In reply to:
[color:"blue"]If someone is elect, then Christ died for his sins whether they are yet regenerate or not. Accordingly, the question we should be discussing is not whether one is regenerated and in the kingdom, but rather whether God would have us say to the child of a professing believing parent that Christ died for his sins.

RonD, this is where Susan and others have problems with your presumed regeneration, or presumed election, if you desire (one must be presumed if the other is presumed). How can you know the mind of God? How do you know who the elect are? The simple fact is you DO NOT know who the elect are and neither should you presume it!

It is God’s eternal decision whom He loves and whom He hates (Rom 9:13). It is God’s eternal decision on whom He will have mercy and on whom He will have compassion (Rom 9:15). It is God’s eternal decision whom He will harden (Rom 9:18). It is God’s eternal decision whom He will make a vessel of honor and dishonor (Rom 9:21). Thus, it is not of you that willeth your child to be elect, but of God that sheweth mercy (Rom 9:16). An infant maybe saved at some time (?), but it is not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:13). God worketh all things after the counsel of his own will (Eph 1:11). If you presume regeneration and in the final estate of things you are incorrect then you have become a liar to your very own child, not to mention God himself.

To presume, against Scripture, that one is elect just because they are the child of a believer is not correct. The Old Testament is full of examples of people that were a part of the covenant, but were never elect (Rom 2:28-29). I do concur that children of believers are very special and receive immeasurable benefits (which in-turn they are responsible for) from hearing the Word of God preached, fellowshipping with others believers, and living in a Christian home, et. al., but this does not guarantee their salvation and thus you should not presume it. Participation in the outer covenant does not guarantee membership in the internal covenant. Just because an infant is a member of the visible Church does not make them a member of the invisible Church. Infant baptism is not based on the possibility that the Holy Spirit may have regenerated the infant before it is baptized, but on the reality of the covenant.

To presume that one is regenerate may run into many problems. One of the major ones being:

    To make of such presumption the rule of the believer's practice in dealing with his children is downright a form of Antinomianism no less than in other matters, even if it conceals itself under the mask of excessive zeal for covenant doctrine.[/LIST] God's revealed will is that the law and gospel are to be presented to sinners. Is your child a sinner? Calling for faith and repentance, is the rule to be observed in the instruction of children. This rule, clearly established in Scripture, supposes that those who are addressed are to be regarded as sinners, not as those justified from eternity and regenerated from the womb.

    If God has not promised to regenerate infants through the waters of baptism, how much less has He promised that our children will be regenerate prior to their baptism! Archibald Alexander is decisive:

    Although the grace of God may be communicated to a human soul, at any period of its existence, in this world, yet the fact manifestly is, that very few are renewed before the exercise of reason commences; and not many in early childhood…. The education of children should proceed on the principle that they are in an unregenerate state, until evidences of piety clearly appear, in which case they should be sedulously cherished and nurtured.
    That's my .02 cents.

Reformed and Always Reforming,