Sabbath Reflection: “We Must Have Christ…”

“The righteousness which justifies us… is not to be separated from the person of Christ.  It does not consist of a material or spiritual gift which Christ can grant us apart from Himself or which we can accept and receive apart from the person of Christ.  There is no possibility of sharing in the benefits of Christ without being in fellowship with the person of Christ, and the latter invariably brings the benefits with it.

In order to stand before the judgment of God, to be acquitted of all guilt and punishment, and to share in the glory of God and eternal life, we must have Christ, not something of Him, but Christ Himself.  We must possess Him in the fulness of His grace and truth, according to His divine and human nature, in His humiliation and exaltation.  The crucified and glorified Christ is the righteousness which God grants us through grace in justification.  And when God grants us this Christ together with all His benefits out of free grace, without any merit on our part, by way of faith, then He at the same time justifies us.  He pronounces us free of all guilt and punishment, and gives us the right to eternal life, to the heavenly glory, to His own blessed, never-ending fellowship.  And then we can stand before His presence as though we had ourselves achieved the obedience which Christ achieved for us.”

-Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith

Sabbath Reflection: “The Message Makes Him Ours.”

“Certainly we shall remain forever in the gloom if we attend merely to the character of Jesus and neglect the thing that he has done; if we try to attend to the Person and neglect the message.  We may have joy for sadness and power for weakness; but not by easy half-way measures, not by avoidance of controversy, not by trying to hold on to Jesus and yet reject the gospel.  What was it that within a few days transformed a band of mourners into the spiritual conquerors of the world?  It was not the memory of Jesus’ life; it was not the inspiration which came from past contact with Him.  But it was the message ‘He is risen.’  That message alone gave to the disciples a living Saviour; and it alone can give to us a living Saviour today.  We shall never have vital contact with Jesus if we attend to His person and neglect the message; for it is the message which makes Him ours.”

-J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism

“You are Christian Children!” J.W. Alexander on the Practical Implications of Infant Baptism

“All baptized persons are members of the Church. Their duty, therefore, to acknowledge Christ before the world rests on clearer grounds. It is true, we do not ascribe a regenerating grace to their baptism; but we must not go to the other extreme of making this precious ordinance a nullity. Those who have been baptized stand in a relation to the Church different from that of the world at large. They have been designated disciples or learners, and, where the parental obligations have been discharged, have been trained in religious knowledge. Such children of the Church should often consider the privileges and benefits sealed by this ordinance. They should be humbled for their sins, and for falling short of and walking contrary to, the grace of baptism and its engagements. They should feel bound to the faith and practice signified by their symbolical separation from the world. Children born within the pale of the visible Church, and dedicated to God in baptism, are to be taught to read, and repeat the Catechism, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Apostles’ Creed, to abhor sin, to fear God, to pray, and to obey the Lord Jesus. And when they arrive at years of discretion, it behooves every one of them to consider the duty of ratifying the vows made in their name, by a personal avowal of allegiance to Christ. The cause of such is therefore widely different from that of the world without.”-J.W. Alexander, The Young Communicant

“But O how we neglect that ordinance! Treating children in the Church, just as if they were out of it. Ought we not daily to say (in its spirit) to our children, “You are Christian children, you are Christ´s, you ought to think and feel and act as such! And on this plan carried out, might we not expect more early fruit of the grace than by keeping them always looking forward to a point of time at which they shall have new hearts and join the church? I am distressed with long harbored misgivings on this point.” (Forty Years´ Familiar Letters, Volume 2, Page 25.)

Observe that Alexander (son of Archibald Alexander, principal founder of Princeton Seminary and its first professor) states that “all baptized members are members of the church.” This means, for Alexander, that baptized covenant children are not to be presumed unregenerate until they experience conversion at a later time in life. Rather, baptized infants are Christians, “disciples or learners,” and because of this, ought to be taught the Catechism, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Apostles Creed. They are to fear God, pray to God, and obey the Lord Jesus Christ. When they come to years of maturity, they ought to ratify the vows made in their name.

For Alexander, the ordinary means of a child’s salvation is not an extraordinary conversion experienced later on in life. Rather, they are to be raised as Christians since only a Christian can pray to God, abhor sin, and obey the Lord Jesus Christ. Elsewhere, Alexander expresses his belief in the presumed salvation of our covenant children in a letter he wrote, lamenting the neglect of infant baptism and its practical implications (see the second quotation). Here Alexander, undoubtedly responding to the neglect of infant baptism and covenant nurture among Presbyterians and other evangelicals influenced by the growing influence of 19th century revivalism with its conversionist conception of individual salvation, argues that parents ought to tell their covenant children that they are Christians and therefore ought to think and act as such. One practical implication of such an approach is that we will, by God’s grace, see early spiritual fruit in the lives of our children. Suspending the judgment of charity and encouraging our children to look forward to a conversion experience later on in their lives has the opposite effect- it’s more likely that this approach will stunt spiritual growth in our children and prevent the Christian fruit that is more likely to emerge when we train our children, from their earliest years, as disciples of Jesus Christ.

Here is yet another example of how the Old Princeton tradition, in contrast to both 18th and 19th century revivalism, stood with the Reformers in urging both believing parents and the church to disciple their covenant children from their earliest years as Christians, as those whom we regard, by faith, as members of the church and heirs of the covenant promises in their most comprehensive sense.