The Voice Of One Crying Out In Suburbia

What do you see?

A baby?

Yet another Sido?

A blessing from God?

All of the above are true, but what we really see when we strip everything away is this:

A sinner

The picture is of our youngest daughter, Victoria, at a few hours of age last October. She is cute as a button, smiles and grins all the time, loves her mom and dad and her brothers and sisters. But she is at heart no different than any other person (save Christ) who has every walked on this earth, even though she isn't walking yet, in that she is lost in her sins and although full of physical life she is spiritually dead.

Not every child who is born to Christian parents is elect and grows up to be a Christian. Not every Christian is born of Christian parents. So why in the world would we give the sign of the remission of sins to a person who we have no idea whether or not is elect? Some say this is not an issue of parentage but of obedience. Two questions there: 1)Why not baptize all infants at the hospital? and 2) More importantly, where does God's Word command us to baptize infants? If it is a direct commandment of God, should the commandment show up somewhere? We are left with trying to explain a New Covenant sign with Old Testament text. Infant Baptism only makes sense when viewing the New Testament through the lens of the Old, rather than the proper method of interpreting the Old Testament in light of the New.