“For me and my house, we shall serve Jehovah.”—JOSHUA xxiv. 15.
(Translated for the first time from the French.)
(Continued from page 464, vol. xviii.)
CHAPTER VIII.—THE APOSTLES REGARDED THE CHILDREN OF BELIEVERS AS MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH.
The father of the family.—“You will still less refuse assent to the evidence wherewith, in this connection, the constitution of the Apostolic Church is seen to furnish us, whether we have regard to the state of that Church whilst the Apostles lived, or during the period that immediately followed the days of the Apostles. To begin with, notice that when the Holy Spirit makes mention, for the first time, of the extension of the Kingdom of God so as that it should include the nations, He particularly specifies that the children of the Gentiles were to have a part in this kingdom similar to that which the children of the Jews had had under their own covenant. The facts may be put thus (Acts ii. 38):—The Apostle Peter had just set forth to the multitude of assembled Jews the doctrine of that salvation which is by faith in the name of the Lord Jesus, and that with great power. The Jews present, pricked in their consciences, anxiously asked what they must do in order to obtain this great salvation. ‘Repent,’ replies the Apostle Peter, ‘and be ye baptised everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto Him.’ Now, my brother, I ask, why this reference to children? The Jews present had apparently asked a question that respected themselves exclusively. Well, I take it that it was because the Jews in saying ‘we,’ virtually meant to include the children with themselves. And the Apostle, taking the word ‘we’ in this wide sense, replied to their question by giving them an assurance that their children also should be reckoned as coming under the roll-call of the Gospel promise, and that their calling upon the name of Jesus would not break the bond which united them to their families, nor would it abolish the blessings and the privileges to which their children were heirs. And at the same time the Apostle, as he contemplated the Church in the midst of the nations, declared that the conditions would not be otherwise so far as they concerned the peoples that were as yet far off, but that, in the measure in which the Lord would call to him into the Church those peoples, the promise in their case also should embrace their children as well as themselves. Thus then, Samuel, we say that the Kingdom of God, in passing over from the Jewish people unto the Gentiles, changed its spiritual constitution so very little that, in fact, it continued to conserve for the children that which, under the older dispensation, they possessed with their parents, in such wise that the new dispensation addresses the promise as well to the one as to the other. Don’t you see it, my good friend?”
Samuel.—“How could I fail to see a declaration so direct! For, in brief, these words, ‘as many as God shall call unto Him,’ do not refer to the children of the Jews (as I have sometimes heard say at the mouth of those who cited this passage), but they refer to the Gentiles who at this time were still far off, and whom God in due course called. That is to me quite clear.”
The father of the family.—“To ‘us’ then, who are the Gentiles whom Peter looked upon as being about to be called into the Church, and to ‘our children with us,’ is the promise; and that, altogether, in the same sense in which it belonged to the Jews and to their children. For, in fact, there are not two churches, nor two faiths, nor two baptisms, nor two kingdoms of God. That privilege, which in times past was promised and assured to Jewish families, is now promised and assured to our families. Now, at the present time, as regards us Gentiles who have been called, the children cannot be separated from their parents, the promise envelopes equally the one with the other; God is the God of both parties in the same manner, and His great name, which is the sign and seal of that promise, is called upon the two together, to the end that the child with the parent, if they believe the promise, may share in the benefits which the promise announces and contains. Is not that so, Samuel?”
Samuel.—“I, for my part, don’t know whether it is from ignorance or from conviction of the truth, but it does seem to me that for me to refuse submission to the evidence you bring forward, would only mean that I sought a subterfuge in subtleties of reasoning. At the same time, although I see in the declaration of the Apostle Peter the federal relation of the children together with their parents, I do not, for all that, see that baptism with water appertains to them.”
The father of the family.—“I think I perceive that in your words ‘appertains to them,’ there still lurks the idea that children should manifest some sort of disposition or of preparedness for baptism, and that you do not sufficiently realise that, as circumcision was a sign of consecration, so also is baptism with water.”
Samuel.—“Ah, but that is just the point of view from which I am just now regarding water-baptism.”
The father of the family.—“Well, then, if baptism with water is a sign of consecration, going along with the promise of grace, ought not that sign to be put on him to whom that promise and that consecration has come?”
Samuel.—“But, dear brother, is there not here a marked difference between the sign of circumcision and that of baptism with water? As to the latter, did not the Lord virtually say, ‘Teach the nations before you baptise them’? Is it not so written at the end of the Gospel according to St. Matthew?”
The father of the family.—“Not at all, dear friend. For if some translations give what is an erroneous impression here, not all translations do so. (See the German translation of Piscator, Matt. xxviii. 19.) In any case your rendering is not in keeping with the original text.”
Samuel.—“What is then, if you please, in keeping with the original text?”
The father of the family.—“The Lord Jesus, who is the Saviour of any nation, be it what it may, and not of the Jewish nation only, at the moment that He was bidding His ambassadors farewell, gave them commandment to preach to all the peoples of the world indiscriminately. ‘Go,’ said He to them, ‘and make all nations disciples.’ And then, in order to indicate to them the manner in which that work was to be done, He adds: ‘(1) baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and (2) teaching them to keep my words.’ Thus, then, the first order concerns a mission of the apostles which was to be co-extensive with the globe; and the second order is in the sense of a declaration that the disciples of this mission would (1) be baptised, and therefore (2) be taught. Baptism is, therefore, here the sign of consecration in the name of Jehovah; and he who is thus consecrated and put apart ought to be therefore taught concerning all that the promise, which this name contains, implies.”
Samuel.—“But do you gather that the Apostles understood this declaration in that sense?”
The father of the family.—“Certainly; otherwise how could they have baptised whole families?”
Samuel.—“Ah, that circumstance does not seem to me to prove it, partly because this last was done very rarely or as the exception; partly, besides, because the accounts we have of those cases of baptism seem to me to establish the view that those families were all of them adults and believers.”
The father of the family.—“Are you sure, dear friend, that your reasons are well grounded? To begin with, even if we suppose that only a few families were thus baptised, would the fewness of their number render my argument weaker? Would the Apostles have baptised, even in a few cases, if that practice had run contrary to their orders?”
Samuel.—“Unquestionably, no. I have therefore erred in alleging the fewness of the cases in point as disproving your contention.”
The father of the family.—“Besides, the thing was not so very rare, for several families are designated by name, and several others are brought before us in circumstances that suggest that more whole families were baptised; for example, those who constituted the Church in Tyre (Acts xxi. 3-5), in the case of whom we find fathers, mothers, and children met together, and kneeling down together before the Lord in prayer. And as to your saying that probably those baptised families contained only adults, why should you think so, seeing that it is nowhere so written?”
Samuel.—“But it seems to me that what I have suggested is a fact. For example, it is said of the Philippian jailor (Acts xvi. 34) that ‘he rejoiced greatly, with all his house, having believed in God.’ His family, then, had believed as well as himself before they were baptised.”
The father of the family.—“I don’t think so; for, first, notice that the jailor, having said to Paul and to Silas, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’ they answered him, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house’—as much as to say that the submission of the head to the Lord would also be the means of drawing his family out of the darkness of idolatry. And, besides, believe me when I tell you that the Greek text does not and cannot mean that the jailor rejoiced because he, along with all his house, had believed, but the meaning is that he rejoiced in (or with) all his house because that he had believed.* It is evident then that the head of the family is here the only believing disciple intended, just as was the case with Lydia (Acts xvi. 14-15), who, having believed, was baptised and her family.”
Samuel.—“Nevertheless, is it not said that some brethren lived at the house of Lydia? (Acts xvi. 40.) These brethren, were they not her family, and in that case would not her family have been made up of adults?”
The father of the family.—“Yet once more, why do you suppose that which is not actually said, and thus add to the Scriptures? Besides, if in fact that family or household had been made up of adult believers, would not Lydia, in that case, have said, ‘If you have judged us to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there’? Whereas, what she actually said was, ‘If ye have judged me to be faithful.’ And as to those brethren (Acts xvi. 40) whom the apostles saluted at the house of Lydia, is it not most natural to think that, in the circumstances, the jailor and other disciples would have met at the house of Lydia? Is it likely that if the writer meant here (Acts xvi. 40) the children or household of Lydia, he would have designated them by the name of brethren?”
(To be continued.)
* The verb rendered “believed” is in the singular number.—J. R. M.