Circumcision was the sign of the covenant first introduced in Genesis 17

“This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you” (vv. 10-11).

As strongly as God had associated the Person of His Son with this covenant in Isaiah 42:6, so strongly He associates the signs of this covenant with the covenant itself, so that something communicated in the sign is essential to the substance. It is not as though the old covenant signs were all circumstantial and zero substantial—in other words, all about Israel of old and not at all about the gospel—and then the new covenant signs come in speaking about the gospel for the first time.

But how does circumcision speak about the gospel? Consider a few passages:

“if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity” (Lev. 26:41).

“Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn” (Deut. 10:16).

“And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live” (Deut. 30:6).

“Circumcise yourselves to the LORD; remove the foreskin of your hearts, O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; lest my wrath go forth like fire, and burn with none to quench it, because of the evil of your deeds” (Jer. 4:4).

“Behold, their ears are uncircumcised, they cannot listen” (Jer. 6:10).

“and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart” (Jer. 9:26).

“Thus says the Lord GOD: O house of Israel, enough of all your abominations, in admitting foreigners, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, to be in my sanctuary” (Ezk. 44:6-7; cf. 9).

Something about circumcision clearly symbolizes regeneration. We may even consider Stephen’s words to the Sanhedrin, “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you” (Acts 7:51). Moses twice even lamented to God about his speech impediment as being “of uncircumcised lips” (Ex. 6:12, 30). Whether viewed from deafness, muteness, or total deadness, the pattern becomes clear. The opposite state is to live unto God.

Now it may be said, as it often is, that the old covenant sign was merely ethnic. Not so. God tells Abraham: “Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring” (v. 12). If then someone replies that this is only because the foreigner is being brought in, or now considered a Jew, I can only remind him of how Abram was “brought in,” since God invented the Jew by this very covenant, and how this is no different that what we are saying about the Gentiles with the coming of Christ. We too have been brought in. 

There may also be confusion brought about by a surface reading of Galatians. Circumcision there is cast in a negative light. But how so? What Paul did was to maintain that the purpose of circumcision was a sign of the covenant of grace whose fulfillment had come. Consequently, to maintain circumcision as a mark of being in the right with God, as the Judaizers in Antioch and Galatia were pushing, was in conflict with the truth of justification being by faith alone. If we read the language of Galatians 5 carefully, we will note that a Jew who had already been circumcised was in no worse place than a Gentile who would be circumcised in order to be justified (and vice-versa): “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love” (v. 6). The only issue was doing it for justification. 

The New Covenant and its Sign of Inclusion

Baptism is a sacrament instituted directly by Christ (Mat. 28:19-20) that marks one as belonging to the covenant community of God. It is the New Testament sign and seal of the covenant of grace. In other words, it functions the same general way that circumcision did in the Old Testament. It symbolizes the washing of regeneration and cleansing from sin in addition (Titus 3:5, Acts 2:38).

Think of the exhortation at the end of Peter’s sermon at Pentecost. 

“And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” (Acts 2:38-29).

It should be recalled in this context that the giving of the Spirit to the Gentiles was one of the promises that Paul ascribed to the Abrahamic covenant in Galatians 3:14. Note that Peter uses the Abrahamic formula from Genesis 17, not only to the Jews assembled there but for the “far off” Gentiles (cf. Eph. 2:13, 17). Consider how remarkable it was that we hear nothing of the excommunication of all children from the covenant. The Jews who were antagonists to Jesus and the disciples were not shy about falsely accusing the new movement of anything that could be falsely charged to their message. They were accused of upending the Sabbath, the Temple, the whole law of Moses. Do you imagine for a second that if these new outlaws had preached the exclusion of the promise to their children that this would not have created the uprising of all uprisings in Jerusalem? Yet we hear not a hint of their exclusion. The relative silence about infants in the New Testament is not the “own” that Baptists have thought that it is. 

On the other hand, if God commanded the sign to be applied to the children of all Abraham’s descendants (Gen. 17:10) and if Paul tells us that those descendants are all of faith (Rom. 2:25-29; 4:9-17; 9-11; Eph. 2:11-19; 1 Cor. 10:1-11; Gal. 3:6-4:31), then from those two premises it follows that New Covenant believers are commanded by that same command to apply the sign of entry to their children. When a command or principle of the Old Testament is not part of the ceremonial law of Israel, or its particular civil code, and is imperative specifically to man as man (moral law) or to believers as parties to the covenant of grace, then it is forced to rescind the imperative on the grounds that the New Testament does not contain some explicit rewording. God’s people are expected to at least be sophisticated enough to draw the implications of the unity of the Bible about the biggest things.

The Colossians 2:11-12 passage is particularly instructive concerning the substantial link between circumcision and baptism. I must admit that for the first ten years as a Christian, every time I heard the Presbyterian argument, what I was gathering from their use of this text is a link between the signs of the old and the new. Actually Paul’s link is far stronger. He does indeed use the words associated with the signs, but in fact he is not talking about the signs, but the substance in Christ’s work.

“In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.”

What the signs of circumcision and baptism represent are two dimensions of one work. They are not two works, one of which fades away. 

That the children of the covenant community are still included is also evidenced by Paul’s language in 1 Corinthians 7:14, where Paul adds to his reasons for a believing spouse to work things out with an unbelieving spouse the fact that the children are considered “holy.” All that this means is that they are considered special by God. It does not mean that such children do not need to be regenerated, or that we do not preach the gospel to them with a mind toward their conversion. It simply means they are a party to the means of grace in the visible church, which is a great blessing. When someone complains that this argues for an “advantage” for such children, I can only scratch my head.

Does the Baptist really want to deny any such advantage or means to their children? We already grant that only the Holy Spirit can regenerate some stranger to whom we preach the gospel. Would we want more advantageous means to be employed in that circumstance or less? After the obvious answer, consider what is left of the objection. Why would we employ less excellence or deny more instrumentality to our own beloved children than we would to a stranger? It is instructive that Paul addressed the children in the assembly directly in the words of Ephesians 6:1, when he could just as easily have addressed their parents with the same words to pass on to them. But the Apostle considered them as part of the visible assembly.

Finally the issue of how we interpret New Testament conversion passages needs to be addressed. The leading Baptist argument will often be a simple appeal to the several narrative texts in the Gospels and Acts where someone is either described as or commanded to believe and be baptized. This is of no consequence to the debate on two counts. First, we Presbyterians believe that adult converts ought to be baptized upon belief as much as Baptists do. The question at odds is whether, in addition to these, the children of believers are proper recipients. This appeal to such narrative “prooftexts” is as senseless as to disprove the existence of shoes by showing me your shirts and pants. Second, let us take those passages out for a little test drive and you will notice that not only do some of them exclude either belief or baptism on occasion, but others will add repentance, or some other duty, while others will include the same audience speaking in tongues, and in one case even the handling of serpents. Shall we include these in the formula? Why or why not? Where is the passage that tells us which to include and which to exclude? A better realization is the one that begins to question whether or not these texts are given to us as a formula to begin with.

More than that, you must admit that you too have presuppositions. If the Baptist replies to all of this, “Well, it is just obvious that belief and baptism go together in a way that those other details do not.” But why is that? What makes that so obvious? And you will have to appeal to other texts that are not directly “baptism texts” in the sense of instituting baptism, narrating baptisms, or describing them. In short, the Baptist is in the same boat as the Presbyterian with respect to reading texts on baptism within a wider framework of assumptions. Where the rubber meets the road is on the question of whose set of assumptions are actually taught by the whole counsel of God’s word. 

Then there are those household baptisms (Acts 10:48; 16:15, 33; 1 Cor. 1:16) about which the Baptist is quick to point out never mention any infants. But this entirely misses the point. Anyone baptized on account of the household head’s conversion eliminates the Baptist argument about faith as the prerequisite; and that household inclusion is the natural way that those passages read. 

Misgivings and Objections Answered

One might ask how circumcision could symbolize regeneration if it does not regard whether or not one is already regenerated? If a sign symbolizes a reality, would not the reality have to have happened? But this is one of many examples of modern thinking defining a reality down to the individual who is participating rather than the reality so participated in. Consider Paul’s statement about Abraham that, “He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised” (Rom. 4:11).

Note that Paul does not say that this circumcision was primarily a sign of faith, but rather of the righteousness that he had by faith. That he had already come to faith was a matter of his historical place in the covenant. He had to be physically called out of the pagan world, whereas his son did not. Paul’s subject matter in context was the doctrine of justification by faith alone. That is why faith is the emphasis. However, a bit of common sense will probe into why Isaac (and all their male generations thereafter) had the same sign applied to them well before coming to faith. Surely the sign did not have a fundamentally different meaning for Abraham than for them! 

On the flip side of that coin, although circumcision represents regeneration, it does not follow that all were regenerated thereafter, just as all who are baptized in the new covenant era have a symbol of cleansing, and yet not all are forgiven, as all do not believe. This is crucial to remember when we hear the Baptist objection that it is unfitting to apply the sign of baptism to anyone who cannot believe. Consider carefully that this argument depends entirely on the nature of the human being in his or her stage of development.

Infants and small children cannot have informed faith. However, if this is both true and relevant, then would it not also be true and relevant about the infants in the Old Testament? Has the nature of childhood development changed since the coming of Christ? No one would argue this. Instead, the Baptist simply glosses over their own logic, or else has to include some other increased priority of belief as one of the changes that occurred in the new covenant. But what is this other priority and where is this in Scripture?

And does this not move over to the rationale of the dispensationalist or other groups that tend to view the Old Testament people as those apart from faith? If faith was just as necessary for them as for us, and they were told to apply the sign to infants, then, whatever else one may object, the notion that the sign is unfitting vis-a-vis faith falls to the ground. 

A linchpin passage for Baptists who may have taken to the form of covenant theology is Jeremiah 31:31-34. In fairness, we should distinguish the way in which adherents to so-called “New Covenant Theology” press this text to exclude even the moral law from the way in which “1689 Baptists” will borrow from it. Nonetheless, the relevant inference with respect to baptism is the same. If the promise of the new covenant is precisely the work of the Spirit that Jeremiah seems to describe, then it would seem to follow that all who are members of the new covenant community would have to be regenerated. There are three basic problems with this conclusion.

First, it misunderstands the contrast Jeremiah is making between old and new. Notice that this new covenant is “not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt” (v. 31). Now what is that a reference to? Is this to the covenant made with Abraham? No—it was to that made following the exodus through Moses. In other words, the contrast between old and new is precisely between the typological administration and the administration fulfilled in Christ. The substance of the covenant of grace and its signs belongs to the original made to Abraham and his seed. 

Second, the covenant Baptist interpretation treats the terms “covenant” and “covenant community” as logically coextensive. A thing is logically coextensive with another thing if everything that is true about the one thing is true about the other, if they cover the exact same terrain, or mean the exact same thing. But this is clearly not the case about the essence of the covenant, which is God’s promises to His own elect people in Christ, on the one hand, and the communal expression of that covenant in the gathering of a people in space and time. This is another way to draw out the distinction between the invisible and the visible church—a distinction that most Baptists would not reject per se. If the essence of the covenant and this communal instantiation of the covenant were logically coextensive, then how would we make sense of all those cases of apostasy and warning texts of the New Testament (e.g. Mat. 7:21-24; 13:1-43; Heb. 6:4-9; 10:26-31; 2 Pet. 2:1; 1 Jn. 2:19)?

The covenant Baptist may reply that he can answer those objections just fine as a Calvinist. Those who are falling away are not falling from election but from a false profession of faith. That is correct, as far as it goes. But are they not also falling away from the visible church? The Baptist may grant the point without reflecting upon what this entails about the means of grace. 

Third, it resorts to special pleading with respect to the items on that list of promises:

“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:33-34).

Another common ground we have with Baptists who are Reformed is a familiarity with the eschatological concept of the “already” and the “not yet.” Many biblical prophecies offer a single snapshot of a coming “Day of the Lord” which splits between fulfillments in Christ’s First Advent and others awaiting the Second Advent. While the gift of the Holy Spirit and forgiveness of sins are ours upon regeneration, other items, even if possessed as a foretaste, are more greatly consummated in the end, as the end of Revelation speaks of God dwelling with us in Christ, in a more full and final way. And surely the Baptist does not want to suggest that we should not have teachers in the New Testament church! Yet on that list we read that “no longer shall each one teach his neighbor,” because of the fullness of knowledge each possesses. This is sufficient to make the point that such a prophecy is not giving to God’s people an infallible mandate to effectively erase the real distinction between invisible and visible church once Christ arrived the first time. 

In any event, Jesus expressly ruled this out in the parable of the wheat and tares.

“And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ‘Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn’” (Mat. 13:27-30).

Sacraments are visible signs. When we commonly say that they are visible signs of an invisible grace, we frequently lose our minds and forget the first part of our sentence. That they signify an invisible work of God does not magically put us in place of God to do part of the invisible. Our actions upon and sight of the signs remain visible. That is the very nature of a sign—visible marks on a visible body. The sacraments were not given to us in order that we may infallibly mark out that which God is doing.  

The Westminster Confession, XXVII.3 states that,

“The grace which is exhibited in or by the sacraments, rightly used, is not conferred by any power in them; neither doth the efficacy of a sacrament depend upon the piety or intention of him that doth administer it, but upon the work of the Spirit, and the word of institution, which contains, together with a precept authorizing the use thereof, a promise of benefit to worthy receivers.”

Note how those last words anticipate the objection that covenant baptism nullifies requisite belief upon regeneration. The promise is sealed to those of faith. To those who are reprobate, it does not seal but sears—that is, it hardens the heart. Such a hardening for apostates in the body incurs a greater guilt and impresses a deeper delusion on such a soul than on the one who never darkens the doors of the church with hypocrisy. 

There was a mixed body in the Old and a mixed body in the New. There was a remnant in the Old and a remnant in the New. There were apostates in the Old and apostates in the New. Nothing about the invisible and visible church dynamic has changed from Old to New. The typological focus on one people group in the Old has of course given way to the expansion of that kingdom to the nations, but it is an expansion and not a replacement.