Devotional 151: The Ground for Infant Baptism: The Covenant Extended to Children

The Confession Read

Although it be a great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be regenerated, or saved, without it; or, that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 28, Section 5

Introduction

A man may be carried to the font by his parents, sprinkled with water in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and enrolled among the visible people of God, and yet go down to his grave a stranger to the grace that the water only pictured. A man may profess Christ with his lips, be brought to the water before a watching congregation, and rise to the warm hand of the elders, and yet hear at the last day those terrible words: "I never knew you; depart from me." The sacrament we have spent these past hours unfolding can be trusted too much, and it can be honored too little, and both errors have souls in their keeping. Consider how these two errors work themselves out in the lives of ordinary men. One man trusts his baptism as a man trusts a charm hung about his neck. He has never wept over his sin, never fled to Christ, never known the Spirit's quickening, but he is persuaded that the water settled the matter long ago, and he sleeps upon that persuasion as upon a pillow. Another man shrugs the whole ordinance away. The water, he says, cannot wash a soul, and he is right; but from that true premise he draws a false conclusion, that the water is therefore nothing at all, and he goes through his days despising what God has appointed. The first man makes an idol of the sign; the second makes a mock of it. Both have erred, and both have erred concerning their own souls, for the sign was never meant to be trusted, and it was never meant to be scorned. This is the truth the Westminster Divines now set before us in a single, carefully balanced sentence. Grace and salvation, they say, are not so inseparably annexed to baptism that no person can be saved without it; nor is it true that every baptized person is certainly regenerated. With one stroke they cut away a superstition and a presumption, and with the very same stroke they guard the honor of the ordinance with a warning of their own: it is a great sin to despise or to neglect it. Here, dear listener, is the Reformed mind at its sober best, refusing both the magic of Rome and the contempt of the enthusiast, holding two truths together that only appear to pull apart. Why does this matter to you? Because you have either been baptized or you have not, and in either case the devil has a snare prepared. If you have been baptized, he will whisper that the water settled everything, that your place is secure, that the sign has done what only the Spirit can do. If you have not, or if you look back on your baptism as a half-forgotten custom of childhood, he will whisper that the ordinance is nothing, a ceremony to be shrugged off, and that since the water saves no one it matters not at all whether you received it. Both whispers are lies, and this section of the Confession is the sword that cuts them both. Let us take it up carefully, and let the truth of it search our own hearts before we are done.

Scripture Foundation

We begin at the fountain of all true religion, with a conversation our Lord held one night with a ruler of the Jews. Nicodemus came to Jesus by darkness, bearing a cautious compliment: we know thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles except God be with him. And Jesus, passing over the compliment entirely, struck straight at the man's soul: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" John 3:3. The word our Lord used, and which John has preserved for us in Greek, is anōthen, and it is a word of double meaning. It means both again and from above. Nicodemus heard only the first meaning, and he stumbled over it: how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb? But Jesus meant the second meaning as well, and indeed chiefly. The new birth is not a second, better performance of the old. It is a birth from above, a birth that comes down out of heaven, a work that no man performs upon himself any more than he performed his first birth. Then the Lord pressed the point until there was no room left for confusion: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again" John 3:6-7. Mark the clean division. Flesh begets flesh, and Spirit begets spirit, and the two lines never cross. Whatever is born of human instrumentality, whatever men can do with water and words and hands, remains flesh. The water of baptism touches the flesh, and the flesh cannot pass it on to the soul. Only the Spirit of God can beget the new man, and he does it sovereignly, invisibly, and from above. Scripture has a name for this work: paliggenesia, a word compounded of the word for again and the word for coming into being, so that the new birth is literally a second genesis, a coming-into-being again. And a genesis is never a man's own doing; he is born, he does not birth himself. This is the first and deepest ground of everything this section teaches. Regeneration is not the work of a ceremony; it is the work of a Person, and that Person is not bound to any font or any minister's hand. If a man would see the kingdom, the water will not open his eyes; only the Spirit from above can do that. Now turn from John's Gospel to Paul's epistle, where the same distinction is drawn across the whole history of God's covenant. In the second chapter of Romans Paul takes up the great old-covenant sacrament, circumcision, and he strips it of the magic men had attached to it. "For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision" Romans 2:25. Then, lest any man suppose the outward mark was itself the thing, he declares: "For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God" Romans 2:28-29. The Greek word for circumcision is peritomē, a cutting round about, and Paul's whole argument hangs on the difference between a cutting of the flesh and a cutting of the heart. There was never a day when the sign itself saved anyone. Abraham's descendants bore the mark in their flesh from the eighth day, and many of them died in their sins with the mark still upon them, for they had the outward peritomē but not the inward, not the peritomē of the heart that only God can give. If this was true of the old sacrament, how much more plainly it stands over the new. Baptism is the circumcision of the new covenant in its outward form, and it profits a man only as the inward reality it seals is his. The water may be upon his brow while his heart remains as hard and uncut as the day he was born. The sign does not create the grace; it seals it, and the seal belongs only to those in whom God has begun the inward work. The sharpest proof of this very point is a man whose name has become a byword for the baptized hypocrite. In the eighth chapter of Acts we meet Simon, a sorcerer of Samaria who had bewitched the city with his arts, and who, when Philip preached Christ, made a profession of faith and was baptized Acts 8:13. Scripture does not hesitate to say it: "Then Simon himself believed also: and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip." Here was a man who had received the very sign of the covenant, who had submitted to the water in the name of Christ, who stood among the baptized church at Samaria. And yet when the apostles came down and laid hands upon men for the gift of the Spirit, Simon's true heart came out at last. He offered money for the power to give the Spirit, and Peter turned on him with words that still burn: "Thy money perish with thee... thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee. For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity" Acts 8:20-23. Consider the weight of that scene. A baptized man, a member of the visible church, and yet Peter reads his state and finds him in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity. The water had touched him, but the Spirit had not. His faith was a faith of astonishment, not of repentance; he had believed with the same credulity with which he had once followed his own magic, because he saw great things and wondered. The Ethiopian eunuch in the very same chapter believed to salvation and went on his way rejoicing; Simon believed to his own ruin and went on his way unchanged. Two men, one water, two ends. This is exactly what the Confession means when it refuses to say that all who are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated. Our Lord himself supplied the final proof in the parable of the wedding feast. A king made a marriage for his son and sent into the highways to gather guests, both bad and good, until the hall was filled Matthew 22:10. But among them the king found one man without a wedding garment, and to him the command went out that still rings with terror: "Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" Matthew 22:13. The man was in the hall. He had come in at the king's own invitation. He sat among the guests at the very feast. And yet he was cast out, because he lacked the one thing needful. "For many are called," our Lord concluded, "but few are chosen" Matthew 22:14. The visible church is that hall, and baptism is the entrance into it. But to sit in the hall is not yet to be clothed, and to be invited is not yet to be chosen. Many pass through the water who never pass through the gate of regeneration.

What the Divines Meant

The Westminster Divines did not write this sentence in a vacuum. Two living errors stood before them, and the sentence is shaped to answer both, as a good sword is balanced for the cut in either direction. On the one side stood Rome, which had made baptism a thing of automatic power. By the doctrine of the opus operatum, the bare performance of the rite was held to confer regeneration upon every subject of it, whether infant or adult, quite apart from any faith or repentance in the heart. Grace was said to be tied to the water as the effect is tied to its cause; the sacrament was the instrument by which the soul was cleansed, and the act itself worked the work. It followed that every baptized person was certainly regenerated, and that no unbaptized person could be saved, for grace and salvation were inseparably annexed to the ordinance. Against this superstition the divines set their careful denial. Grace and salvation, they write, are not so inseparably annexed to baptism that no person can be regenerated or saved without it, nor that all who are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated. The water is real and holy, but it is not a charm. It does not work by its own force, and it does not bind the Spirit of God. On the other side stood a different error, one no less dangerous for being the mirror image of the first. There were enthusiasts and sectaries in the divines' own day, as there are in ours, who so exalted the inward work of the Spirit that they despised the outward ordinance altogether. Since the water saves no one, they reasoned, the water matters not at all. The sacrament was a ceremony, a relic, a thing indifferent, and the man who was truly spiritual might neglect it with a clear conscience. Against this contempt the divines set the opening words of the sentence, and they chose their words with care: "Although it be a great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance." Mark the two verbs. To contemn is to despise, to treat with active contempt, to sneer at the thing God has appointed. To neglect is quieter but no less fatal, for neglect is the contempt of the idle heart, the man who does not mock the ordinance but simply never troubles himself to honor it. Both are sin, and the divines call them a great sin, for the man who scorns the sign scorns the God who appointed it, and the man who neglects the seal treats the King's own seal as a trifle. The genius of the sentence lies in its twofold denial, and we do well to dwell on both halves. The first denial is that grace is not so annexed to baptism that no one can be saved without it. Here the divines answer Rome's iron necessity, and they answer it with a tenderness that has comforted anxious souls from that day to this. There are those who were never baptized, who were cut off from the church by persecution or by sickness or by a providence too strange for us to read, and the gospel must be able to say to such, as our Lord said to the thief beside him, "To day shalt thou be with me in paradise" Luke 23:43. Salvation is not in the font; it is in Christ, and where Christ is received by faith, the want of the sign does not undo the substance. The second denial is that not all who are baptized are certainly regenerated. Here the divines answer presumption. The man who rests in his baptism as a finished salvation, who has never wept over his sin or fled to Christ, has made the sign his idol and his ruin. Simon the sorcerer was baptized, and Simon was in the gall of bitterness. Notice also the quiet wisdom in the very shape of the sentence, the "although... yet" that holds the two truths in a single breath. The divines did not let the one half swallow the other. They did not say, because the ordinance does not save, therefore it is nothing; nor did they say, because it is a great sin to neglect it, therefore it must save. They held both: the ordinance is holy and to be honored, and the grace is free and not to be idolized. This is the balance that only a high view of God's sovereignty can sustain. The sacrament is precious because God has appointed it as a seal of his promise; it is not salvific because God alone gives the grace it seals. Here, as everywhere in the Confession, the divines are guarding the glory of God against every encroachment, whether from the sacrament that would bind his grace or from the enthusiast who would spurn his command.

Theological Depth

Calvin presses this very balance with an urgency we can still feel. In the Institutes he insists that the sacraments confer nothing of themselves; the water of baptism does not contain grace as a vessel contains wine, and the Spirit is not so bound to the sign that he must act wherever the sign is applied. The efficacy of the sacrament, he writes, lies not in the outward element nor in the bare act, but in the promise of God and in the inward working of the Spirit, who alone can wash the soul. Calvin can therefore hold, without any strain, that a baptized man may remain in his sins and that an unbaptized man may be saved: the sign seals, but it does not create, and the thing sealed belongs only to those to whom the Spirit applies it. Yet the same Calvin will not permit a syllable of contempt toward the ordinance, for it is God's own appointed pledge, and he who scorns the pledge scorns the faithfulness of the Giver. The water is not the fountain, but it is the appointed witness to the fountain, and the witness of God is not to be despised. Shaw, in his Exposition of the Confession, reduces the whole matter to its plainest pastoral form. The section, he explains, is directed against two extremes: against those who make baptism absolutely necessary to salvation, as though the grace of God were chained to the water, and against those who make it of no account whatever, as though a divine ordinance could be a thing indifferent. Against the first he holds out the comfort of the gospel, that salvation is in Christ and not in a rite; against the second he holds out the command of Christ, that the ordinance is his and not ours to neglect. Shaw's genius is his brevity: the sign is not the thing, but the sign is not nothing. A man may perish in the water, and a man may be saved without it, and neither fact gives anyone license to treat the water as his plaything. Both the presumption of the superstitious and the carelessness of the contemptuous are sins against the same command. Turretin supplies the rigorous theological machinery behind the denial. The efficacy of the sacraments, he argues, is not physical but moral and instrumental. The water does not act upon the soul the way a medicine acts upon the body, by a natural virtue inherent in the element. It acts as a sign and seal, exhibiting and confirming the promise to faith, and it accomplishes its work only where the Spirit of God makes it effectual. Grace is therefore not tied to the moment of administration, nor to the act itself, nor to the worth of the minister; it is conferred according to the good pleasure of God, to whom and when he will. This is the exact ground of the Confession's denial that all who are baptized are certainly regenerated, for if the efficacy were physical and automatic, the act would infallibly produce its effect, and Simon's case would be impossible. Turretin keeps the sign and the thing signified cleanly distinct, and in doing so he keeps the glory of regeneration where it belongs: in the sovereign hand of the Spirit. Hodge gathers the strands into a single cord in his commentary on the Confession. The ordinance of baptism, he reasons, is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, and a seal, whatever else it may be, does not of itself convey the estate it attests. It witnesses, it confirms, it obliges; it does not create. The grace of the covenant is the free gift of God, and the seal is his pledge that the gift is real, not the gift itself. Hodge therefore holds both propositions of this section without embarrassment. Baptism is to be administered and received with reverence, because it is God's seal, and it is never to be trusted as a saving work, because it is only a seal. The man who looks to his baptism for salvation has mistaken the receipt for the inheritance; the man who casts his baptism aside has torn up the receipt and declared the inheritance worthless. Both are wrong, and both errors are corrected by the single truth that the sacrament is God's appointed witness to a grace that God alone bestows. Owen adds the word that steadies the whole. The Holy Spirit, he insists, is the only efficient cause of regeneration, and the sacraments are his instruments only as he pleases to use them. The Spirit is sovereign and free, and he is not at the beck of any ordinance; the water is nothing without him, and with him a word, a sermon, a mother's prayer may be the appointed means of the new birth. And so the Confession can be at once so tender and so severe: tender, because no soul that trusts Christ need despair over the accidents of his baptism; severe, because no soul that possesses only the water may presume upon it. The Spirit bloweth where he listeth, and none can command him, and therefore the wise man neither leans upon the sign nor casts it away, but uses it as God appointed it and looks through it to Christ.

Puritan Application

First, then, let the baptized examine whether the sign has ever become the thing. You have received the water, dear listener; but have you received the Spirit? The question our Lord put to Nicodemus he puts still to every professor: art thou born from above, or hast thou only been carried to the font from below? Do not answer too quickly. Simon was baptized, and Simon stood in the visible church, and Simon's heart was not right in the sight of God. Search your own heart by the same test Peter applied to him. Is there in you the gall of bitterness, the bond of some iniquity that you will not let go, a love of sin that the water never touched? If there is, then let no memory of your baptism quiet you, for a sign that has not led you to the thing signified is a witness against you, not for you. The wedding guest sat in the hall and was cast out. Let this solemn thought keep you from ever resting in the ceremony. Yet, in the second place, let no one despise the ordinance as a thing of no account, for that is the other sin this section names. It is a great sin to contemn or neglect what God has commanded. If you have delayed your baptism, or if you look upon the sacrament as a mere formality that may be put off and put off, then you are not standing on higher ground than the superstitious; you are standing on the other side of the same ditch. The writer to the Hebrews asks a question that ought to search every careless heart: "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?" Hebrews 2:3. The seal is the King's own, and he who scorns the seal scorns the King. Receive it, then, in faith and obedience, and let no false notion that the water saves nothing persuade you that the water matters nothing. It is the appointed witness to the blood that cleanses from all sin, and the witness of God is precious. Third, and this is pure comfort, let the gospel be free where the ordinance has been imperfect. Tender consciences are tormented because their baptism was administered in haste, or by an unworthy minister, or in a church they have since left, or because they were never baptized at all and fear the want of it bars the door of heaven. To such the Confession speaks peace. Grace and salvation are not so annexed to the ordinance that no one can be saved without it. The thief on the cross never came to the water, and yet he entered paradise the same day in the arms of Christ Luke 23:43. Your salvation never rested on the perfection of a ceremony; it rests on the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ, and he is enough. Do not make an idol of your baptism by despairing over its circumstances, any more than by trusting in its performance. The fountain is Christ, and the water only points to him. Fourth, learn to distinguish the visible church from the invisible, and to be content with the distinction. The church can see only what men profess, and so she administers the sign to all who profess and to their children; but the church cannot read the heart, and God alone knows them that are his. This means two things for your daily life. Judge charitably of your brother who bears the sign; do not set yourself up as a discerner of hearts, for Simon's falsehood was hidden from Philip, who was an evangelist, and it will be hidden from you. But judge yourself strictly, for you do know your own heart, and the question whether the sign has become the substance is one you alone can answer before God. Be patient with the tares, for the Lord has reserved the harvest to himself, and be ruthless with the tares in your own soul, for there the uprooting is your present duty. Finally, let the whole ordinance drive you past itself to Christ. This is the great office of every sign, and of this sign above all: to point away from itself to the thing it signifies. A milestone by the roadside tells the traveler that the city is near, but the man who sits down beside the milestone and goes no further will never see the gates, and the milestone has done him no good. Your baptism is that milestone. It declares that cleansing from sin is real, that a Savior has been provided, that the promise of the covenant is true and sure; but it does all this only to send you onward to the One it declares. Every time you see a child baptized, let it send you to the cross. Every memory of your own baptism, let it carry you not back to the font but forward to the blood. The water is precious because it points to Christ, and it is dangerous only when it points to itself. Look through the sign, and you will find the Savior.

Prayer

O thou who alone canst make clean the heart, we bless thee that our salvation was never made to hang upon the perfection of any ordinance of ours, but upon the finished work of thy dear Son. We praise thee that the water of baptism is a sign and not a savior, a witness and not the fountain, and that the fountain is Jesus Christ, whose blood cleanseth us from all sin. Lord, search us, we pray, as thou didst search Simon, and show us our hearts as they are in thy sight. If any of us have rested in the sign and never fled to the thing signified, awaken us now, we beseech thee, for it is a fearful thing to sit in the hall and be cast out. Grant that the sign may never be our peace, but only a signpost to our Peace. And keep us, O God, from the contempt that would treat thy ordinance as a trifle. Forgive us where we have neglected what thou hast appointed, where we have been careless of thy seal, where we have made light of thy command. Teach us to honor the sign with reverence and to trust the Savior with all our heart, and to hold these two together all our days. Create in us, we pray, that clean heart which no water can wash and no man can give, even the circumcision of the heart in the spirit, whose praise is not of men but of God. Do thou, O blessed Spirit, who blowest where thou listest, breathe upon us the breath of the new birth, that we may be born from above, not in word only but in truth. And when our faith is weak, help our unbelief, until the day when the sign shall be swallowed up in the substance, and we shall see him face to face. In the name of Jesus Christ, who receiveth sinners and cleanseth them from all unrighteousness, we pray. Amen.