A Contemporary Reformed Defense Of Infant Baptism (Part 1)

by on April 8, 2026

Introduction

Among Western Christians there are four major views on baptism:1

  • Baptism is the means of spiritual renewal and initial justification and sanctification through the infusion of grace received in it, in such a way that one cannot be saved ordinarily without it. Baptism communicates saving grace by the working of its own power. Children of all church members and unbaptized adult converts must be baptized (Roman Catholic).2
  • Baptism is a public testimony to one’s faith in Jesus Christ. Only those who have reached the age of discretion can make such a profession of faith. Therefore, only those who are able to confess Christ should be baptized (Baptist).3
  • Baptism is so closely related to the gospel that through it, Christians receive eternal life, and without baptism there can be no assurance of salvation. Both the children of believers and unbaptized adult believers should be baptized (Lutheran).4
  • Baptism is a means of sanctifying grace and a gospel ministry to the people of God. It is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace illustrating what Christ has done for his people and sealing salvation to them. Therefore, covenant children of believing parents as well as unbaptized adult converts should be baptized (Reformed).5

Protestants uniformly reject the Roman Catholic view of baptism as unbiblical and sub-Christian since it replaces faith as the instrument of justification. Among Bible-believing Protestant churches, the Baptist view is easily the most common, and the Reformed view is probably the least well known. The view labeled Lutheran is probably somewhere in the middle in popularity.6

Unfortunately, many Bible-believing Christians assume that all infant-baptizing (paedobaptist) churches are identical.7 This essay is intended in part to change that perception. I believe (perhaps naively) that if more Bible-believing Christians understood the Reformed view of baptism, they would accept our explanation of what God’s Word says about it. I also intend to give Reformed believers a clearer understanding of what God’s Word says about baptism and to answer objections that are often made against the Reformed position.

Is Infant Baptism Protestant?

In short, yes. All the Protestant Reformers, including Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Calvin, held to infant baptism. Though these three great Protestants disagreed on many things, they all agreed on the Protestant doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. They also agreed that infant baptism is a biblical practice and the best expression of the Protestant gospel.8 Infant baptism has been the practice of the historic Christian church since the apostolic period.9 But the historic practice of the church does not settle the question. Historic practice, however, suggests a certain presumption in favor of infant baptism. Nevertheless, tradition alone is not sufficient reason for any practice in the church. Therefore, Reformed Christians practice covenant baptism because we are commanded to do so in both the old and new covenant Scriptures.10

We believe that the Bible alone is the Spirit-inspired, infallible, Word of God written. God’s Word alone is the source of our faith.11 Comparing our ideas with God’s clear revelation in the Bible is the only way to safety and certainty.

Why Do Christians Reach Different Conclusions?

Christians study the same Bible, but we often read it differently. Sometimes we begin with different assumptions about the nature of things and authority. These different methods and starting points lead to different conclusions.

True Bible study requires comparing Scripture with Scripture and especially comparing clearer passages with those that are less clear. True Bible study requires a submissive attitude to the clear teaching of God’s Word.12 Bible study is not just looking for isolated texts that seem to prove one’s point. Rather, Bible study means that we must do exegesis—that is, understand what the biblical writer is saying, why, and to whom.

What Is the Covenant of Grace?

In the gospels, our Lord Jesus left us two great signs to be observed until he returns, the Lord’s Supper and baptism (see Matt 28:18–20; Luke 22:7–23). These two new covenant signs broadly correspond to the old covenant signs of circumcision and Passover (see Gen 17; Exod 12). We call baptism and the Lord’s Supper covenant signs because that is what God himself calls them. They are signs of his covenant relationship with those he loves, his people.

The term covenant is a frequently used word in the Bible. God’s covenant with believers is so important that it is nearly impossible to correctly understand the Bible while ignoring it.13 The covenant of grace describes the way God relates to his people. It involves a binding oath between the Lord and his people in which he promises his people to be their God, and his people, in response to God’s grace, swear complete fidelity to the Lord. The covenant of grace was signed and sealed in blood.

God made a covenant of grace with Adam after the fall in the garden (Gen 3:14–16). He made a promise to save and preserve Noah through the flood and us after it (Gen 6:18; 9:9–17). He promised to be a God to Abraham and his children (Gen 15:1–18; 17:1–27; 1 Chron 16:16; Ps 105:8; Acts 3:25; 7:1–60; Rom 4:1–25; 9:1–33; Gal 3:1–29). With each promise God attached conditions. The first is saving faith, which God works in us (Rom 4:3). The second is to make use of the covenant signs and seals. In Genesis 17 the Lord spoke to Abraham about his covenant:

I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. . . . This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner-those who are not your offspring. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant. (vv. 7, 10–14)

The Lord gave a bloody mark as a sign to Abraham that he and his children belonged to him. Similarly, in Exodus 12:1–13, 21–29, 43–51, God remembered his covenant with Abraham (Exod 2:24; 6:4–5). The Lord also instituted an annual celebration to remind his people how he mercifully and graciously redeemed them from bondage in Egypt (Exod 12:24–27). As a sign and seal of his saving grace, he instituted the sacrament of Passover along with many other feasts (Exod 12:43–49).14

The Passover had many of the same characteristics as circumcision. Both were bloody and were associated with God’s covenant promises. Passover (like the other feasts) differed from circumcision, however, in the same way that baptism and the Lord’s Supper differ: Circumcision, the first covenant sign, was applied to infants and adults alike and was a mark of entrance into God’s covenant people.

The Passover feast was restricted to those who are able to understand God’s redeeming acts because it was a sign designed to nurture and lead to growth. It was not a sign of entrance into visible covenant assembly of God’s people but served as a means of renewing the covenant of grace.

Is There Still a Covenant of Grace?

Just as God made a covenant with Abraham, he promised a new covenant to come later (Jer 31:32–33; Ezek 34:25). He made this new covenant in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ (Luke 22:20; 2 Cor 3:7–18; Heb 8:1–10:18). The Lord Jesus consciously and specifically established “the new covenant” (Luke 22:20). The apostle Paul said he was “a servant of the new covenant” (2 Cor 3:6). How can this be if there is only one covenant of grace? The new covenant is new, as contrasted with Moses, but not as contrasted with Abraham or Adam (Luke 1:54–55, 72–73; Acts 7).

This is the point of Galatians 3:1–29; 4:21–31, and 2 Corinthians 3:7–18, where Paul says that the glory of the old covenant was fading, but the glory of the new covenant is permanent. The message of Hebrews 3–10 is that the old covenant under Moses was preparatory to the new covenant. The fundamental theme of Hebrews 11 is that Abraham had a new covenant faith—that is, he anticipated a heavenly city and the redemption that we have in Christ (1 Pet 1:10–12).

The Promise Remains, the Circumstances Change

Now that the promise of the covenant of grace has been fulfilled, the circumstances of the covenant have changed. We who live on this side of the cross view things differently because we live in the days of fulfillment. In biblical terms, we live in the “last days” (Heb 1:2; 1 Pet 1:20). We have the completed Bible and the gift of the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit (John 14:25–27; 15:26–27).

The old covenant was designed to direct attention forward to the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.15 The old signs like Passover and circumcision, along with the other bloody sacrifices and ceremonies, have been replaced. Yet we still live in covenantal arrangement with God, and the bloody pictures of Christ have been replaced with bloodless signs (reminders) and seals.

Why Is the Covenant of Grace Important?

The covenant of grace is important because it is a comprehensive category in Scripture, without which the Bible cannot be understood rightly. For example, because God administers his salvation through the covenant and because there is only one covenant of grace, there is one salvation, one gracious promise (Christ) and people of God. Thus, the covenant of grace unifies all of Scripture.16 God made a salvation promise to Adam and Eve.17 He repeated the promise to Abraham, whom Paul called “the father” of all believers (Rom 4:11, 17). All believers are saved because of God’s faithfulness to his covenant promise.18

The covenant of grace is also important because it explains the Christian life. The God we serve is the one who graciously and sovereignly saved us. Just as the way of salvation for Adam was the same as for us (faith in the finished work of Christ), the moral standards of the Christian life are substantially the same from age to age.

The covenant of grace is central to our self-understanding as Christians. God is a covenant-making and covenant-keeping God, and we are his covenant people.

How Were Covenants Made?

Circumcision was the sign given to Abraham (Gen 17:10–14). The covenant and the sign were so closely identified that the Lord called the sign of circumcision “my covenant.” Anyone who did not take the sign would be “cut off” from the covenant people.19 In the old covenant Scriptures the phrase “to make a covenant” was expressed with the words “to cut a covenant”—that is, to perform the cutting away of the foreskin of the penis of the uncircumcised adult male or the eight-day-old Hebrew infant (Gen 15:18; Exod 24:8; 34:27; Deut 4:23; 5:2; 9:9). To be circumcised was to be identified with God and to be “cut off” from the world and included with God’s visible covenant people.

Implied in the act of circumcision is the taking of an oath: “If I do not keep the covenant, may the destruction which is illustrated by the cutting of the foreskin actually happen to me.”20 This is why the Lord spoke of covenant breakers being “cut off” in Genesis 17:14. In Exodus 4:25; 12:15; 30:33, 38; Leviticus 7:20–25; Psalm 37; Ezekiel 14:8–17; 25:7–16, Scripture used the same verb for cutting off covenant breakers as it did for the cutting of a covenant in Genesis 15:18.

The Lord placed himself under this curse in Genesis 15:17–21. He sealed his promise to Abraham by passing between the pieces as a sign that he would keep his promise. He received the curse on himself in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was “stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted . . . cut off from the land of the living.”21 Galatians 3:13–14 and 2 Corinthians 5:21 clearly teach that Jesus became sin and endured the curses of covenant breaking for those who believe.22

Since the covenant of grace was made by God, he gets to set its terms. God’s Word says that before we were in Christ, we were dead in sins and trespasses—as dead people we could no more save ourselves than Israel could get herself out of Egypt (Eph 1:1–15; 2:1–10). Because God is sovereign, he has the final say about who receives baptism and the Lord’s Supper and how they receive it.

Notes

References to the Greek New Testament are drawn from the United Bible Society’s Greek New Testament, 3rd edition, and the Nestle-Aland 26th edition. The references to the Hebrew Bible are drawn from the Biblia Hebriaca Stuttgartensia (© 1977). References from the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament used by the New Testament authors, abbreviated LXX) are from the Rahlfs edition. In most instances I have provided my own English translations. Nevertheless, this essay has consulted a number of English Bible translations, among them the New International Version (©1984, International Bible Society), the New American Standard (1971), and the Revised Standard Version (1951).

  1. These categories are rough and ready. For example, by “Baptist” I do not mean only those who attend Baptist congregations but rather most evangelical congregations in North America that do not baptize infants. Note also that there are other Christian traditions not in this list that wield some influence in North America. For example, the Campbellite tradition (the Church of Christ, the Christian Church) teaches a type of baptismal regeneration, formally resembling the Lutheran position, but denies infant baptism, formally resembling the Baptist position.
  2. See the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994), 1210–84.
  3. The Baptist Faith and Message, adopted by the Southern Baptist Church, article 8, says

    Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer’s faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Savior, the believer’s death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus. It is a testimony to his faith in the final resurrection of the dead. Being a church ordinance, it is prerequisite to the privileges of church membership and to the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members of the church, through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine, memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate his second coming.

    The Baptist position has received the significant support of Karl Barth in his Church Dogmatics.

    Many Baptistic churches also allow the practice of baby dedication. It would appear that this rite substitutes for baptism of the children of believers. Why? Because believers instinctively know that they need to present their children to God. Like the altar call, this is a human substitute for divinely instituted covenant signs and seals of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Baptism is the sign of entrance or initiation into the visible covenant assembly (the church). Baby dedication fulfills this function. Similarly, the altar call often effectively replaces the Lord’s Supper as an opportunity for believers to respond to God’s grace.

    Regarding the mode of baptism, there are two major procedures: effusion (sprinkling, pouring) and immersion. Historically orthodox Christians have accepted any mode of Christian baptism. Baptists, however, usually acknowledge only immersion, although this has not always been the case. “The original Baptists did not immerse” (B. B. Warfield, “The Archeology of the Mode of Baptism,” in Studies in Theology [Oxford University Press, 1932, 347n10]). This also unites them with the Campbellites and distinguishes them from the Reformed position. The latter have historically practiced effusion.

    The argument over mode is really about what is the appropriate action in baptism to symbolize the truths of baptism. If baptism is the gospel made visible and if we are baptized as an act of identity with Christ’s death, then how ought we best symbolize those truths?

    The Reformed practice of effusion draws from the rich history of the biblical practice of sprinkling for sanctification and salvation. The typical Hebrew term for effusion/sprinkling is Zaraq (e.g., Exod 29:16–21), which is translated with a variety of terms in the LXX. Two of the more interesting passages for understanding the biblical background and basis for the Reformed practice of effusion are the Passover painting of the doorposts with the blood of the Lamb (Exod 12:22) and Exod 24:1–8.

    In the former case, the Hebrew verb “to dip” is Tabal, which was translated in the LXX with Baptizen, apparently strengthening the Baptist case. Yet notice that the hyssop branch was “dipped,” but the redeeming blood was “touch[ed]” (RSV) to the doorpost. In the latter case, Moses “took the blood and sprinkled (Zaraq/Kataskedannumi) it upon the people, and said, ‘Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you.’” This is the sort of image Peter meant to invoke when he spoke of the sprinkling (Rantismos) of Christians with the blood of Christ (1 Pet 1:2).

    In fact, the word baptize and its cognate Baptein are used routinely in the LXX to describe ceremonial washings. The Jews were not in the habit of immersing objects for purification. Look at two notable immersions in the old covenant Scriptures. Peter compares God’s judgment-flood to baptism (1 Pet 3:20–21; see also 2 Pet 3:6–7). Notice in the case of Noah’s baptism who was dry and who was immersed. The same is true of Moses’s “baptism” in the Red Sea (See 1 Cor 10:1–13). Exodus repeatedly reminds us that Moses and the Israelites went through “on dry ground” (See Ex 14:16, 22; 15:19; Ps 66:6; Heb 11:29). Paul explicitly makes the point that Israel was “baptized in the sea,” and yet it was dry baptism. The only ones immersed were Pharaoh’s armies. It would seem, in the Israelite mind, that to be immersed would constitute an identification not with the God of the exodus, but with Pharaoh. This would hardly be appropriate for Christian baptism.

    One might ask, Why, in the New Testament, do people go down to or in the river to be baptized? (See Matt 3:6,16; Acts 8:38). It is not certain that either John or Jesus was immersed. Practically, if one is to baptize in the desert, one must stand in the water. In the mass baptism of Acts 2:41 it is unlikely that three thousand people were immersed in the city’s water supply. If the Ethiopian eunuch was immersed, so was Philip who baptized him. Both men are governed by the same Greek preposition (Eis). So if the immersionist view is correct that the jailer was immersed, then both men went “into” (i.e., were immersed in) the water. More likely, both men went “to” the water, or perhaps both men stood “in” the water. For more information on the verb baptize, see J. W. Dale, An Inquiry into the Usage of Baptizo, and the Nature of Judaic Baptism (Philadelphia, 1869; repr. 1991–1995). See also Jay Adams, The Meaning and Mode of Baptism. Reformed churches that sprinkle infants do so on strong biblical grounds and not out of sentiment or personal preference.

  4. Article 9 of the Augsburg Confession (1530) says, “Of Baptism they teach that it is necessary to salvation, and that through Baptism is offered the grace of God, and that children are to be baptized who, being offered to God through Baptism are received into God’s grace. They condemn the Anabaptists, who reject the baptism of children, and say that children are saved without Baptism.”
  5. The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) 69 says, “How is it signified and sealed to you in Holy Baptism, that you have part in the one sacrifice of Christ on the cross? Thus: that Christ instituted this outward washing with water and joined therewith this promise: that I am washed with his blood and Spirit from the pollution of my soul, that is, from all my sins, as certainly as I am washed outwardly with water, whereby commonly the filthiness of the body is taken away.” HC 70: “What is it to be washed with the blood and Spirit of Christ? It is to have the forgiveness of sins from God through grace, for the sake of Christ’s blood, which he shed for us in his sacrifice on the cross; and also, to be renewed by the Holy Spirit and sanctified to be members of Christ, that so we may more and more die unto sin and lead holy and unblamable lives.” HC 72: “Is then the outward washing with water itself the washing away of sins? No, for only the blood of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit cleanse us from all sin.” See Belgic Confession (1561), art. 34; art. 27 of the Thirty-Nine Articles (1662); and Westminster Confession (1647), chapter 28.
  6. The Southern Baptist Convention is America’s largest Protestant denomination. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) and the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) are smaller, but much larger than all the confessional Reformed denominations combined.
  7. The technical word for those who baptize the children of believers is paedobaptist, from the Greek word for child, Pais, plus the Greek Baptizo, which has been brought directly into English.
  8. See B. A. Gerrish, Grace and Reason: A Study in the Theology of Luther (Clarendon Press, 1962); R. S. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament (Oliver and Boyd, 1953); and W. P. Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli (Clarendon Press, 1984).
  9. W. Wall, The History of Infant Baptism (London, 1705); Joachim Jeremias, Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries, trans. David Cairns (SCM Press, 1960); and Joachim Jeremias, The Origins of Infant Baptism: A Further Study (A. R. Allenson, 1963) defend a paedobaptist reading of ancient church practice. For a Baptist reading, see Kurt Aland, Did the Early Church Baptize Infants?, trans. G. R. Beasley-Murray (Westminster Press, 1963).
  10. Many liberal mainline denominations do not confess the Bible to be the infallible, inerrant Word of God and appear to practice paedobaptism more out of sentiment than biblical conviction. Covenant baptism should be sharply distinguished from the unfortunate practices of those churches that baptize children regardless of the spiritual state of the parents. Baptist practice is also abused. Just as there are churches who baptize infants without any regard for biblical restrictions, so there are Baptist churches that also abuse baptism even by Baptist standards.
  11. Please see Jer 36:27; 1 Cor 2:13; 2 Cor 13:3; 1 Thess 2:13; Heb 1:5; 2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 3:17.
  12. The absolute authority of God’s Word is a crucial starting point. It is not Bible study to assume beforehand what Scripture must say.
  13. The biblical teaching of the covenant is perhaps the sharpest dividing line between the Baptist and Reformed understandings of the Bible. Baptist scholars do write about the covenants. Christian theologians have been using the biblical doctrine of the covenant of grace to teach the unity of God’s people and the unity of the way of salvation (Christ) since the second century AD. Since the early sixteenth century, however, Reformed scholars have worked most closely with this biblical thread as a way of uniting the biblical doctrine of justification with the biblical doctrine of sanctification. Since the early 1520s there has been a steady stream of Reformed scholars who have been working out the relationship between the covenant of grace and baptism.
  14. Do not confuse a sacerdotal (from the Latin noun sacerdos, meaning “priest”) view, which regards the minister as priest who procures salvation for God’s people through sacraments, with the term sacrament. Sacrament comes from the Latin noun sacramentum. The term referred originally to a deposit (escrow account) held as part of a lawsuit. The term also signified an oath. This latter meaning was carried over into the church to describe the covenant (oath) signs and seals. See Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1879), under “sacramentum.”
  15. This is why the Bible speaks of “types” and “shadows.” See Rom 5:14 (NIV uses “pattern”); 1 Cor 10:1–13; Heb 8.
  16. Compare Jer 31:31–34 with Heb 7:22; 8:1–13; 9:15; 10:24.
  17. See Gen 3:14–16. Jesus fulfilled this promise by his death on the cross.
  18. Eph 2:1–22. Gentiles were brought into covenantal relationship with God by faith; cf. Rom 11:17–24.
  19. God nearly took Moses’s life because he failed to circumcise his second son. See Exod 4:24–26. On the threats attached to circumcisions, see Gen 17:14.
  20. For a clear example of this curse bearing, see the book of Jeremiah. Repeatedly God prosecutes Israel for failing to live up to the terms of the covenant. In 34:17–20 the Lord says, “The men who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces. The leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests and all the people of the land who walked between the pieces of the calf I will hand over to their enemies who seek their lives. Their dead bodies will become food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.” This is a direct reenactment of the covenant-oath ceremony of Gen 15:8–21. God graciously, sovereignly enters into a covenant with his people; that is, “I will be your God, you will be my people.” That covenant-oath-promise is always sealed in blood. This is a common practice of the ancient Near Eastern world. See K. A. Kitchen, Ancient Orient and Old Testament (Inter-Varsity Press, 1966); M. G. Kline, The Structure of Biblical Authority (Eerdmans, 1972); M. G. Kline, Treaty of the Great King (Eerdmans, 1963); and G. E. Mendenhall, Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East (Biblical Colloquium, 1955). This is not just an old covenant occurrence. In Gal 5:12, Paul wishes this curse on enemies of the gospel.
  21. See the Song of the Suffering Servant in Isa 52:13–53:12.
  22. Isa 53:4, 8; Heb 13:12. See the section above on being cut off from the covenant. See also Deut 21:22–23.

Editor’s Note: This essay was first published informally c. 1988. It has been revised several times since then.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

RESOURCES

Heidelberg Reformation Association
1637 E. Valley Parkway #391
Escondido CA 92027
USA
The HRA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization

    Post authored by:

  • R. Scott Clark
    Author Image

    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

    More by R. Scott Clark ›

Subscribe to the Heidelblog today!