Q and A

Welcome and Explanation of Q&A Format

0:00 This adult Sunday school class was held on January 1st, 1984, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. First of all, I wish to extend a very cordial welcome to those who are visiting with us today, usually on holiday weekends, as we have an outflow of our own people. We have an influx of relatives and friends, of members of our own congregation, and I saw several coming in this morning whom I had not previously seen, and we do want you to know that we extend to you a very cordial welcome in Christ's name. Now, perhaps just a word of explanation is in order with respect to what we're doing in this class. Generally, we are led in the study of the Word of God by one of the proven teachers or pastors of the congregation, and for several months now, Pastor Nichols has been leading us in the study of the Word of God with respect to the subject of baptism, and particularly seeking to bring the teaching of the Word of God to bear upon the practice of infant baptism. We might call this series, Infant Baptism Under the Magnifying Glass of Holy Scripture. Now, that's not his title, that's mine.

1:24 Now, we have not been doing that because we believe those who practice, infant baptism, are heretics, because we are nasty Baptists who would unchurch all but those who hold our view of baptism. As a visitor, you would not be aware of this, and so for the sake of our testimony, I feel I must say this, some of our dearest friends and some of the churches with whom we have the most intimate ties are friends and churches who practice infant baptism, and yet because we do not practice it out of conviction and have never had an extensive study on this subject, we felt there were a number of reasons indicating to us as elders that this was an appropriate time to go into this study. And Pastor Nichols has led us in that study through the first three major divisions of five divisions, and in the light of his own workload this past week and the fact that divisions four and five are breaking new ground for him and demanding many hours. And in the light of his own workload this past week and the fact that divisions four and five are breaking new ground for him he asked that he be relieved this morning of the responsibility of teaching the class, and then next weekend, God willing, he's going to be off with our young people on their retreat,

2:42 ministering the word of God to them, and so I should be leading the class this morning and again next Lord's Day morning, God willing. Now, as I prayerfully considered what we ought to do this morning, as I thought of all of the factors, and because we did this morning, I thought of all of the factors, and because we did this morning, and because we did this morning, I thought of all of the factors, and because we did this morning, I did not have an elders' meeting last night. Generally, I would consult with my fellow elders, and we'd come to a consensus. I have made a unilateral decision, believing that perhaps there are not a few of you who didn't use the best of judgment in getting to bed at a decent hour last night.

3:16 Perhaps your minds were a little dull because you cheated yourself on your normal allotment of your seven or eight hours' sleep, and to enter into an intensive study first thing in the morning would not be a good thing. Perhaps your minds were a little dull because you cheated yourself on your normal allotment of your seven or eight hours' sleep, and to enter into an intensive study first thing in the morning would not be a good thing. Perhaps your minds were a little dull because you cheated yourself on your normal allotment of your seven or eight hours' sleep, and to enter into an intensive study first thing in the morning would not be a good thing. Perhaps your minds were a little dull because you cheated yourself on your normal allotment of your seven or eight hours' sleep, and to enter into an intensive study first thing in the morning would not be a good thing.

3:28 Perhaps your minds were a little dull because you cheated yourself on your normal allotment of your seven or eight hours' sleep, and to enter into an intensive study first thing in the morning would not be a good thing. in the best interest of your edification and certainly not to the best interest of my encouragement to talk to glassy eyes in any kind of a deep study this morning. And so what we propose to do is to open up the class for questions, first of all, giving priority to questions that may yet be in your minds relative to the matters covered over the past weeks on the subject of infant baptism. We had such a session a few weeks ago and the time flew by and I was quite certain that there were other questions that we simply could not address because the allotted time had passed.

4:08 So we will be opening up the class in a few moments for general discussion on the subject of baptism and we have this time the one who's been teaching the class present. As I said the last time, he ran off and left his dirty work to me. He kept promising you a chance for...

4:25 questions and answers and then he ran off to St. Louis to preach at Mark Sarver's ordination and left me to answer all the questions with a good distance between the class and himself. But he's here this morning to speak for himself. If there are matters that only he can unravel, I will gladly defer to him and he'll come and answer those questions.

Guidelines for General Open Forum Questions

4:47 So we're going to kind of team answer any questions pertaining to the material he has given you and if questions... are not forthcoming on that subject or are exhausted with respect to the subject of baptism, why then we'll move on to a general open forum in which any of the members of the church are free to ask questions relative to the meaning of a passage of the word of God, relative to a subject pertaining to the Christian life, the walk of faith, and the only guidelines are that I make a judgment about the questions, as to whether or not it would be in the best interest of general edification to entertain that question publicly.

5:32 And if I make a judgment that it is not, I trust no one will feel offended. We'll gladly discuss such a question with you privately. And our great guideline is let all things be done unto edification and that's our purpose. The scriptures tell us in 1 Corinthians 14 that the women are to ask their husbands any questions that they may have when they go...

5:55 Well, we have women who don't have converted husbands who can answer questions. We have single women, we have widows who are not able to have that opportunity and so we do open up this question time in this family atmosphere under the leadership of proven guides and your elders to women as well as men. And that again, perhaps for any who are visiting with us wonder why we practice this kind of an open-ended session and allow women to participate. Asking a question is not assuming the role of an instructor or a teacher nor is it being carnally disruptive.

6:34 I am here to recognize a hand and either to acknowledge your right to ask a question or to bypass it. And what Paul was dealing with in 1 Corinthians 14 was a situation where there was this two-fold problem of the overthrow of the constituted order of male leadership and apparently, from the context, there was an element of disruptiveness in the bursting out of questions in a manner that did not fit the directive, let all things be done decently and in order. And we believe we can keep the spirit of that passage in the framework that I have mentioned. Well, so much for explanation.

Opening Prayer and Invitation for Baptism Questions

7:15 Now let's pray and ask God by the Holy Spirit to guide us in our time today.

7:22 Our Father, we do thank you for all of the mercy, that have surrounded each one of us, bringing us safely to this hour and to this, the first Lord's Day of a new year. We know that each one of us is in a very real sense his own little amazing story of your preserving, protecting, restoring grace. We thank you that we are found amongst your people this morning. We thank you that we are not at home nursing hangovers and trying to dull a screaming conscience because of the sordid, wicked activities of the past night, but that we have been able this morning to come and look up into your face through our Lord Jesus Christ and sing of our gratitude for so great a Savior who does save and keep and love us to the end. And in the confidence that he is with us as we meet this morning, we pray that he will be with us this morning. We pray that he will be with us this morning. We pray that he will be with us this morning.

8:26 We pray that he will be with us this morning. We pray that he will be with us this morning. All right, there are those of you who have had unanswered questions on the material given to us on the subject of infant baptism. You will remember we have covered the three broad categories, the Biblical witness to the subjects of baptism, secondly, the significance of baptism and the Biblical witness to the sacraments. That is, the Lord's Supper and baptism with special attention to the relationship between baptism and circumcision. All right, are there any who have come with questions that you wish you had time to ask in some of the previous sessions, and were not able to do so. Now is your time to bring forward your questions or observations.

9:39 You're all settled and all sorted out on the subject. You can sit down with an articulate pedobaptist and give a good defense of the hope that is in you. All right? Dean?

Christian Liberty vs. Compromising Religious Practice (Circumcision and Passover)

9:55 A few weeks ago when Pastor Nichols talked about Paul having Timothy circumcised and then taking the vow in the temple, I believe he said it was so there would not be any needless offense to the Jews. Does this give any support for Jewish Christians to, if they want to, have the privilege of still having Jewish customs like celebrating Passover and such things? Would you want to address that question?

10:32 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 says, is nothing, or uncircumcision, it's nothing, no difference. However, if circumcision is administered as a sign that someone is binding himself over, to keep the Mosaic covenant, what is he doing? All right, what is he saying? He is saying, then, that everything surrounding the Mosaic administration is still in force,

11:56 and therefore, everything to which it pointed in Jesus Christ is a nullity. It doesn't exist. You see, all of this was what the Bible calls the shadow of the good things to come. Now, the good things are the substance, things.

12:16 And God and these things cast a shadow backward, and it formed the Mosaic framework, and much of the Levitical ritual, and all of the rest. Now, the substance has come. 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.

12:42 You are fallen from grace. You who would keep the law. Now, that's the sense in which that terminology is used. So, the same thing holds true with regard to the Passover.

12:55 If someone simply wants to have a meal with a lamb as part of Jewish custom, that's fine. But to have it with all of the ritual and all of the significance of Passover, that lamb pointed forward to the coming of Christ. That lamb was a prefigurement, the shadow cast backward, of the substance of him who is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So, to keep those rituals as matters of religious celebration is to again say, Christ has not come.

13:30 But now, your question is, what about Christian Jews who want to keep it remembering Christ? My response to that would be, Christ has instituted a new feast, a new supper of remembrance, not remembering the deliverance out of Egypt, but remembering the deliverance that has been wrought by Christ upon his cross. So that I personally believe that this movement of so-called messianic Christianity or messianic Judaism and people talk about being fulfilled Jews and the rest, and keeping all of those rituals is really a compromise of the offense of the cross. As Paul says, that the reason these Judaizers were pressing people to be circumcised was that they might avoid the offense of the cross. Because when a Jew would not have his child circumcised and someone asked him why, he says, look, this is no longer necessary. I have circumcision of heart. God's covenant community is now perpetuated not by bloodlines and by these temporal and earthly and physical symbols, but by internal realities.

14:37 And I rest only in the cross of Christ. And my only hope for my children is in the cross of Christ. Well, you see, that would bring upon a man a real swat in terms of bearing reproach for Christ's sake and for the sake of the gospel. And my own suspicion is that much of this movement, and again, many of you are insulated from this.

15:00 You're not even aware it's going on. Thankfully, you're insulated from it. But questions like this sort of pull back the insulation. But there is a very strong movement in, in certain circles today to say the best way to win Jews is to let them know they can still be thorough Jews and be thorough Christians.

15:17 And there is a mixing and a blurring of these things. They are not making this line of distinction between what is innocent culture and what has real significance from a religious standpoint. It's not a matter of just Christian liberty. Now, just where we would draw the line, perhaps, Pastor Clark, would you have something to add to that or Pastor Mickels?

15:39 No, because there may be a difference of opinion on these things. And it's not nothing that I've ever thought through, you know, in great length. I'm just speaking some of my reservations. Maybe you should.

15:55 Well, I think it's a matter of Christian liberty as to whether we send out Christmas greetings or not. And in the same ballpark, I think it's a matter of Christian liberty. I think once I sent a Hanukkah card to a Jewish friend of mine. Yes.

16:15 And I looked upon that as a matter of liberty. I knew that my Jewish friend celebrated this. I think it's the Feast of Dedication, I'm not sure. And in December.

16:29 And it's become a custom for Jewish people to send out to each other, one another, Hanukkah cards. And I sent a very close Jewish friend a Hanukkah card. And sometimes when I meet a Jewish friend, I would say shalom. Yes.

16:46 So this would be a matter of identifying with an innocent cultural factor. That's what I feel. Sure. I would put that in the realm of Christian liberty.

16:54 The same way Paul was willing, as a matter of liberty, to give the appearance of Jewishness with regard to that vow. Now, of course, that's a debated issue. Some feel he was compromising and denying the very thing he establishes in the book of Galatians. And perhaps we'll not be able to sort that out.

17:12 But I would say that's an example. I would say that's an example of an innocent cultural custom in which we can identify, as a matter of liberty, with a desire to establish a bridgehead of friendship without compromising the finality of the work that Christ has accomplished upon the cross. And, of course, you see this in Paul himself. He takes Timothy and has him circumcised before he goes out on his missionary journeys.

17:39 But when he goes to Jerusalem and has Titus with him, and the Jews are saying, Titus must be circumcised or we're going to keep him at a distance, Paul says to the Galatians, we would not yield to that pressure. He said, in order that the truth of the gospel might remain with you. In other words, to have had Titus circumcised in a situation in which they were demanding circumcision before they would accept him as a full-blown Christian, what they were saying is the work of Christ is not complete to bring a man into the new covenant community, he must have the work of Christ plus circumcision. So in that situation, it would have been a compromise of the fundamental truth of the gospel, that Christ alone and Christ as presented in the gospel is enough. And so he said, we would not have Titus circumcised. So you see that flexibility. The same practice, circumcision, in one case was an innocent custom and a matter of Christian liberty, and Paul had Timothy circumcised, in another set of circumstances, that same practice would have been compromising the heart of the gospel, and Paul refused.

The Transition Period and the Offense of the Cross

18:52 So that's why you can't come up with a simple little list, do this, don't do that, but there needs to be a sensitivity to things that differ, and our conduct must be regulated accordingly. Yes, Pastor Nichols? The only thing I would consider this matter, and it's going to come up a little bit later on, I never thought of it as far as it applies to the question that Dean asked, but one of the factors that I think you need to throw into the hopper in considering that issue is the difference between the period of history in which we live and the period of history in which Paul lived. Yes, the transition. The transition, that at the time in which he lived, God had not seen fit in his providence to dismantle the Jewish sacrificial system. That got dismantled in 70 AD. When the Jewish temple was still standing, the Jewish priesthood was still operating, and the sacrificial system was still in practice, and that he was operating in that type of a historical framework, now God in his providence has dismantled that completely, and we live in a different framework.

20:12 So what he did in that framework may not be regulative. doesn't necessarily apply one for one across the board to what we should do or what Christians ought to do in a different setting, in a different context. That's something that needs to just be thrown into the hopper. And I think the book of Hebrews is a great help to us here because this system still stood when the book of Hebrews was written, and even then the writer for Hebrews warns people about going back to types and shadows when the substance has come.

20:43 Now if he warns them about going back to these things while they still existed, how much stronger is the warning when God has dismantled all those things and going back to resurrect them? Because they were all part of that middle wall of partition, part of that which God had given to separate his people Israel from the other nations. And in a sense, to go back to those things is to re-erect that wall of partition which God has torn down. And that's part of Paul's argument, of course, in Galatians.

21:13 So I'd say at best, it's very questionable, Dean, very questionable, and we certainly would not want to involve ourselves in that as the Lord's people. And I think, again, much of it is perhaps a sincere, well-intentioned effort to become all things to all men, but when that's pressed to that extreme, you're compromising the gospel and what you're bringing across, then, is a gospel stripped of the rough edges of its offensiveness. It's the same way that people, this whole push now for this Power for Living book, where you see all these personalities, you notice the name of Christ is never mentioned in all the pitch ads. It's, I have found meaning in my life with God. Would you like a relationship with God? They'll not mention Christ up front. Why?

22:06 Because the offense of the cross would confront people. And I would venture to say, I took down the number, and I want to get the book, I would venture to say that it's the kind of thing that will introduce Christ almost apologetically about half or two-thirds of the way through. And then, without any real call to repentance, any real call to submission to Him as Lord, I could almost predict what the contents will be. But I'll have to read the book before I'm certain.

22:32 But the whole pitch, you see, if you come on and sell your product in a given framework, it's dishonesty to give something up rather than what you promised. And if you come across with an offenseless Christ, then it's awfully hard along the way to keep your sense of integrity and then introduce an offensive Christ. Whereas Paul's position was just the opposite. He said, I determined to know nothing among you save Christ and Him crucified, though I knew that that message to the Greeks was foolishness and to the Jews was a stumbling block.

23:07 And he said, I deliberately came not in an offensive manner, but with an offensive message, knowing that only the efficacious work of the Holy Spirit would bring anyone, Jew or Gentile, to embrace it. And so part of the fruit of this whole idea that ultimately man's decision is in his own power, therefore we must make the decision context as easy as possible. You see, it's all tied together. A man-centered evangelism with a defective view of man's depravity conditions the whole climate of your evangelism.

23:41 Method and message. And so that's, I'm convinced, much of it grows out of that whole perspective. All right, Dean? Now, your question, Jim.

Pedobaptist Views on Church Membership and Covenant Children

23:52 That's right. Jim's question is, when infant baptism is practiced, let's call this Little Willie, when Little Willie is christened or has water applied to his head in the name of the Triune God, some pedobaptists would say it is that which actually is the instrument of his regeneration. The Roman Catholics and the Lutheran position is that by the waters of baptism the child is regenerate and is made a part of the regenerate community. Now, in that sense, you don't have a real continuous fixed circle of two levels of membership. However, we've been dealing especially with those what we call evangelical pedobaptists who do not believe that the child is necessarily not regenerated by baptism, but by virtue of its blood ties with believing parents

25:19 or a believing parent, they are, from the moment of their birth, automatically members of the Church, as the rubric in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church indicates in our own hymnals. We read it the other day at the back. As members of Christ's Church, they ought to be baptized. Now, when they are placed on the role of the Church at their baptism, they are considered non-communicant members.

25:50 In other words, in those situations, the children are considered members of the Church and therefore under the protection of the Church's care, the object of its prayers, its nurture, its instruction, and all of those things. However, they are not considered communicant members. That is, they have no vote. They are not welcomed to the Lord's table.

26:14 Now, that's, again, not true in all of them. I just read of a rather large Church where that's not true, where the parents can very early make a decision that they feel the children show signs of life, and then they're encouraged to take communion without coming before a session and become communicant members on the basis of the judgment that the parents make. But most of them, often somewhere at puberty, the accepted thing is that you come before the session, and that's what the Board of Elders is called in the Presbyterian Church, the session, and you answer certain questions, you give testimony to the fact that you believe the Bible to be the Word of God, Christ to be the Son of God, and in some situations, they would really press for positive evidences of conversion. Some do not. If there is orthodoxy and a half-decent life, then you will be welcomed into the communicant membership. So you have the two levels of membership.

27:15 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.

27:46 We pray for them. We surround them with love and concern and with entreaties. So often the caricature is held up. You Baptists, you're so cruel to your children.

27:57 You treat them like little pagans. Well, we regard them as unconverted sons and daughters of Adam. But how do little pagans get converted? When you bring the word of God to them, line upon line, precept upon precept, when you love them, when you show concern and compassion, and in our homes, where the bottom line comes of Christian nurture, we do nothing different than do our evangelical paedobaptist friends.

28:25 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.

28:51 Why? Well, because we don't yet believe you are converted or a child of God. Well, if I'm not a child of God, what am I as a covenant child? Am I like little Johnny next door?

29:03 He's not saved. Am I like him? Well, no, you're not quite like him. Well, wherein do I differ?

29:10 Well, uh, hmm. Wherein do I differ? Well, some would say you differ because you're a child of the covenant. Yeah, but what does that mean?

29:23 Well, God has made special promises to you. Fine, but what do those promises give me? Do those promises automatically give me a new heart? Do I pray that God would give me a new heart?

29:32 Or do I thank Him that He has? How do I pray, Mommy? How do I pray, Daddy? And when the preacher says, and you children who don't know the Lord, seek the Lord, cry to God for a new heart, look to Christ, should I listen to the preacher?

29:49 Or should I sit there and say, that doesn't belong to me, that doesn't apply to me? You see the confusion. Precisely what does this covenant child status mean? And I would not want to be a Vito-Baptist mother-father preacher trying to explain that.

Inconsistency in Defining the Church and Covenant Child Status

30:04 Yes, Pastor Clark. I heard a reformed preacher this morning on the radio say, you can be a covenant child and still unconverted. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

30:17 So what is it, then, being a covenant child? In that kind of perspective, all it means is that your identity as a child is that I have the privilege of having been born in a Christian home, and I'm under the wonderful opportunity of Christian nurture. But does that qualify someone to be a church member? Well, of course not.

30:38 Because you can bring unconverted children from unconverted homes into the nurture and love and care and instruction and prayers of any fellowship of God's people, but that's not the basis of their inclusion in the community of God's people. And this will become even more clear as Pastor Nichols goes into unit number four, which is the whole subject of the church. And what is the identity of the church according to the teaching of the New Testament? What is the identity of the church in the New Testament?

31:08 What is the precise identity? Do you find any indication that you have two basic identities? A church made up of those who have both supernatural generation and those who merely have natural generation? Or do you have a church comprised only of those who've had supernatural generation by the Holy Spirit?

31:30 And this is one of the great embarrassments to paedobaptists, and Pastor Nichols will demonstrate from their own literature that they flip-flop between this conception of the church on the one hand and the conception that we believe is biblical, that the church is the community, the new covenant community, of those who have been quickened to life by the Spirit of God and have borne witness to that work of God in their hearts in the ordinance of baptism and by their identification with Christ and his people. And there are times when paedobaptists will define the church this way. We agree 100%. On the next page, they're defining the church this way, where it's this plus the children of people who have this.

32:13 And you really have two totally different definitions, conceptions of the church, and it's a massive contradiction in its outworking. But that awaits Pastor Nichols' treating in a systematic way, yes. I'd like to say that there's a difference of opinion on the evangelical paedobaptists that I have read concerning precisely what is the relationship between the covenant child and the promises of the covenant and what precisely is the relationship of the covenant child and the gospel. On the one hand, you have what could be called the presumptive regeneration approach, which assumes that the child has a new barn, which assumes that the child is a Christian, and that the child will become a Christian, and which treats them like a Christian. In other words, you have the concept of Christian children, which is often found in Dutch Calvinistic circles. Not always found, not all Dutch Calvinists believe that, but it's often found there that you have the concept of the Christian child in which they're assumed to be regenerate and treated as regenerate until such time as they prove themselves to be otherwise. And so all of the nurture of home and church is to develop the life

33:42 that we assume has already been implanted by the Holy Spirit. So it's a matter of attitude. So you have to have a quote-unquote a positive attitude towards your children, so that would be an area where they would disagree. You'd have to have a positive attitude towards your children rather than a negative Baptist attitude, where you assume that your children are unconverted and rebels against God, and they assume that their children are basically submissive to the Lord and fundamentally what you would call Christian children, which is what they would have gone.

34:13 Then there's those who would not want to regard their children as regenerate until they give positive signs that they are so. And then there's another thing which is sort of in between there that I've read, and I'll get into this when I get into the so-called rites of the covenant child, where the covenant child is the one who is the father of the child and the son of the child and the son of the child. And this has been propounded in a book which is pretty much well known, a man by the name of Pierre Marcel who wrote The Biblical Doctrine of Infant Baptism, which has been a widely read and circulated book which has been heralded as the, well at least up until the last 20 or 30 years as the bottom line as far as Paedo-Baptist polemic was concerned, that it really stated it very well. And he takes a position in there about the rites of the child and he comes out and says that we have a different message for the covenant child than we have for the unbeliever or the unconverted in general. You do not preach the gospel as you would preach it to the unconverted in general. You do not preach it that way to the covenant child.

35:23 The covenant child has the right of forgiveness and the right to receive all of those promises. So he has the right to be saved. Yes. And that's important.

35:36 And you must deal with them accordingly. These are the things which are your right and your privilege before God and you must receive those things which are your rights and prayers. So there's a spectrum. Well you see again because according to our understanding of the word of God this whole class doesn't exist biblically.

36:01 You can see what happens when you try to regulate it. If the class were created by the Bible the Bible would give us some principles to know how we treat that class. But since that class of people is not created by the Bible you won't find any consistent teaching as to how they're to be regarded. And you'll find this tremendous latitude within paedobaptist polemic and teaching and even in their positive instruction.

36:36 Because in public preaching he referred to his newborn child as one who was born a veritable devil with the heart of a demon. He said now a little bit of hyperbole there granted but it got people upset. Now here was a paedobaptist saying my child is not a little ancient. He had just apparently announced the birth of his child.

37:06 Now I happen to know that child was sprinkled in a Presbyterian church prior to that kind of description or about the same time. I shouldn't say I'm not sure if it was prior but about the same time. And that's how he regards that child. So you see you have that broad spectrum of revelation and that it's a particular difference in terms of the elect. That is confusing and in some paedobaptist churches the pastor

38:15 whoever's preaching will look out and say and you covenant children all of your privileges mean nothing that he would preach to any unconverted person. However, others would say, and you covenant children who have been blessed with such privileges and have been given life by God, you must now live out what you are. You are the children of God. You are sons and daughters of the covenant manifested in your walk.

38:47 Walk as a Christian, not become a Christian, but become a consistent, fully developed Christian. And so they would actually have a separate category in their exhortation. And so you end up then not with two classes of people, saved and lost, just and unjust, regenerate and unregenerate, but you end up with three classes. And you've got this middle class of covenant children who are something other than completely and totally and unqualifiedly lost, but they are something less in the eyes of many than totally, completely, unqualifiedly saved.

The Danger of Presumptive Regeneration and Semi-Pelagianism

39:24 And then they're all shades. And it does. It creates tremendous confusion. And, of course, where people presume, there's the tremendous danger.

39:34 Where people presume, presumption is one of the great sins that damns people. That's why the Bible again and again says, be not deceived. Be not deceived. Let no man deceive you.

39:44 Let no man deceive himself. And I can think of no better way than to cooperate with the devil in the deception of our children than to presume they are regenerate. And to let them know we're presuming it. It seems to me that's one of the best ways to cooperate with the devil in the damnation of their souls.

40:04 Yes, Pastor Nitz. If I may answer that in terms of that middle position that I described of Marcel's. What he says is, when you talk about people who are lost, they have no ability native to themselves to repent and to believe and to receive the promises. And those who are saved, they have the ability to obey God and to serve God.

40:25 Well, what he says is that a form of prevenient grace is given to the covenant children so that they do have the ability to repent and they do have the ability to believe. They have that native, sinful inability. They have total inability removed as a result of being born to Christian parents. And that they do have the ability to receive the grace of God.

40:56 And to come to Christ by that grace given to them as covenant children. So that's the difference. Yeah. Sounds like a dressed up form of semi-Pelagianism.

41:09 That's what it is. Yeah. Forgive the big terminology, but theologically, that's what it is. That man has some ability either innately or given to him by God.

41:21 Correct. But it's a general givenness. It is not distinguishing and particular. So.

41:27 Well, you can see enough. We could go on ad infinitum on this, but you can see that it creates tremendous confusion and from a parental standpoint could only be crippling. Yes, Charlie? There doesn't seem to be much difference between the covenant children and the carnal Christian concepts.

Covenant Children and the Carnal Christian Concept

41:44 Yeah. I was wondering if people would make the connection. Yes, there could at the grassroots of pastoral perspective, it could very well be that there's a real affinity. Yes, there is.

41:58 It creates a relationship. Yes, there is. There's a relationship. Yes, there's a relationship.

42:02 That's right. And that relationship is the same as the relationship of the child. Yes. Well, that relationship is the same as the relationship of the child.

42:06 Yes. And yet it's not. I mean, there wasn't a relationship like that before that was established. No, there wasn't.

42:10 No, no, no. That relationship is not. No, no, no. But that relationship is a relationship, because again, it creates a third class.

42:14 People who may not have positive signs of regeneration, and yet because of either some prior experience, decision, or in this case, prior relationship, born of Christian parents, they are safe. They're not all we'd like them to be. we hope and pray they will be, but they're still safe. They're still safe by virtue of a prior decision. Most of you know what we mean by the carnal Christian theory, that because a person makes a decision to accept Christ, even if there's no radical moral and ethical change, he's basically left untransformed in his ethics and in his whole perspective and bent of life, this whole teaching that, well, if he was sincere in making his decision, he's just a carnal Christian, he's safe, he'll go to heaven when he dies, so he'll lose a few rewards. Well, this does create another class that is very parallel to that. It's, I think, a very accurate observation, Chuck. Yes. Yes. Cliff?

Discerning Conversion in Children for Baptism

43:04 The other day, a few weeks ago, the danger that Baptists encourage their children to become baptized and then members of the Church when there really is no evidence of saving grace. There's no evidence of saving grace in their hearts. Where their parents really are wishing that they were, as a result of maybe an invitation system that they put on, they conform to their parents' wishes. But then on the other hand, there's the requirement that a person, when they are converted, truly converted, they do become baptized. At what point, when we see evidence, true evidence of conversion in our children, should we encourage them to become baptized? Mm-hmm. Uh, except, I mean, as members of the Church. Well, hopefully, Cliff, it's one of the matters that we've been wrestling with for months as elders, and hopefully, when we're done with the subject of infant baptism, we hope to address that explicitly.

44:07 Mm-hmm. Because the key to that whole question is, if I may take a phrase out of your thing, when we see positive signs of the regeneration or conversion of our children, and the moment you put together positive signs of the regeneration or conversion of our children, and the moment you put together positive signs of the regeneration or conversion of our children, and the moment you put together positive signs and children, you're putting things together that are very difficult, because the mark of children is they are tossed to and fro. And instability is one of the marks of the undeveloped soul of a child. And there's not a one of us who's a parent of children who have come to their mature years who cannot look back and say that the history of our children, at least, if not all of them, the history of the majority that we've observed is. That anywhere from about three or four years old onward, there were peaks of certain patterns of spiritual sensitivity and responsiveness. If we say this is the plateau or the threshold of their mature adulthood, and this is their infancy, somewhere along the line, coming from here to here, in their spiritual pilgrimage, there were plateaus where at that point, as we observe the patterns of their sensitivity and responsiveness, there were peaks of certain patterns of their sensitivity, their responsiveness to the word, their prayerfulness, their simple

45:29 faith, we would have sworn with all of our faculties, sure, they must be converted. But a little time went by, and lo and behold, another pattern set in, and we'd say, surely, they're as lost as the devil. And then along that time scale, something happened, and then again, another plateau in which we say, surely, these are the marks of grace. A constant, a conscious, as sensitive as the eye is to a speck, coming continually to mommy and daddy, forgive me for this, I'm sorry for that, and praying. And at times, the simplicity of their faith, apparently, in prayer, overwhelming us. And our hopes are raised, and we say, now the work is done. And a little time passed, and lo and behold, down here again. So we're going to have to wrestle with the whole question of the development of the soul of the child. In other words, he's going to have to have these things denied to him, and,

46:27 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.

47:00 Forget it. But you said, uh-uh, this has got all the signs of real labor. Maybe you already had a couple of kids, so you know what the real thing is. And you say, this is the real thing.

47:08 Honey, get me to the hospital. I think in about three hours, everything's going to be over. Lo and behold, after a full day in the hospital, the doctor sent you home and said, false labor. Well, in a sense, this is what happens in bringing children to birth spiritually.

47:21 There are these periods where you think for sure. So that's an issue we're going to have. We have to open up and try to bring to bear a number of scriptures upon it, because it is an issue that we must wrestle with before God. Because on the one hand, we do not want to encourage presumption, but neither do we want to discourage obedience to Christ.

47:39 And that's the razor's edge. And your elders have been wrestling with that question literally for months, and even set aside a whole day to try to cull the perspectives of the Word of God. So hopefully we'll be dealing with that in a more focused way. So, with your permission, we'll suspend that for now and give a promise, all right?

48:01 I hope it'll be better than his promises to give you time to answer questions. All right?

Validity of Infant Baptism and Re-Baptism

48:08 Good. Yes, sir. Yeah. Yeah.

48:30 Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right. So we've got two questions.

48:39 What happens when little Willie, who's been here at age 20, is soundly converted and sees in his Bible that one of the fruits of conversion is the birth of Jesus? Is the obedience of threshold identification with Christ and his people? Would they re-sprinkle him? The average paedobaptist, the answer is an emphatic no.

49:01 In fact, in fact, they are prepared if someone comes at age... Well, let me give you a couple examples, recent in my own mind.

49:10 Someone may come at age in the 30s and be soundly converted from a life of total worldliness, one sprinkled as an infant in the Roman Catholic Church, one sprinkled as an infant in the Episcopalian Church, and an evangelical Presbyterian Church is not demanding or even suggesting that they be baptized. Even sprinkled afresh, their Roman Catholic and Episcopalian christening is accepted as valid baptism. Now that issue is being debated in the PCA, the Presbyterian Church in America, which is the largest evangelical church. It is the largest evangelical and reformed Presbyterian church in existence today.

49:52 Now, would they immerse that person? If he had had no kind of baptism whatsoever, most Presbyterian and Reformed standards do not forbid immersion. What they state is that immersion is not essential to the proper administration of the ordinance, but they would not say it is disorderly. Now some Presbyterian ministers simply will not immerse.

50:18 They'll say, look, go to the local Baptist minister and have him take care of you. Others will go themselves to a local Baptist church and use their baptistry, and there's difference of practice based on personal conviction and preference. But most Presbyterian and Reformed standards, their confessions, their books of church order, do not forbid immersion to someone who's had no water at any time ever placed upon him. Then, you see, it's not a matter of re-baptizing.

50:48 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.

51:10 Or not even a ball of yarn, you've just got a floor full of yarn. The whole fabric will come to pieces. They realize you can't just pull that. You have to pull it.

51:17 You have to pull it. You have to pull it. You have to pull it. You have to pull it.

51:18 You have to pull it. You have to pull it. You have to pull it. You have to pull that one thread out.

51:19 If you start pulling it where it's going to go, and this is why, personally, I'm convinced that many of them are reluctant to negate the validity of Roman Catholic or any other kind of baptism in infancy, because then you've started on the way to a re-examination of the whole fabric of your baptismal practice. Well, our time is gone, so we're going to have to quit. And I trust that, again, though these matters have not been more as directly related to the whole fabric of your baptismal practice, we're going to have to quit. But they will help us to fulfill the biblical injunction to sanctify Christ as Lord, ready always to give a reason of the hope that is in us.

Closing Exhortation and Prayer

51:59 And I hope if someone comes to you and says you claim to love God and his word, how is it that you've not baptized your children? How could you withhold from them this great privilege of the sign of the covenant? I hope you can tell them you're doing them a greater privilege by withholding it and be able to support your statement. Well, let's pray and thank God for his help to us in the past hour.

52:26 Our Father, we have been reminded again this morning that left to ourselves we can only err and walk in paths that bring confusion and undermine spiritual stability and confuse the most basic issues of the soul's relationship to you. And our Father, we pray that you would have mercy upon us. We pray that you would have mercy upon us. And where we do believe that you have delivered us from the errors of pedobaptism, we shudder to think the other areas in our own lives and perhaps even in our corporate life where there are other areas of which we are not aware.

53:07 O Lord, teach us, search us, and know us. We ask that we may be led along the path of increasing conformity to everything revealed in your holy word. We pray. For our dear pedobaptist friends, that you would bring many of them to reconsider their practice, especially, Lord, those who lead their children to presume regarding their state before you.

53:34 O our God, we ask, show them the tragedy and the danger of this, that they may lovingly but faithfully entreat their children to turn from their sins and to be reconciled to you. Seal, then, your word to our hearts. And help us that we may walk with deeply embedded, intelligent, and biblical convictions, and yet ever walk with grace and graciousness to our brethren with whom we differ on these matters. Hear our prayer and receive our thanks for your presence with us, we ask through our Lord Jesus Christ.

54:13 Amen.