As one can see, the problem always comes back to the question, “Who is Abraham’s true seed”? Charles Hodge has some excellent comments on Romans 9 that are helpful in answering this question. I confess that I find it hard to believe that a Paedobaptist Theologian could say some of the things that Hodge says:

The apostle now approaches the subject which he had in view, the rejection of the Jews, and the calling of the Gentiles. That God had determined to cast off his ancient covenant people, as such, and to extend the call of the gospel indiscriminately to all men, is the point which the apostle is about to establish.^[1] He does this by showing, in the first place, that God is perfectly free thus to act, verses 6–24, and in the second, that he had declared in the prophets that such was his intention, verses 25–33.

That God was at liberty to reject the Jews and to call the Gentiles, Paul argues, l. By showing that the promises which he had made, and by which he had graciously bound himself, were not made to the natural descendants of Abraham as such, but to his spiritual seed. This is plain from the case of Ishmael and Isaac; both were the children of Abraham, yet one was taken and the other left. And also from the case of Esau and Jacob. Though children of the same parents, and born at one birth, yet “Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated,” is the language of God respecting them, verses 6–13 .^[2]

Hodge correctly understands Paul’s argument. By “not all Israel is Israel,” Paul clearly means exactly what Hodge states. Look again at what he said:

… the promises which he [God] has made, and by which he had graciously bound himself, were not made to the natural descendants of Abraham as such, but to his spiritual seed.

Hodge then labors to show how the Jews totally misunderstood God’s covenant with Abraham by thinking it meant physical children.

His exposition of this section is superb. One could only wish that Hodge would have consistently applied his own statements to his theology of infant baptism. The emphasis in the following quotation is mine:

Verse 6 … [I]t was a common opinion among the Jews, that the promises of God being made to Abraham and to his seed, all his natural descendants, sealed as such, by the rite of circumcision, would certainly inherit the blessings of the Messiah’s reign… The reason why the rejection of the Jews involved no failure on the part of the divine promise, is, that the promise was not addressed to the mere natural descendants of Abraham…. His object is to show that the promises made to the children of Abraham were not made to his natural descendants as such.^[3]

Verse 8. “That is, they which are the children of flesh, these are not the children of God.^[4]

How can Hodge not see that his Paedobaptism makes the very same mistake that the Jews made? If one really understands the ground upon which infant baptism rests, and read the above comments substituting ‘Christian parents’ for ‘Jews,’ it should be enlightening!^[5] Hodge wants to eliminate the Jews, as the natural seed, from the covenant made with Abraham because, as he says, “The promises were not made to the natural descendants of Abraham, but to his spiritual seed.” However, Hodge then wants the identical covenant of Abraham to include the natural descendants of believers today. As a wise man once said, “Consistency is a gem of rare value.”

How can a Christian parent claim that his physical children are included in the covenant with Abraham when that covenant never even promised that to Abraham himself! Did God’s covenant with Abraham really include both Jacob and Esau? If it did not, then how can a Christian parent claim that the same covenant includes all of his physical seed today? Unless a parent can prove beyond any question that his child is one of the elect for whom Christ died, then he has no more reason to believe that his child is in the covenant than Abraham had to believe that his son Ishmael, or his grandson Esau, was in the covenant.

Paedobaptists actually claim for their physical children through the Abrahamic Covenant more than Abraham himself could claim for his physical children in the same covenant. Hodge sees this clearly as it relates to the Jews, but then he turns right around and uses the identical argument and the same covenant promise that the Jews used in order to prove his infant baptism.

It seems to me that both the Covenant Theologian and the Dispensationalist simply will not take Paul seriously in these verses in Romans 9. Neither of them will accept the fact that “and thy seed” cannot, in any sense, be made to mean the physical children of either a Jew or a Christian. They both insist that the heart of the Abrahamic covenant was made with parents and their physical children; and since that same covenant is still in effect today, then the physical children must still be included. Both of these systems of theology refuse to accept the clear Apostolic interpretation given in the NT Scriptures of “to you and your seed” and “not all Israel is Israel.” If Romans 9:6 means anything even close to what Hodge’s exposition states that it does, then neither a Jew nor a Christian parent may apply the words “and to thy seed” in Genesis 17:7–8, to their physical children today.

When all of the smoke clears, it is apparent that either we have to ‘naturalize’ the whole covenant in Genesis 17:7–8 or else we have to ‘spiritualize’ it. Neither the Dispensationalist nor the Covenant Theologian is willing to either naturalize or spiritualize the whole passage. They both want to naturalize one part and spiritualize the other. They just choose different parts. In reality both systems ultimately wind up with a hermeneutic that makes the OT Scriptures interpret the NT Scriptures instead of vice versa. As long as both of these theological systems insist that the promise to Abram and his seed means physical children, they will both continue to insist on maintaining the very thing that has been forever done away in the New Covenant.

Dispensationalism insists the Israel/Gentile distinction is still true in the ‘church age.’ Israel is still God’s special ‘covenant nation,’ and, as such, God has still ‘unconditionally promised’ to them things that he has not promised to the Gentiles who are ‘outside the covenant.’ Abraham’s physical seed will inherit the land of Palestine because that is part of the unconditional covenant made with Abraham as the father of the Jewish nation. The covenant made with Abraham and the nation of Israel comes into the New Testament still in force and unchanged in any way. For God to cast off the natural seed of Israel would be to deny himself and his oath. The seed, the nation, the land, etc. are all physical and are to be understood ‘literally.’ The special nation is still under God’s unconditional covenant and has future purposes distinct from the Church. Jewish children, by birth, have the right and obligation to the covenant sign of circumcision and all that it promised, including the future promise of inheriting Palestine.

The Covenant Theologian does exactly the same thing. He insists that the very same Israel/Gentile distinction—by another name (covenant community/all others)—is still in effect because the unconditional covenant (of grace) with Abraham (the believer) and his children (physical seed) is still in effect. Covenant theology sees nothing really new, in the sense of different in nature, in the New Covenant. In actual fact, he does not even have a distinct New Covenant. The new covenant of Covenant Theology is merely a ‘spiritualized administration’ of the identical covenant that Israel (the Jewish church) was under.

Under the ‘new administration’ of the one covenant of grace everything is still the same because the covenant is the same. The same things simply get new names. The ‘Jewish’ church becomes the ‘Christian’ church, circumcision becomes baptism, the Sabbath becomes Sunday, etc. Everything is spiritualized and brought over into the new administration of the same covenant. All that has been changed are the outward methods and means of visible representation. The covenant children of believers still have promises made to them which non- covenant children do not have. Covenant children today have the right and obligation to the covenant sign of baptism since they are born into the Church, even as the Israelite child was born into the nation (church) under the old administration of the same covenant. All that has really changed according to this system is the sign of the covenant. The Israel/Gentile distinction is still in effect in a quasi-spiritual/physical manner as it respects covenant and non-covenant children, and the covenant community (Israel = Church) and non-covenant community (Gentile = unchurched).

One of the basic errors of both Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism is their doctrine of the Church. Dispensationalism does not see the Church as the true fulfillment of the promises made to Abraham and the nation of Israel. It does not believe the Church is the true seed of Abraham to whom the real promises were made. This system of theology introduces a disunity into the Scriptures and the purposes of God at Genesis 12 from which it can never recover. It separates Israel and the Church in such a way that makes their distinction from each other to be total and permanent. In reality, there is no such thing, in any sense whatsoever, as a ‘true spiritual Israel’ in Dispensational theology.

Covenant theology, on the other hand, does not see the Body of Christ as a totally new thing created by the Holy Spirit at his personal advent on the day of Pentecost. They do not see the whole physical nation concept finished forever and a new thing—the Church as the spiritual Body of Christ—brought into being (Eph. 2:12–21). The Covenant theologian’s doctrine of the Church makes it impossible for him to realize that many of Paul’s doctrinal statements could never have been spoken or written by any prophet before the day of Pentecost. The following words are only one example:

Wherefore the law was our [Jewish believer] schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith [the gospel age] is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. [Could David have said those words prior to Pentecost?] For ye [Gentile believers] are all the children [sons—in the sense of ‘mature children’] of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: For ye [Gentiles] are all one in Christ Jesus. [Could a Jew, living under the very covenant that mandated those distinctions, utter these words?] And if ye [Gentiles] be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed [Could a Jew, before Calvary and Pentecost, speak these words to a group of Gentiles?], and heirs according to the promise (Gal. 3:24–29).

The personal advent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost not only produced a ‘unity in Christ’ of all believers (both Jews and Gentiles); it also established a total equality ‘outside of Christ’ of all unbelievers (again, both Jews and Gentiles). A Gentile believer under the New Covenant, along with his believing Jewish brother in Christ, is raised to a higher status and privilege (sonship) than Moses or Aaron ever enjoyed; and likewise, the Jewish unbeliever is now lowered to a position of total equality with the Gentile dogs outside the covenant.

There were indeed great differences between Jews and Gentiles before the Day of Pentecost in respect to special privileges, but now there is no difference at all. The truth of ‘no difference’ is the one thing that the Jew just could not accept. He could not conceive that every one of the distinctions and advantages (Rom. 3:1–3) that he enjoyed under the Old Covenant were forever gone and that he was now put on the same level with the Gentile. Of course he still has the same free offer of the gospel promise that all other men have, but neither he nor his physical children any longer have any special covenantal claim on God.

In reality, the Covenant Theologian has the identical difficulty believing that same thing in reference to his children. He insists that his children are in a different category before God than non-covenant children. ‘There is no difference’ somehow just cannot mean his children. After all, his children are covenant children and are therefore under the unconditional covenant of grace that God made with Abraham and his seed. That covenant gives the believer a special promise for his physical children. ‘There is no difference’ simply cannot mean that a believer’s children are in the same category before God as a child born in a non-covenant, or pagan, home.

Let us ask a few questions that will help us to understand the doctrine of the Church in relationship to the two testaments.

1. Are all believers today, without any exception, ‘in Christ?’ Yes, beyond question (1 Cor. 12:12, 13; Gal. 3:26–29; whole book of Ephesians).

2. Is being ‘in Christ’ and being part of ‘the Body of Christ’ the same thing? Yes, they are interchangeable statements (Ibid., same texts).

3. How does one get into the Body of Christ? We are baptized into the Body of Christ by the Holy Spirit (Ibid., same texts).

4. Were believers living prior to Pentecost also, at that time, baptized into the Body of Christ and given the Holy Spirit as the ‘Spirit of Adoption’? No, because such an experience was impossible prior to the personal advent of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. The Old Covenant believers were just as truly saved as we are today, and they were saved in exactly the same manner, namely, by grace through faith in the gospel promise. However, they were ‘heirs in non-age’ waiting for the time of full-fledged ‘sonship’ to come (Gal. 3:24–4:7), and the deliverance from the law as a pedagogue.

5. Why was it impossible for an Old Covenant believer to be baptized into Christ and to be given the Spirit of Adoption? The Apostle’s whole argument in Galatians 3:26–4:7 would be utter nonsense if that would have been possible. In that passage Paul is not discussing how or when unbelievers get converted and become children of God, or part of the family of God. An Old Covenant believer was just as much a part of the family of God as a believer today, and he became a child of God in exactly the same way, namely, by faith in the gospel promise. In Galatians 3 and 4, Paul is showing the difference between a child in minority under a Pedagogue (a Jewish believer under the law covenant) and a mature son (a believer under the New Covenant) brought into full family rights and governed from within by a new Pedagogue, the Holy Spirit himself.

Few people notice the reverse order in which a Jew and Gentile come into sonship and heirship. This is an important part of Paul’s argument in Galatians 4:1–7. A believing Jew living under the legal covenant was a true child of God and therefore an heir-in-waiting of the full benefits of the status of sonship. The law covenant in his conscience was the Pedagogue that controlled him in his minor state. When the Holy Spirit came to indwell each believer, the minor child was raised to full mature sonship and the old Pedagogue was dismissed and the Holy Spirit became the new Pedagogue.

On the other hand, the Gentile was an heir of nothing but wrath. We were not ‘immature heirs-in-waiting,’ but rather ‘strangers to the covenant and promises, etc.’ We were without covenants, promises or hope. The Gentiles were never under the period of the tutorship of the law. We came into full sonship the moment we trusted in Christ. Unlike the Old Covenant believer, we did not have a waiting period under a Pedagogue for Christ to come before we could receive the gift of the Spirit. We were immediately given, at conversion, the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of adoption to testify to our full sonship and all of its privileges. We were also given the full inheritance. However, unlike the Jewish believer who was an heir waiting to come into sonship, we became heirs because we had become sons. The heir/sonship order is reversed. The Old Covenant believer was an heir who became a son on the day of Pentecost, and under the New Covenant the Gentile believer becomes an heir because he was first made a son.

The distinctions between Jew and Gentile, male and female, and bond and free in Galatians 3:27, 28 were all established and enforced by the law covenant made at Sinai. A Jew, prior to Pentecost, could not have married a Gentile without deliberately sinning against God. All of these distinctions existed, and were carefully enforced, by God’s orders simply because God himself had made a difference between Israel and every other nation, and he wanted that distinction maintained “until the seed came to whom the promises were made” (Gal. 3:19). The means that God used to establish the difference was the Covenant of Law, and its attending rules and ceremonies, given at Sinai. The means of enforcing the difference was stoning to death for breaking the law covenant.

It was God himself that established the middle wall of partition that had to stand until the Cross and Pentecost. It is only because every believer has now been baptized into Christ that these distinctions cannot exist in the Church. It is only because the cross has forever broken down the middle wall of partition (the Old Covenant) that was erected (Col. 2:14, 15), that the baptizing and uniting work of the Holy Spirit could take place. This is the clear argument in Ephesians 2 and 3 as well as Galatians 3 through 5.

The personal faith of a genuine believer prior to the coming of Christ did not allow him to ignore the Jew/Gentile distinctions. A pious Jewish woman could not ignore the restrictions set out in the law that put clear distinctions between her and males. Justification by faith did not allow even the most godly Jew the ‘Christian liberty’ to eat pork chops with his Gentile neighbor. Or with anyone else!

Read the following very carefully:

Wherever we find any of the distinctions mentioned in Galatians 3:27, 28 in force, we cannot have the ‘one in Christ’ experience; and wherever we have the ‘one in Christ’ experience, we cannot have any of those distinctions in force.

The Old Covenant believer was forced, in some cases upon pain of death, to rigidly maintain certain customs and standards, in his relationship with Gentiles, that are now absolutely forbidden for a Christian. How could this be possible if he was baptized into the Body of Christ and one in Christ with the Gentile? Is not this one of the major problems dealt with by the Apostle Paul because the Jewish believers (including Peter) had such difficulty accepting the Gentile as being equal in Christ? Personal faith in a coming Messiah did not nullify the Jew/Gentile category as it concerned a true believer living under the Old Covenant. It took the Cross and the personal advent of the Holy Spirit to create the ‘New Man’ (Eph. 2:14–18), and it also took the establishment of the New Covenant to destroy all the distinctions established by the Old Law Covenant.

6. What really happened that changed the whole situation? The fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham and his seed set aside the Law Covenant (Gal. 3:19) that functioned as a pedagogue in the conscience of immature heirs of the promise (Gal. 4:1–3). The Law Covenant that established the distinctions was fulfilled and nullified, and a New Covenant (which fulfilled the promise to Abraham and his seed) was brought in to take its place. It was the Law Covenant that established Israel as a distinct and separate nation, and that separation had to be maintained under threat, even down to clothing, food, agriculture, etc., as long as that Old Law Covenant stood in force. Everything stood or fell together.

The inauguration of the New Covenant made possible the creation of the Body of Christ, the New Man of Ephesians 2. The new experience of the Holy Spirit indwelling every member of God’s true temple is the essence of New Covenant sonship and this made possible the new approach to God (Heb. 10, 2 Cor. 3). The old Pedagogue (Law Covenant) has been dismissed now that the child has become an adult, and the new Pedagogue (the indwelling Spirit) treats us as full-fledged sons. This is the message of Ephesians and Galatians. This is the “liberty we have in Christ Jesus” that Paul expounds and defends:

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been made near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off [Gentiles] and to those who were near [Jewish believer under the law]. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father (Eph. 2:13–18 NKJV).

This is true ‘liberty of conscience,’ and it is a liberty that must be protected against legalism. It is impossible for men who do not see this liberty as a distinct New Covenant blessing to ever protect it. The moment one reads this liberty of conscience back into the experience of an Old Covenant believer, he has already lost the reality of the liberty itself. John Stott has some excellent comments on Galatians 5:1 where the Apostle Paul exhorts us to “Stand fast therefore in the liberty with which Christ has made us free…”:

As the New English Bible puts it, “Christ set us free, to be free men.” Our former state is portrayed as a slavery, Jesus Christ as a liberator, conversion as an act of emancipation and the Christian life as a life of freedom. This freedom, as the whole Epistle and this context make plain, is not primarily a freedom from sin, but rather from the law. What Christ has done in liberating us, according to Paul’s emphasis here, is not so much to set our will free from the bondage of sin as to set our conscience free from the guilt of sin. The Christian freedom he describes is freedom of conscience, freedom from the tyranny of the law, the dreadful struggle to keep the law, with a view to winning the favor of God. It is the freedom of acceptance with God and of access to God through Christ. (From: The Message of Galatians, by John R Stott, IVP, p. 132).

Much Reformed preaching, especially by some Reformed Baptists, is designed to bring the law down on the conscience in a way that cannot avoid legalism and fear. Preachers vehemently deny that they are setting men under the law in order to be saved. However, when these same preachers consistently appeal to fear as the primary motive essential to produce holy living, the end result is experientially the same as it effects the conscience before God.^[6]

A legalist sincerely believes that a conscience freed from the fear of the law is the breeding ground of antinomianism. He honestly believes that bringing the law down on the conscience is the only way to produce holy living.^[7] Paul constantly says that the exact opposite is true. The conscience freed from the law by a realization of God’s amazing grace and unchanging love is the only way that true holiness, or law keeping, can ever take place: And, I must add, such a realization will always lead a person to want to obey the whole revealed will of God, as that will is embodied in clear ethical and moral commandments in Scripture.

The legalist’s great mistake is confusing the means with the ends. His goal of holy living is the goal that we all have. We all long to see the holiness demanded by the law embodied in our own lives as well as in the lives of those to whom we preach. Our difference with the legalist is over what kind of preaching will produce biblical holy living. What kind of theology in men’s hearts will produce a ‘love that obeys the law?’ The two different answers to these questions are the difference between law-centered preaching and Christ-centered preaching.

I recently listened to a message on Ephesians 2:14–18 by a noted Reformed Baptist preacher committed to Covenant Theology. At the close of the message he said, “I have struggled to find an application for this message this morning.” I could see why the man had such difficulty finding an application. He had waffled all the way through the sermon without actually explaining the text. He kept insisting, “We must remember that the law at Sinai was a ‘gracious’ covenant given to a ‘redeemed people’ for their sanctification.” The man was so scared of setting the believer’s conscience free from the fear of the law, that he could not in honesty exegete the text. He reminded me of some hyper- Calvinists who simply cannot read out loud the words in John 1:29.

We must see that passages like those just discussed from Ephesians and Galatians could never have been written prior to the cross and the personal advent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The ‘in Christ’ experience of being ‘baptized into his body’ cannot take place until the “middle wall of separation” erected by the Law Covenant has been removed. The true inheritance cannot be realized until the “true seed to whom the promises are made” has come and fulfilled the Old Covenant, earned the blessing it promised, died under its curse, and then established the New Covenant, the new man, the new access, the new status, yea, the whole new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). This is exactly what we celebrate when we sit at the Lord’s Table and remember the New Covenant sealed in his blood (1 Cor. 11:25).

The Covenant Theologian cannot see that many things which are spoken of Israel as a nation could never be spoken of the Church and vice versa. Just as Galatians 3:24–4:7 could never have been written to the nation of Israel, and just as the verses in Ephesians, the two which were quoted previously, could never have been written before Pentecost, so passages like Romans 9:6 could not be spoken today in reference to the New Covenant people of God, the Body of Christ. The following words were true of the nation of Israel, but the same words could never be true of the Body of Christ:

Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel … (Rom. 9:6).

Paul could say, “Not all Israel is Israel” in reference to people in the physically ‘redeemed’ nation of Israel simply because a person was part of the nation by their physical birth. However, one could be part of the redeemed nation and still be lost, but the same situation cannot be true under the New Covenant. Paul could never say, “not all of the Body of Christ is the Body of Christ,” in reference to people under the New Covenant simply because every single person in the Body of Christ is a true believer. Everyone in the Body of Christ has been baptized by the Holy Spirit into that Body. Each has been born of God and given the Spirit of Adoption. That is the only way one can get into the Body of Christ. Paul can, and emphatically does, warn professing believers in a local congregation to be sure they are saved, or truly in Christ, but he can never say that the Body of Christ has unbelieving members who will ultimately be lost.

The ‘visible/invisible’ Church idea is not a biblical concept as it is used by the Covenant Theologian. It is another theological invention that allows a congregation to deliberately and consciously include both believers and known unbelievers in its membership. Baptist churches may have unregenerate people as members, but it is never with a conscious knowledge and consent. Charles Hodge, in his section trying to prove infant baptism, argues that it is not even God’s purpose to have only regenerate members in the so called visible church:

Second Proposition. The Visible Church does not consist exclusively of the Regenerate.

It is no less clearly revealed that it is not the purpose of God that the visible Church on earth should consist exclusively of true believers….^[8]

A false profession of faith and a non-profession of faith are two different things. Accepting a hypocrite (only because we cannot see his heart) who has made a false confession of faith is a totally different matter from knowingly saying unbelievers may be church members. The Baptist concept of visible/invisible Church is radically different than a Paedobaptist’s view. The Church as ‘believers only’ and the church as ‘believers and their children’ are two totally different concepts that have far-reaching consequences. A Covenant Theology concept of the Church is absolutely essential to the practice of infant baptism. Hodge makes an amazing admission when introducing his section on infant baptism:

10. Infant Baptism.

The difficulty on this subject is that baptism from its very nature involves a profession of faith. It is the way in which by the ordinance of Christ, He is to be confessed before men; but infants are incapable of making such a confession; therefore they are not the proper subjects of baptism. Or, to state the matter in another form: the sacraments belong to the members of the Church; but the Church is the company of believers; infants cannot exercise faith, therefore they are not members of the Church, and consequently ought not to be baptized.

In order to justify the baptism of infants, we must attain and authenticate such an idea of the church as that it shall include the children of believing parents…^[9]

And guess what? By applying logic to his Covenant Theology, Hodge manages to deduce a view of the church that will justify baptizing babies. It is this kind of ‘theological truth’ that the Westminster Confession of Faith is referring to when it says “good and necessary consequence may be deduced”.^[10] I am certain it was not the intention of the framers of the Confession to equate logic and Scripture, but the practical result as seen in their system is the same as if it were intended. A Christian should have only one source of absolute truth, namely, texts of Scripture, upon which to build his basic presuppositions. The Westminster Confession uses two equal sources of truth to establish its basic presuppositions, namely, texts of Scripture plus the theological implications that logic can deduce from its system of theology. Infant baptism, by Hodge’s own admission, is not a result of textual exegesis but purely a theological necessity deduced by logic.

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