Personal Application
The same stages that are found in the covenant-history
can also be seen in one’s personal life. As I have argued earlier, even those
who do not know God or seek God are in a sense children of God. God has given
them life, and He has cared and provided for them in many ways. So, they owe it
to their Father-God to seek Him and to thank Him; to trust and to obey Him.
If children are born in a Christian family, they may
know that they, as little lambs in the flock, also belong to the Good Shepherd.
Like the children of Abraham, they may live in the community where they hear
God’s Word and experience God’s love. They have the promise of salvation, which
at the right time, they must appropriate by faith.
Others are to seek their Father-God, so that –when
they hear the Good News- they may recognize it as the truth that they so
desperately need to hear. In the Gospel proclamation, they too receive the
promise of salvation, and here too, it must be appropriated by faith.
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When you travel from the earth’s equator to the North Pole, you pass through several climate zones: from tropical to temperate to arctic cold.
Yet, you can experience the same sort of
climate zones when you climb a mountain in a tropical country, but you can do
so in a shorter span of distance and time.
I see a parallel in the covenant history.
The three stages took thousands of years, yet in one person’s life they can
be experienced within a span of less than a century.
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Although children in the church are fully part of the two-dimensional covenant, just like the children of Israel, yet they cannot make a credible life-long commitment to follow Jesus. We do not expect them to commit themselves to a life-long partner in marriage, so we cannot expect them to make a similar decision towards Christ, even though He has –in a sense- already offered them His wedding ring!
As we saw, Peter, at Pentecost addressed the God-worshippers with the claim, “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” (Acts 2: 39). Surely, God’s promises of salvation and the (indwelling) Spirit were for all who heard Peter’s message. These promises were for the Jews and converts to Judaism as well as their households; they were also for all those who would yet, in ages to come, hear the same Gospel message.
Yet, not all who heard the message and had the promise accepted it in faith, for Luke writes, “Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.”
The Position of the Young
Children (of Believers)
When the Hebrews escaped slavery in Egypt, the
children joined their parents. When Lot was saved from Sodom, the children came
with him. When Jesus ‘saved’ children from their diseases, he did so on the
ground of their parents’ faith. When the prison guard became a disciple of Jesus,
his whole family was saved (Acts 16:
31-33).
When I took a course on ‘church planting’ at a Baptist
seminary, a former missionary to the Middle East urged us, “If a father in that
culture decides to follow Christ, we should be prepared to baptize him and his
family”. It is normal in that culture that the family follows the father.
‘Wow’, I thought, ‘and isn’t this the same culture where we find the early
Christian church?!’
When a baby was born to Christian friends in China,
they regularly asked me, as pastor, to bless their newborn child. On one
occasion, I noticed in the bedroom a calendar with a picture of ‘the Good
Shepherd’, so I assured their parents that their little lamb also belonged to
Jesus, and we prayed together that she would later indeed choose to (continue
to) follow Him.
Nevertheless, I have often observed that in churches
where infants are baptized a false assurance lives that the child is guaranteed
to go to heaven. There the very word ‘covenant’ brought up associations with
‘the wonderful comfort that we might have in infant baptism’.
The liturgical form does little to stress that
covenant blessings, if spurned in later life, actually result in a greater
curse and condemnation.[1]
This is what the Reformed churches (GKv) in The
Netherlands have in their liturgical form for the baptism of infants:
De
heilige Geest garandeert je dat hij in je komt wonen. Hij maakt je één met
Christus. Hij maakt tot je persoonlijk eigendom wat je in Christus al heb .
Daardoor zul je eens volmaakt zuiver zijn. Dan zul je eeuwig leven te midden
van het volk dat God heeft uitgekozen.
The Holy Spirit guarantees you (in baptism) that He
will come to dwell in you. He makes you one with Christ. He makes that (all
Christ’s promises) will be your personal possession. Through this work, you
will be made pure and perfect. Then you will dwell forever among the people
that God has chosen.
And what is the biblical passage that is supposed to
teach that this is true for all baptized children? 1 Corinthians 6: 19, which
reads:
”Do you not know that your
bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have
received from God?”
Yet, it seems to be clear that Paul is here not
addressing infants in the church, but believers.
Sure, the next paragraph in the form states that there
are still obligations for the child, but how could a guaranteed rebirth ever be
undone? Besides the rebirth or indwelling Spirit is only true for the elect.
Reformed theology professors have given me vague, inconclusive answers when I
questioned them on this point.
One told me that the Holy Spirit gives the assurance,
but that’s not the same things as a guarantee. Nevertheless, baptism is listed
as a sacrament, which implies not only that it is a sign, but also a seal. And
a seal is a guarantee, so the newer translation does not change the meaning
that was already intended by claiming it’s a guarantee.
Another one assured me that the real basis for (infant) baptism is the receiving of the promise and not of the promised things. Yet, regular church
visitors (in the preaching) also
receive the promise, while the church would not
consider them for baptism until they
make a credible public profession of personal faith!
Obligation for Obedience
As I mentioned, the form continues:
Van jouw
kant ben je nu verplicht God zo te gehoorzamen als bij je nieuwe leven past. Je
moet geloven in deze ene God - Vader, Zoon en heilige Geest - en hem liefhebben
met heel je hart, met heel je ziel, met heel je verstand en met inzet van al je
krachten. Je moet met de wereld van de zonde breken, wat zondig in je is laten
afsterven en vol ontzag voor God leven.
From your side, you are now under obligation to obey
God as it befits your new life. You must believe this one God- Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit – and love him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. You
must break with the world of sin, let sin die in you, and live in full respect
for God.
At the time that I publicly challenged these things in
our churches, it was a common idea that the obligations for the baptized person
have no eternal consequences, for…
·
God has given his
guarantee. We cannot make this undone.
·
If we
are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself. (2 Tim. 2:13)
·
The Canons of Dort teach
us that God’s grace is irresistible
·
They also teach us about the
perseverance of the saints
Now, this is the problem.
If the Reformed children have the guarantee of
salvation, and it cannot be undone, then salvation is guaranteed for all the
children in the church. That impression was given in our church at the time,
but the Bible clearly teaches no such thing.
On the other hand, if salvation is first graciously
given, while the final salvation depends on the fulfilment of the righteous
requirements, then we are not saved by grace alone. There are Reformed leaders,
who teach this two-step-justification-theory.[2]
Thank God, Baptists like John Piper, Don Carson, and
Stephen Westerholm[3] have
pointed out the subtle but serious error in this teaching.
Conclusions
The issue of ‘infant baptism’ is not nearly so clear
as I have been led to believe. I was told that Baptists cannot be Christian
believers. The Bible clearly tells us to baptize children of believers, they
claimed, so those who refused to do this cannot truly believe the Bible.
Over the most recent twenty years, however, I have
observed with amazement how many Baptists became more and more Reformed, even
as most ‘Reformed’ churches today no longer stand for the core values of the
Reformation.
Thank God for The Gospel Coalition, where the Reformed
and the Baptists can work effectively together, without compromising the Truth
or the authority of Scripture.
A few months ago, I was baptized by immersion in a
Baptist church. This was my testimony:
“When I was –about sixty years ago- born of believing
parents, they brought me into the church to receive the sign of the covenant:
God also wanted to be my Father and Savior’.
It took about twenty years before a radical
transformation occurred in my life. No longer did I want to be in the center of
my life. In deep gratitude for God’s love in Jesus’ sacrifice, I now wanted to
live for Him and to be His witness.
Yet, at that time I had little notion of conversion or
rebirth. This only came another twenty years later, when I wanted (like the
Bereans) to search the Scriptures to find out whether what I had learned was
true. That is when I came to know the work of Don Carson and John Piper. I
recognized my Master’s voice! Yet, at that time I was not ready to be immersed.
Nevertheless, today the day has come –some twenty
years later again- to renew my covenant with God and to enter the deep water of
baptism!”
[1] Dr. J. Van Bruggen warned about this in his
book “Het Diepe Water van de Doop”
(the deep, hence threatening water of baptism.)
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