When observing the New Covenant in light of the Old, Paul Jewett explains, “stress should…be laid on its unity. The covenant idea is a fundamental concept of redemptive revelation: it unites the entire purpose of God throughout salvation history.”1 Despite this, there is still a level of discontinuity between the physical seed, Israel, and the spiritual seed, the church. The physical seed had a mixture of faithful and unfaithful participants, but in the case of the spiritual seed, all participants confess Christ. Further, the foundation of the covenant changes, as the covenant mediator of physical Israel is Abraham, but the covenant mediator of spiritual Israel is Christ. As this kingdom is spiritual, you cannot have the high degree of continuity between the covenants and their signs as the paedobaptist claims.2 In his description of the New Covenant, the Prophet Jeremiah writes:

I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers…I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, “Know the LORD” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more (Jeremiah 31:31b-32a, 33b-34).

From this, we see a stark contrast with the Old Covenant. Unlike the Old Covenant, where it was a mixture of covenant-keepers and covenant-breakers, we see that all participants in this covenant will know God and will walk in his ways. All those within it will be irrevocably his spiritual people.

Despite this, the paedobaptist argues that the New Covenant remains mixed in the same manner as the old and what Jeremiah describes will not be realized until the coming of Jesus. Richard Pratt explains:

Jeremiah distinguished the new covenant as one that would not be broken, … [but] evangelical paedobaptists consistently stress that baptized children are in the new covenant, but that they are not automatically or necessarily saved. In effect, infant baptism introduces unregenerate, unbelieving people into the new covenant community.3

In order to resolve this apparent tension, he points to the parable of the mustard seed to draw three stages of fulfillment of the New Covenant prophecies: “the inauguration of fulfillment in the first coming of Christ, the continuation of fulfillment between the first and second comings of Christ, and the consummation of fulfillment at the return of Christ.”4 With this in mind, he believes that the covenant will not be able to be broken upon the return of Christ, but that participants can break the covenant today. He points to various Hebrews warning passages, namely Hebrews 10:28-31 to show how covenant members can currently become covenant breakers.5

Although it is true that there is an already/not yet element to the covenant, it is not accurate to affirm that not all will know the Lord under this covenant at this point in redemptive history. In contrast with Pratt, Bruce Ware notes, “Even if the fulfillment of the new covenant reality of faith and obedience takes place progressively…all those in the new covenant are believers. But if infants are baptized who never come to faith and obedience, they have then wrongly received the sign of the new covenant.”6 Thus, given that from its very inauguration, the New Covenant is focused on and is made up of only believers, it becomes very difficult to argue for the covenant sign being given to those who do not (and at their age cannot) profess faith. What makes the New Covenant new and different from the Old is that it is not mixed; only God’s elect people make it up. In his discussion of Hebrews 8:10, James White writes:

All those with whom he makes this covenant experience what the remnant experienced under the old: true internal conversion resulting in a love for God’s law and a true relationship with him. Quite simply, there is no “remnant” in the New Covenant, and all those with whom God makes this covenant experience its fulfillment.7

In a more direct response to Pratt’s claims, he says:

Central to the thrust of the writer is the establishment of the supremacy of Christ over the old ways… . We are never given the slightest indication that this better covenant is only partly better now, and will get much better in the future. … Are we left with some form of ‘partial covenantalism’ that…continues to have the very same faults in it that the passage in Jeremiah had addressed?8

This creates a stark contrast between the fundamental nature of the Old and the New Covenants. If this covenant is only unbreakable upon the return of Christ, then how much is the New Covenant really new? Although salvation in Christ has been secured through this covenant, we are still weighed down by an unrealized and unfulfilled covenant in a similar manner as Hebrew believers were under the Old Covenant, as it is still mixed with believers and unbelievers. Pratt’s already/not yet understanding of the New Covenant fails to do justice to the new covenant benefits secured by Christ. We are not left waiting for an unbreakable covenant. The benefits of the covenant were given to God’s elect people at its inauguration, and we can enjoy the benefits of an unmixed covenant now as we await His return. White further explains in his exegesis of Hebrew 8:6, “It is important to see that for the writer, the New Covenant has past-tense action, officially enacted. … The New Covenant is not something that will someday be established but has already…been founded, established, [and] enacted… .”9 Thus, it is evident that the full benefits of the covenant are enjoyed by the elect now and are not something to be attained in the future, making Pratt’s claim that the New Covenant is mixed very problematic. It is far more exegetically and theologically sound to accept an unmixed New Covenant.

Continue with Part 3

  1. Paul K. Jewett, Infant Baptism and the Covenant of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Williams B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1978), 84.
  2. Ibid., 135-137.
  3. Greg Strawbridge, ed., The Case of Covenantal Infant Baptism (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing Company, 2003), 161.
  4. Ibid., 168.
  5. Ibid., 169-170.
  6. David F. Wright, ed., Baptism: Three Views (Downers Grove, NJ: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 45n.
  7. James R. White, “The Newness of the New Covenant,” Reformed Baptist Theological Review 1, no. 2 (July 2004): 160.
  8. James R. White, “The Newness of the New Covenant: Part 2,” Reformed Baptist Theological Review 2, no. 1 (January 2005): 101, 102.
  9. White, “The Newness of the New Covenant”, 157.