wtcrs2 – We Love God!

The people of the covenant in the Old Testament were made up of Israel according to the flesh – an ethnic, national, religious people containing “children of the flesh” and “children of God” [see Rom. 9:6-8; Gal. 4:22-28]. Therefore it was fitting that circumcision was given to all the children of the flesh. But the people of the new covenant, called the Church of Jesus Christ, is being built in a fundamentally different way. The church is not based on any ethnic, national distinctives but on the reality of faith alone, by grace alone in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Church is not a continuation of Israel as a whole; it is a continuation of the true Israel, the remnant – not the children of the flesh, but the children of promise. Therefore, it is not fitting that the children born merely according to the flesh receive the sign of the covenant, baptism.

John Piper