"All of this is very instructive, if indeed we Christians are Abraham's offspring. It tells me that the Christian life is response in faith and obedience to the God who takes the initiative and comes in sheer grace to seek me out. It tells me that God generously gives a physical mark of belonging to seal that unseen contract between His undeserved love and our wobbly faith. Baptism is obviously the mark of initiation into the New Covenant, just as circumcision was into the Old. Indeed, Paul brings the two of these sacramental acts together and links them with the dying and rising of Christ in his letter to the Colossians. 'In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.' (Col 2:11-12)
Baptism, then, corresponds to circumcision under the Old Covenant. It is the mark of the covenant between God's grace and our response. Not just His grace, nor just our response. It is the seal both in His initiative and our response... The other point to note at this stage is that if we see baptism as the fulfillment under the New Covenant of what circumcision was under the Old, then, like circumcision, it cannot be treated as automatically effective. If the inner attitude of response does not grasp hold of God's loving initiative, then the baptised person in Christian society no more tastes the reality of salvation than did the nominal, circumcised Jew who did not share Abraham's faith."
-Baptism; It's purpose, practice and power. Michael Green. pp13-14. Paternoster, USA (2006).
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