Scott,
I'm thrilled it blessed you and hope it strengthens your faith.
Richard,
Quote:
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“So the gospel is that Christ died for you? So did Christ die for every infant of believing parents? This is covenant universalism. The picture of baptism is well taught by the Heidelberg Catechism”
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The parent must believe in no other way, this IS the essence of saving faith. To believe other wise would be to deny the promise of God which is neither save and in fact foolish. For one you are confounding particular and universal. The Gospel is communicated universally without caveats for the very sake of the elect, the particular. Any attempt to communicate it in particular way fails as Gospel, you loose the “for you” in all such attempts and end up in denying Christ altogether every time.
Similarly, you also confuse the communication of the Gospel with the eternal election. This is what Luther would call a theology of glory, ascending into heaven trying to ‘see God in the nude’ to some how detect “the elect” or other wise eternal things your foolish eyes have neither been given to see or have permission from Scripture to seek out. All theologies of glory, as opposed to the theology of the Cross, pretend to see by the means of the things that are (living by sight) into the eternal realities of God (God in the nude). They in essence attempt to “poke at God like fumbling apes” through the veiled screen of His attributes, then grunt out their ideas of what God is like, thus honing their idol. The god men attempt to see by His eternal essences and realities becomes every single time, an idol, the fallen nature can do no other thing and the new nature is a pure man of naked (sightless) faith/trust alone. In Thesis 19 and 20 of Luther’s HD he sets forth the difference between ToG (fallen religion) and ToC (the Cross); “That a person does not deserve to be called a theologian who claims to see into the invisible things of God by seeing through earthly thing (events/works/etc…)” (e.g. trying to build a regenerate or ‘believers only church’ functions this very way. Contra wise: “But that person deserves to be called a theologian (of Cross) who comprehends what is visible of God through suffering and the cross.” In Thesis 21 he sums this up nicely; “The theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil, but the theologian of the Cross says what a thing is.”
Similarly, as Calvin said we are to behold our election in the Cross of Christ as if in a mirror, not nakedly. What a foolish and disobedient parent worthy of hell I would be to turn my children’s eyes to some “signs of faith” WITHIN THEM or some “measure of conversion” WITHIN THEM or some “experimental conversion” none sense WITHIN THEM so that they can earn the merit of baptism. Rather I point them to Christ FOR THEM to which their baptism gives FOR THEM Christ. FOR THEM is Christ given, it matters little when they or adults for that matter actually come to faith. One can cast off their baptism and then if dying so, not letting Christ have you entire sin nature (good and evil works), one only is condemned greater for the rejection of so great a gift.
God suffers His gifts, like baptism and the Lord’s Supper, to be rejected such is the shear loving kindness of His Gospel. This is CENTRALLY apparent and explicit no less than at the very Cross of Christ in which all men rejected Him and to which Baptism and the Bread and the Wine all point, signify, seal and give. God suffers His gifts to be rejected, especially His Son and so the stupidity of fallen man is manifested most plainly. It is as Paul says in Romans ‘if men and women do not believe’ it is not as if the word of God has failed’. For God does not lie.
In terms of what we are to do here and now we simply proclaim the universal offer of the Gospel, John 3:16 is in the sense of proclamation real. Eternal things I leave to God and dare not ascend like a giddy spirited fanatic into the heavens so as to “see God in the nude”, no man can behold him so and all such pretend beholdings are idols of God. In the end the only sin that damns is the sin of not allowing Jesus to take care of your sins for you.
There is not ONE single work nor life of works the devil cannot bring to bear the real Law of God upon so as to show a man that he has NO evidence of conversion and by extension baptized rightly in terms of “timing”. Even faith itself, the devil, when he attacks fully he will shred to pieces like nothing and with no effort. A man will be left with nothing. The devil then, under believers only baptism, snatches the sword of baptism from you as Gospel where it was the “Sword of the Spirit” FOR YOU, and will turn it on you as a weapon against you, e.g. the cries for rebaptism and such. Left naked he will devour one. Crying out, “I am elect”, will avail you nothing when the arch enemy comes, his mind is greater than you dream. He is the lawyer supreme! Leaving you in a whirlwind of doubt of “is it really for me”.
It is as Calvin said that it is NO small issue that God has respect for one’s children for in this the parent TOO has a Gospel NO devil can rob from him/her. Baptism upon the child MOST shows forth the Gospel of God. This is why Lazarus exemplified the Gospel, a dead man called forth to live by faith, for he, like infants, could do NOTHING but receive. In a sense the baptizing of our children are a gift to us today since we only read of Lazarus but can see our children baptized so that we may see the realness of the Gospel in stark contrast…to wit…nothing of you but yet FOR YOU. This weapon no devil nor doctrine of man can rape from your hand. In fact one draws this Sword of the spirit and thrusts it into the belly of the enemy, devil or man or other doctrine and kills it. This is to suffer by faith, yet kill all enemies by nothing more than suffer to trust in another FOR ME. This is what the baptism of infants portrays to the congregation, the people of God, not the individuals of God. This is again why Jesus easily says “…for of such are the kingdom of God…” and “praise and worship are by them perfected”. Nothing worships God like the dead being raised (a type of receiving) and the babies receiving. The nothingness of their state declares His very power to call into being that which is not. NOTHING speaks of or bears witness of the total depravity of man and utter inability of man and the very power of the Gospel like the baptizing of infants. The baptism of adults are at BEST, a very very very poor second witness to which the stain of “trying to do” (make a profession) taints the entire reality of fallen man and grace of God.
May Christ bless you most deeply with His grace,
Larry