The Roman Catholics, as well as many older denominations baptize or christen infants while Orthodox Jews do what Mary and Joseph did with baby Jesus—they presented him to God and had the Rabbi circumcise him on his eighth day as a sign of his consecration to God.
The Jewish ceremony goes back to God’s covenant with Israel under Abraham. To seal the covenant of blessing he Commanded Abraham that all believing Jews must be circumcised. It was a picture of cutting away the flesh on the organ which produces life. The meaning was that in order to produce spiritual life, we must die to our sinful human nature (that’s the flesh).
In the New Testament (the covenant with the church) circumcision of the male organ is no longer required. Rather we are to symbolically be circumcised in our hearts—that means our human pride has to be cut away so that we can produce life through our “circumcised” lips. Real spiritual life flows from what we say (see Romans 2: 28-29 and Colosssians 2:11).
Thus, as pure as the parents’ motives are who want their babies baptized and as good as their intent is, baptism of infants is really not required or efficacious. So, what we do is dedicate our babies to God. It’s akin to what Hannah did for her son
Samuel when she gave him back to God. (I Samuel 1:28) -- although we encourage parents not to leave them at the church with the pastors, as Hannah did!What we call dedication is more like when Jesus held and blessed the little children (Matthew 19:13-15). It has the double benefit of the parents’ desire to raise their child to love and honor God, and also God’s touch of blessing on the child and his parents.
We do not consider dedication a required ordinance, like we do baptism or communion. Thankfully, I get to do a lot of baby dedications which is one of my favourite things to do.
Barry
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