Latest / Reformed Thinking / Baptism | John Calvin

Transcript

Baptism | John Calvin · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to Reform Thinking.
• 0:02
  It is really good to have you with us again.
• 0:04
  It is. We are continuing our walk
• 0:06
  through the, well, the historic texts of our faith.
• 0:10
  And today we're opening up a book that has, I mean, it's
• 0:13
  arguably done more to shape Protestant theology than
• 0:16
  anything outside the Bible itself.
• 0:18
  That's for sure. We are looking at John Calvin's
• 0:21
  Institute's of the Christian Religion and specifically we are
• 0:24
  flipping to book 4, chapter 15. This is the chapter entirely
• 0:28
  dedicated to baptism, and I know what you might be thinking.
• 0:31
  You might be thinking this is going to be, you know, a dry
• 0:34
  instruction manual on how to conduct a christening service.
• 0:37
  Right. Or a debate about how much water
• 0:38
  to use. Exactly.
• 0:40
  Or, you know, something along those lines.
• 0:41
  But I have to stop you right there.
• 0:43
  Calvin is doing something much, much more significant here.
• 0:46
  I was so surprised by the tone of this chapter.
• 0:49
  I really was. I expected logistics, but what I
• 0:52
  got was, well, it felt like a rescue mission for the
• 0:56
  conscience. That's a great way to put it.
• 0:58
  Calvin seems almost obsessed with the idea that we
• 1:01
  misunderstand what's happening when the water touches us.
• 1:04
  He uses this phrase that just stopped me in my tracks.
• 1:08
  He calls baptism A sealed document.
• 1:11
  That image is the anchor for the whole chapter.
• 1:13
  You really have to get that to get the rest.
• 1:15
  And you have to remember the context.
• 1:17
  In the 16th century, people were frankly terrified.
• 1:21
  They were anxious about their standing before God constantly,
• 1:24
  constantly. They saw God as this, this judge
• 1:27
  who was ready to strike them down.
• 1:28
  And they were always trying to figure out if they had done
• 1:30
  enough, you know, to appease him.
• 1:32
  Calvin steps right into that fear and says look at your
• 1:35
  baptism. So he's trying to shift the
• 1:37
  focus away from our performance and and onto a legal guarantee.
• 1:41
  Right. Think of a title deed to a house
• 1:43
  or a royal charter. If a king gives you a plot of
• 1:46
  land, he writes it down on parchment.
• 1:48
  But to make it official, to make it undeniable, he presses his
• 1:51
  signet ring into hot wax on that document.
• 1:54
  That seal proves the document is genuine.
• 1:57
  It's the King's mark. Calvin argues that baptism is
• 2:01
  that wax seal. It's a physical object that God
• 2:04
  attaches to His promise to prove that He really, truly means it.
• 2:08
  That is a very high view of the sacrament.
• 2:10
  I think in our modern context, we often treat it as more of a a
• 2:15
  dedication ceremony. Yeah, that's common.
• 2:17
  You know, we bring the baby or the adult upfront.
• 2:19
  We promise to raise them well, the congregation applauds.
• 2:21
  We have cake afterwards. It feels like something we are
• 2:23
  doing. For God and Calvin would say
• 2:26
  that is completely backward. He defines baptism right at the
• 2:29
  start as a sign of initiation by which we are received into the
• 2:33
  Society of the church. The point is so that, and this
• 2:36
  is key, being rafted into Christ, we may be reckoned among
• 2:39
  God's children. But then he immediately
• 2:42
  distinguishes between two purposes.
• 2:43
  One purpose is serving our confession before men.
• 2:45
  That's the US doing something part.
• 2:47
  But the primary purpose, the one that matters most, serves our
• 2:50
  faith before God. So the arrow points down from
• 2:53
  God to us, not up. Spot on.
• 2:56
  Is God preaching to our eyes? We're visual creatures.
• 2:59
  I mean we struggle to believe in visible promises.
• 3:02
  It's just how we're wired. So God gives us a visible word.
• 3:05
  OK, so let's talk about what this seal document actually
• 3:08
  promises. Calvin outlines 3 distinct
• 3:12
  benefits of baptism. The first one is this idea of
• 3:15
  cleansing. This is where that seal analogy
• 3:18
  does the heavy lifting, he says. Baptism attests to us that our
• 3:22
  sins are abolished, deleted and blotted out.
• 3:25
  Deleted is a really strong word. It sounds so final.
• 3:28
  It's meant to be. And this is where we have to get
• 3:31
  into some, you know, some heavier theology to understand
• 3:34
  why this was so revolutionary at the time.
• 3:36
  In the medieval Roman Church, the teaching was, well, it was
• 3:39
  slightly different. They taught that baptism washed
• 3:42
  away original sin, the sin you inherited from Adam, and any
• 3:46
  actual sins you had committed up to that point.
• 3:48
  So you're clean on the day of your baptism.
• 3:49
  You get a fresh start. You're clean for about 5
• 3:52
  minutes. I mean seriously?
• 3:54
  Then you have a bad thought, or you lose your temper with
• 3:57
  someone and suddenly you're dirty again.
• 3:59
  You've lost that baptismal purity.
• 4:01
  It's gone. It's gone.
• 4:02
  And this is where the concept of the second plank came in.
• 4:05
  They taught that baptism is the first plank that saves you from
• 4:09
  the shipwreck of sin. But if you sin after baptism,
• 4:13
  you fall off that plank. Now to keep from drowning, you
• 4:17
  need a second plank. I'm guessing that second plank
• 4:20
  is penance. That's it.
• 4:21
  The sacrament of penance, confession, satisfaction, works
• 4:26
  of contrition, The entire Christian life became this
• 4:29
  desperate striving to stay afloat on that second plank
• 4:32
  because you'd already used up the first one.
• 4:34
  It was an anxiety factory. That just sounds exhausting.
• 4:37
  It makes your standing before God completely dependent on your
• 4:40
  most recent confession. It does, and Calvin looks at
• 4:43
  scripture, specifically verses like Ephesians 5.26 where Paul
• 4:46
  talks about the washing of water in the Word and he just says
• 4:49
  this whole second plank idea is wrong.
• 4:51
  It's an insult to the work of Christ.
• 4:53
  OK, so how does he see it then? He argues that the purity
• 4:56
  offered in baptism is not time bound.
• 4:58
  It's not a one time car wash that wears off when you drive
• 5:01
  through a muddy puddle. So, he said, the promise covers
• 5:03
  the future as well. All of it.
• 5:05
  He is, he says, the force and efficacy of baptism remains It
• 5:09
  covers the entire life of the believer, past, present and
• 5:13
  future. Wait, I want to push on that a
• 5:15
  bit because that sounds, well, it sounds a little dangerous.
• 5:18
  If I'm baptized and it covers my future sins, does that mean I
• 5:23
  have a license to do whatever I want?
• 5:25
  You know, I've got the seal, so I'm good and.
• 5:27
  That's always the objection to grace, isn't it?
• 5:29
  Paul deals with it in Romans, but Calvin would say you're
• 5:32
  misunderstanding the purpose of the seal.
• 5:35
  The seal doesn't give you permission to sin.
• 5:37
  It gives you a way back when you do sin.
• 5:39
  OK, he says when the believer falls, they don't need a new
• 5:42
  sacrament. They absolutely do not need to
• 5:44
  be re baptized. They need to recall the memory
• 5:47
  of their baptism. They look back at that watery
• 5:49
  seal from years ago and say God put his name on me.
• 5:52
  That contract is still valid. So it's the sacrament of
• 5:55
  repentance for your whole life? For your whole life, that's a
• 5:57
  perfect summary. That brings us, then, to the
• 6:00
  second benefit. It's not just about a clean
• 6:02
  slate. It's about a new life.
• 6:04
  He talks about mortification and renewal.
• 6:06
  This is pure Roman 6. It's the imagery of the grave.
• 6:10
  When you go under the water, it pictures death.
• 6:12
  You are participating, really participating, in the death of
• 6:16
  Christ. You are mortifying, which
• 6:18
  literally means killing your sinful nature.
• 6:20
  And when you come up out of the water.
• 6:22
  You're participating in his resurrection new life.
• 6:25
  He uses an agricultural metaphor here that I found really
• 6:27
  helpful. He talks about grafting.
• 6:29
  Yes, if you take a twig from one tree and just, you know, jam it
• 6:33
  into a generic root, the twig will die.
• 6:36
  But if you graft it into a living, vibrant root, it draws
• 6:39
  SAP and life from that root, Calvin says.
• 6:42
  Baptism testifies that we are grafted into Christ.
• 6:45
  We're the twig. He is the root.
• 6:48
  So the power to kill sin doesn't come from my willpower.
• 6:51
  I don't just try harder, it comes from the FAP flowing from
• 6:54
  the root. Correct.
• 6:55
  We draw the energy to kill our sin from his death.
• 6:57
  We draw the energy to live a holy life from his resurrection.
• 7:01
  It's all derivative, it's not self generated.
• 7:04
  And this leads right into the third benefit, which seems to
• 7:06
  tie the 1st 2 together, union with Christ.
• 7:09
  This really is the capstone. Baptism testifies that we are so
• 7:13
  united to Jesus that we share in all his blessings.
• 7:16
  And Calvin is very careful here to keep this trinitarian.
• 7:20
  He says the Father is the cause, the Spirit is the instrument,
• 7:23
  but the matter, the substance of baptism is Christ.
• 7:27
  You can't have the gift without the giver.
• 7:28
  You cannot. The water is effectively saying
• 7:31
  you are in Him. And because you are in Him,
• 7:34
  everything that belongs to Him, His righteousness, His Holiness,
• 7:38
  His standing with the Father, now belongs to you.
• 7:41
  Now we need to address the elephant in the room.
• 7:43
  We've been using language that sounds very well, almost
• 7:47
  magical. The water seals, the water
• 7:49
  graphs us in. Is Calvin saying the water
• 7:51
  itself saves us? He is absolutely not saying that
• 7:54
  and he's fighting a war on 2 fronts here.
• 7:55
  It's really important to see that.
• 7:57
  On one side he has the Roman view, which in his time had
• 8:00
  drifted towards superstition, thinking the water itself
• 8:03
  contained the grace like a potion.
• 8:05
  And the other side, on the other side he has some of the radical
• 8:07
  reformers who said the water is nothing, it's just a badge, a
• 8:10
  public symbol, and that's it. So how does he walk that line?
• 8:14
  He separates the sign from the reality, but he refuses to
• 8:17
  divorce them. He says water is not magic, it's
• 8:21
  H2O. It has no power in and of itself
• 8:24
  to cleanse the soul. The power is in the word
• 8:28
  attached to the water. The washing of water in the
• 8:30
  word. That phrase again.
• 8:31
  Precisely. The gospel promise is the soap.
• 8:34
  The water is just the basin. If you take away the Word, you
• 8:37
  just have a wet Sinner. But Calvin insists God uses the
• 8:41
  water to deliver the promise. He says we shouldn't act like
• 8:44
  we're too spiritual for physical signs.
• 8:46
  God knows we are weak. He knows we need to see and
• 8:49
  touch. This implies then, that there's
• 8:51
  a requirement on our end the water doesn't work automatically
• 8:54
  like an incantation. Faith.
• 8:56
  That's the receiver. Calvin says the promise is
• 8:58
  offered to everyone who is baptized.
• 8:59
  The contract is valid, but you have to read it and believe it
• 9:02
  to enjoy the benefits. OK?
• 9:04
  He compares it to sunlight. If you stand in the bright sun
• 9:07
  with your eyes squeezed shut, you are in the light, but you
• 9:11
  don't see it. The defect isn't in the sun,
• 9:13
  it's in your eyes. So for the person who is
• 9:16
  baptized but doesn't believe, the promise is still there, sort
• 9:20
  of hovering over them, but they aren't benefiting from it.
• 9:23
  The offer is objective, the reception is subjective.
• 9:26
  And This is why he hates the idea of baptism as just a badge
• 9:30
  of profession. He says yes, of course it marks
• 9:32
  us out as Christians like a soldiers uniform.
• 9:35
  But if you make it primarily about your profession, you are
• 9:38
  making the sacrament about what you do for God.
• 9:41
  And he always wants to bring it. Back.
• 9:42
  He always wants to keep it focused on what God is promising
• 9:45
  to you. I want to circle back to
• 9:46
  something we touched on earlier because it's one of those
• 9:48
  practical parts of this chapter. We talked about how baptism
• 9:51
  covers our future sins, but Cowlin gets very specific about
• 9:54
  the nature of that sin. He distinguishes between guilt
• 9:58
  and nature. This is this is essential for
• 10:01
  mental health in the Christian life.
• 10:03
  Calvin teaches that baptism assures us the guilt of original
• 10:06
  sin is removed, the condemnation is gone.
• 10:08
  You are not going to hell for it, but the nature of sin, the
• 10:12
  corruption, the twisted desires remains in us.
• 10:15
  He uses a really frightening image to describe us.
• 10:19
  He calls our nature a glowing furnace.
• 10:22
  It is vivid, isn't it? He says.
• 10:23
  Even after baptism, even after regeneration, our nature is like
• 10:27
  a furnace that is constantly blowing out sparks of sinful
• 10:30
  desire, or like a spring that is always bubbling up muddy water.
• 10:34
  He calls this concupiscence. That feels.
• 10:37
  I mean, that feels discouraging. If I'm washed, why is the
• 10:40
  furnace still hot? That is the question every
• 10:42
  single believer asks. Why do I still struggle so much?
• 10:46
  And Calvin points them directly to Romans 7.
• 10:49
  You know the passage where Paulda screens, Wretched man
• 10:52
  that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?
• 10:55
  Yeah, and there's a lot of debate about that passage.
• 10:57
  Some people say Paul must be talking about his life before he
• 10:59
  met Christ because a Christian shouldn't be that miserable
• 11:02
  about sin. Calvin completely rejects that
• 11:04
  view. He says Paul is describing the
• 11:06
  regenerate man. He's describing the normal
• 11:08
  Christian life. Think about it.
• 11:11
  A dead body flowing down a river doesn't struggle against the
• 11:14
  current, it just floats. It's only the living swimmer who
• 11:17
  fights the stream and feels the exhaustion.
• 11:19
  So the fact that we feel the heat of the furnace is actually
• 11:22
  proof that we're alive. It's proof of the Spirit's work.
• 11:25
  If you were dead in sin, you wouldn't care.
• 11:27
  The struggle itself confirms your new life, and baptism is
• 11:31
  given to us as assurance for that struggle.
• 11:34
  It tells us that while sin still dwells in US, it no longer rules
• 11:37
  over us. We're fighting a defeated enemy,
• 11:40
  right? It's like the Israelites
• 11:41
  crossing the Red Sea. Calvin loves this typology.
• 11:45
  The Egyptians were drowned in the sea.
• 11:46
  They could no longer enslave Israel, but Israel still had to
• 11:50
  walk through the wilderness. They still had to fight battles
• 11:52
  with the Canaanites, but they never had to worry about Pharaoh
• 11:56
  again. Speaking of the Red Sea, this
• 11:57
  brings us to the section on the continuity of the Covenant.
• 12:00
  It's a big deal for Reformed theology.
• 12:03
  Calvin spends a lot of time arguing that baptism isn't some
• 12:06
  brand new idea that just popped up in Matthew 28.
• 12:09
  He argues for the unity of the whole Bible.
• 12:11
  He looks at the Old Testament and says, look, the substance of
• 12:14
  the covenant has never changed. The way God saves people in the
• 12:17
  Old Testament is the same way He saves them in the new by grace
• 12:21
  through faith in the Messiah. And he deals with the objection
• 12:24
  about John the Baptist. I've heard people argue that
• 12:27
  John's baptism was just a Jewish ritual, not really Christian
• 12:30
  baptism. That was a common argument and
• 12:32
  people would point to the fact that John said I baptize with
• 12:35
  water but he who comes after me will baptize with fire.
• 12:38
  They'd say see two different baptisms. 1 is physical, one is
• 12:41
  spiritual. So how does Calvin answer that?
• 12:44
  He says you're misreading the comparison.
• 12:46
  John wasn't comparing the rituals, he was comparing the
• 12:49
  persons. He was saying I am just a
• 12:51
  servant, I can only put water on your body.
• 12:53
  That's my limit. But Jesus, Jesus is the Lord.
• 12:57
  He can send the Spirit into your heart.
• 13:00
  It's a statement about authority, not a claim that his
• 13:02
  baptism was empty or different. So he argues that the doctrine
• 13:05
  was the same. John preached repentance and
• 13:08
  remission of sins in Christ. The apostles preached repentance
• 13:10
  and remission of sins in Christ. Same message, same sign.
• 13:14
  Exactly. And then he goes back even
• 13:16
  further to the cloud and the sea.
• 13:17
  In 1st Corinthians 10, Paul says the Israelites were baptized
• 13:21
  into Moses and the cloud on the sea.
• 13:23
  I love the detail Calvin brings out about the cloud.
• 13:25
  It's beautiful, isn't it? He says.
• 13:27
  The cloud represents cleansing and protection.
• 13:30
  In the desert, the sun is deadly.
• 13:32
  The cloud shielded them from that scorching heat.
• 13:35
  Calvin connects that to the blood of Christ.
• 13:38
  Baptism tells us we are under the cloud.
• 13:41
  We are screened from the scorching heat of God's
• 13:43
  judgement. It just shows that God has
• 13:45
  always used physical things to communicate spiritual reality.
• 13:50
  He's consistent. He meets us where we are, in our
• 13:52
  weakness. OK, now we need to get into some
• 13:55
  of the the nitty gritty of church practice because as high
• 13:59
  as Calvin's view of baptism is, he's very practical about the
• 14:03
  validity of it. And this leads to the Donatus
• 14:05
  controversy. Can you give us a quick
• 14:06
  refresher on who the Donatus were?
• 14:07
  Sure, the Donatus were a group in North Africa back in the 4th
• 14:11
  century. And they were They were
• 14:13
  hardliners. They believed that if a priest
• 14:15
  had lapsed during persecution, if he denied the faith to save
• 14:18
  his skin, he was a traitor. OK, and if that traitor later
• 14:21
  baptized your baby, that baptism didn't count.
• 14:25
  It was null and void because the vessel, the minister was dirty.
• 14:28
  That seems like a logical stance on the surface.
• 14:30
  You want a holy minister? It makes sense on a human level,
• 14:34
  but Augustine fought them fiercely on this, and Calvin
• 14:36
  picks up that fight. He says if the validity of your
• 14:39
  baptism depends on the holiness of the minister, you can never
• 14:43
  have assurance, ever. Why not?
• 14:45
  Because you can never know for sure what's in your pastor's
• 14:48
  heart. He might be a secret Sinner.
• 14:50
  He might be a hypocrite. If the sacrament depends on him,
• 14:53
  your salvation is on shaky ground.
• 14:56
  So how does Calvin solve this problem?
• 14:58
  He uses the letter carrier analogy.
• 15:01
  I think this is just brilliant. Imagine you receive a letter
• 15:04
  from a king. It has the King's handwriting,
• 15:06
  and it has the King's royal seal, Preston Wax.
• 15:09
  But the mailman who delivers it is a known drunkard.
• 15:12
  Maybe he's a thief. Does his bad character change
• 15:15
  the content of the letter? No.
• 15:17
  Of course not the letters from the king, the mailman is just
• 15:20
  the delivery mechanism. Exactly.
• 15:22
  Calvin says the minister is the hand that sprinkles the water,
• 15:25
  but the hand that gives the grace is God's.
• 15:28
  We look at the seal, not the carrier.
• 15:30
  So even if the minister is an impious Wretch, as Calvin puts
• 15:33
  it, the baptism stands. This is why he is so adamant
• 15:36
  against rebaptism. He hates rebaptism.
• 15:39
  He sees it as a profound insult to God.
• 15:42
  If you get re baptized because you think the first one didn't
• 15:45
  take, you're essentially saying God's first promise was
• 15:48
  defective. You are trying to correct God's
• 15:50
  work. But there's a snag here, a
• 15:53
  difficult verse. Acts chapter 19.
• 15:56
  Paul arrives in Ephesus and find some disciples who have been
• 16:00
  baptized by John. And the text says on hearing
• 16:03
  this they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
• 16:06
  That sounds a lot like a RE baptism.
• 16:08
  This is the hardest text for Calvin's position, without a
• 16:10
  doubt. If Paul re baptized them, then
• 16:12
  Calvin's whole argument that John's baptism and Christian
• 16:15
  baptism are the same thing, yeah, it falls apart.
• 16:17
  So what does he do with it? He does some some pretty serious
• 16:20
  interpretive gymnastics, to be honest.
• 16:22
  He argues that in this specific verse, the word baptism does not
• 16:25
  mean water. Come on.
• 16:26
  Yeah, it says they were baptized.
• 16:28
  I know, I know, it sounds like a stretch, but Calvin argues that
• 16:32
  baptism here is a figure of speech for the visible gifts of
• 16:35
  the Holy Spirit. The text goes on to say that
• 16:38
  Paul laid hands on them and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.
• 16:41
  Calvin says that event, the tongues, the prophecy was the
• 16:45
  baptism Luke is talking about, not a second water baptism.
• 16:49
  That seems, well, a little convenient for his argument.
• 16:51
  Why would he push that interpretation so hard?
• 16:53
  Because the alternative is worse for his whole system.
• 16:57
  If ignorance requires re baptism and remember these guys didn't
• 17:00
  even know about the Holy Spirit, then the apostles themselves
• 17:03
  would have needed to be re baptized every time they learned
• 17:05
  a new doctrine. That's a good point.
• 17:07
  They spent three years with Jesus and were confused about
• 17:09
  almost everything, Calvin says. If perfect knowledge is the
• 17:13
  standard, none of us are truly baptized.
• 17:15
  He's protecting the objective nature of the covenant.
• 17:18
  He's saying the promise waits for us to catch up to it.
• 17:21
  So for the listener who was baptized as an infant or maybe
• 17:24
  baptized in a church they no longer agree with doctrinally,
• 17:27
  Calvin's advice is clear. Do not do it again.
• 17:30
  Do not do it again. The promise is still there, you
• 17:34
  just need to embrace it now by faith.
• 17:37
  Let's shift gears a little to the ceremony itself.
• 17:40
  Calvin was writing during the Reformation, and he had some
• 17:43
  very strong words about how the Catholic Church was conducting
• 17:46
  baptisms at the time. He calls it theatrical pomp.
• 17:49
  Oh he is not a fan of the show. You have to visualize a 16th
• 17:53
  century baptism. It wasn't just water, it was a
• 17:56
  whole production. The priest would use oil chrism
• 18:00
  to anoint the baby. They would light a consecrated
• 18:04
  taper or a candle. They would put salt in the
• 18:06
  baby's mouth. And spittle.
• 18:08
  That's the one that always gets me.
• 18:09
  Yes, this is the part that really grossed everyone out.
• 18:12
  The priest would put his own spittle on the baby's ears and
• 18:14
  nose, mimicking Jesus healing the deaf man in the gospels.
• 18:18
  Then they would do something called Exiflation where they
• 18:20
  would literally blow in the baby's face to drive out the
• 18:23
  devil. It sounds like a magic spell.
• 18:25
  That's exactly Calvin's critique.
• 18:27
  He calls it a hodgepodge of human inventions.
• 18:30
  He says these things dazzle the eyes of the symbol people.
• 18:33
  They're so distracted by the candles and the spitting and the
• 18:36
  oil that they completely miss the water.
• 18:39
  They miss the blood of Christ. He says it obscures the clean
• 18:42
  brightness of God's command. He asks a really pointed
• 18:45
  question. Is Christ's command too simple
• 18:48
  for us? Jesus said wash them.
• 18:51
  He didn't say wash them and oil them, insult them and spit on
• 18:54
  them. Calvin wants to strip away all
• 18:56
  the clutter so the sign can speak clearly.
• 18:58
  So what is the ideal Reformed baptism in his view?
• 19:02
  It's simple. It's dignified.
• 19:03
  You present the person to the assembly, you offer prayers, you
• 19:06
  recite the Confession of Faith, the Apostles Creed, probably you
• 19:10
  baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and
• 19:13
  you dismiss the people with Thanksgiving.
• 19:16
  Done. What about the mode?
• 19:17
  Do we dunk or do we sprinkle? Calvin is surprisingly relaxed
• 19:21
  here. He admits the Greek word baptizo
• 19:23
  means to immerse. It's the early church probably
• 19:27
  dipped people under the water. But he says the amount of water
• 19:30
  is a detail of no consequence. Sprinkling, pouring, dipping
• 19:34
  once, three times. He says churches should be free
• 19:37
  to decide based on their climate and custom.
• 19:40
  So if you live in a freezing climate, maybe don't dunk the
• 19:43
  baby. Right, the substance is the
• 19:45
  water in the word, not the volume of the liquid.
• 19:47
  But that flexibility stops cold when we talk about who holds the
• 19:51
  water. This brings us to the final and
• 19:53
  perhaps most dramatic section, emergency baptism.
• 19:57
  This is where we see the pastoral heart of Calvin
• 19:59
  clashing with the intense anxiety of his age.
• 20:02
  Set the scene for us. Why was emergency baptism a
• 20:05
  thing? It goes right back to that fear
• 20:06
  we talked about at the beginning.
• 20:08
  The common belief was that baptism was absolutely necessary
• 20:11
  for salvation. If a baby died unbaptized, they
• 20:14
  couldn't go to heaven. They went to Limbo, the Limbus
• 20:17
  infantium. So if a birth was going wrong,
• 20:20
  if the baby was in distress. Panic.
• 20:22
  Absolute panic. If the baby was breached or
• 20:25
  dying and the priest wasn't there, the midwife was
• 20:27
  authorized to baptize the child immediately, sometimes right
• 20:30
  there in the birthing bed. And Calvin steps in and says
• 20:32
  stop. He forbids it.
• 20:34
  He says baptism is a church function.
• 20:36
  It is a ministry of the keys given to the apostles and their
• 20:39
  successors. It's not for private individuals
• 20:42
  and certainly not for women, which was his cultural stance to
• 20:46
  usurp that official role. But wasn't he being cruel?
• 20:49
  I mean, telling a grieving mother, sorry, the midwife
• 20:52
  shouldn't have done that. That sounds harsh.
• 20:54
  It sounds cruel until you understand why he forbade it.
• 20:57
  He wasn't trying to damn the babies, he was trying to save
• 21:00
  the parents from bad theology. He calls the idea that water is
• 21:04
  absolutely necessary for salvation of false dogma.
• 21:07
  He says God is not so bound to his sacraments that he cannot
• 21:11
  save without them. Exactly.
• 21:13
  He points back to the covenant. I will be a God to you and to
• 21:16
  your children. He tells the parents your child
• 21:19
  is holy because they are yours and you belong to God.
• 21:23
  The promise saves them, not the water.
• 21:25
  The water just confirms what is already true.
• 21:28
  He's trying to tell them your baby is safe in God's arms even
• 21:31
  without the water. He's actually offering more
• 21:33
  comfort, not less. But his opponents had a Bible
• 21:36
  verse and it is a weird 1. Exodus 4, the story of Zipporah.
• 21:42
  The Bridegroom of blood. This is one of the strangest
• 21:45
  stories in the entire Pentateuch.
• 21:46
  Retell it for us because I think a lot of people just gloss over
• 21:49
  it. OK, so Moses is on his way back
• 21:50
  to Egypt to liberate the Israelites.
• 21:52
  Suddenly the text says God met him and sought to kill him.
• 21:55
  We assume it's because Moses had failed to circumcise his son
• 21:59
  Gershom. He was neglecting the covenant
• 22:01
  sign. The stakes are life and death.
• 22:03
  Total chaos. So Zipporah, Moses's wife, sees
• 22:07
  her husband is about to die. She grabs a sharp flintstone
• 22:10
  from the ground. She cuts off her son's foreskin
• 22:12
  right there and then. This is the crazy part.
• 22:15
  She throws the foreskin at Moses's feet or touches his feet
• 22:18
  with it, and she screams. Surely you are a bridegroom of
• 22:22
  blood to me. And God let's Moses go.
• 22:24
  And the medieval church used this story as a precedent for
• 22:27
  midwives baptizing. Yes.
• 22:29
  They argued, look, Zippora was a woman.
• 22:32
  She administered a sacrament in an emergency to save a life and
• 22:35
  God accepted it so midwives can baptize.
• 22:38
  How does Calvin handle that? It seems like a slam dunk for
• 22:40
  them. Calvin absolutely dismantles it.
• 22:42
  He changes the narrative completely, he says.
• 22:44
  You think Zippora was being a pious believer?
• 22:46
  No, he argues. She was furious.
• 22:49
  She was hysterical. She threw the forestman down in
• 22:51
  anger, murmuring against God and her husband because she hated
• 22:54
  the bloody ritual. He calls her action inexcusable
• 22:57
  temerity. He says she was throwing a
• 22:59
  tantrum, not conducting a religious service.
• 23:02
  He argues that just because God spared Moses, it doesn't mean he
• 23:06
  approved of her method. God often spares us despite our
• 23:09
  Miss Calvin says we should not build church doctrine on the
• 23:12
  angry outbursts of a stressed out woman.
• 23:14
  It's a violation of order, not a rule for the church.
• 23:17
  He really refuses to let fear dictate theology.
• 23:21
  He wants everything done decently and in order.
• 23:23
  That is the hallmark of his thought.
• 23:26
  We must value the command. We must be baptized.
• 23:28
  We shouldn't neglect it, but we must not make the water into an
• 23:32
  idol that saves us by magic. We trust the God of the water,
• 23:36
  not the water itself. So as we wrap up this deep dive,
• 23:39
  let's try to synthesize all of this.
• 23:41
  We've talked about seals, furnaces, clouds, and sharp
• 23:43
  rocks. What is the big take away for
• 23:46
  the person listening right now? The take away is assurance.
• 23:50
  That is the heartbeat of the Reformation.
• 23:52
  Calvin wants you to know that you're standing before God is
• 23:55
  not based on your fluctuating feelings.
• 23:56
  It's not based on your performance today or how well
• 23:59
  you did this week. It's based on a sealed document.
• 24:01
  It's based on a verdict that was rendered when you were washed in
• 24:04
  the name of the Triune God. If you are a believer, you have
• 24:08
  a charter in your pocket. You might have forgotten it is
• 24:11
  there. You might be struggling with a
• 24:13
  sin that feels like it's winning.
• 24:15
  You might feel like God is 1,000,000 miles away.
• 24:18
  And Calvin says look at the water.
• 24:20
  Look at the water. Don't look at it as a sweet
• 24:23
  memory of a cute baby in a white dress.
• 24:26
  Look at it as a legal sentence passed by the judge of the
• 24:29
  universe. He has claimed you.
• 24:31
  He has washed you. That verdict stands.
• 24:34
  You don't need to do penance to earn your way back.
• 24:36
  You don't need to find a second plank.
• 24:38
  You never fell off the ship. You just need to walk back to
• 24:40
  the captain. It's shifts our identity.
• 24:42
  It's not just I was baptized as a past event.
• 24:45
  It's I am baptized. It's a present reality.
• 24:48
  It is the shield you wear into battle every single day.
• 24:51
  I. Want to leave you with a final
• 24:52
  thought to chew on? We've talked about how powerful
• 24:55
  the seal is. Calvin puts immense weight on
• 24:58
  it. But here's the tension I want
• 25:00
  you to wrestle with. If the promise saves us like it
• 25:04
  saved the thief on the cross or the unbaptized infant of a
• 25:07
  believer, why did Christ command the water at all?
• 25:10
  Why do we need the physical stuff if the spiritual promise
• 25:14
  is enough? It's the question that
• 25:15
  challenges our pride, isn't it? Maybe we need the physical stuff
• 25:18
  because we are weaker than we like to admit.
• 25:20
  We aren't angels, we are dust. And maybe we need to see, touch
• 25:24
  and feel God's promise. Or we simply won't believe it.
• 25:27
  Something to think about the next time you see a baptism at
• 25:30
  your church. It is more than just a ritual,
• 25:33
  it is a seal. Thank you for joining us on
• 25:35
  Reformed Thinking. We'll see you next time.