j2theperson

I arrived at Westminster Seminary California a convinced Baptist. I left a paedobaptist. Meredith Kline did it, and he did it on three points I could not answer. First, the new covenant is broader than the elect. Its visible administration encompasses more than the finally saved. Men can stand within it, receive its signs, sit under its ministry, enjoy its privileges, and yet never embrace Christ in saving faith. That is not an exception. It is the Bible's own picture from Israel to the warnings of Hebrews. Second, baptism is the sign of the new covenant. The sign belongs to the covenant as God administers it in history. It marks membership in the visible covenant community, not infallible knowledge of election hidden in the decree. Third, the children of believers belong to that covenant community. The promise runs to believers and their children as it always has. Paul calls them holy (1 Cor. 7:14), not because they are presumed regenerate, but because they belong to the holy people God has set apart in history. Then Paul presses the point further in Ephesians 6. Writing to a Gentile church, he addresses the children directly: Honor your father and your mother. And he gives them the covenant promise attached to the command: that it may go well with you. This is remarkable. Paul does not treat the children of the church as outsiders awaiting admission. He takes a covenant command from the Decalogue and administers it directly to them as their command. Nor does he discard the promise attached to it. Under the Mosaic economy, the promise was expressed in terms of life in the land, a typological inheritance pointing beyond itself. Writing to a predominantly Gentile congregation outside that land, Paul does not abandon the promise. He carries it forward into its eschatological fulfillment. The land type has yielded to the greater inheritance, but the promise still belongs to the covenant children to whom he writes. A covenant stipulation given through Moses is administered by an apostle to the children of the new covenant church, complete with its promise transformed from type to antitype. Canon to covenant, command to promise, and the line never breaks. Put those three points together and the Baptist fence cannot stand. I had built it on a single equation: covenant membership equals election. Kline broke the equation. Once covenant membership was distinguished from election, the rest followed. The sign belongs to the covenant. The children belong to the covenant. Therefore the sign belongs to the children. I did not change tribes. I learned to see the covenant whole. #Paedobaptism #Baptism #CovenantTheology #Kline #Ephesians6 #SecondAdam