Being in the happy time of having kids (the world must be peopled), many of my friends are working through the relationship of their unborn and recently born children to God. This quote by Calvin is helpful.

The offspring of believers are born holy, because their children, while yet in the womb, before they breathe the vital air, have been adopted into the covenant of eternal life. Nor are they brought into the church by baptism on any other ground than because they belonged to the body of the church before they were born. He who admits aliens to baptism profanes it. . . . For how can it be lawful to confer the badge of Christ on aliens from Christ? Baptism must, therefore, be preceded by the gift of adoption, which in not the cause of half salvation merely, but gives salvation entire; and this salvation is afterwards ratified by Baptism.

It’s helpful to remember that Calvin lived in a time of great covenant hypocrisy–the Roman Catholic Church of the sixteenth century. He was no stranger to clerical abuse nor of false profession. Still, where the covenant is embraced, covenant blessings follow. And to believing parents, the promises are for them and their children, as many as the Lord will call.