Devotional 152: The Grace of Baptism: Not Inseparably Tied to the Moment

The Confession Read

The efficacy of baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered; yet, notwithstanding, by the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited, and conferred, by the Holy Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth unto, according to the counsel of God's own will, in his appointed time.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 28, Section 6

Introduction

Picture the prophet standing at the rim of a valley that runs away from him in every direction, and picture that valley floored not with grass or stone but with bone. Wherever Ezekiel's eye fell it found the same thing: a rib cage here, a femur there, a thousand skulls bleached white by the sun. The bones were not merely dead; they were dry. Death had held that ground so long that whatever life once bound the frames together had long since evaporated into the open air. And God put to His prophet a question that must have sounded like mockery to any natural ear: Son of man, can these bones live? What followed is the key to everything our Confession teaches in this section. Ezekiel did not raise the dead. He prophesied, as he was commanded, and as he spoke, bone sought out bone and sinew and flesh crept over the frames. Yet still there was no breath in them, and the whole valley stood like a vast assembly of the newly made dead. Then God commanded the prophet to call upon the wind, to summon breath from the four quarters of heaven, and only then, when the wind came at God's own command and in God's own time, did that exceeding great army rise upon its feet. The wind did not blow because the prophet was faithful, though he was. It did not blow because the bones were willing, for bones have no will. It blew because God sent it, at the hour God had appointed, upon the very bodies God had chosen to quicken. That is the doctrine of baptism's efficacy in a single picture, and it answers a question every believing parent has carried into the small hours of the night. Not whether grace will ever reach the child who sleeps in the font. When. This is no idle curiosity, for two errors have always pressed upon the church at this point, and both of them wound real souls. On one side stands the error that fastens grace to the clock, as though the Spirit were bound to work the instant the water touches the skin and nowhere else. On the other stands the error that empties the ordinance of all grace whatsoever, as though the water were a bare badge and the Spirit had nothing to do with it at all. Our Confession will have neither. It teaches, with a balance that is the glory of the Reformed mind, that the efficacy of baptism is not tied to the moment of its administration, and yet that by the right use of the ordinance the promised grace is not only offered but really exhibited and conferred by the Holy Ghost, to such as that grace belongs, according to the counsel of God's own will, in His appointed time. Let us set this truth before us plainly, then, and let it do its quiet work upon our hearts. For it is a doctrine at once sobering and tender, a doctrine that humbles the proud and steadies the anxious, and a doctrine that teaches us to look away from the calendar and the font to the free and sovereign Spirit of God.

Scripture Foundation

The first foundation of this doctrine is that strange and wonderful chapter in which God teaches a prophet the freedom of His own Spirit. The hand of the LORD carried Ezekiel out and set him down in a valley full of bones, and the LORD asked him whether these bones could live. Ezekiel answered with the only answer a creature may safely give: O Lord GOD, thou knowest. Then God told him to preach to the bones. Ezekiel 37:4 "O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD." And the astonishing thing is that the bones obeyed. There was a noise, and behold a shaking, and bone came together to his bone, and sinew and flesh rose upon them and skin covered them over. But there was no breath in them. The word had rebuilt the frame; it had not yet kindled the life. Then came the second command: Ezekiel 37:9 "Prophesy unto the wind... Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." The Hebrew here deserves our close attention, for it is the hinge on which the whole passage turns. The word for breath and the word for wind are the same word, rûaḥ, and it is the very word the Old Testament uses for the Spirit of God. When God commanded the prophet to summon the rûaḥ from the four winds, He was not asking Ezekiel to manufacture a breeze. He was teaching him that the life of the dead is not in the prophet's mouth, nor in the obedience of the bones, but in the free and sovereign act of God's own Spirit. Ezekiel 37:14 "And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live." The wind came because God sent it, at His command and in His time, and the army stood. Here is baptism's efficacy in miniature. The ordinance is the prophet's word spoken over dry bones. The water is applied in obedience, and the sign and the seal are set in their place. But the life itself, the breath that raises a dead sinner to walk in newness of life, belongs to the Spirit alone, and the Spirit comes when and where and upon whom He pleases. The frame may be built at the font; the quickening may come at any hour God appoints, whether in the same moment or twenty years afterward. The water does not determine the day. The Spirit does. A second foundation stands in the first chapter of Ephesians, where Paul unveils the deep spring from which all grace flows. Ephesians 1:11 "In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will." The word rendered counsel is boulē, and it means a settled, deliberate purpose, the kind of resolve a king forms in the privacy of his own will and then carries out. Paul would have us know that our inheritance, our share in Christ, our very quickening, was not left to the accidents of a font or a date or a minister's hands. It was determined in the counsel of God's own will before the world began. When the Confession says that grace is conferred "according to the counsel of God's own will, in his appointed time," it is only echoing Paul. The Spirit does not keep the church's calendar; He keeps the Father's counsel. And observe that this counsel is personal before it is general. God has not merely appointed a time for grace in the abstract; He has appointed a time for you. The same boulē that fixed the hour of the world's redemption fixed the hour of your regeneration, and the two are joined in the one unsearchable purpose of Him who worketh all things after that counsel. This is why the believer may leave his own spiritual biography in God's hand with perfect peace. A third foundation appears in Galatians, and it shows us that God's grace has a fullness of time. Galatians 4:4 "But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law." The phrase is to plērōma tou chronou, the fullness of the time. God did not send His Son too early, before the law had done its convicting work, nor too late, after hope had died. He sent Him at the appointed hour, when every promise and every prophecy had ripened to readiness. And as it was with the coming of Christ, so it is with the coming of Christ's grace into a single soul. The Spirit is sent at a fullness of time that God alone has measured. Galatians 4:6 "And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." The same Father who timed the incarnation of His Son times the regeneration of His children, and He times it well. A man may be baptized in infancy and cry Abba at forty; the years between are not the Spirit's delay but the Father's appointed season. The fourth foundation meets us in Antioch of Pisidia, where Paul and Barnabas preached and the Gentiles believed. Acts 13:48 "And as many as were ordained to eternal life believed." The word translated ordained is tetagmenoi, from a root that means to set in order, to appoint, to dispose. It describes soldiers drawn up in rank or tasks arranged beforehand. Luke does not say that as many as believed were then ordained to life; he says that as many as had been ordained to life believed. The appointing came first, in the hidden counsel of God, and the believing followed in the open world. This is exactly the Confession's meaning when it speaks of grace conferred to such "as that grace belongeth unto." Grace does not belong to everyone upon whom water falls; it belongs to those for whom it was appointed from eternity, and to them it will certainly come, whether at the font or far from it. We might add one word from the ninth chapter of Romans, where Paul presses the point until it can no longer be evaded. Romans 9:15 "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." Romans 9:16 "So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy." The moment of grace is not earned by the runner, nor compelled by the wisher. It is God's mercy, given to whom He will, when He will. Baptism does not alter that freedom; it bows before it. Taken together these passages give us the full shape of the doctrine. The grace of baptism is real, for God has joined it to the sign and sealed the covenant in the triune name. But the grace of baptism is free, for the Spirit who confers it blows where He lists, and the Father who appoints it has set the hour from eternity. The water is God's, the promise is God's, the breath is God's, and the time is God's. When we have said that, we have said all that this section teaches, and all that a believing heart needs to know.

What the Divines Meant

The Westminster divines wrote this single sentence to settle a quarrel that had burned for centuries, and every word of it carries the weight of that argument. Notice first the opening denial: the efficacy of baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered. The divines chose the word efficacy deliberately. They were not denying that baptism accomplishes anything, as the enthusiasts charged. They were denying that its whole accomplishment is compressed into the seconds in which the water is applied. Rome had taught that grace is infused at the moment the sacrament is performed, by the bare performance of it, so that the water working of itself produces the grace in the soul. Against this the Reformers had always protested, and the divines here make the protest precise: the Holy Ghost is not a force locked inside the element, to be released the instant the skin is wetted. He is a free and sovereign Lord, and He works in His own time. To fasten grace to the moment of administration is to make the Spirit a servant of the font, and the divines will not have it. Yet mark how quickly the Confession swings back to guard the other side. "Yet, notwithstanding," it says, "by the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited, and conferred." Here the divines cut away the error of the enthusiast, who would turn baptism into an empty picture that merely illustrates a truth but conveys nothing. Three words bear the weight of the correction. The word offered tells us that in the ordinance God truly sets His grace before all who receive it, and the promise is genuinely tendered to every baptized person. The word exhibited goes deeper: in the right use of baptism the grace is not only spoken of but displayed, held out, shown in the sign that God has joined to it, so that what the minister pours upon the brow truly presents the blood that cleanses the soul. And the word conferred goes deepest of all: to the elect, to those to whom the grace belongs, the Spirit does not merely show or offer but actually gives the thing signified. The divines are careful about who receives this conferring. It comes, they say, "to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth unto." The parenthetical is significant. Age makes no difference to God's freedom. A full-grown convert may come to the water with tears and a broken heart and yet receive only the sign, if the grace was never appointed for him. A week-old infant who cannot speak a syllable may receive the grace itself, if God has appointed it. The water does not discriminate by understanding; the Spirit discriminates by election. And the whole work is resolved, at last, into one phrase that silences every boast and every anxiety alike: "according to the counsel of God's own will, in his appointed time." Here the divines borrowed the language of Scripture itself, for the phrase is Paul's from Ephesians, and it places the whole matter where alone it can safely rest. The time of your quickening, whether you can name the day or not, was appointed before the foundation of the world. The ordinance is not the source of grace but the appointed channel of it, and the channel never fails when the counsel of God has opened it. This is why the section can speak so calmly of things so high: because nothing here is left to chance, and nothing to the creature's worthiness, and nothing to the accident of a calendar. Notice, too, what the divines were quietly rejecting in the very grammar of the sentence. The phrase "counsel of God's own will" is shot through with anti-Arminian force, for it insists that the conferring of grace rests not on the free choice of man but on the free purpose of God. And the phrase "his appointed time" rejects the notion that the Spirit must work on the day of the ceremony or not at all. The divines were not content merely to deny Rome's clockwork; they were equally resolved to deny the enthusiast's emptiness, and to leave the believer with a real grace, a free Spirit, and a settled purpose that cannot fail. The men who wrote these words knew both errors at first hand. They had watched Rome make the font a kind of machine, dispensing grace by the mere turning of a handle, so that a priest's water became a thing to be bought and a superstition to be sold. And they had watched the sectaries of their own day run to the other extreme, casting the sacraments aside as rags and boasting a Spirit who had no use for the water Christ commanded. Between the machine and the emptiness the divines set this single, careful sentence. It was their way of saying that grace is neither manufactured by the rite nor disconnected from it; it is promised, exhibited, and conferred by a free Spirit, at a time of God's own choosing, to the souls God has chosen. The sentence is a piece of pastoral care as much as a piece of theology, for it was written to quiet the anxious and to startle the presumptuous.

Theological Depth

Calvin presses the point with his usual pastoral force. In the Institutes he observes that we must not imagine the efficacy of baptism to be tied to the instant in which the water is administered, for the promise of which baptism is the seal abides through the whole course of life, and its fulfillment is governed by the good pleasure of God. The grace of baptism may go before, accompany, or follow the washing of the body, because the Spirit, who is the author of it, is not bound to any moment. Calvin is equally firm in the other direction: baptism is no bare and empty ceremony, for it presents to the believer, in visible form, that very cleansing and renewal which God has promised, and the faithful receive it as God's pledge, sealed to them by the Spirit in the time God has set. Where some men fasten grace to the water and other men strip the water of grace, Calvin keeps both truths in a single sentence, exactly as our Confession does. Hodge, commenting on this very section, sharpens the distinction that holds the whole doctrine together. The grace promised, he says, is offered to all who receive the ordinance, but it is conferred upon the elect alone; the one is the gospel's free tender, the other is the Spirit's sovereign application. The efficacy of baptism, therefore, is not in the water, nor in the minister, nor in the moment, but in the operation of the Holy Ghost, who works where and when He wills, and who will not fail to work in every soul for whom the grace was appointed. Hodge is careful to say that this is no insult to the ordinance: God has been pleased to join the grace to the sign, so that the sign truly exhibits it and the Spirit truly confers it, and yet the two are never so welded together that the sign can be said to contain the grace as a vessel contains wine. The sign is not the thing; but the sign is not nothing. Shaw, in his Exposition, walks the same narrow path and names it plainly. He observes that the grace of baptism is really offered to all who are baptized, and really conveyed to the elect; the difference lies not in the water but in the Spirit's discriminating work. He warns against two opposite sins: the presumption of the man who rests in his baptism as though the deed were done, and the despair of the man who thinks his baptism worthless because he cannot fix the hour of his conversion. Against both he sets this section: the grace is real, and the time is God's. The ordinance is God's own appointment, and he who trusts God's appointment may leave the calendar in God's hand. Owen carries the argument into the doctrine of the Spirit, on ground he made his own. In his work on the Holy Spirit he insists that regeneration is the Spirit's own sovereign act, performed by the Spirit alone, and that the Spirit, being a free person and not a power, works when and where and upon whom He pleases. Owen returns again and again to the valley of dry bones as the standing figure of this freedom: the prophet may preach, and the bones may rise into a formed body, but no breath enters until the Spirit breathes, and He breathes at the command of God, in the hour of God's choosing. A sinner may be brought to the font and washed with water in the triune name, and yet lie a formed but breathless frame until the Spirit quickens him. Or he may be quickened in the same hour as his baptism. The time is not in the hands of men. So the four voices converge. Grace is real; the ordinance truly exhibits and conveys it. But the Spirit is free; the time is God's; and the souls to whom grace comes are those for whom it was appointed from eternity. To trust the ordinance without trusting the Spirit is presumption. To honor the Spirit by despising the ordinance is ingratitude. The Reformed way is to hold the sign in reverence and the time in patience. Nothing in the Reformed tradition is more characteristic than this refusal to choose between truths that belong together. The sign is real, and the Spirit is free; the ordinance conveys grace, and the moment does not bind it. A man who grasps only the first half will end in superstition; a man who grasps only the second will end in contempt. Only the man who holds both, as Calvin and Hodge and Shaw and Owen held both, will find the ordinance sweet and the Spirit sovereign, and will learn to wait upon the wind of God.

Puritan Application

First, be patient with the souls of your children. A believing parent may look upon a son baptized in infancy who has reached fifteen or twenty or thirty years and has never yet professed Christ, and the heart may sink. The doctrine before us forbids despair. The grace of baptism is not tied to the moment of administration, and the Spirit keeps His own calendar. The frame may already stand, as the bones stood formed upon the valley floor, waiting only for the breath. Your part is not to quicken him, for no parent can breathe life into a dead soul. Your part is to prophesy, as Ezekiel did: to keep the word of God sounding over that young life, to pray without ceasing, to walk before him in the beauty of holiness, and to leave the hour of the wind in the hand of the God who sent it. The same Spirit who breathed upon the first Adam's dust will breathe upon your child's dust in His own time, and no mother's tears can hurry Him, and no father's anguish can delay Him. Second, let no man rest in his baptism as though the deed were done. This is the presumptuous error the Confession quietly slays. The sign is set upon multitudes to whom the grace was never appointed, and the water upon the brow is no discharge from the duty of the soul. Search your own heart. Has the breath of the Spirit ever quickened you, or are you still a formed frame without life, clean in the church's register but dead in your trespasses and sins? Does Abba rise within you when you pray, or is the word a stranger on your lips? If the Spirit has not yet breathed upon you, your baptism does not excuse you; it witnesses against you, for it tells you plainly what grace was offered to you and how far short of it you still lie. Let the baptized man consider what his baptism declares. It declares that grace was offered to him, that Christ was exhibited to him, that the covenant was sealed upon him. If he has never closed with that grace, his baptism becomes not a pillow for his head but a witness against his soul, a witness that will rise with him at the judgment and testify that mercy stood at his door and he would not open. Do not let the sign become your accuser. Make your calling and election sure, and let the water that once fell upon your brow drive you, with tears, to the blood that alone can wash the conscience. Third, let no man despise the ordinance because he cannot date his conversion. There are tender souls who were baptized long ago and came to Christ so gradually that they cannot name the day or the hour of their quickening, and Satan whispers to them that their baptism meant nothing and their faith is not real. The doctrine before us answers that whisper. The efficacy of baptism is not tied to the moment, which is to say that God is not obliged to work with a sudden and datable stroke. The wind may come as a gentle and gradual rising rather than a tempest, and a soul may be alive in Christ for years before it can say with certainty when the life began. Do not measure the grace of God by the clarity of your memory. Measure it by the fruit of the Spirit, and if the fruit is there, bless the God who kept His own appointed time, whether you can read it on the clock or not. There are men and women in the church today who cannot name the day of their conversion and yet love Christ with a love that only the Spirit could have kindled. Their baptism was administered in infancy, and the grace of it, far from being tied to that long-ago morning, has been rising in them like a tide all their lives, silently, irresistibly, in the time God appointed. Let such souls take courage. The absence of a marked hour is no argument against the presence of grace; it may be the strongest argument for a work so gradual and so divine that no single morning could contain it. Fourth, reverence the ordinance for what it truly is. The enthusiast errs when he turns baptism into an empty picture, and the church of God must not follow him. When you stand in the assembly and watch the water poured in the triune name, you are beholding not a mere illustration but the gospel itself set before your eyes, the blood of Christ exhibited, the cleansing of the Spirit shown, the covenant of grace sealed. Treat it with the reverence due to a thing that God has joined to His own grace. The sign is not the grace, but it is the appointed sign of the grace, and he who sneers at the sign sneers at the hand that appointed it. Fifth, rest the whole weight of your hope upon the counsel of God's own will. Here is the deep comfort of this doctrine, and its deepest humiliation too. Your quickening was not your own achievement; you did not choose the hour, and you did not supply the breath. You were chosen before the world began, and quickened at the time God appointed, and kept by the same sovereign will that will keep you to the end. Let that truth steady you when your frame is weak and your heart is cold. The God who timed the incarnation of His Son timed your regeneration, and He who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. The calendar is His. The counsel is His. The breath is His. And because it is all His, it is all sure.

Prayer

O sovereign Lord, who didst breathe upon the valley of dry bones and bid the dead stand up, we bless Thee that our life is not in our own hands but in the counsel of Thy own will. We confess how often we have fastened Thy grace to a moment, and how often we have doubted because we could not read the clock of Thy Spirit. Forgive us, and teach us patience. We thank Thee for the ordinance of baptism, which Thou hast appointed as the sign and seal of Thy covenant, and we ask that we may never despise it, and never rest in it, but look through the water to the blood of Christ and to the quickening of Thy Spirit. Grant to every child of the covenant, in the hour Thou hast appointed, that breath from the four winds which alone can raise the dead. For the young who have been baptized and have not yet professed Thee, we beseech Thee, come with power; prophesy not only to their bones but breathe upon their spirits, that they may live. And for those of us who have lived long in the church and yet know not whether the breath has ever entered, have mercy, O God, and quicken us before the day pass. Thou hast appointed the time; we rest in it. Thou hast chosen the souls; we rest in that election. Do with us according to the counsel of Thine own will, and grant that when the wind blows we may be found standing upon our feet, a people quickened by Thy Spirit, to the praise of the glory of Thy grace. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.