Infant Baptism
I believe in infant baptism; that is, the covenantal baptism of the children of professed believers within the church.
The whole of the "argument" relies upon the close connection in the understanding of circumcision in the Old Covenant and baptism in the New Covenant. Circumcision was the outward and external sign of the promise of the Old Covenant (a promise well summarized by the phrase "I will be your God and you will be my people.") The covenant people of God in the Old Covenant were marked with a sign, they were sealed with a marker of their covenant status, a sign so important that God called that sign itself "the covenant." The essence of that covenant promise is articulated in Gen. 17:1-9. The use of the outward sign to represent that covenant is so obviously described in the verses that follow, Gen. 17:10-14. The focus of that covenant promise was two-fold, the promise of the land and the promise of many descendants. Those two foci joined together became the blessing, "In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." (Gen. 12:3) Likewise, "Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations." (Gen. 17:4) Obviously, explicitly, in the Old Covenant, children of believers were given the sign of the covenant as a matter of duty and commandment.
Now, how does all that come into the life of God's people in the New Covenant? The text I find the most compelling in the connection between baptism and circumcision is Colossians 2:11-12. There is in that context a repetition of the phrase, "in Him." The reference, of course, is "in Christ." The first reference is verse 3, "in Him" or "in whom." Then verse 6, "so walk in Him." Verse 7 the phrase is again repeated, emphasizing our union with Christ. Verse 9, "In Him dwells all the fullness of the godhead..." Verse 10, "You are complete in Him." Then verse 11, "In Him you were circumcised." That's an amazing statement. Paul addresses Jewish Christians, and says to them in such rich Old Covenantal language, "You were circumcised in Christ." That's now their identity–not the physical, fleshly sign of the Old Covenant but the spiritual fulfillment of that sign. You were circumcised, you are marked and sealed as the covenant people of God, not by the cutting of the foreskin by a human priest but by your union with Christ. Paul gets explicit to be sure he is rightly understood–he is not talking about the circumcision performed by a man, but rather he calls it "the circumcision of Christ."
Then look at what Paul says in verse 12: "buried with Him in baptism." Actually, a participial phrase, "...by being buried with Him in baptism." So the argument goes, "You have been circumcised in Christ by being buried with Him in baptism." Thus, in the logic of the apostle, the covenant sign of baptism is replacing the covenant sign of circumcision. Whatever circumcision meant to the Old Covenant believer, baptism now means to the New Covenant believer. Grammatically, there could not be a more direct connection, "You were circumcised...by being baptized." Those words convince me that Paul was intentionally connecting the two, and teaching us of the meaning and significance of the New Covenant sacrament by using the example of the Old Covenant sacrament. He is not making a contrast or distinction between the two, but quite to the contrary, expounding them as equivalents in terms of what they represent.
Having said that, clearly the meaning and significance of the Old Covenant sign of the covenant was that the covenant promise was made "to you and your descendants." Repeatedly, with emphasis, the covenant comes in that form. Right from the outset, Gen. 17:7 "And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you." The promise of the covenant is made to you and to your children, a promised repeated just in the book of Genesis 28 times! For example, Gen. 26:3 "Dwell in this land, and I will be with you and bless you; for to you and your descendants I give all these lands, and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father. 4 "And I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven; I will give to your descendants all these lands; and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed."
To rightly understand, then, the significance of baptism vis-a-vis, infant baptism, this repeated, biblical idea of the covenant promise made to you and your children has to be well appreciated. I might then add, the New Covenant uses this same language with obvious references to the Old Covenant idea. The promise (of the New Covenant) is also to you and to your children! Consider, Acts 2:39 "For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call." That language is not incidental nor coincidental. It is an intentional reference to the covenantal principal, that the children of God's covenant people are included within the scope of his covenant promise. In the Old Covenant, that meant that "Israel" (i.e, the covenant people of God) included the children. The children were not categorized with "the heathen," they were not categorized with "the Gentiles," but they were part of Israel. They were not unclean (people outside Israel), but rather clean. They were included within the covenant people because they were recipients of the covenant promise. So it is with the children of the New Covenant people of God. They, too, are "clean," (1 Cor. 7:14). Your children are "holy," a clear reference to Old Covenant language in the context of the New Covenant. They are holy. They are set apart as members of the covenant community of God, just as the Israelite children were in the Old Covenant. Therefore, they are rightly to be recipients of the sign of the covenant, which is now baptism.
There is obvious biblical evidence for household baptisms, and one example in particular stands out in support of the idea that the children of believers, as recipients of the covenant promises of God, were baptized on the basis of their status as children and not on the basis of their own profession of faith. That example is the Philippian jailor, found at the end of Acts 16. The gospel is preached to this man, and the promise of the covenant (the promise of salvation) was proclaimed in the covenantal language of the Old Covenant, verse 31, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household." So what happened? Verse 33, "And immediately he and all his family were baptized." Look then at verse 34. They had a party, a celebration. They greatly rejoiced, "they" in the plural. With an adverb attached, "with his whole house." Literally, the Greek would read, "They rejoiced whole-housedly." And then comes the Greek word for "faith" or "belief." That word is in the singular. Again, a strict literal translation, "They rejoiced whole-housedly, he having believed in God." It is not, "They rejoiced...THEY having believed in God." It is "he", singular, who is identified as having believed. On that basis, the whole family is baptized.
Thus, I believe in the biblical duty of what I would call covenantal baptism, the baptism of the children of the covenant, those who are "holy", set apart as belonging to God's covenant people because their parents belong to God's covenant people. Very personally, when my children were born, they did not belong to "the world." They did not belong to "the heathen." They were not "unclean," but holy. They belonged to God as members of his covenant community, a membership made visible by their baptism into the membership of the body of Christ, the church. At that baptism, we as their parents claimed for them the covenant promise of God and we applied to them the sign of that covenant. The water of baptism did not save them (no more than my wedding ring makes me married), but it did mark them as belonging to God (just as my wedding ring marks me as belonging to my wife).
I do not believe in baptismal regeneration, nor do I believe there is any magical, or, for that matter, spiritual power in the water itself. It is not "holy water," but rather it is a sign of God's marvelous, wonderful, gracious and encouraging promise to me that he lays claim to those children with whom he blesses me. Thus, from infancy (as with Timothy), my children have received the Word of God. From infancy they have been taught to pray to their Father in heaven. From infancy they have taken their place within the body of Christ, with every expectation that they would, as they grew older, embrace the Lord Jesus Christ with the fullness of their age-specific ability and comprehension. At a certain point, we (as a family and as a church) required them to make a public profession of that faith (Romans 10:9), at which time they were invited by the Elders of the church to partake of the Lord's Supper. That public profession of faith we saw as the fulfillment of God's covenant promise to them which we had claimed for them upon their baptism, and we had anticipated it all of their lives.
Sadly, some covenant children rebel against their privileges of the covenant (just as they did in Old Covenant Israel), and they must be disciplined in the earnest zeal to bring them back, but overall, the hopeful expectation of Christian parents (accepting their responsibilities within the covenant to teach their children of the things of the Lord) is that the Lord will save their children. Again, I don't believe baptism is that salvation but rather the sign and seal of that promise God has made, a promise to me and to my children.