All Articles For A Reformed Response to the Reformed Baptist View of Baptism and the Covenant

Rev. Laning is pastor of Hope Protestant Reformed Church in Walker, Michigan. Previous article in this series: March 1, 2007, p. 253. The Reformed Baptists say that infants were circumcised in the old dispensation because the old covenant included a promise of earthly blessings of common grace to all of them head for head. But this, we have pointed out, was not the case. There were no earthly blessings of common grace to anyone. There were only heavenly blessings of saving grace, and these came only to the elect children. So why were they all circumcised, if they did not...

Rev. Laning is pastor of Hope Protestant Reformed Church in Walker, Michigan. That circumcision is the Old Testament counterpart of Christian baptism some Reformed Baptists will acknowledge. The two signs, they will admit, seal the same covenant promise concerning salvation from sin through the blood of Jesus Christ. But they then say that there was another covenant promise that came only to Israel, and that does not come also to the church today. This, they say, was a promise of blessings that were “earthly, material and temporal.” In other words, they teach that Israel had a promise of both material...