…it’s a practice I disagree with until I can be convinced otherwise.
Well, it’s been 4 years and I’ve been convinced otherwise. On March 23, 2014, my husband and I went ahead and had our son baptized. Why?
It’s not necessarily that I feel the practice is explicitly biblical as I feel that the practice isn’t unbiblical. (I hope that makes sense.) From a covenant theology perspective, I can understand why the practice is performed. My pastor walked my husband and I through an hour-long discussion on infant baptism, and I probably won’t do him justice, but I’ll go ahead and try.
I stumbled upon this post, What Does Baptism Signify?, by Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina, and it really sums up exactly how I view the matter. I think most explanations for infant baptism are absolutely confusing.
If I follow covenant theology and believe that Old Testament circumcision grafted children and adults into God’s family then it stands to reason that something in the New Testament must replace circumcision since according to Paul (Gal. 5:6), circumcision is no longer necessary as a sign that one is a part of God’s family. So what has replaced that sign in the New Testament?
Baptism.
Baptism shows that a person is a member of God’s community. Here’s what really got me—I always believed that circumcision was applied to people who already believed or were meant to believe. But in Romans 9:13, the Bible says it is written “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” Both Jacob and Esau were circumcised members of God’s community but only Jacob was actually saved of the two.
This Journey Is My Own 