Editor’s Note: Though the following article is written by a Presbyterian minister, we, being Reformed, should find great affinities for what is written here. Likely though, we practice infant baptism out of tradition instead of conviction. Our allegiance to the Word of God demands that this change and that our church life be lived from grateful conviction instead of spiritual inertia or our affinity for cute customs. To that end, you may wish to read Rev. Robert S. Rayburns’ article on the DOCTRINES OF COVENANT CHILDREN, COVENANT NURTURE AND COVENANT SUCCESSION especially as we in the UCC anticipate the Calvin Quincentennial.
It is imperative that the doctrine of covenant succession be recovered in our churches. Its loss has deeply diminished the church’s appreciation of and wonder over the liberality and perfection of divine grace. ['It is precisely this which Satan is attempting in assailing infant baptism with such an army: that, once this testimony of God's grace is taken away from us, the promise which, through it, is put before our eyes may eventually vanish little by little. From this would grow up not only an impious ungratefulness toward God's mercy but a certain negligence about instructing our children in piety. For when we consider that immediately from birth God takes and acknowledges them as his children, we feel a strong stimulus to instruct them in an earnest fear of God and observance of the law.' Calvin, Institutes, IV, xvi, 32.] Further, the appropriation by faith of this divine promise and summons is the means appointed to furnish the church with generation after generation of great multitudes of Christian servants and soldiers who reach manhood and womanhood well taught, sturdy in faith, animated by love for God and man, sophisticated in the ways of the world and the Devil, polished in the manners of genuine Christian brotherhood, overshadowed by the specter of the Last Day, nerved to deny themselves and take up their cross so as to be counted worthy of greater exploits for Christ and Kingdom. Presently the church not only suffers a terrible shortage of such otherworldly and resolute Christians, superbly prepared for spiritual warfare, but, in fact, is hemorrhaging its children into the world. Christian evangelism will never make a decisive difference in our culture when it amounts merely to an effort to replace losses due to widespread desertion from our own camp. The gospel will always fail to command attention and carry conviction when large numbers of those who grow up under its influence are observed abandoning it for the world. Recovering our Presbyterian inheritance and inscribing the doctrine of covenant succession upon the heart of family and church must have a wonderfully solemnizing and galvanizing effect. It will set Christian parents seriously to work on the spiritual nurture of their children, equipping them and requiring them to live the life of covenant faith and duty to which their God and Savior called them at the headwaters of life. And, ever conscious of the greater effect of parental example, they will forsake the easy way, shamelessly and joyfully to live a life of devotion and obedience which adorns and ennobles the faith in the eyes of their children. This they will do, who embrace the Bible’s doctrine, lest the Lord on the Great Day should say to them: ‘You took your sons and daughters whom you bore to me and sacrificed them to idols.’ ['They incur the guilt of an infamous robber or thief," as Bucer has gravely observed, de Regno Christi, lib. ii c. 9, "who are not at the greatest pains to bring up and form those they have consecrated by baptism to the Lord Christ, to the obedience of Christ. For by this neglect, as much as in them lies, they again rob God of the children they gave up to him, betray and enslave them to the devil."' Witsius, Economy of the Covenants, vol. II, p. 441.]
Related Link: Bringing The Gospel To Covenant Children
