other questions which could be mentioned here, but the main point is that the practice of IB raises many questions.

But as interesting as these questions are, of far greater significance are questions about how IB relates to salvation. In His Great Commission in Matthew 28:19-20, we have already seen Jesus presenting the church with her task which begins with the church going (“Go, therefore!”) and proclaiming the gospel message so that some will call upon the name of the Lord and be saved (Romans 10:13-15). Thus, Jesus begins with salvation. Then those who “call upon the Lord” are the disciples who are baptized, and those disciples are then taught obedience in the context of the church. And the church is to be engaged in this task until the end of the age. The Lord’s plan is simple and clear: proclamation results in salvation which is celebrated in baptism which is then worked out with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12-13) in the local church. Go-Baptize-Teach-Repeat. By this means the Lord Jesus will build His church (Matthew 16:18).

Next time we will see how infant baptism confuses and distorts the New Testament’s clear teaching on salvation as contained in the Great Commission.

Soli Deo gloria            rmb                 10/10/2025                 post #719

Examining “the sign of the covenant” (Genesis 17:11)

SUMMARY. Today’s article takes a look at the phrase “the sign of the covenant” that appears in Genesis 17:11, but that also factors prominently in the Presbyterian practice of Paedobaptism. We will examine the phrase in its context of Genesis 17:11 and compare that with the use of the same phrase when Presbyterians (and probably others) sprinkle water on the head of infants.

The most common use of “the sign of the covenant” is not in the exegesis of Genesis 17:11 but is instead in the words used by Presbyterians as the pastor of the church sprinkles water on the head of an infant (or small child, and so throughout the article). In this ritual, called Paedobaptism or infant baptism, the infant child of a professing believer is said to receive “the sign of the covenant” when they are sprinkled with water.

Now, while this practice has gone on for many centuries, first in the Roman Catholic church and then in most of the Protestant churches of the Reformation and beyond, there are difficulties in explaining or justifying this practice from the Bible. There are also difficulties in showing that “the sign of the covenant” commanded in Genesis 17:11 is analogous to “the sign of the covenant” given in the sprinkling of infants with water. This article is going to examine some of those difficulties.

NO EXAMPLE IN THE BIBLE

The first difficulty is that there is no example anywhere in the Bible, in Old Testament or New, of any infant ever being sprinkled with water. Thus, the Presbyterians have no biblical basis whatsoever for assigning any significance to sprinkling water on the head of an infant. Whatever meaning is assigned to the sprinkling is entirely arbitrary. In fact, the ritual of sprinkling an infant and the assigned meaning of that ritual are simply invented with no reference to the Bible. (As an aside, the question should be asked, “How can you maintain ‘sola Scriptura’ and, at the same time, prominently practice a ritual that is absent from the Scriptures?”) In summary of this point, then, the ritual of sprinkling water on the head of an infant is extrabiblical and the meaning of this ritual is arbitrarily invented.

AN ANALOGY BETWEEN CIRCUMCISION AND SPRINKLING INFANTS ?

Next, we know that the phrase “sign of the covenant” appears four times in Scripture. Three of those appearances are in Genesis 9 with the covenant with Noah. The fourth, and most important, appearance of this phrase is in Genesis 17:11, and this is the one that gets the most attention, because this use of the phrase is alleged to hold the key to the Presbyterian practice of Paedobaptism. Let’s try to follow this.

In Genesis 17:2-8, God declares to Abraham what He is going to do for Abraham under this covenant. Since God is the one who declares these things, we know that they will certainly come to pass.

In Genesis 17:9-14, the pronouns change from I (God) to you (Abraham). In these verses, God tells Abraham what his responsibilities are under this covenant. Every male among Abraham’s descendants (seed) must be circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin (17:10-11). Further, males are to be circumcised when they are eight days old (17:12). This is “the sign of the covenant” between God and Abraham, and it is obligatory. Any male who is not circumcised has broken God’s covenant and shall be cut off from his people (17:14).

Thus, the terms of the Abrahamic covenant are clearly established. All male descendants of Abraham are obligated to be circumcised in the flesh of their foreskin as “the sign of the covenant” (17:11).

So far, so good. But now the real work begins, because the Presbyterian needs to show that, as circumcision is “the sign of the covenant” between God and Abraham in Genesis 17, so sprinkling water on the head of an infant is the sign of the new covenant which Christ established by His death on the cross (Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20).

There are difficulties presented by the task of showing this analogy. Here are a few.

  • Already mentioned is the fact that sprinkling infants with water is absent from all of Scripture. It is therefore difficult to draw an analogy between circumcision, which does exist in Scripture, and the sprinkling of infants, which does not.
  • The phrase “the sign of the covenant” does not appear in any verse of Scripture after Genesis 17:11, where male circumcision is explicitly stated to be the sign of the Abrahamic covenant. It is therefore difficult to connect circumcision with anything in the New Testament, since nowhere in the New Testament can we find a corresponding sign of the covenant.
  • If, despite the fact that there is no sprinkling of infants anywhere in the Bible and despite the fact that there is no identified “sign of the covenant” in the New Testament, we nevertheless made the arbitrary assumption that male circumcision in the flesh of the foreskin on the eighth day was analogous to sprinkling water on the head of an infant, we would need to address the fact that these two signs of the covenant are vastly different in their forms. As seen below, this presents a difficulty, namely, if these are, in fact, analogous, why are they so dissimilar?
circumcisionsprinkling on head
males onlymale and female
on the eighth dayno specific time
cutting with a knifesprinkling with water
“sign of covenant” explicit“sign of covenant” assigned
obligatoryoptional
permanent sign in the fleshtransient sign leaves no trace
biblically commandednot in the Bible
Comparing circumcision and sprinkling
  • The final difficulty in showing that these two rituals are analogous to one another consists in looking at their purposes. We would assume that, if these practices are analogous to one another, then their purposes would provide clues of this analogy. In Genesis 17, the purpose of circumcision is clearly given: to mark the seed of Abraham by a permanent physical sign. But where do we go to find the purpose of sprinkling water on the head of an infant? Since this ritual does not appear in Scripture, we have no way of knowing its God-ordained purpose. In fact, since this sprinkling of infants with water does not appear in the word of God, we conclude there is no God-ordained purpose to this practice. Whatever purpose there is to this ritual must be arbitrarily assigned by man.

So far in this article we have examined the concept of “the sign of the covenant” and have encountered significant difficulties in trying to see how the phrase as used in Genesis 17:11 has any resemblance or connection to the words used by Presbyterians as they sprinkle infants. The magnitude of the difficulties leads us to conclude that there is, in fact, no connection between these two uses of the phrase “sign of the covenant” and that Presbyterians use the phrase when sprinkling infants for reasons that are based on other than exegetical concerns.

SDG                 rmb                 3/2/2022                     #494