Baptism and Regeneration

Rev. Ronald Hanko

Rev. Hanko is a minister in the Protestant Reformed Churches in America and has authored a number of books, including (among others) the following: Doctrine According to Godliness: A Primer on Reformed Doctrine (2004), The Coming of Zion’s Redeemer: Commentary on Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi (2015). He was also the joint author of Saved by Grace: A Study of the Five Points of Calvinism (1995) and its accompanying study guide (all of which can be purchased at http://www.cprc.co.uk and http://www.rfpa.org).

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[Previous section: “Faith, Repentance, Discipleship and Baptism”]

The relationship between baptism and regeneration is very important in the matter of the subjects of baptism.  If baptism pictures regeneration, and infants can receive regeneration—the new birth—as a gift, it is difficult to see why they may have the reality and not the sign or picture.  If, however, one believes in “decisional regeneration,” i.e., that regeneration follows upon a man’s own decision to believe, then it is difficult to see both how an infant can receive the reality of regeneration, since he is unable to make a decision or to believe in Christ, and even more difficult to see how he can receive the sign of regeneration and salvation.

      

In the relationship between baptism and regeneration, Titus 3:5 is an important passage.  It reads:

              

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost.

The word “washing” tells us that the verse is speaking of baptism, even though the New Testament word is not used here.  The reference is, however, not to water baptism, but to the corresponding spiritual reality—the washing away of sin by the blood and Spirit of Christ.  That makes no difference, though, because just as the water sign tells us something about the spiritual reality, so the spiritual reality must correspond to the water sign.

       

That washing or baptism is the washing of regeneration, that is, a washing which begins with, and is, in principle, accomplished in regeneration—for regeneration is the gift of a new heart and makes one a new man in Christ, which is no different than saying he is cleansed from his sin by the work of the Holy Spirit.  Water baptism pictures this.

      

The point, however, is that the reality of baptism is not something we do, but something God does.  The sign must correspond.  Baptism is not a sign of our activity or an “embodiment” of our activity in repenting and believing—even when it follows these—but a sign of God’s work in regeneration, through His uniting us to Christ.  To put the matter as plainly as possible, even when water baptism follows repentance and faith in the case of an adult, it does not look back to the person’s repenting and believing, but to God’s work of sovereign grace which preceded and produced that repentance and faith.  The passage speaks of this by describing that reality of baptism as the washing of regeneration.  The sign of baptism, therefore, pictures the very first work of God in the heart of a person, the wonderful work of regeneration by which the sinner is raised from death to life and given the new life of Christ (regeneration is spoken of as the implanting of the new life of Christ, or the gift of Christ Himself to the believer, in such passages as Galatians 2:20).

      

The spiritual reality of baptism, therefore, is a sovereign and gracious act of God that precedes any activity on the part of the sinner.  Indeed, there can be no activity of repenting and believing until a person is regenerated.  That is a fundamental principle of Calvinism.  The spiritual reality of baptism, then, is something that precedes faith, repentance and all other spiritual activity.  It would be strange indeed, if the sign, of necessity, had to follow these activities, as the Baptists insist.

      

The issue, therefore, is not just the order of baptism, but the order of salvation; and the issue is sovereign grace over against Arminianism.  This we hope to show in more detail in the next chapter.

      

Let it be said at this point that the practice of infant baptism, when it is practiced in faith and with understanding, is a celebration of sovereign and divine grace, and of the fact that grace—and therefore God Himself—is first in the salvation of the sinner.  It is a sign to those who believe in sovereign grace, that God is able to do, and has promised to do, spiritually, what is symbolized in baptism—that is, to regenerate the children of believers.

      

Bromiley points this out:

In contrast to the Lord’s Supper it is an act in which the recipient has a passive, not an active role.  Even an adult convert does not baptize as he takes, eats, or drinks.  He is baptized.  He does not do something for or to himself.  Something is done for, to and on him.[1]

We do not believe, of course, that He promises or actually does regenerate every one of them.  But He does promise, and His promise is always “Yea and Amen”; and, therefore, in the confidence that He will fulfil that promise to those children whom He has chosen, we are not afraid to apply to all our children the sign of God’s power and grace in regeneration.

[Next section: “Infant Baptism and Sovereign Grace”]

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FOOTNOTES:

1. Bromiley, Children of the Promise, p. 32.  Quoted in Jim West, The Baptism of Infants in the Old and New Covenants (Western Classis of the Reformed Church in the United States, 1998), p. 4.