01.07 - Lecture 7

LECTURE VII. THE SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM-continued.

WE have seen that the Abrahamic Covenant is still in force, and that its promises are still finding fulfilment, and must continue to find fulfilment so long as men are reached and blessed through the ministry of the Gospel of the grace of God. The inauguration of the Mosaic Economy and the institution of the Levitical system in connection with the Sinaitic Covenant did not disannul it, as we learn from Galatians 3:17 : “A Covenant confirmed beforehand by God, the law, which came four hundred and thirty years after, doth not disannul, so as to make the promise of none effect.” Nor was it set aside by the new and better Covenant predicted in Jeremiah 21:31-34, and applied to the Christian Economy in Hebrews 8:8-12. The New Covenant superseded and made an end of all that was transitory and shadowy in the Old or Sinaitic Covenant, but neither the one nor the other abrogated or modified the Abrahamic Covenant, or impaired the validity of the Abrahamic promises. The Mosaic Economy was simply aprovision for administering the Abrahamic Covenant and fulfilling the Abrahamic promises, and the Christian Economy is simply a better provision, and the best provision that can be made, for administering the Abrahamic Covenant and fulfilling the Abrahamic promises. So that the Covenant is still in force, and the promises of the Covenant are still valid. We have seen that, under that Covenant, the children of Church members were in the membership of the Church, and were, by Divine command, recognised as being in the membership of the Church from the days of Abraham down to the close of the Mosaic Economy. We have seen that the Discipling Commission, as given in the closing verses of Matthew’s Gospel, not only does not set aside the Church-membership of children, but actually necessitates its continuance, while the recognition rite of Baptism takes the place of the recognition rite of Circumcision. The Covenant and the Covenant promises continue, but a new seal has been provided, and, so far, the children remain in undisturbed possession of all the rights the Covenant secures to them. THE PREACHING COMMISSION. But we are reminded that there is another Commission, and a Commission that is altogether to the Baptist liking, in Mark 16:15-16 : “ Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be condemned.” This passage is regarded as the sheet anchor of the Baptist position, and has, perhaps, been forced to do more for the cause of Baptist proselytism than any other misinterpreted passage found in the New Testament Scriptures. Accordingly it claims at our hand due consideration and regard, that we may discover whether it has been legitimately appropriated and applied by the Baptists in carrying out their distinctive policy of unchurching the children.

It is to be observed, at the outset, that the authenticity of this passage and of the last twelve verses of Mark’s Gospel has been called in question.

If you look into tin; Revised Version of the New Testament you will find that there is a space between the eighth and ninth verses of the chapter, and that there is a statement in the margin to the effect that the two oldest Greek manuscripts and some other authorities omit this ending of the Gospel, and that some other authorities have a different ending. It is generally agreed among scholars that the concluding verses of Mark be ginning with the ninth verse are from a different hand, and, therefore, do not stand on the same level as the rest of the Gospel.

But, leaving aside the question of authenticity and taking the words under consideration as part of the Scripture text, let us see whether they can be interpreted into a pronouncement against infant Church -membership and Infant Baptism. The passage cannot, without violence, be perverted to the purpose which it is made to serve in Baptist hands. The contention of our friends is that belief must, in every case, precede Baptism, and that infants are, therefore, excluded from the ordinance. Their argument might be stated in this form, He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. But the infant cannot believe, therefore the infant is not to be baptized. But if this reasoning is correct it will carry us a little farther. For, keeping to the very same premises, and taking them in the same sense, we can draw another conclusion, and a conclusion that is a great deal more relevant to the principal premise than that which Baptist logic contrives to extract. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. But the infant cannot believe, therefore the infant shall not be saved. That is the goal, the inevitable goal to which this argument leads, and short of that goal there is no legitimate stopping - place, because it is salvation and not Baptism that is predicated in the principal premise, and therefore it should be salvation and not Baptism that is predicated in the conclusion. You cannot build on this passage an argument that will exclude infants from Baptism without, at the same time, building on it a stronger argument that will exclude infants from salvation. But the Baptists are better than their logic.

They admit that infants are saved. Dr. Carson admits that infants are saved, but not by the Gospel, that is not by hearing the Gospel. But the results specified in this verse are results that follow from hearing the Gospel, and therefore infants are not concerned in the case. Dr. Carson simply puts infants outside the scope of this passage so far as salvation is concerned. Then they must be put outside the scope of the passage so far as Baptism is concerned, and we cannot allow them to be dragged in for the purpose of argument, and in order that some show of foundation for their exclusion from the ordinance of Baptism may be fabricated. Baptists admit the salvation of infants.

They admit that the conclusion which denies the salvation of infants the conclusion drawn from their own premises is a wrong conclusion. And you know that an argument which conducts to a wrong conclusion is an unsound argument. Thus you see that the argument based on this passage which denies Baptism to infants, is just the argument which denies salvation to infants, and cannot be made to serve the one purpose without at the same time serving the other purpose. It is to the credit of the Baptists that they refuse to treat their own argument seriously, refuse to follow it further than will serve their own immediate purpose, and allow that infants are received into Heaven, although they cannot be received into the Baptist Church. One is tempted in the direction of the inference that Heaven is somewhat less select than the Church of the Baptists. It is one of the curious inconsistencies that sometimes show themselves in connection with the matter of human belief, that the Baptists, while admitting that infants have a place in the Church above, refuse to admit that they can have a place in the Church below. The truth is, this passage has no reference whatever to infants. It must be taken in connection with the context in which it occurs. It is a statement following upon a Commission to the Apostles to preach the Gospel the wide world over. In the terms of this Commission the offer of salvation is to be made to all men everywhere. But all men will not treat that offer in the same way. Some will accept it. Others will reject it. By that acceptance or rejection they shall be judged. Those who receive the truth and submit to it shall be saved. Those who turn their back upon it and harden themselves against it shall be condemned. But the Gospel offer is not made to infants. It is made to those who are capable of receiving it, and to them it becomes the savour of life unto life or the savour of death unto death.

Infants are not preached to. Infants cannot believe or disbelieve. Therefore this passage has nothing whatever to do with infants, and cannot legitimately be advanced either for Infant Baptism or against Infant Baptism. That question is not touched by this text, and must be determined independently of this verse. The Baptists seem to interpret this passage in the sense that none but believers are to be baptized. In any other sense it would not serve them. I need hardly say that this is to put an unwarranted restriction upon the statement as it is given. To say that he who has a house is to have a vote does not imply that no one else is to have a vote. And to say that he who believes is to be baptized does not imply that no one else is to be baptized. But allowing the Baptists to have their way and taking it that believers, and believers only, are to be baptized, one would, in that case, have some little difficulty in distinguishing between those who are eligible for admission to the ordinance and those who are not. A candidate for Baptism presents himself to a Baptist minister by whom lie is received with demonstrative delight.

He is duly catechised and certified as a fit and proper subject for Baptism. But who is to certify that he is a believer and nothing but a believer?

I have yet to learn that the gift of discerning spirits has been specially reserved for those in authority in the Baptist community, and is specially communicated to them. Of course I am in good hands, and one never knows what he may learn. But, in the meantime, I am strongly inclined to suspect that our Baptist friends fall somewhat short of infallibility in the matter of discriminating between believers and unbelievers, that in consequence they sometimes transgress the limits which their own interpretation puts upon the passage, and that, occasionally, they immerse a brother who is not a believer and nothing but a believer. They cannot, in the face of the facts, deny that men sometimes profess to be what they are not, and that, at least once in a while, an unbeliever contrives to get immersed and subsequently proves by his life that he is not a believer. Was that Baptism valid or invalid?

It would appear that, for the time, it is to be regarded as invalid. But if that immersed unbeliever should afterwards be reached by Divine grace, for Divine grace can reach even the most abandoned; if he should be brought under the regenerating influence of the Divine Spirit, and come to be savingly united to Christ, and give evidence of having passed from death unto life, and if, after having become a real believer, he should once more present himself for Baptism, he would not be immersed the second time notwithstanding the invalidity of his previous immersion.

It would appear, then, that Baptism in infancy is permanently invalid, even if the infant should turn out to be a saint, but that Baptism in unbelief may be good and sufficient.

However, the point remains that Baptists cannot in practice restrict immersion to believers and believers only. They are obliged to admit that, like ourselves in such cases, they have to be satisfied with a credible profession of faith. In that case they must not try to make so much capital out of the passage under consideration, because it does not read: “ He that makes a credible profession of faith and is baptized shall be saved.” And this leads me to say that this passage does not specify who are to be baptized, but who, within the sphere of its application, shall be saved, and therefore any attempt to make it serve any other purpose must be attended with failure. It does not refer to the visible Church, or to membership in the visible Church. It refers to the Church that is invisible, and, as far as it goes, to membership in the Church that is invisible. Thus we see that this passage, which has attained to something like classic dignity among Baptist controversialists, when quietly and carefully examined, cannot be compelled to give a particle of evidence in favour of excluding the infant children of Church members from Church membership and Church recognition. It does not invade the rights of the children under the Abrahamic Covenant, and it does not interfere in the remotest way with the established practice of the Church of God for nearly two thousand years under the Old Economy in recognising the Church status of the infants of those who professed to be God’s people.

We have seen that neither of the recorded Commissions, neither the Discipling Commission nor the Preaching Commission rules the children of Church members out of the Church. Did our Lord ever say anything on any other occasion that would guide His followers in relation to this question as to the Church standing of children? Can we put our finger on any recorded utterance of His that would indicate a desire for the exclusion of the little children from His Church? No, but we have utterances of a very different character that have been deemed of sufficient importance to be preserved in no less than three of the Gospels. And I do not think that the Saviour ever comes closer to us in all that human life of His than when He relieves Himself for a little by taking the little children into His human arms and pressing them close to His human heart. The tenderness of the Saviour never seemed to be so tender as when He touched a little child. He told His followers on one occasion that unless they became like little children they could not enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 18:3; Mark 10:15; Luke 18:17). On another occasion He took a little child in His arms and said: “ Whosoever shall receive one of such little children in My name receiveth Me, and whosoever receiveth Me receiveth not Me but Him that sent Me” (Mark 9:36-37; Matthew 18:5).

Why, that is the very language the Saviour used in reference to the twelve disciples when He sent them forth for the first time on a mission of mercy to the lost sheep of the house of Israel: “ He that receiveth you receiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me receiveth Him that sent Me” (Matthew 10:40).

Thus the little children are not only assigned a place among His followers, but a place within the inner circle of His disciples. When we receive them in His name we receive the Saviour Himself. And surely that is just what we do when, in His name, we receive them into the fellowship of His Church. But there is a passage given in each of the three first Evangelists, in which, as I take it, our Lord distinctly affirms the Church-membership of children, “ Suffer the little children (or the babes, as Luke describes them), and forbid them not to come unto Me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Mark adds: “ And He took them in His arms and blessed them, laying His hands upon them “ (Matthew 19:14-15; Mark 10:13, Mark 10:16; Luke 18:15-17).

“ The Kingdom of Heaven “ or “ the Kingdom of God “ cannot be taken to mean less than the Kingdom of God in its visible manifestation, or, as we should say, the visible Church. If it mean more than that then the greater includes the less. And “ of such “ cannot be taken to refer to full-grown people who are childlike in disposition and spirit.

Imagine the Saviour saying: “ Suffer the little children and forbid them not to come unto Me, for full-grown people who have childlike qualities belong to the Kingdom of Heaven.” Such an interpretation seems, to me at least, to be out of keeping with the directness and simplicity and naturalness of the Saviour’s utterances, and to rob this delightful incident of all its beauty and most of its significance. When the mothers brought their little children to the Saviour that He might lay His hands on them and bless them, prompted thereto by the unerring mother instinct which assured them, in advance, that their quest would not be in vain, they did not seek this favour on the ground of any consideration outside the children themselves. It was for the children’s own sake that they found their way to the place where Jesus was and besought Him for His benediction and His touch, and it was for the children’s own sake that the Saviour responded to the Divinely directed desire of these mothers with such prodigality of sympathy. The Saviour wants parents to follow the example of these mothers and to bring their infant children to the place where He is in the midst of His disciples that He may receive them and bless them and recognise them by a visible sign as having a place in His visible Kingdom. It may be said that our Lord did not baptize the little children that were brought to Him. It was not necessary that He should. Christian Baptism was not then instituted. But He declared that they were in the membership of the Church, and membership in His Church carries with it the right of recognition in the recognition rite.

Jesus loved the little children, and received them and blessed them when they were brought to Him in the days of His public ministry, and after His death and resurrection He continued to have them in His heart, and when, as we learn from John 21:15, He was giving directions to Peter, whom He then restored to his position as the leading Apostle, He charged him to prove his devotion by feeding, in the first instance, the lambs of the flock. The first care of the Risen Saviour was for His lambs. So that, first and last and all through, the Saviour’s love for the little children was one of the great outstanding features of His ministry and His life.

These lovely pictures of Jesus and the little children would never fade away from the recollection of His disciples, as we may gather from the frequency with which they are referred to in the Gospel narrative. And if it had come to be a question with them of driving the little children out of the Church and depriving them of the Church-standing which they had enjoyed in the past, or of allowing them to remain where the Abraham ic Covenant placed them and to retain the rights which the Abrahamic Covenant secured to them if such a question had arisen we can under stand that, in the absence of a plain and positive and pointed precept of exclusion, and in view of the relations which Christ sustained to the children throughout the whole course of His ministry, and in view of the unrepealed law and the undisturbed practice of the past we can understand that, in such a case, the little children were not likely to be any worse off than they were before, and that whatever enlargement of favour the new order of things might bring them there would not, at least, be any restriction of privilege in the matter of Church-standing. THE CONTINUITY OF THE CHURCH.

We have now travelled to the starting point of the New Dispensation, and we have failed to find in the Gospels any indication of that exclusiveness, in relation to Church-membership, that would rob the little children of their birthright. Before we move any farther it will be in order to observe that the Cl lurch under the New Dispensation is in all essential particulars the same as the Church under the Old Dispensation. I know that the Baptists deny the existence of an Old Testament Church, although we read of “ the Church in the wilderness “(Acts 7:38). Some of them go so far as to deny that Judaism was a religion in any sense. In their anxiety to deliver themselves from the force of the argument from Circumcision they do not hesitate to secularize all the arrangements and observances and ceremonies of the Old Economy. They try to make it appear that Jewish life was dominated and deter mined by political considerations and political influences, and that there was no great institution or organization to remind the people of their relation to God and of their obligation to do His will. But in that case what are we to make of the prophets and psalmists and leaders who influenced the nation in the direction of righteousness? What are we to make of the Temple and its worship? What are we to make of the synagogues and their ser vices? What are we to make of the Old Testament Scriptures themselves? Is everything pertaining to Judaism to he secularized in order to meet the exigencies of the Baptist situation? The truth is the Jews were pre-eminently religious. That was their great outstanding characteristic. And true religion was the same in their day as it is in ours. The experience of God’s people was the same under both Dispensations, and that is why we can still use the Psalms to edification in our service of praise. In connection with the parable of the wicked husbandmen our Saviour said to the Jews, “ The Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matthew 21:43). The Kingdom changes hands, but it is the same Kingdom all the while. It is the same olive tree that grew up in the past, into which the Gentile branches have been grafted that they might be partakers of its root and fatness (Romans 11:17). It is not a new olive tree that is spoken of, but the old olive tree that lived through the Old Dispensation rooted in the Abrahamic Covenant. And the Jewish branches that have been cut off shall yet be grafted into their own olive tree, for God is able to graft them in again. It is the same household of God, into which Gentile strangers and sojourners have been introduced (Ephesians 2:19). The Church of God continues the same all through. It was a very easy transition for the Jews who accepted the Christian faith on the day of Pentecost. Faith in a Messiah to come became changed into faith in a Messiah already come. In some cases the Jews who submitted to the new teaching simply formed them selves into a new synagogue and had their court of elders as before, thus constituting themselves, at one and the same time, a Christian synagogue and a Presbyterian congregation. So easy and natural was the transition from the old order to the new. This fact of the continuity and identity of the Church in all ages has an important bearing on the subject of Baptism; for it is obvious that if the Church continued to be the same all through then its constitution must have been the same, and it must continue under the New Dispensation, as it did under the Old, to consist of those who profess the true religion and their children.