Should Infants be Baptized?

1. 0:00Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 27 Does this outward washing with water itself wash away sins?
2. 0:16No, only Jesus Christ's blood and the Holy Spirit cleanse us from all sins.
3. 0:23Why then does the Holy Spirit call baptism the water of rebirth and the washing away of sins?
4. 0:29God has good reason for these words.
5. 0:32To begin with, he wants to teach us that the blood and spirit of Christ take away our sins just as water removes dirt from the body.
6. 0:40But more importantly, he wants to assure us, by this divine pledge and sign, that we are as truly washed of our sins spiritually as our bodies are washed with water physically.
7. 0:55Should infants also be baptized?
8. 0:57Yes, infants as as adults are included in God's covenant and people and they no less than adults are promised deliverance from sin through Christ's blood and the Holy
9. 1:10Spirit who works faith therefore by baptism the sign of the covenant they too should be incorporated into the Christian church and distinguished from the
10. 1:20of unbelievers. This was done in the Old Testament by circumcision, which was replaced in the New Testament by baptism. Previously in Lord’s Day 26, we learn what it is that baptism is signifying
11. 1:36and sealing, how Christ reminds and assures us that just as walking, water washes dirt from the body, so too the blood of Christ cleanses us from our sins.
12. 1:45So Lord’s Day 27 then anticipates this objection, and that is, are we saying that the waters physically are washing away the sins of our soul? We're saying no. We're not believing that the
13. 1:59water works in a magical way to wash away our sins. We're saying that it's the blood of Christ alone, as the scriptures so clearly proclaim, it's the blood of
14. 2:10Christ alone that cleanses us from our sins. So it's not a magical washing, but there is this mystical sense in which God speaks so strongly that water is signifying and sealing what Christ does inwardly.
15. 2:24So in a sacrament, there are always two things, an outward sign and an inward reality.
16. 2:29So the waters of baptism are the outward sign and the inward reality is the spirit cleansing us of our sins, which only happens by grace through faith.
17. 2:39in the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
18. 2:42Where we see this most clearly is in 1 Peter 3:21.
19. 2:47And this is one of those passages that is a bit disputed and wrangled over in the church because of the strong language that's used.
20. 2:54Let me read it and work it out a little bit.
21. 2:57"Baptism, which corresponds to this, now says, So just as Noah and his family are brought through the floodwaters of judgment and brought to safely on the other side as God has shut the door behind them, so too
22. 3:25baptism is corresponding to this wonderful sign of God cleansing us from our sins by the sacrificial death of Christ and through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, then we might ask
23. 3:39Question 73: Why does the Holy Spirit call baptism the waters of rebirth?
24. 3:44And notice that our catechism is putting great emphasis on God's goodness and His wisdom.
25. 3:51God has good reason for this because He wants to teach us as His people that the blood of Christ and the Spirit of Christ take away our sins just as we'll
26. 3:59water removes dirt from the body. So you can be assured that this covenant sign is lifting your eyes from yourself unto your holy God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that he's given his very own Son for your sake.
27. 4:13Now we need to ask then, who are the recipients of this sign? Who should receive the holy of baptism and that's where question 74 goes next asking should our infants also
28. 4:25be baptized and the answer is yes because infants as well as adults are included in God's covenant and his people and we've seen this all throughout redemptive history where God ordinarily works through families and
29. 4:39He calls people to himself and he says the promise is for you and for your children after you.
30. 4:46So he gives this promise to Abraham, to the patriarchs, and that promise continues to be repeated through the old covenant where God is giving the covenant of grace to his
31. 4:54people and saying these promises are also for your children, for all that God has revealed is for us and for our children as Deuteronomy 29:29 says. In the New
32. 5:05Covenant you might wonder does this promise have a different substance? Does it change? And when Peter stands up at Pentecost and he preaches the gospel, what
33. 5:15does he say at the end of that sermon but that the promise is for you and for your your children and for all who are far off.
34. 5:22So when Peter has an opportunity to change the substance of this promise, what he does is he quotes the language of God in prior covenants where God has promised to give this
35. 5:33covenant sign to the believers and also to their children.
36. 5:392:11-13, we see this continuity between circumcision and baptism. Really what it is is that there is an outward sign that points to an inward reality, a heavenly
37. 5:54reality. Both the signs that are outward, the Old Covenant and New Covenant, they point to the same inward reality. We can see this in Deuteronomy 10 and Deuteronomy 30 where
38. 6:04God tells the Israelites in Deuteronomy 10 to circumcise your hearts. And then in Deuteronomy 30 he says, "I will circumcise your hearts." In other words,
39. 6:13circumcision always pointed to an inward reality and that is the cleansing of the sins of God's people and that's exactly how we speak of baptism and so we see that
40. 6:24continuity circumcision is pointing forward to the cutting off of Christ as he sheds his blood and baptism is looking back to the blood of Christ being
41. 6:34shed for us and so there are differences in each sign however they have the same and that is Christ washing us of our sins.
42. 6:43A couple of passages that we can read just to maybe anticipate some objections.
43. 6:49Many would object to say, we have no instance in the New Testament where we see infants baptized.
44. 6:56How can we be sure that the scriptures teach us, only make much of what God commands.
45. 7:03And we can grant that there is no one chapter or verse that we can point to and say, "This is where it says to baptize your infants."
46. 7:11However, the weight of the paradigm, we see the old covenant just flowing into the new and the promise is never rescinded.
47. 7:19While we see these household baptisms with Cornelius and Lydia and her household, can we be sure there are infants there?
48. 7:27Well, maybe not, but what we can be sure of is that there's infants in the nation of Israel when they're brought through the waters of judgment in the Red Sea.
49. 7:35"For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all Paul is convinced that this movement through the Red Sea is a baptism into Moses. And so there we
50. 8:04see the language of baptism being used in the Old Covenant and that same sign that God would redeem us from sin, death, and hell, which is signified in the nation of Egypt and Pharaoh as the people are in
51. 8:19slavery and they're set free. That is showing us being set free from our sins.
52. 8:25And we see that same promise given to the Israelites that comes to fuller fulfillment in Christ and then given to his people.
53. 8:33Therefore, we should give this covenant sign to our children as God has always promised.
54. 8:39that the promise is for you and for your children and therefore we should not withhold this sign because they are set apart from the world as Paul says in 1
55. 8:48Corinthians 7 that they are holy that means they are consecrated they are set apart so we ought not withhold this sign from them but rather give them the sign and continue to call
56. 8:59them to faith to believe in the promises of the sign, which is that God forgives us our sins for the sake of Christ. So we can be reminded and we can be assured that as water cleanses the body,
57. 9:11so too it's the blood of Christ that washes us of our sins. Let us take hope in Christ and Him alone.
58. 9:19Thank you.

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