SPROUL: Just last week, somebody was talking
with me, and they had a copy of the brochure for this conference, and they said, "I see
that you and John MacArthur are going to be talking about baptism and whether it is to
be administered to infants." And I said, "Yes." They said, "Well, I hope you go out there
and change John's mind on this subject." And I said, "Let me tell you something about
the John MacArthur that I know, that if you can prove your position to John MacArthur
from the pages of sacred Scripture, he'll change it in a heartbeat because I've never
met a man in my life who is more sold out to building his theology on the basis of Scripture
alone then my brother John." And so, that really is my burden is to try
to persuade him on the basis of Scripture. He won't let me appeal to history or tradition
or church authority. So, but this is something that I hope and
trust is true of the overwhelming majority of Christians who struggle with this question. My working assumption, when this debate arises
among believers and of those who are committed to the doctrine of “Sola Scriptura” from
the Reformation, my working assumption is that both sides want to do what is pleasing
to God and to be faithful to the Word of God. And unfortunately, those of us who disagree
on this point, though we both desire to be pleasing to God and faithful to the Word of
God, obviously this is one of those places where we both simply cannot be right. And in fact, it's one of those also where
we both cannot be wrong. Somebody's right and somebody's wrong, and
we all know who that is, so we can take a break. One of the things that John has made absolutely
clear in his excellent presentation today is that there's nowhere in the New Testament
that explicitly commands the baptism of infants or explicitly mentions the baptism of infants. And so, he concludes it's simply not in the
New Testament. And from an explicit perspective, I agree
with him completely. We also have stipulated and agreed that there's
no explicit prohibition against infant baptism to be found anywhere in the New Testament
either. So in the absence of explicit teaching, both
sides in this controversy are forced to rely upon inferences drawn from what is explicit
in Scripture and that should, by the very virtue of that fact, force us to go the second
mile in patience with one another. When we recognize I cannot prove to John MacArthur
that Scripture commands the baptism of infants and by not baptizing infants he is being disobedient
to his Lord. And at the same time, he can't point to a
text in the Bible that explicitly prohibits infant baptism, and say to you, "R.C., you
have to stop doing what Scripture prohibits." Now I think we all understand the absence
of the explicit directives in either case and since we are both relying upon inferences,
we have to be exceedingly patient and charitable with each other. Now one of the most important things that
John has already gone over is the classic defense in Reformed theology of infant baptism
on the grounds of its relationship to the circumcision in the Old Testament. And obviously, there are certain things about
circumcision in the Old Testament that are not simply implicit but are clearly explicit. Now, what I want to do is take some time and
look at the relationship between circumcision and New Testament baptism. And here's where it does get a little bit
complicated because I often hear people say emphatically, "R.C., New Testament baptism
is not circumcision. There is no equation between the two or identity
between the two." And when I hear people say that, I am impressed
with their amazing grasp of the obvious. I don't know anybody in the history of the
church who has argued that there is an identity between circumcision and baptism. On the one hand, Jewish people who were circumcised
in the Old Testament were not circumcised with water, and it's not the same thing obviously. Now the issue, however, is not one of identity
but one of relationship. And the question is, is there any continuity
between circumcision in the Old Testament and baptism in the New Testament? If we're going to be careful and look at this
in technical terms we have to see, and I think we would all agree, that there is some continuity,
at least, between circumcision in the Old Testament and baptism in the New Testament. And yet at the same time, there are serious
and significant points of discontinuity. So we have elements of continuity, where they
are similar to each other, elements of discontinuity. The obvious element of discontinuity is circumcision's
in the Old Testament, baptism's in the New Testament. That's obviously a difference, isn't it? Now, in terms of the historical argument for
infant baptism, here are the crucial points in terms of continuity. That in the Old Testament, it is almost universally
agreed by scholars, I'm not sure I agree with John on this or that he would agree with me,
I sort of think he would, that circumcision, whatever else it was in the Old Testament,
was the sign of the old covenant. Yes, sign of the old covenant. And that baptism, whatever else it is, is
the sign of the new covenant. That both sides tend to agree on. Now, here we see that there are different
signs. One is circumcision, one is baptism, but both
of them are signs of some kind of covenant that God makes with people. In the case of circumcision, we say it is
the sign of the covenant that God made with Abraham. Now in Reformed theology, we would argue that
part of the terms of that covenant that God makes with Abraham includes temporal, earthly
blessings like descendants, like the possession of the land, real estate, and so on. But that beyond those external matters of
physical inheritance, ethnic and national, is communicated the Old Testament promise
of redemption unless you want to argue that people were saved in the Old Testament in
a manner radically different from how they are saved in the New Testament. I'm going to say something I've never said
before publicly. Now I believe it, but basically out of response
to John's passion and his years of faithful defense of the purity of the gospel, where
he has been the strongest of allies and comrades alongside of me in the trenches, and when
an issue becomes the gospel of Jesus Christ, I don't have to look very far to know who
I want to call and stand next to me and be in my foxhole when there's something about
the gospel. Who? Am I kidding, John? No, sir. Huh? Alright, it's a tag team, when that comes. But here's what I want to say in a very real
sense, beloved, circumcision in the Old Testament was a sign of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Why do I say that? Because whatever else circumcision was, circumcision
was the sign of the covenant, and the heart and soul of the covenant is the promise of
God to provide redemption for His people, and that Abraham believed that promise and
was counted just by God. Abraham rejoiced to see the fullest manifestation
in history of the terms of that covenant in the appearance of the One who embodied Israel,
our Lord, and Savior, Jesus Christ. I think it would be a vast oversimplification
to reduce the meaning of circumcision in the Old Testament simply to ethnic or national
characteristics, a point which many Jews, in fact, did for which they received the scathing
critique of the prophets and of the Apostle Paul himself in the book of Romans. Now, I don't believe that circumcision was
a sign of faith exclusively, that is, that the only thing that circumcision indicated
or signified was faith. It signified a whole lot more than that but
no less than that. Let me say it again, that circumcision signified
a lot more than faith, but by no means less because the doctrine of justification by faith
alone was taught throughout the Abrahamic covenant as Paul labors in Romans 3 and chapter
4 of the New Testament. Now, when does Abraham receive the sign? Before he has faith, or after he has faith? Before he realizes the content of the promises
of the covenant, or after he actually realizes the content of the promise? Manifestly, he receives the sign of the promise
after he's received the substance of the promise. After he's believed, after he's repented,
right? Then he is given the sign of circumcision. But not only is this sign of circumcision,
which indicates all that's contained in the promise of redemption, is given to Abraham
after he has faith and has been repentant and all the rest and is regenerate and so
on, God not only permits, but explicitly commands that the infant son of Abraham receive the
sign of this same covenant. And not only is it commanded to Abraham and
to Isaac and to Jacob, but when Moses delays it, God threatens to kill him for withholding
the sign of the covenant from his infant son. That's very important because here in the
Old Testament, the sign of God's covenant of redemption is not only permitted to be
given to the children of believers, it is commanded of God so to be done. And if faith has the remotest portion of the
content of the promise of Abraham, and if it does not, then we would have to say that
Abraham is justified by some other means or some other instrument than faith, which I
don't know any Baptist who would want to argue that. But the point is that if it even has the smallest
portion of the content of the meaning of that sign of the old covenant, then we have to
say that we have explicit biblical teaching that God Almighty, at least in one time in
history, has explicitly commanded that a sign of faith be administered to a person who does
not yet possess that which the sign signifies. So, the first point we have to see here that's
emphatically taught in the Old Testament is that the sign of redemption is commanded of
God to be given to infants, not to all infants indiscriminately, but only to those who are
in the covenant community, to the visible household of faith, which I'm going to take
the liberty to call the Old Testament church. Now, there were people in the Old Testament
who believed that the sign saved, correct? And they lived on into the New Testament times
when the Pharisees said, "We're the children of Abraham. We're circumcised." And Paul talks about how circumcision doesn't
save anybody. Only the person who is circumcised inwardly
are saved. Only those who actually have faith are saved. You can have the sign without faith, but you
can't have what the sign signifies without faith. So again, we don't want to ever get to the
conclusion that a person is justified by circumcision in the Old Testament or by baptism in the
New Testament. There's one thing that my buddy John said
that I have to speak out on in terms of my emphatic disagreement with him because, on
this one point, I am absolutely one thousand percent sure he couldn't possibly be more
wrong. I know he's wrong. I'm positive he's wrong and I'm going to prove
to you right now beyond not a reasonable doubt but a shadow of a doubt that he's wrong. My dear brother stood up here in front of
all these people and said that we had lunch, and it was really brunch. Just a couple of hours ago, when the speakers
got together and sat around a table. And did you hear him say that he was the only
one there who believes in believer's baptism? Did you say that? Alright, a little cross-examination. Was I there? MACARTHUR: You were there. SPROUL: Okay, this is how I can prove he's
wrong, because I believe in believer's baptism. And I was there. And I'm positive that Bob Godfrey believes
in believer's baptism and that Sinclair Ferguson believes in believer's baptism because all
Reformed people believe in believer's baptism. If you want to get anecdotal, three weeks
ago, I had one of the most precious privileges a pastor, a minister of the gospel can ever
have, baptized three adults at Saint Andrew's Church. We only have forty-three members, and it was
such a thrill to baptize those adults into the fellowship of Jesus Christ. And let me tell you what, not only do we baptize
adults, but we will not baptize adults until or unless they first make a profession of
faith and give evidence of repentance and of clinging in faith to Jesus Christ. Now there's abundant evidence in both Testaments,
for the adult reception of the sign of the covenant. In the Old Testament, as John has pointed
out, that we had the record of those who were strangers and foreigners to the covenant from
the Gentile world, who come over and embrace Judaism and receive circumcision as adults. And before they can be circumcised as adults,
they must make a profession of faith. And likewise, we have abundant records in
the New Testament of adults being baptized, which adults are called upon to profess faith
and so on. We have actual twelve references in the New
Testament to actual baptisms. They're all adults. Four of those baptism accounts include the
“oikos” formula that John referred to, which is translated "house" or "household,"
which by the way in passing, Oscar Cullmann, the Swiss New Testament scholar, argues that
in antiquity that not only just possibly included infants, but he believes that that word was
used with specific reference to infants. But that's too much of a stretch for me. What it does indicate is some kind of continuity
of the principle of corporate solidarity that we find clearly evident in the Old Testament. But I wouldn't care if the term “oikos”
or the term "household" occurs or not in the New Testament, because I think every single
reference to adult baptism in the book of Acts is one hundred percent utterly, completely,
and totally irrelevant to the question we're discussing here. As we've stipulated, we all believe in adult
baptism, and we all believe that in the case of adult baptism, there is a prior requirement
of a profession of faith. No argument about that whatsoever. So there's no sense taking any time arguing
over what we agree on. Only one thing, the only evidence that that
adult baptism has for this controversy in the New Testament is one that's somewhat secondary,
not utterly insignificant, but it has some significance, and that is that all of those
who are baptized as adults are presumably first-generation believers. If the opponent of infant baptism could point
to one case of an adult baptism in the New Testament where the person who's being baptized
as an adult was the child of Christian parents when that person was an infant, then they
would have a relevant case to point to. In fact, that would be all it would take to
change me on that. But you don't have any such evidence whatsoever,
and all of the pointing to the evidence of adult believers is only obfuscating the issue
because there's no debate about what are the requirements for believer's baptism. We all agree with that. The question is simply, should the child of
a believer receive the sign of the covenant in the New Testament, as it clearly and incontestably
did in the Old Testament? Now again, we recognize that there is a difference
between the New Testament and the Old Testament. John pointed out one – in the old covenant
economy, the only people who received the sign of the covenant were males, boys, little
boys. The women didn't. And presumably in the New Testament, the sign
of the covenant is administered not only to the males, but to the females as well. Now, what does that tell you? One thing it tells you is that, as the New
Testament labors over and over and over again, the New Testament's a better covenant than
the Old Testament. And one of the ways in which it's better,
or at least different, is that it is obviously more inclusive rather than less inclusive
than the old covenant. Now in the old covenant, you didn't have to
be a child of an Israelite parent to be saved. But one of the great mysteries in the history
of redemption is the role that the Gentiles play and that there is a radical expansion
of outreach and evangelism to the Gentile world in the new covenant that is absent in
the old covenant. It's a radical expansion. It's not like there's no outreach to the Gentiles
in the Old Testament. There was some, but not nearly the degree
to which you find it in the new covenant. Now it just seems strange to me that if in
general terms, the new covenant is more inclusive than the old covenant, why would a practice
of including the children of believers in the reception of the sign of the covenant
of redemption that is in practice for two thousand years would suddenly be repealed
and abrogated in the New Testament without a single word? I really think the burden of proof here is
on those who say that at the point of including children of believers in the reception of
the covenant sign of the promise of God for redemption that the burden for that should
be on those who want to argue that there is this radical change in the history of redemption. That a practice that is normal and normative
for two thousand years suddenly stops without a word in the New Testament. Not only without a word in the New Testament,
but as Joachim Jeremias has pointed out that we can't find anything in the literature of
the first century apart from the Bible or into long into the second century and not
much at all until the middle of the third century about the practice of infant baptism. And the first reference we have to it that
has survived in antiquity, in literature outside of the Bible, describes infant baptism as
the universal practice of the church. Now, it's possible in a hundred or two hundred
years that the whole Christian church could have departed from the apostolic practice
without one word surviving in written complaint against that, despite the mountain of information
that has survived from the first three centuries about a host of other theological controversies
about which the patristics were divided. And isn't it strange that this departure and
deviation from the purity of the apostolic church took place to the extent that it captured
the whole of Christendom, and not one single word of protest survives from that period? Now that's an argument from silence, but it's
a very screaming silence. I'm saying the reason why there's no explicit
command to baptize in the New Testament is that it would be clearly assumed by any Jewish
or early Christian believer that the same practice and principle of including the children
of believers in the reception of the covenant sign would continue unless God said, "Stop
it." Now I'm trying to do this real quick because
I don't have much time, but I want to real quickly point to a text that John pointed
to that I thought was a very important text. I don't need to read it, he did. All those appeals to "suffer the little children"
and all that, I agree with John on those. We can stipulate those, and we don't have
to debate them. I don't think they have the tiniest significance
for this discussion. But I do think the passage from 1 Corinthians
regarding marriage and the unbelieving husband and all that, I think that this passage does
have special relevance, for this reason. We understand, as John rightly pointed out,
that when it says that the unbelieving wife or the unbelieving husband is sanctified by
the unbelieving husband, the unbelieving wife, etc., that the word there that is used "to
sanctify" could be a little bit misleading to us because we normally use the term "sanctification"
or "to sanctify" to refer to that growth in holiness and progress and conformity to the
image of Christ that immediately follows after our justification and presupposes justification. Now obviously, John is right in pointing out
that that can't be the meaning of the text here unless we want to assume that the Bible
teaches two different ways of justification, in fact maybe even a third. On the one hand, the New Testament teaches
that we're justified by faith, our faith, not somebody else's faith, right? Paul says that the women are saved through
the bearing of children and if we mean by "saved" in that context, "be placed in a state
of grace and in a state of justification," then we could say a second way of salvation
or the second way justification is limited to women, that is, by having babies, you can
be justified. And if that doesn't work and then you're barren,
or if you're a man and can't have babies and don't have any faith, the third way of salvation
is to marry somebody that does because the unbeliever is sanctified. Now, I've tried to reduce this to absurdity
and show you that this text cannot mean that the sanctification that is in view refers
to that sanctification that follows from and flows out of necessarily, immediately, and
so on, justification. Is that clear? So, it can't be what John called the maximalist
view, it has to have a minimal thing. I don't think as nearly as minimal as my brother
John does. I think it means far more than to be put in
a favorable environment with respect to the secular influences of the world. I understand what it does mean. I want to call attention to the language,
to call attention to the language as it is found in Scripture. If you look and see what it means to sanctify,
biblically its primary meaning is "to set apart" or "to consecrate," "to be placed in
another or different setting or environment." It goes back to God's initial setting of Israel
apart, saying, "Be ye holy even as I am holy," and "I will be your God, and you will be My
people." And God sanctified to Himself a nation. Now not everybody in that nation was sanctified
inwardly, but the whole nation was sanctified outwardly. Israel was given a holy vocation. They became the holy people, the chosen of
God. God set them apart. And so, I'm saying to you that the primary
way in which the Bible uses the term "to sanctify" is "to set apart" or "to consecrate." So that when Paul says "the unbelieving wife
is sanctified by the believing husband, or the unbelieving husband is, pa, pa, pa, pa,"
means that they are set apart, not that they are saved. That they are set apart, they're set apart
from something, they're placed in some kind of situation that differs from that which
is ordinary or normal. And the reason for this that the apostle gives
is not with particular reference to the benefit of the unbelieving spouse, but as John eloquently
pointed out, the benefactor from this sanctifying or setting apart of the unbeliever is whom? The children. Now, listen to this language. God said, "I'm going to set apart the unbelieving
wife or the unbelieving husband for the benefit of the children that issue from this marriage,"
because He says, "else would their children be unclean, but now are they holy." Now, here's what the Apostle Paul does say
explicitly in the New Testament, namely that the offspring of at least one believing partner
in a marriage. That's why for centuries churches that do
practice infant baptism do not do it indiscriminately and will not baptize any infant, but only
if there is a profession of faith by at least one parent. But listen to the language, "Doing this,"
Paul says, "for the sake of the children, else would they be unclean." Do you ever hear that word in the Bible, "unclean"? What is the primary reference of the concept
of being "unclean" to a Jew? To be outside the covenant, to be numbered
with the unbelievers, to be numbered with the Gentiles in Israel, to be a foreigner
and a stranger to the covenant promises of God. That's what it meant to be unclean. To be outside the camp, outside the community
where the grace of God is focused. And Paul said, "I will not have the children
of unbelievers be unclean, because now they are holy." Now what I am submitting to you is that that
is manifestly covenant language. It is the language that is used consistently
throughout the Bible to refer to those who are in a covenant relationship with God. And my time's up, so I'm just going to say
this in summary. In the Old Testament, circumcision does not
convey redemption; it's the sign of redemption. In the New Testament, baptism doesn't convey
redemption, and it's a sign of many things. It is a sign of our cleansing. It is a sign of our regeneration. It is the sign of our sanctification. It is a sign of our being baptized with the
Holy Spirit and, as John eloquently pointed out, it is a sign of our being buried with
Christ and raised with Christ. It is a sign of all of those things that are
part of the content of salvation, which sign does not automatically communicate the reality
by the outward sign. What it does communicate is the reality of
the promise of God to all who put their trust in Him that they would receive the fullness
of redemption that is promised in the gospel. In a word, the sacrament of baptism is a dramatic
object lesson, a visible sign of the spoken promise. We proclaim the Word of God in the presence
of infants. They maybe don't understand the Word, and
they don't understand the sign either until it's explained to them. That's why the responsibility is for the parents
and for the church to say to this child, "You received the sign of the promise of God, you
received the sign of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And let me tell you what that sign means." And you tell them what the sign means and
you tell them, "If you trust in this promise of Christ, you will be saved." And as Calvin pointed out, that which a sign
signifies in the Bible may be given before or after the sign is present. Exhibit A, the sign that was given to Abraham
after he had faith, to Isaac before he has faith. And if you want to raise a principial objection
about giving a sign that includes, among other thing, a sign of faith to people who are incapable
of exercising faith at that time, if you want to raise that objection in principle, don't
hesitate to object against God Himself because that's exactly what He did in the Old Testament. I agree with Calvin that the preferred method
of baptism is immersion. I disagree with Baptists who insist that the
Greek word “baptize” can only mean "immersed" because it is clearly used in the Septuagint
to translate a text in Leviticus 14 where two birds are used in a sacrificial way, and
these two birds are killed, the one has its blood drained out of it and the other one
has to be “baptize” -ed in the blood of the first one. There's just ain't enough blood in the first
one to immerse the second one. You dip it in there, but anyway that's a secondary
issue and not a primary issue. There are many, many more things to be said
about this. What I hope our discussion has done today
is to get you to understand, if nothing else, that this is important to God. And we ought to try to dig at it, get down
to it and try to work it through, and where we have reasoned improperly or failed to understand
the nuance of the Scripture, we need to be willing to change on that. I used to do this when I taught the sacraments
at seminary level, I would have students that were both from the Reformed tradition and
from the Baptist tradition, and I would do this. I would make the students from the Reformed
tradition write a term paper on the case against infant baptism, and I would make the Baptist
guys write a paper on the case for infant baptism. And I wouldn't grade them on what they personally
believed, I would grade them on how accurate they were in their articulation of the different
positions. Because most of us, unfortunately, just follow
our traditions as John said. Just blindly accept the Christian subcultural
view in which we have grown up and just carry it on, when this is something we should search
the Scriptures to understand what God wants us to do and then do it. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank you for the outward signs that You
give that demonstrate the truthfulness of Your Word, and we pray that we may be faithful
both to Your Word and to those signs that You've given to your church. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.
