About a year and a half ago, my family found a home at a Reformed church (URCNA), and we could not be happier with that decision. We love the pure preaching of the Scriptures, the doctrines of grace, family worship, and seeing our children baptized. Yet the road that led us to a Reformed church was a long one, and the final hurdle for me was infant baptism. Surprisingly, it was the Exodus from Egypt that convinced me infant baptism was biblical. To understand how I came to that realization, we need to go back to the beginning.
When I was born, my mom had me baptized as an infant in a Roman Catholic Church. She didn’t do this because she was a faithful church-going Catholic. She mostly did this because she is Mexican, and many Mexicans simply assume the Catholic faith. My dad, however, came from a more evangelical background, so a week later, he had me dedicated at a Calvary Chapel.
Although I received these spiritual experiences as an infant, my childhood wasn’t necessarily spent in church. My parents were separated on and off for most of my early years. I remember family members speaking of God, but I don’t really remember visiting a church until I was about 8 years old. My mom’s uncle became a Pentecostal preacher, and we started attending his church. This is where she ended up answering the Lord’s call. She began to pray that my dad would answer this call as well and that they would get back together. God eventually answered this prayer, and my parents reconciled.
Following this, my dad began taking us to a church that was associated with a Calvary Chapel. Then we moved to a different town that didn’t have a Calvary Chapel, so we found a home at a Reformed Baptist church. I was told I needed to be re-baptized because infant baptisms were not valid. We attended this church for a few years until our family left to help another family plant a Calvary Chapel. I am grateful for my heritage in Calvary Chapel because it’s where I grew to love Scripture. However, if you know one thing about Calvary Chapel, it is that they are not very fond of Reformed theology.
Despite this, I was introduced to Reformed theology through the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement. I began reading their books and listening to their sermons, and eventually joined a church connected to the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement. They were Reformed in their soteriology but practiced believer’s baptism. At this church, I met a friend who would attend Westminster Seminary in Escondido, CA. When he came home for a visit, he began talking about infant baptism. I believed there was no scriptural evidence for this so I didn’t want to hear anything that he had to say.
Then, almost ten years later, I was scrolling on social media and saw someone share 1 Corinthians 10:1–5 to prove infant baptism from Scripture:
“For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.”
I thought about the Exodus from Egypt and how all of the Israelites crossed through the Red Sea. The parents didn’t tell their children, “You need to stay in Egypt until you’re old enough to decide for yourself.” No, they took their children with them and all fled Egypt together. And the apostle Paul says that this was a type of baptism. So the children were baptized.
Following this, I began to study how Paul also refers to baptism as “the circumcision of Christ” in Colossians 2:11–12. So now, baptism, not circumcision, is our sign and seal that we belong to the covenant community in Christ. If, in the Old Testament, circumcision was given to children to include them in the covenant community, and if the new covenant in Christ is better than the old (Heb. 8:6–13), why would our children be forbidden from being baptized? After all, the apostle Peter did boldly proclaim on the day of Pentecost, “For the promise is for you and for your children” (Acts 2:39). The day my children were baptized, I understood for the first time that the covenant God made with Abraham was never just for one generation, but for believing families in every age. The promise truly is “for you and for your children,” and by God’s grace, mine bear that seal.
