Word of Salvation – Vol. 37 No. 06 – February 1992
The Covenant Of Grace (II)
Sermon by Rev. W. Wiersma on Lord’s Day 27
Reading: 1John 1; Romans 4:1-17
Dear Brothers and Sisters, young and older,
The question of infant baptism, or rather the baptism of the children of believers, is for us very much linked to the question of how the Bible teaches us to regard the children of believers. You will remember that I referred to the Old Testament, particularly to the covenant which God made with Abraham and his descendants. We saw that this covenant of God with Abraham was actually part of a much wider and much bigger arrangement of God for the salvation of mankind and the whole of creation. An arrangement which was increasingly unfolded over the centuries covered in the Scriptures. And the heart of this arrangement or covenant is, in fact, the covenant which God has made with Christ and His people.
Now the New Testament has a lot to teach us about this covenant which God has made with Christ and His people of which the covenant with Abraham was a part, and an expression.
For instance, the apostle Paul says that the beneficiaries of this covenant of God with Christ and His people were chosen in Christ from before the foundation of the world.
We are also taught that these people, the covenant people, are chosen for a purpose, namely, they will be witnesses of God’s grace and power in the world. They are called to be a holy people separated for God to serve God. Both are true for God’s people in the Old Testament and in the New Testament.
The Scriptures also very clearly teach that Christ is central to this covenant. It is particularly His obedience to death, His victory over Satan, sin and death, that makes it possible for his people to be the people of God who can live in the presence of God without being destroyed by God’s holiness. I do not need to go into details here. I’ve preached on the work of Christ, and its absolute necessity and its significance, many a time. I mention it here to underline the biblical teaching that the covenant which underlies God’s dealing with His people both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament is an arrangement of grace. It springs forth out of the love of God. It is an arrangement in which God is always taking the initiative to which we are called to respond in faith and obedience. It is an arrangement within which God gives and we receive.
Now, if for a moment we turn our attention back to Abraham and we would study the life of Abraham, we would find that Abraham was called by God and Abraham went where God told him to go. We read that God gave Abraham the promise of many descendants and that Abraham believed God. And then the Scriptures say: “Then he believed in the Lord and He (that is the Lord) reckoned it to him as righteousness’. In other words, Abraham in the Old Testament, was justified, he was saved by faith in God. That is the teaching of the Old Testament and that is the teaching of the New Testament. Now let us turn to Genesis 17 again. First of all I read verse 7 and then I want to read the verses 9-11. As I said last week, verse 7 of chapter 17 tells us, you might say, the heart of God’s covenant promise to Abraham where God says to Abraham, ‘And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout the generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you.’ It seems to me that this is the heart of God’s covenant promise. ‘I will be your God; you and your descendants will be my people’. And then we go to verse 9. God said further to Abraham, ‘Now as for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout the generations. This is my covenant which you shall keep between me and your descendants after you, every male among you shall be circumcised.’
Now as we read in Romans 4, Abraham’s circumcision was the sign and seal of the righteousness he had received from God by faith. Genesis tells us that it was the sign of the covenant which God made with Abraham. Does this not suggest that the heart of God’s covenant promise is the privilege of being right with God, which God gives to those He has chosen in Christ and who therefore come to faith in Christ? Let me put that differently. Does it not mean that the heart of being the covenant people of God is to receive the righteousness of God, that is God’s gift in Jesus Christ? So the heart of God’s covenant promise is salvation. You shall be my people, I shall be your God’.
That’s what it means to be saved. The Lord Jesus put that very clearly when he said ‘this is eternal life, to know God and Jesus whom he has sent’. And to know God does not mean to just know about God, but is to have fellowship with God; it is to have communion with God, is to have peace with God; it is to be right with God. That is the heart of God’s covenant promise to Abraham and his descendants. And to Christ and his people. And is that not what circumcision was a sign and a seal of, at least to Abraham: that he belonged to the covenant people of God, that he was right with God?
Abraham believed before he was given that sign. But that same sign, relating to the same covenant promise, was given to his children. And some of his children were a little bit older by this time and they all received the sign. All males in his household, in fact, received it. And those that were born later, they received it when they were eight days old. They received the sign of the covenant which spiritually had the meaning of being right with God through faith in God.
Now that immediately raises all kinds of questions. For instance, did that covenant promise, that covenant seal, make faith unnecessary for Abraham’s children, and their children, throughout their generations? We know better!
The New Testament goes against those who trust in their circumcision and even in their physical descent from Abraham. It says that circumcision by itself meant nothing.
For, you see, it was not circumcision that saved, and it was not even Abraham that saved his descendants. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.
It is always God who does the saving both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament.
And God was constantly calling His covenant people to faith. Even though they had been circumcised and they belonged to the covenant people, God called them to faith. Circumcision itself was to remind them of the covenant promises and to strengthen them in their faith.
Another question arises. Were all the descendants of Abraham, saved who received the sign of the covenant which for Abraham was called, the sign of the righteousness by faith? The answer of Scripture is, NO. In one sense they belonged to the people of God and in another sense they were not saved. Now that raises all kinds of questions, I admit. Questions which I cannot answer for you.
But it is true that there were those who received the sign and seal of God’s covenant promises and yet were not saved. You take a man like Ishmael or you take a man like Esau, just to name two of them. And yet, God told Abraham to circumcise his children and all males in his household. God taught Abraham to regard and treat his whole family as the covenant family of God.
We see the same approach throughout the Old Testament. Children were circumcised by parents who were also told to teach their children in the Word and the promises of God so that they might come to believe. And when those children grew up and when some of them went astray, then they were called to be circumcised in heart. Not to be circumcised again, but to be circumcised in heart, that is to repent of their sins, to accept God’s grace and to submit their lives to His teaching.
And now the question is whether the New Testament takes a different approach. Does the New Testament, like the Old Testament, speak of children as belonging to the covenant people of God or does the New Testament teach and treat the children of believers as having no part in the covenant community, till they can express faith for themselves? Now it is true that you do not even read of an actual case of an infant being baptised, in so many words. Neither do you read in the New Testament of any child growing up in a Christian family who is baptised as a believer. But that is not the point.
The question is, how does the Scripture regard the children of believers? Under the Old Testament administration it is clear that God deals with people in the context of the family. To use some technical words, the covenant was regarded as being organic. The head of the house was the one with whom God dealt, so to speak. Abraham was told to circumcise his household and he did. Without first asking all, ‘well, do you agree, or don’t you agree’. He circumcised them all. His family was a covenant family. Is that the kind of thing we find in the New Testament? Or is everyone in the New Testament dealt with strictly on an individual basis?
Well, the fact is that in the New Testament a number of households are mentioned as coming to faith and being baptised as ‘a household’. For instance, when the Philippian jailor asked Paul, ‘what must I do to be saved?’, he was told: ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved, you and your household’. And that same night, we are told, he was baptised, and all his household, (that is, his whole family). We read the same sort of thing of a number of families like the family of the centurion in Caesarea.
When Peter preached on Pentecost Day, he said to the people gathered there: ‘to you is the promise and to your children and to all who are far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call to Him’. You and your children. The same kind of thing as we find in the Old Testament.
And then there is that verse in 1Cor.7:14, which says that children of believing parents, even if there is only one believing parent, are holy. In other words, they are part of the holy community.
The families of believers in the New Testament are Christian families. Families where the Word of God is heard. They are families where ‘Christ is the Head of the Home’, where the Word of God is believed and obeyed. Families where parents are told to bring up their children in the Lord. And where children are addressed (and you will find that in Ephesians 6 and in Colossians 3), as part of the saints in whom the letters I have just referred to are addressed. They are addressed as covenant children who have covenant obligations, because the Apostle writes: ‘and children obey your parents in the Lord’.
I repeat, that in the New Testament it raises questions just like it does in the Old Testament. And who of us has not had questions about baptism. The heart of the question is: “In what or in whom do we ultimately trust’? The truth is, only God saves! Our trust is to be in Him, and in the Saviour whom God has supplied. That goes for all of us. Neither circumcision in the Old Testament nor baptism in the New Testament, saves us. Rather they point us to God who calls us and our children to live by what he graciously supplies. And that is what we have to have eyes for. What God gives us. And where God puts us. Surely one of the greatest gifts and one of the greatest privileges is to have parents, even one parent, who shares the gospel promises with you and prays for you from the moment you are born. Has it not pleased God through that witness to bring many to faith?
Are our families truly Christian?
AMEN