The sign of the Abrahamic covenant (circumcision) marked out a nation, a male line to the Messiah, and signaled the need for a circumcised heart.
The sign of the New Covenant (baptism) celebrates the reality of a circumcised heart, the arrival of the male Offspring, and membership in a global, singular nation of believers who are permanent members.
Hence we baptize men and women, we don’t baptize unbelieving spouses, and we only occasion it on a credible profession of faith — evidence of one’s rebirth.
New wine, new wineskins. New Covenant, new sign with “escalated” meaning.
Dispensationalism and paedobaptism have this in common: They don’t sufficiently “escalate” Old Testament types.
Example: The land promises of the Old Testament point to fact that God’s people will inherit the whole Earth. Classic dispensationalism downplays or rejects this.
Paedobaptism fails to see the escalated “genealogical principle” fulfilled in Christ and the New Covenant. Biblically, the New Covenant only includes those “born of God”:
“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:12-13)
The 1689 federalism aspect: all prior Biblical covenants prepared for THE covenant of grace, the New Covenant.
I Am Aaron Shafovaloff 