The Broken Logic of Infant Baptism

By Robb Brunansky

Published August 7, 2024

How should Christians think about baptism? I recently ran across this post on X making a case for infant baptism:

Although the argument is brief, it encapsulates well the thinking of those who hold to infant baptism. The logic might seem to work on the surface, but when you dig into what these texts actually say, and what baptism truly is, you see how the logic of infant baptism is broken, and the only viable position a Christian should take on baptism is believer baptism.

The first point he makes is that “the children of the people of Israel were to be circumcised.” This point has some merit, although it is terribly anachronistic. In Genesis 17:12, Israel had not yet been born, there were no “people of Israel” in existence yet, and the sign was given to Abraham. The sign of circumcision in the flesh later became part of the Mosaic Covenant (Leviticus 12:3) with the nation of Israel. While this might seem like splitting hairs, the distinctions between the covenants is vital, as we shall see.

Citing Galatians 3:29, the second point in his argument is that “the church is the new Israel.” As a side note, skipping entirely over the Mosaic covenant is a strange move. Circumcision was part of that covenant, and believers who want to understand the covenants and the signs of the covenant should study each covenant in context and not blithely pass over a covenant that occupies a significant portion of the Bible (not to mention a significant portion of Galatians 3). But more to the point, nowhere in Scripture do we ever read that the church is the “new Israel.” Galatians 3:29 says that those who are in Christ are Abraham’s descendants, language that is quite specific and significant. The Bible knows nothing of a “new Israel.”

In Romans 11, we have the clearest chapter in the Bible on the relationship of Jews and Gentiles to the Abrahamic covenant, and Paul is clear that the root is the same. God did not abandon or replace Israel, and the root of the covenant remains intact. God did not plant a new tree or establish a new people. God broke off unbelieving Jews because of their unbelief and grafted in Gentiles by faith. Rather than creating a new Israel, God established a new covenant through the death of His Son. The new covenant does not replace Israel with a new Israel, but it does replace the old covenant with a new covenant. Those who were God’s people under the Mosaic covenant are no longer His people by means of that covenant since that covenant is no longer in force. While much could be said here to untangle the relationships of the various biblical covenants, suffice it to say for our purposes that the Bible does not indicate the church is the new Israel but that the church is the people of God in Christ under the new covenant.

Once the second point falls apart, the rest cannot be sustained. The third argument is that baptism is the new circumcision. The text cited is Colossians 2:11-12. The problem with this argument is that Scripture nowhere describes baptism with human hands, that is to say, water baptism, as the sign of new covenant membership, and it certainly never replaces physical circumcision with water baptism. Colossians 2:11 makes this exact point. Paul says that in Christ we were “circumcised with a circumcision made without hands” (emphasis added). That means that the circumcision we experienced as believers in the new covenant was nothing that man did to us but something that God did to us. Paul uses this same terminology to describe the circumcision of the new covenant in Romans 2:28-29. True circumcision is not water baptism with hands but the circumcision of the heart by the Spirit of God.

We can therefore conclude that circumcision is still the sign of the covenant, but not physical circumcision in the flesh done with hands, which was an external foreshadowing of the true circumcision of the heart in the new covenant, but circumcision of the heart by the Spirit. Circumcision as the sign of the covenant was not replaced but brought to fulfillment in the new covenant.

When Paul goes on to mention baptism in Colossians 2:12, it is obvious that he does not mean water baptism performed by human hands. He likens it to circumcision because, as the Spirit circumcises our hearts, the Spirit also baptizes us into the body of Christ. Both of these events are “without hands.” We were not buried with Christ in water baptism but in Spirit baptism. We were not raised up with Christ in water baptism but in Spirit baptism. We were not made part of the church through water baptism but through Spirit baptism (1 Cor 12:13). Paul indicates this again by noting that we were raised up with Christ through faith, not through water. So then, it is proper to equate circumcision with baptism, but only in this sense: baptism and circumcision under the new covenant are both acts God performs upon His people without human hands but simply and solely by the Spirit’s power. These are the signs of the new covenant, Spirit-wrought circumcision of the heart and Spirit-wrought immersion into the body of Christ.

Therefore, only those who have received the sign of the new covenant, that is, the saving work of the Spirit in the heart, are to be baptized. Water baptism is an outward sign of what the Spirit has wrought within us. As Ephesians 1:13 makes clear, the Spirit is given as the sign and seal of the new covenant in Christ. As Galatians makes clear, we dispense with circumcision of the flesh not because it has been replaced by baptism in water but because through faith we have received the Spirit, who marks us out as Abraham’s descendants (Gal 3:2, 14, 29).

Since the sign and seal of belonging to the new covenant is the presence of the Spirit, who circumcises our hearts and baptizes us into the body of Christ, only those who have the Spirit of God are to be baptized in water.