Biblical Missions and Baptism: Part 1: What Baptism Is Not
This article is the first in a two-part series.
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…it is well to remind ourselves of the close connection that exists between the written Word of God and the incarnate Word of God. We shall never enjoy the one apart from the other…. Take God’s Word as it stands, and God’s Christ as He reveals Himself to us, and enjoy all in Him.
James Hudson Taylor Missionary meeting at Taiyuan, China July 12, 1886
Standing before fellow cross-cultural international missionaries in China, James Hudson Taylor passionately advocated that missions must center upon the incarnate Word and the written Word of God.[1] While Taylor’s assertion may seem uncontroversial and even common-sensical to present day evangelicals, the history of missions in China and beyond amply testifies to the lamentable tendency of missionaries to abandon Christ-exalting, Word-saturated missions. To be clear, missions must be biblical through and through, and not biblical only in its theoretical foundations. Scripture must determine missions strategy and practice as well.
Accordingly, this two-article series anchors missions firmly in Scripture in order to deal rightly with the crucial topic of baptism. The scriptural anchor for missions must hold fast amidst a storm of conflicting denominational doctrines, missionary organization policies, and pragmatic considerations. Confusion and discord among new churches on the mission field is the inevitable result of paying primary attention to powerful but quite-fallible influences such as these rather than the Bible. Thus, this first article attempts to dispel confusion by applying the infallible Word of God, interpreted accurately, to baptism. Baptism is a fundamental element of the Great Commission: not the sign of the new covenant, but a sign of faith in Christ. With this crucial biblical foundation in place, the second article will then develop a practical biblical theology of baptism to put into action as the church obeys Jesus’s Great Commission.
Biblical Missions and the Word
The written Word contains the Great Commission of Jesus, the incarnate Word, in Matthew 28:18–20, Luke 24:45–49, John 20:21–23, and Acts 1:8.[2] There, Jesus’s teaching, especially in Luke and Matthew, plumbs the relationship between the incarnate Word and written Word. In Luke 24:45–49, Jesus poses the proclamation of “repentance for forgiveness of sins… in His name”[3] as a necessary outcome of understanding the Old Testament—which is three-quarters of the written Word (vv. 45).[4] Furthermore, by thoroughly testifying to Christ, the Old Testament not only motivates Great Commission obedience, but it also stands as an integral part of Jesus’s message that must be proclaimed to “all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (v. 47); for, in His words, “Thus it is written” (v. 46).
As for the relationship between the New Testament as the written Word and Jesus the incarnate Word in missions, a key passage is Jesus’s proclamation in Matthew 28:18: “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” Jesus is God, therefore the complete Holy Spirit-inspired Word of God is Jesus’s Word.[5] In v. 20, Jesus requires that His disciples teach new disciples to “keep all that I commanded you,” so the scope of that teaching must be the entire written Word in both the Old and New Testaments. As Taylor asserted to his missionary colleagues, one cannot separate the incarnate Word and the written Word. In other words, missions that would obey the incarnate Word must obey the written Word, and that obedience requires a right view of biblical authority and of biblical interpretation.
Biblical Authority
“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth” indeed highlights the foundational issue in missions: authority. Absent the authority of Christ and His Word, missions has no coherence, no purpose, no center, no direction. Of course, any number of human activities may claim the title “missions” but not acknowledge the authority of the inseparable written and incarnate Words. Such activities may expend great effort, captivate the imagination, pull at the heartstrings, and call forth praise for real or imagined “results,” but their lack of submission to the Word is their critical flaw. They are like withering grass and fading flowers compared to the Word that stands forever (cf. Isa 40:8).
In contrast, a secure foundation for everything in the life of faith, including obeying the Great Commission, is to place oneself completely under the authority of the Word of God. This posture of faith entails rejecting four common strategies to evade the authority of Scripture.[6] First, Christians should not fall into Eve’s error of presuming to judge the Word of God and so determine the degree to which they are willing to accept it (cf. Gen 3:1–5). Second, they should not redefine authority as something other than the Bible itself, such as suggesting that the Bible is only a witness to an authority beyond itself that must be actualized in some way.[7] Third, they should not use traditions and confessions as their lens through which to view the Word of God, but instead should evaluate their traditions and confessions in the clarifying light of Scripture.[8] Fourth, Christians should not proclaim fidelity to biblical authority in word but fail to live out the teaching of Scripture in deed.[9]
All this is to say, living under the absolute authority of Scripture requires that the Word of God not merely be one’s “primary” or even “final” authority, which would render the authority of Scripture somehow contingent upon interaction with other authorities. Instead, other authorities are contingent upon Scripture. For example, theological systems, officers of the church, and leaders within missionary organizations only exercise legitimate authority to the degree that they uphold the Word of God. At any point of misuse or contradiction of Scripture, these normally trusted voices hold no authority whatsoever. The absolute authority of the Word of God in missions therefore urgently requires proper biblical interpretation.
Biblical Interpretation
The practice of biblical interpretation that prioritizes authorial intent and assigns no significant standing to the opinions of the interpreter is grammatical-historical interpretation. The “historical” component refers to the use of knowledge of the Ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman cultures to attempt to understand Scripture as a product of its historical context. The “grammatical” side has to do with direct analysis of the inspired text[10] in the original languages.[11] Due to the faithful transmission of the biblical text since the time of its composition and due to advances in the knowledge of its languages specifically and of linguistics in general, grammatical interpretation of the biblical text has improved markedly with the passage of time. For these reasons, “grammatical” is the senior partner in the exercise of grammatical-historical interpretation.
To be sure, constructing a theology of biblical missions requires more than grammatical-historical interpretation of discrete texts relating to missions. If exegesis were the end of the process of forming theology, the result would be a “thin” biblicism of propositional statements not particularly well suited to application in the field.[12] The mission field instead cries out for “thick” biblicism: theological thinking grounded in grammatical-historical interpretation that constructively gathers the biblical theology of the entire canon of Scripture for missional application. With “thick” biblicism, the interconnected web of theological themes at all points remains grounded in individual texts, such that theological themes themselves do not cut against the grain of the primary texts from which those themes arise.[13] So now, applying grammatical-historical interpretation to the written Word, this article turns to the command of the incarnate Word to baptize.
Baptism and the Great Commission
The Great Commission text most helpful for understanding the role of baptism in missions is Matthew 28:19–20:
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
The verb “make disciples” is the only command in the Greek text of Matthew’s Great Commission. Constructed from the noun “disciple,” the verb carries meaning that derives from the noun.[14] That is to say, Jesus commands His disciples to make other disciples.
Yet disciple-making is by no means “multiplying ourselves in the lives of others,”[15] as if the point of reference for disciple-making were the disciple rather than Christ.[16] Instead, Jesus explains how His disciples must carry out this command by using three participles. As English participles these actions are “going,” “baptizing,” and “teaching.”
The first action, “going,” is an attendant circumstance participle, which has “something of an ingressive force.” [17] Thus, “going” must happen before the main activity of making disciples takes place. The most fitting way to express the connection of “going” with “make disciples” in English translation is to place the imperative “go” before “make disciples” in sequence.[18] Crossing of ethnolinguistic boundaries to “the nations” to make disciples is what makes missions “missions” and not simply ministry.[19]
As for the second and third actions, “baptizing” and “teaching,” these are participles of means, explaining how to make disciples.[20] Hence according to the Great Commission in Matthew, whatever actions take place in missional efforts, making disciples must lay at the heart of those efforts. Furthermore, the characteristic actions—the irreducible minimum requirements—for making disciples are baptizing and teaching.[21]
Yet, baptism and teaching typically receive scant mention in missions books.[22] One might label this lack of attention to biblical teaching on baptism as “under-theologizing.” A related but opposite problem is what one could term “over-theologizing”: assuming sophisticated theologies of baptism without rooting them in Scripture and its grammatical-historical interpretation. However, since missionaries must baptize to make disciples on the mission field, missionaries can afford neither under-theologizing nor over-theologizing to detract from their understanding of baptism.
Therefore, in order to clear the decks for a practical baptism theology for missionaries (the focus in Part 2 of this article), it is necessary first to address one of the most prevalent misconceptions about baptism by stating what it is not. Baptism is not the sign of the new covenant.
What Baptism Is Not: The Sign of the New Covenant
Denying that baptism is the sign of the new covenant may seem counterintuitive if one has, like many Christians, merely assumed this theological function.[23] After all, baptism is surely a symbolic act, and another term for a symbolic act is a “sign”![24] Furthermore, one might also question whether the identity of the new covenant sign is a particularly urgent issue for the practice of baptism in biblical missions. However, to answer these concerns and to illustrate what is at stake for baptism, note the following comment by the late expositor R. C. Sproul on the Great Commission:
Jesus also commissioned His church to baptize. Why did He see fit to include this ritual in the Great Commission? Just as the covenant that God made with Abraham was sealed by the covenant sign of circumcision, so the new covenant that Christ has given to the church is sealed by the sign of baptism. Baptism communicates that we have been united to Jesus Christ. It shows that we have been cleansed from sin, regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and buried and raised again with Jesus Christ, just to mention a few of its significations. God promises that all who have faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, will participate in all of the promises, all of the benefits, that Christ has secured. Baptism is not a sign of one’s faith; it is a sign of the faithfulness of God to give all of His Son to all who believe. That is why the Apostles not only preached, but also they baptized individuals and entire households, all who came into the body of Christ in the first-century church. It is also very important that baptism is to be in the Trinitarian formula—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.[25]
In the first half of the third sentence above, Sproul refers to circumcision as both a sign and a seal. This is the teaching of Romans 4:11 regarding the Abrahamic covenant: “and he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised, so that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised, that righteousness might be counted to them.” To this point, Sproul’s teaching has clear biblical warrant. In contrast, the assertion in the second half of that same sentence, “so the new covenant that Christ has given to the church is sealed by the sign of baptism,” has no biblical warrant. That is to say, the Bible—again, in its grammatical-historical interpretation—neither teaches that baptism is a seal of the new covenant, nor that it is the sign.[26]
The Typological Correspondence Argument
Now, one may argue that typological correspondence so strongly ties together circumcision and baptism that explicit biblical warrant is not necessary here. That is to say, “good and necessary consequence” (logical deduction)[27] demands that baptism be the sign and seal of the new covenant because it closely follows the divine pattern of the sign and seal of the Abrahamic covenant.[28]
Yet this argument from deduction fails on two points. First, it contradicts the explicit teaching of Scripture on the true typological correspondence of circumcision between the covenants. In Paul’s thought, circumcision “made in the flesh by hands” (Eph 2:11 ESV) connects by contrast with circumcision “made without hands… by the circumcision of Christ” (Col 2:11 ESV).[29] The circumcision “made without hands” refers to an act of the Holy Spirit in regeneration, when God imputes Christ’s righteousness to the believer. Christ’s active, full, and perfect obedience to God exemplified the love that flows from the circumcised heart, described in Deuteronomy 10:12–13 and then commanded in 10:16: “So circumcise your heart, and stiffen your neck no longer.” Despite God’s command, Israel’s inability to obey proved quite clear throughout its history (see Lev 26:41–42; Jer 4:4, 9:25–26). In light of Israel’s waywardness, Deuteronomy 30:6 expressed a beautiful future hope: God himself would circumcise his people’s hearts and make it possible for them to obey him. Paul revealed that day has finally come in the work of the Holy Spirit (Rom 2:28–29). In other words, circumcision still plays a pivotal role in the new covenant through heart circumcision. Water baptism does not correspond to circumcision, for it does not enact the circumcision of the heart.
Moreover, and second, Paul explicitly states that the Spirit is the seal of the new covenant (2 Cor 1:22; Eph 1:13–14; 4:30).[30] So baptism is not the seal of the new covenant; the Holy Spirit is. Typological correspondence, if valid, would seem to require that one entity be both sign and seal for the Abrahamic covenant (the type), and likewise one entity should be sign and seal for the new covenant (the antitype). Circumcision was the sign and seal for the Abrahamic covenant, so if baptism were the sign of the new covenant, it should be the seal too. But it isn’t. Therefore, at first glance it appears that Scripture has broken (or simply not used) the covenant sign typology. Yet Scripture speaks further.
The Spirit as the New Covenant Sign
A “thick” biblicism, acknowledging circumcision as a covenant sign, would actually require that the new covenant sign not be baptism but the Spirit who circumcises the heart (thus sign and seal would be one). Space allows two observations that are particularly relevant for this identification.[31]
First, Scripture labels both the Abrahamic covenant (Gen 17:7) and its covenant sign of circumcision (17:13) as “everlasting” or “eternal.”[32] Scripture likewise describes the new covenant, like all biblical covenants, as eternal in Isaiah 55:3, 61:8; Jeremiah 32:40, 50:5; and Ezekiel 16:59–63, 37:26 (note also Heb 13:20). Yet baptism never receives characterization as eternal in the Bible. In fact, new covenant texts only once describe elements of the new covenant as eternal: “‘As for Me, this is My covenant with them,’ says Yahweh: ‘My Spirit which is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart… from now and forever’” (Isa 59:21). Isaiah’s expression unites, on the one hand, the new heart and new Spirit imparted to every new covenant member (as promised in Ezekiel 36:26–27) with, on the other hand, the writing of the law upon the heart of every new covenant member (as promised in Jeremiah 31:33).
Second, once God grants the covenant sign, its presence is mandatory for the continuance of covenant membership. Refusing the required sign of circumcision was a covenant breaking act and resulted in being “cut off” from the covenant people (Gen 17:14). Positively speaking, if the covenant sign was present, the covenant was in force. Negatively speaking, if the covenant sign was absent, the covenant was not in force; the one without the sign was cut off. If baptism were to function this way in the new covenant, the necessary implication would effectively be baptismal regeneration: one must be baptized to be saved from the eternal death-dealing power of sin. Then, without baptism one is “cut off.” [33] This is simply not the way the new covenant works. Ephesians 2:8 teaches that salvation comes to sinful humans by grace through faith, and further that faith itself is a gift from God.[34] The indwelling Holy Spirit regenerates people to faith in Christ (John 3:5–8). If one has the Spirit, the new covenant is in force for that person (Gal 3:14). If one does not have the Spirit, that person is outside the new covenant (cf. Rom 8:9).
Thus, for the sake of obeying the Great Commission and baptizing rightly on the mission field, one should reject the idea that baptism is the sign of the new covenant. Authoritative and sufficient Scripture teaches otherwise, and therefore one’s Great Commission teaching of the Bible should not include this error. In addition, the concept of baptism as covenant sign smuggles in further theological errors that sow confusion on the mission field.
For example, few would argue that missionaries should withhold baptism from disciples made on the mission field following their conversion. Yet, many Bible-believing missionaries who view baptism as the covenant sign proceed to baptize those disciples’ unconverted children, who are not believers and therefore are not disciples. This discourages those children from later choosing to obey Christ’s command to be baptized in His name as disciples. It may also give them false assurance that, while still unconverted, they are already members of the new covenant and recipients of the grace that it includes. Infant baptism may possess a lengthy history in church tradition and may line up many heroes of the faith on its side, but it is an anti-biblical, post-biblical theological innovation.
What Baptism Is: A Sign of Faith
Although infant baptism is one potential error, the gravity and scope of error may actually come more clearly into view in Sproul’s second highlighted assertion above: “Baptism is not a sign of one’s faith; it is a sign of the faithfulness of God to give all of His Son to all who believe.”[35] Such a surgical removal of the faith of the believer (i.e., the one receiving baptism) from the faith of “all who believe” pushes back against the logic of every New Testament account of baptism.
The climax of Peter’s sermon at Pentecost epitomizes the logical connection of faith and baptism: “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). To make any sense to Peter’s hearers, before the plural “you” in Peter’s exhortation can apply generally and universally to God’s people in all times and cultures, it must apply specifically to those present to hear him! Peter exhorts each person in his audience (“each of you”) to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of his or her own sins. These new believers receive baptism in recognition of their own forgiveness as a concrete reality, not the forgiveness of others’ sins as an abstract truth. Missionaries must not oppose the straightforward teaching of Scripture and enervate the gospel witness of baptism by denying that it is a faith response of Jesus’s disciples.
Indeed, baptism in the New Testament always follows faith, faith in Jesus Christ enabled by the Spirit, faith manifested in repentance. Repentance and forgiveness of sins are surely a description of the general state of the people of God, but these are only valid descriptors of God’s people because they are true of every one of God’s people individually. Part 2 of this article develops these ideas more fully.
In summary, once one frees baptism from performing the function of new covenant sign—an encroachment on the work of the Holy Spirit—it is possible to practice baptism more freely and confidently based upon the teaching of authoritative and sufficient Scripture. Then fittingly, the incarnate Word and the written Word reside at the center of missions practice as they should. Part 2 of this article will thus profile biblical baptism for what it is: a key act in making disciples according to the Great Commission.
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[1] James Hudson Taylor, Days of Blessing in Inland China: Being an Account of Meetings Held in the Province of Shan-si &c, 2nd ed. (London: Morgan & Scott, 1887), 59–60.
[2] Mark 16:15–18 appears in the traditional “longer ending” of Mark. No material follows Mark 16:8 in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark. See Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994), 102–7. Ramm uses the spurious endings of Mark to illustrate the principle that “No doctrine should be constructed from an uncertain textual reading.” See Bernard Ramm, Protestant Biblical Interpretation: A Textbook of Hermeneutics, 3rd rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1970), 183.
[3] Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture citations in this article derive from the Legacy Standard Bible.
[4] Luke 24:27 (a few verses prior to Luke’s Great Commission passage in 24:45–49) records Jesus’s teaching that “all the Scriptures” (the Old Testament) testify to him.
[5] See the brief exegetical treatment of the authority of Christ in Matt. 28:18 in Scott N. Callaham, “Make Disciples: What the Great Commission Means and What We Must Do,” in Biblical Missions: Principles, Priorities, and Practices, ed. Mark Tatlock and Chris Burnett (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2025), 107–14, esp. 107–8.
[6] These are attitudes toward Scripture profiled and rejected in Bruce K. Waltke and Charles Yu, An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 73–77.
[7] Examples of this second strategy for denying the unmeditated, undiluted authority of Scripture include historical-critical scholarship, which posits early “authentic” traditions lying behind the detritus of accumulated “inauthentic” later tradition. In addition, postmodern ideological approaches to Scripture functionally designate certain oppressed groups as inspired interpreters, such that their appropriations of Scripture wield authority. Yet another deflection from Scripture to a Scripture-adjacent authority lies in the Neo-orthodox concept that the Bible itself is not the Word of God but instead “contains” the Word of God, which then requires preaching to bring it to life with authority.
[8] Placing traditions and confessions under the critique of Scripture is a characteristic of healthy confessionalism. See for example WCF 1.10: “The supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.” Westminster Assembly, The Westminster Confession of Faith: Edinburgh Edition (Philadelphia: William S. Young, 1851), 20–21.
[9] Adherence to Scripture in word but not in deed could take the form of signing an orthodox doctrinal statement for the sake of partnering with a missions agency, only to ignore or act contrary to its scriptural teaching on the mission field. In the contemporary practice of missions, pragmatism often takes the upper hand over Scripture.
[10] For an in-depth justification of why theological thinking should center upon the biblical text itself rather than the reconstruction of the historical events to which the text points, see John H. Sailhamer, Introduction to Old Testament Theology: A Canonical Approach (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 36–85.
[11] Emphasis upon biblical interpretation in its original languages is not due to any lack of availability or untrustworthiness of Bible translations. However, study of the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts is the study of primary sources, without the interposed “veil” of meaning loss in translation. See Ramm, Protestant Biblical Interpretation, 117.
[12] Burns helpfully cautions against “Bible-onlyism,” a narrow biblicism that resists theological reflection and exhibits a tendency toward theological innovation and pragmatism on the mission field. See E. D. Burns, Ancient Gospel, Brave New World (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2021), 166–93.
[13] Anchoring in discrete texts separates this vision for biblical missions from that of Christopher Wright, who argues that neither the Great Commission texts, nor any other “list of texts” provides proper biblical grounding for the church’s mission. See Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 26. “Thin” and “thick” biblicism are concepts that arose in conversation with David Mitzenmacher.
[14] Karl Heinrich Rengstorf, “μαθητεύω,” TDNT, 4:461.
[15] John C. Maxwell, “Spiritual Reproduction,” Sermon Central, July 23, 2007, accessed August 23, 2025, https://sermoncentral.com/content/a-john_maxwell_07_23_07.
[16] See disciple-making defined with Jesus as reference point in Stephen I. Wright, “Discipleship as Integral Component of World Mission Strategy,” in World Mission: Theology, Strategy, and Current Issues, ed. Scott N. Callaham and Will Brooks (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2019), 105–29.
[17] Daniel G. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 640–45.
[18] The popular notion that the English adverbial phrase “as you go” better captures the meaning of the Greek participle is incorrect, because in “as you go,” it is not clear that “going” is mandatory. See Cleon Rogers, “The Great Commission,” BibSac 130 (1973): 258–62, esp. 261–62.
[19] See Chris Burnett, “The Composite Teaching of the Great Commission Passages,” in Biblical Missions: Principles, Priorities, and Practices, ed. Mark Tatlock and Chris Burnett (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2025), 93–103, esp. 97–100.
[20] Maximilian Zerwick, Biblical Greek, trans. Joseph Smith (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1963), §66.
[21] See reflection upon the relationship between making disciples, baptizing, and teaching in G. R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), 88–92. A more developed treatment of “teaching” as theological education in missions is not possible here, but see Scott N. Callaham, “A Biblical Proposal for Theological Education in Mission,” TMSJ 36 (2025): 169–85.
[22] See for example Andy Johnson, Missions: How the Local Church Goes Global (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 26.
[23] See the following examples of asserting that baptism is the sign of the new covenant without scriptural proof: Paul Smalley, “A Reformed Baptist Perspective on the Subjects and Mode of Baptism,” in Reformed Systematic Theology, ed. Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021–2024), 4:1153–83, esp. 1170; Tom Hicks, What is a Reformed Baptist? An Overview of Doctrinal Distinctives (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2024), 202; John Piper, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry (Nashville: B&H, 2013), 160; Thomas R. Schreiner and Shawn D. Wright, eds., Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ, NAC Studies in Bible & Theology (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2006), 2. These examples illustrate how widespread the assumption of baptism as a new covenant sign is among Reformed Baptists. Yet even the non-Reformed, non-Baptist John Wesley asserted similarly: “For as that [circumcision] was a sign and seal of God’s covenant, so is this [baptism].” John Wesley, The Opinion of the Rev. John Wesley, M. A. on the Sacrament of Baptism, As Set Forth in a Treatise on That Subject (Truro: J. R. Netherton, 1851), 3.
[24] Baptism points beyond itself to spiritual truths, but to claim “The act of baptism is symbolical only” may be an overreaction against sacramentalism, unintentionally downplaying the physicality and significance of the celebration of baptism itself. See William Wilson Stevens, Doctrines of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 334.
[25] R. C. Sproul, Matthew, St. Andrew’s Expositional Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 826; emphasis mine.
[26] As Coxe observed, apart from circumcision neither baptism nor “any other Ordinance” receives the title “seal” in Scripture. See Nehemiah Coxe, A Discourse of the Covenants That God made with Men before the Law (London: J. D., 1681), 186.
[27] WCF 1.6.
[28] Cf. WCF 28.6; Calvin, Instit. 4.16; Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1938), 634, §5.4.F.2.a.(4).
[29] Paul’s rhetorical move of discussing circumcision with and without hands alludes to the divinely hewn stone “cut out without hands” in Dan. 2:34 (and similarly, v. 45).
[30] Barth dispels the claim that sealing by the Spirit in these texts is a cypher for baptism. Markus Barth, Ephesians 1–3: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 34 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), 135–43.
[31] See the much fuller case for the Holy Spirit as the sign of the new covenant in Scott N. Callaham, “Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit: Rejecting the Sign of the Covenant,” HBT 45 (2023): 37–58.
[32] Whatever term an English translation may select, the focal Hebrew term here is olam.
[33] Rejection of baptismal regeneration (and separately, rejecting the claim that baptism is the sign of the new covenant) by no means implies that baptism is unimportant in the Christian life. As F. F. Bruce wrote, “the idea of an unbaptized Christian is simply not entertained in NT.” See F. F. Bruce, Commentary on the Book of the Acts: The English Text with Introduction, Exposition and Notes, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), 77.
[34] The neuter pronoun touto “this” in Eph. 2:8b (“and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God”) probably refers to the whole event of being “saved” (masculine participle) “by grace” (feminine noun) “through faith” (feminine noun). Harold W. Hoener, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Baker Academic, 2002), 327; S. M. Baugh, Ephesians, Evangelical Exegetical Commentary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2015), 160.
[35] Sproul, Matthew, 826. Erickson identifies the assertion that baptism substitutes for circumcision as covenant sign as “a key step” in the Reformed argument for infant baptism. See Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 1103. In truth, the entire argument collapses once one removes the linchpin of baptism as new covenant sign.