A few days ago, I wrote about how I became a paedobaptist. I attributed that change to a connection that was shown to me between the promises of God for our children and the practice of infant baptism. That connection stirred up a reasonable question out there, which I would like to try to answer here.
When God promises us our children, how are these promises to be understood? Head for head, each baptized child of the covenant will be saved? If that is the case, then why is God not keeping His promises? But if his promises are for this group of Christian parents and not that group, then exegetically how do we determine what our response should be? Exegetically, how do I know what group I am in?
The answer is that this is a covenant promise. The promises concerning the salvation of our children should be understood the same way that promises of answered prayer are to be understood. We know that God promises to answer our prayers — whatever we ask in Christ’s name. The language of some of these promises is, frankly, quite exuberant and over the top. The promises are for every Christian; they apply to every Christian. No Christian has the right to say, “no, that promise is not for me. No sense in me praying.” Nevertheless, some Christians do not pray as they ought to, and faithlessly they do not ask God for those things they have every right to ask for. The promise is still good, but all God’s promises are always apprehended by faith.
It is the same with God’s promises for our children. The promises are ours; they are part of the terms of the covenant. God promises that our children will serve Him faithfully, but He does not promise that they will serve Him automatically. We are summoned to believe these promises, and our faith in what He has declared is His instrument for bringing the promises to fruition. For those who believe the promises, the unbelief of others does not negate the promises. God promises things for His people, and some of His people do not believe Him. What else is new? Christian parents who do not believe these promises, who explain them away, or who throw them away, will often find that their homes contain the very sad results of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The just shall live by faith, from first to last, and this includes our life of bringing up children. We bring up our children in the Lord by faith, and not by works. One of the strangest charges I have had to deal with in the federal vision controversy is the charge that I deny the centrality of faith through my insistence that we must believe God’s promises in this regard. But believing God is no work, and not believing God is not faith.
At any rate, there is no theological or doctrinal problem with the position that God promises us our children that could not be urged equally against God’s general promises to answer our prayers. And a biblical answer to one supplies the answer to the other.