De Jager
Puritan Board Junior
Greetings Brothers and Sisters,
I wanted to get your thoughts on a topic that, from my perspective, is one of the biggest stumbling blocks when it comes to the understanding of the reformed position on the covenant, and how that relates to baptism. From what I have seen, many Baptists misunderstand what we mean when we talk about “the promise” and how the “promises are to our children”. However, since I know that I am by no means an expert and I myself could be misinformed, I wish to present to you my understanding of this subject, and invite your critiques and/or corrections.
From my perspective, the Baptist (which at one point included myself) confuses promise with fulfillment. Another way of looking at this, is that they confuse covenant with election. From my perspective, when we affirm that “the promises are to our children”, we are not saying that all our children are elect. When I affirm that the promises are to a specific child, I am not saying that in the final analysis, that specific child will be saved. All I am saying is that the promise of salvation is made to that child.
The natural objection to this would be the following: “so, you’re saying that God promises to save this child? What should we conclude if this child clearly falls away from the faith”? To that, my response would be simple: promise of salvation does not equal salvation. For the promises will never be realized without a personal faith. God had promised that the Israelites would inherit the land of Canaan, but a whole generation of them fell in the wilderness. What went wrong? Did God’s promise fail? No, the promise was good. What was lacking was faith. “So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief” (Heb. 3:19). “For what if some did not believe? Shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid” (Rom. 3:3-4). So we see that the promises of God must always be responded to in faith.
I conclude that there are two ways of looking at the promises of the Covenant of Grace. In one sense, from a bird’s eye view, the promises, subsumed under the general promise “I will be their God, they will be my people” is an immutable declaration by God that cannot be annulled no matter how faithless his people are – it is an unconditional promise that God will gather for himself a people who will believe in Him. However, in another sense, from the view of each individual person, it is a conditional promise that must be responded to in faith by the individual, or it will not be true of that particular person – God will not be their God if they do not respond in faith, and they will not receive the substance of the promises of the covenant.
An objection to this line of thinking may be that it sounds Arminian. “Are you saying that God has done his part, now we must do ours”? To this objection, we simply point out that the condition of the covenant (faith) is also a gift of God (Eph. 2:8-10). Therefore, we can rightly say that our children must respond to God’s offer of salvation to them, and yet at the same time we admit that in and of themselves, they have no capability to do so but must be regenerated by the Holy Spirit.
I will leave with a quote from Matthew Henry’s commentary on Genesis 17: “The offer of this eternal life is made in the word, and confirmed by the sacraments, to all that are under the external administration of the covenant; and the earnest of it is given to all believers”. Here Henry differentiates between the “offer” and the “earnest”, which I believe is what I have alluded to above.
I would love to hear your comments, and whether you think I have hit the mark, or if I am badly mistaken! Thank you!
I wanted to get your thoughts on a topic that, from my perspective, is one of the biggest stumbling blocks when it comes to the understanding of the reformed position on the covenant, and how that relates to baptism. From what I have seen, many Baptists misunderstand what we mean when we talk about “the promise” and how the “promises are to our children”. However, since I know that I am by no means an expert and I myself could be misinformed, I wish to present to you my understanding of this subject, and invite your critiques and/or corrections.
From my perspective, the Baptist (which at one point included myself) confuses promise with fulfillment. Another way of looking at this, is that they confuse covenant with election. From my perspective, when we affirm that “the promises are to our children”, we are not saying that all our children are elect. When I affirm that the promises are to a specific child, I am not saying that in the final analysis, that specific child will be saved. All I am saying is that the promise of salvation is made to that child.
The natural objection to this would be the following: “so, you’re saying that God promises to save this child? What should we conclude if this child clearly falls away from the faith”? To that, my response would be simple: promise of salvation does not equal salvation. For the promises will never be realized without a personal faith. God had promised that the Israelites would inherit the land of Canaan, but a whole generation of them fell in the wilderness. What went wrong? Did God’s promise fail? No, the promise was good. What was lacking was faith. “So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief” (Heb. 3:19). “For what if some did not believe? Shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid” (Rom. 3:3-4). So we see that the promises of God must always be responded to in faith.
I conclude that there are two ways of looking at the promises of the Covenant of Grace. In one sense, from a bird’s eye view, the promises, subsumed under the general promise “I will be their God, they will be my people” is an immutable declaration by God that cannot be annulled no matter how faithless his people are – it is an unconditional promise that God will gather for himself a people who will believe in Him. However, in another sense, from the view of each individual person, it is a conditional promise that must be responded to in faith by the individual, or it will not be true of that particular person – God will not be their God if they do not respond in faith, and they will not receive the substance of the promises of the covenant.
An objection to this line of thinking may be that it sounds Arminian. “Are you saying that God has done his part, now we must do ours”? To this objection, we simply point out that the condition of the covenant (faith) is also a gift of God (Eph. 2:8-10). Therefore, we can rightly say that our children must respond to God’s offer of salvation to them, and yet at the same time we admit that in and of themselves, they have no capability to do so but must be regenerated by the Holy Spirit.
I will leave with a quote from Matthew Henry’s commentary on Genesis 17: “The offer of this eternal life is made in the word, and confirmed by the sacraments, to all that are under the external administration of the covenant; and the earnest of it is given to all believers”. Here Henry differentiates between the “offer” and the “earnest”, which I believe is what I have alluded to above.
I would love to hear your comments, and whether you think I have hit the mark, or if I am badly mistaken! Thank you!