II. The Training or Bringing up unto Confession
In baptism God gives us the visible sign and seal that in Christ He hath given Himself unto us and hath accepted and adopted us as His children.
And that acceptance, that adoption is the basis or foundation of our confession.
CHAPTER II
The Training or Bringing Up Unto Confession Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. - Matt. 4:4.
In the way of the covenant of grace God trains or brings up all His children unto liberty and independence.
While election only includes who shall infallibly inherit eternal salvation, the covenant of grace describes the way in which these elect are and shall be led to this, their destiny. Election and covenant are therefore not distinguished as a narrower and a wider circle, for they both consist of and include the same persons; but while in election they are considered by themselves, in the covenant they are always considered as standing in relation to the whole human race.
Although the covenant of grace, thus, in the most beautiful way maintains the absolute sovereignty of God in the whole work of salvation and prohibits anything of man being added to or introduced into it, it nevertheless also, at the same time, does full justice to man's rational and moral nature and to the fact that he was created in the image of God. When God obtains His right, man also receives the place and the honor which belongs to him according to the will of God. God chooses those who are His in Christ, that they should be holy and blameless before Him in love.
To be sure, Christ appears in the covenant of grace as head of the church, but He does not efface His believers neither does he force them from their place. From the beginning to the end Christ is surety for them, but, in such a way that they themselves, also taught and enabled by His spirit, consciously and willingly begin to live and walk in the covenant. True, the covenant of grace is established with Christ but through and over Him it propagates itself unto all those who are His and adopts them wholly and entirely, with body and soul, with mind and will and all strength.
Because God works in them both to will and to do His good pleasure, He urges and compels them to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling. By the grace of God they are what they are; and are enabled to do all things through Christ who strengtheneth them.
Because Christ lives in them, they themselves live by the faith of the Son of God. Now, therefore, because the children of believers are accepted into this covenant of grace even before their consciousness and will, therefore we say, the calling particularly and specifically comes to the parents that they shall help and cause them to be instructed in the aforesaid doctrine and shall bring and have them brought up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Because in all covenants there are two parts, therefore the covenant of grace also admonishes and obliges us into a new obedience. When God says unto us: I am your God; He also immediately adds to it: Walk before my countenance and be ye upright. Giving Himself unto us, He also
wills that we shall give ourselves unto Him with all we are and with all we have.
Children, however, are not able immediately to confess for themselves and to walk in that confession. The parents are responsible for them. They are they who appear as witnesses at the baptism of their children and as sureties answer for their Christian training. Upon the basis or foundation of the acceptance or adoption from God's side the parents are obliged to bring and lead their children to the full conscious, free and willing confession of faith.
Here also, natural things are symbols of things spiritual. The natural life, which becomes our part and portion through conception and birth out of our parents, is in an absolute sense a gift, unmerited and even beforehand forfeited. But that life, even from the very first beginning of its existence has need of all manner of sustenance and protection. It must be nursed and fostered, guarded and protected, fed and refreshed. Without feeding, without strengthening in the widest sense of the word, it would soon succumb and perish.
The first and highest cause of this preservation is God. He is not only the Creator but also the Preserver of all things. If He did not sustain that life, called into existence by Himself, from moment to moment, with His almightly and everywhere present power it would immediately sink back into non-existence. And now if it pleased the Almighty, He could bring about this sustenance and preservation of life without using any mediums whatsoever, even as He sustained and preserved a Moses for forty days on the mountain and Jesus for forty days in the wilderness. Or He could bring it about in an extraordinary manner, even as He send the ravens to feed His servant Elijah at the brook Cherith, or as He fed the children of Israel for forty years in the wilderness with bread from Heaven.
But the common and general rule is, that God brings about this preservation in a mediate way. He uses food and drink to feed us, and He makes use of the parents as the natural guardians to provide
for the manifold and various needs of the child. The parents are obliged to collect, to lay up treasures for the children. And of those treasures the children live. They have not merited them, they can lay no claim to them, they are pure dependency and live by grace.
But even then, it is not really the bread that feeds us, but the word, which proceedeth out of the mouth of God. By bread alone, with nothing more, man shall not live, but by the word, the command, the power, the blessing laid therein and communicated therethru by God. That and that only feeds us, which it pleases God to provide with strength.
And now what feeding is for the natural life in the natural world, that is training or bringing up for the spiritual life in the spiritual world.
It would not be a too wondrous or a too marvelous thing for God to preserve and build up man in his whole spiritual life without any mediums whatsoever. But it pleases Him to have men brought up and trained by man and especially to allow them to labor with the word unto the forming and upbuilding of the spirit. Mind and heart, conscience and will, disposition and imagination are in this way, from infancy formed in man through the influence of others. And also in the feeding and preservation of the spiritual life, brought into existence by regeneration, God works in no other way or manner.
Parents are in the first place, as instruments in the hand of God, employed to nourish and foster the spiritual life in their children and bring it to maturity. Nature itself already indicates this, for it is in the circle of the family that the children receive their existence and spend the first years of their life. And God in His revelation is in conformity with this His teaching in nature. In Israel the Lord inculcated in the parents the duty, that they should declare unto their children and their children's children the great works that God had done in their midst; that they should give them an explanation of the solemn ceremonies in their service, especially those of the Passover; and that they should instruct them in the laws, in the statutes and judgments which God had given unto His people. Even
as the Lord Himself was the Father and Provider of His people, so the parents must be the corporeal and spiritual guardians of their children.
Still stronger is this duty bound unto the hearts of the parents in the days of the New Testament. Jesus calls the children unto Him, by name, blesses them and promises them the Kingdom of Heaven. Not less than the parents, the children participate in the blessing of Christ. The Apostles therefore considered them, even as the adults, accepted into the communion of Christ and exhort them to be obedient unto their parents in the Lord; and upon the parents they lay the duty not to provoke their children to wrath, but to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
When Christianity entered the world, it again restored and sanctified the broken bands of family life; it restored the husband to the wife, the mother to the children, the children again to the parents. And under the impression of that moral change a Church Father wrote that beautiful word: "The mother is the glory of the children, the wife the glory of the husband and both are the glory of the wife."
In this weighty and responsible task of training and bringing up, the parents are in the present day assisted by the school. Because the demands for life, both in knowledge and ability, have become so much higher and broader, the parents themselves are no longer personally able to fulfill the whole task which rests upon them in the bringing up of their children. They no longer have the time neither the ability for it. Therefore next to the family has come to stand the school; which to be sure does not relieve the parents of their responsibility and task but nevertheless comes to offer help and assistance in the keeping and fulfillment of it. The parents remain called to bring their children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; they must see to it, that the instruction given in the school is in conformity with this. But the school continues the education in this line, brings the Christian training into connection with the requirements which state and society demand of its future active
members; and the purpose of the school is to mould the children into men of God, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
The church also has a task to fulfill in this training of the children of the covenant. But her work is essentially distinguished from that of family and school. It was especially the Reformation, and among the Reformers specifically, Calvin who again laid stress and emphasis upon this ecclesiastical training of the youth. The catechetical instruction, which the church officially, in the name of the Lord, gives to her youthful, minor members, has this peculiar and specific purpose, that it leads the baptized children, in full liberty of faith to participate in the Holy Supper, and there, with the whole church, in personal independence and liberty show the death of the Lord. The instruction of the church does not include the task which awaits the children in their civil and social life, but it enforces the relation which God has laid between the two signs and seals of his covenant, and purposes to train and bring up the children of the covenant unto mature, conscious confessing members of the Church of Christ.
If it is thus carried out according to the rule of the word of the Lord, then family, church and school work together in a most beautiful way. They do not stand disconnected, side by side, and much less in opposition to each other; the one does not break down what the other builds up, but together they labor in the one great task, the reformation of man after the image and likeness of God. One faith and one baptism binds them together; it is one confession upon which they all rest; it is one view of world and life which they impart to the children for comfort and support in the arena of this earthly life. Each in its own way and yet in a mutual relation they warn and teach every man in all wisdom, that they may present him perfect in Christ Jesus.