We continue to learn to pray through the promises of Jeremiah: “O Lord, our children are prone to wander and would forsake the covenant in an instant if not for your grace. Thank you for your promise to be God to us and to our children after us. Please never turn away from doing good to them and cause them to grow in godly fear of you all their days. Even as you rejoice over them, cause them to lay hold of all the good that you have promised in their baptism, that they may never turn away from you.”

God’s people ought to delight in God’s gift of baptism for covenant children. John Murray wrote in Christian Baptism that “the ordinance of infant baptism is intended to encourage and confirm faith in the covenant faithfulness of God. Baptism is the sign and pledge and seal that God’s mercy is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him and His righteousness unto children’s children” (89).

Delighting in God’s Gift of Baptism for Covenant Children

Baptism is a delight for God’s people precisely because it is a sign and seal of the most glorious spiritual realities and, as Peter preached on the Day of Pentecost, “the promise is for you and your children” (Acts 2:39). J. Gresham Machen in The Christian View of Man wrote:

In baptism, God receives the child into His covenant family. By baptism, God assures us that our children, like ourselves, are included in the covenant of grace. Thus, baptism becomes an anchor of assurance, binding our children to Christ and His church.

If we are to delight properly in God’s gift of baptism for our covenant children, we must never lose sight of the glorious truths signified and sealed in baptism (see Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 165) and ever put them before our children as they grow up in the covenant.

First, baptism is a picture and pledge of union with Christ. All the other blessings and benefits of the covenant flow to us through this rich vein. The one for whom this promise is realized will declare with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I have been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world” (see Gal. 2:20; Eph. 1:4).

Second, baptism is a picture and pledge of the forgiveness of our sins. As the old hymn says, “What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.” Not all the blood of bulls and goats can take away my sin, but “where there is forgiveness of [our sins and lawless deeds], there is no longer any offering for sin” (Heb. 10:18). “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses” (Eph. 1:7).

Third, baptism is a picture and pledge of regeneration, or the giving of the new heart. Our children have no hope apart from the gracious gift described in Ephesians 2 as simply, he “made us alive.” In John 3, Jesus taught Nicodemus of his great need to be “born of water and the Spirit” (v. 5), echoing Ezekiel 36:25–27. The one who receives the new heart believes the gospel and worships the triune God now and forever.

Fourth, baptism is a picture and pledge of our adoption into God’s family. He “predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself.” The one adopted cries with the Apostle John, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1 NKJV). J. I. Packer in his modern classic Knowing God wrote, “Adoption [to be loved and cared for by God the Father] is the highest privilege that the gospel offers” (206).

Fifth, baptism is a picture and pledge of our resurrection to everlasting life. “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Rom. 6:5). Our baptism points us to the eschatological climax of redemptive history and causes us to long for that day.

Praying for God’s Covenant Children

What an incredible privilege we possess—to pray for God’s precious covenant children!

Given the scope of what baptism signifies and seals, together with the baptized entering into an “open and professed engagement to be wholly and only the Lord’s” (WLC Q. 165), we have a powerful way to pray. 

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