Shooting Blanks
We receive baptism, but is membership of the visible New Covenant body entirely objective? The Old Covenant church, “the Body of Moses,” was Adamic. The Tabernacle was a Babelic tower, a ladder to heaven, laid out prostrate on the ground. The New Covenant Body, the Body of Jesus, is Evian. As a Temple filled with the Spirit of God, it stands upright and walks on the Crystal Sea.
I’m a Calvinist, but baptism is about the willing response of the New Covenant bride, initiated by the witness of the Old Covenant Adam. To try to divvy it up into subjective/objective is to miss the point of relationship. It takes two to tango.
Baptism was pictured for us by the animals gathering and submitting to Adam to be named, the animals gathering and submitting to Noah to be sheltered, the Gentiles submitting to the government of Mordecai and Esther (predicted by Isaiah with the Noahic symbols of holy branch, wolf and lamb [1]), and fulfilled in the Gentiles (beasts) miraculously listening to Paul once the Jews (Adams) reject the gospel. Yes, baptism is received, but it is an authority conferred.
Perhaps this is the difference between a mark and a seal. A mark is a cutting of the law into a dead tablet. The marks on repentant Israelites in Ezekiel’s vision and the mark of the beast in Revelation are like this: external tattoos on skin. But a seal is a sign of completion, and mission. It is the king’s authority on a “living” epistle, one that contains the Law inside and is ready to ride out into the world. [2]
When Jesus opens the New Covenant seals, the gospel horsemen ride out into the Land: Word, Division, Increase/Decrease, then Judgment. The horses were the legal witness of the Apostolic church.
In these two, mark and seal, we may have the difference between circumcision and baptism, Word and Spirit, external law and internal law.
If so, this means that “sealing” babies is like sealing empty envelopes. As far as New Covenant virility goes, it’s the equivalent of shooting blanks. [3]
[1] See The Wolf and the Lamb.
[2] See The Secret.
[3] See New Covenant Virility.
