Theopedia

Sign

“You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.”

— Genesis 17:11 (ESV)

Definition

A sign is a visible token God appoints to represent, and point beyond itself to, an inward spiritual reality.1 Scripture uses the word in two related senses: a covenant sign marks an established relationship between God and his people, as circumcision and the rainbow did (Gen. 17:11; 9:12-13, 17), while an attesting sign confirms a word or a messenger’s divine commission, as the wonders given to Moses did (Ex. 3:12; 4:8-9). Baptism is called a sign in the same covenantal sense.2 A sign is often, though not always, also a seal: Scripture calls circumcision both.1

Confessional Witness

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession states that baptism is “a sign of his fellowship with him, in his death and resurrection; of his being engrafted into him; of remission of sins; and of giving up into God, through Jesus Christ, to live and walk in newness of life.”2 The Westminster Confession’s parallel chapter goes further, calling baptism “a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins.”3 Where Westminster names baptism a seal as well as a sign, the 1689 confession’s own chapter on baptism does not; that difference, and what it does and does not imply, is treated at length under Seal.

Biblical Basis

God appointed circumcision as the sign of his covenant with Abraham: “You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you” (Gen. 17:11). Paul later calls the same rite “the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith” (Rom. 4:11), applying both words to one rite. After the flood, God set his bow in the clouds as a sign of his covenant with Noah and “every living creature of all flesh”: “I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth” (Gen. 9:12-13, 17).

Scripture also uses “sign” for a wonder that confirms a word or a messenger, distinct from a covenant sign. When Moses objected that Israel would not believe he was sent by God, God gave him miraculous signs to perform, and told him plainly, “this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you” (Ex. 3:12; 4:8-9). During the plagues on Egypt, God set apart the land of Goshen from the plagues that struck the rest of Egypt “so that you may know that I am the LORD in the midst of the earth,” a sign distinguishing his people rather than marking a covenant (Ex. 8:22-23).

Doctrinal Significance

Reformed theology’s account of the sacraments follows Scripture’s own language closely. Against Rome’s treatment of a sacrament as a “sacred, secret, and hidden thing,” Bavinck writes that “Scripture speaks of it as a sign and seal of the covenant,” citing the rainbow, circumcision, and Paul’s own description of circumcision together; Reformed theology accordingly described the sacraments as “visible, holy signs and seals instituted by God so that he might make believers understand more clearly and reassure them of the promises and benefits of the covenant of grace.”1 A sign, on this account, does not merely illustrate a truth already known some other way; God appoints it so that believers grasp and are assured of the covenant promise itself.

John Gill’s treatment of the Noahic covenant shows a covenant sign can also mark a covenant with no conditions attached to the human party at all. The covenant with Noah, Gill observes, had “no conditions in it, no sign or token to be observed on man’s part; only what God himself gave as a token of his good will, the rainbow in the cloud.” The rainbow accordingly signifies a covenant of pure divine faithfulness.4

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 22, “The Spirit’s Means of Grace.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 29, “Of Baptism,” para. 1. ↩ ↩2

  3. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 28, “Of Baptism,” para. 1. ↩

  4. John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book 4, chap. 2, “Of the Exhibitions of the Covenant of Grace in the Patriarchal State.” ↩