Q and A

Driving home: So, to take the shadow in a religious sense of binding yourself over to that whole system, Paul says, you who are circumcised, Christ profits you what? Nothing.

The Mosaic framework and Levitical ritual are described as a 'shadow' cast backward by the 'substance' of Christ, explaining why keeping old rituals religiously after Christ's coming is a nullity.

Well, I had to answer it. Someone asked it of me privately last week, so I'll respond in this way by saying we must separate in these things, make a very distinct line of demarcation between what is a matter of Christian liberty, or what the Bible calls the adiaphora, things indifferent, a matter of innocent custom from what would be a compromising religious practice, now, take the matter of circumcision, if circumcision is given simply as a cultural tradition, if circumcision is administered simply on the basis of medical reasons, as a matter of liberty, then certainly circumcision, as Paul s...

10:32 - 11:56 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin addresses the pedobaptist concept of 'non-communicant members' (baptized infants) and the resulting confusion for children regarding their spiritual identity and…

Martin addresses the caricature that Baptists are cruel to their children by treating them like 'little pagans,' arguing that their nurture is similar to paedobaptists, but without the confusing 'covenant child' status.

You have non-communicant members, those are the infants who've been sprinkled, and communicant members, those who are in full-fledged membership, forming the inner circle. So that basically, I think it would be accurate to say, not a caricature, that these non-communicant members are no different from the children in our church, except they're called church members. We nurture our children publicly in our homes. We catechize our children.

27:15 - 27:46 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin addresses the pedobaptist concept of 'non-communicant members' (baptized infants) and the resulting confusion for children regarding their spiritual identity and…

Martin imagines a 'covenant child' named Little Willie asking his parents about his identity, highlighting the confusion created by being called a church member but not allowed to partake in the Lord's Supper.

But what we are doing is, we are not putting these children in the awkward position of having to ask the question when they begin to think and reflect upon who they are, what is their identity. And one day, the $64 question will be asked. Mommy, Daddy, what am I as a covenant child? I'm called a member of the church, yet I can't partake of the Lord's table.

28:25 - 28:51 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Because on the one hand, we do not want to encourage presumption, but neither do we want to discourage obedience to Christ. And that's the razor's edge.

The spiritual sensitivity and responsiveness observed in children are compared to 'false labor' in pregnancy, illustrating the difficulty parents face in discerning genuine conversion from temporary spiritual swells.

Its mind, its will, its perspective from infancy to the maturity of the threshold of adulthood and how that all interfaces with what I would call some of the swells of spiritual sensitivity that are really often like false labor. And some of you women who've gone into false labor, the only reason you went to the hospital is it felt like a real thing. Otherwise, you wouldn't have gone to the hospital. You'd have said, ah, this is false labor.

46:27 - 47:00 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains that most paedobaptist churches do not re-baptize individuals who were sprinkled as infants, even if they come from other denominations or convert later in life…

Negating the validity of Roman Catholic or other infant baptisms is likened to pulling the first thread on a knit garment, which would unravel the entire fabric of paedobaptist baptismal practice.

That's the real crunch with them. Anything that suggests re-baptism is saying, what happened as an infant is invalid. Now, once they say that, in any case, they know that they've pulled the first beginnings of the thread on that knit garment. And you keep pulling, and before long, all you've got is a ball of yarn at your feet.

50:48 - 51:10 Read in full sermon