Ephesians 6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with promise: 3 “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”
1.) The phrase, “in the Lord” marks the identity of the children as being the Christian children of Christian parents which points to the inclusion of these children in the new and better covenant just as they were included in the old and worse covenant. If the children were not included in the new and better covenant Paul could not command the pagan children to obey their parents “in the Lord.”
2.) This reading then correlates to I Corinthians 7:14 where the same Apostle under the same inspiration of the Holy Spirit says that the children of even one believing parent are indeed “Holy.”
“Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.”
Children are set apart by their relation to the covenant. At the very least they are outwardly related to the covenant, though we extend them the judgment of charity by believing that they have the essence of the covenant (Christ) until such a time, (may it never be), when they forswear their covenant privileges and obligations.
3.) Since that is the way the Apostle speaks of the children (“obeying parents in the Lord,” and “not being unclean but holy,”) it is without dispute that infants should be baptized with the sign and seal of their inclusion. They cannot obey their parents “in the Lord” unless they are “in the Lord,” – which is what the sign and seal of Baptism proclaims, and they can only be considered “holy” by having the sign and seal of the covenant.
4.) The continuity between the old covenant and the new and better covenant which we are insisting should find infants baptized is seen also in the fact that the promise of the old and worse covenant (“that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”) remains in the new and better covenant. This is a lesser to greater argument. If the promise remains to Christian children as articulated in the Old Covenant “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth,” then how much more so should it be obvious that the promise is extended to only those who have been first given the sign and the seal of inclusion into the covenant of grace?
The New Testament makes no sense unless their is a covenantal unity that is presupposed between the old and new covenant.
