To a Thousand Generations: Infant Baptism—Covenant Mercy to the Children of God

Top Highlights

“Unlike many modern believers, they knew their Old Testaments. If anyone at that time had seriously maintained this meant the children of believers were now to be excluded unless they came into the covenant on their own as a separate individual, this would have been, in the first century, an incomprehensible doctrine.” (Page 15)

“And as the history of the church revealed in Acts shows, their central debate was over whether or not the Gentiles had to include their children in the New Covenant by means of circumcision—their debate was not whether the Jewish Christians had to start excluding their children.” (Page 15)

“Water baptism does not regenerate, it does not save, and it does not cleanse.” (Page 12)

“It is important to reiterate that water baptism is not a picture of the believer’s own personal death, burial and resurrection. It is a sign of the believer’s union with and in the death, burial, and resurrection of Another.” (Page 52)

“Just as circumcision was a sign and seal of the Christ who was to come, so baptism is a sign and seal of the Christ who came. Circumcision looked forward in history, and Christian baptism looks back in history, but they both testify to the same Christ, the same Lord of the Covenant. Neither circumcision nor baptism primarily testifies concerning the inward state of the individual who bears the sign and seal; they testify of Christ.” (Page 49)