Looking Back by Paul Assink: Chapter 4 A Promise Sealed

(This chapter is my attempt to elaborate on a significant ritual/sacrament of the church in which I grew up and still presently attend. This chapter now as it stands is a bit involved theologically and may not be of equal interest to everyone, so let the reader be alerted to move on if so desired)

It was Sunday, November 7 in the year of my birth, or maybe it was November 14, or October 31 --about that time--that I officially became a member in the world's most important family--God's ever-lasting, world-wide family. It was a family which God himself was calling out and forming to become his own special people. Just as I did not choose to become a part of my biological family, I didn't apply for membership in God's family either. Tiny infants are powerless to make any such decisions; but since I was on the scene, God invited my parents to present me for membership, and they did, confident that God's invitation was sincere. As far as God was concerned all the requirements for membership in his family had been met, the dues paid for. So, it was on that Sunday that God spoke his promise that he would accept me and, in addition, made a visible demonstration with water to confirm my membership in his family.

I didn't hear God say anything, of course, or see him do anything either; nor did he expect me to at that time. And, really, what he spoke and demonstrated was directed on that occasion largely for the benefit of my parents and for the Christian community of called out people gathered there in the Kanawha Christian Reformed Church. They had come to hear a word from God and to witness in that service my becoming a part of that spiritual community in that rite of baptism.

In that service of baptism, this Mysterious Being we call God, the Being who is responsible for there being something rather than nothing, for the whole world and for all existence, and the One who accounted for me coming on to the stage of history at this particular time--this Being was giving the community gathered there another special insight into what kind of Being He was and is. Yes, who really, is this Mystery we call God? Assuming He is a personal being and not an It, what is He really like? What is his attitude toward us? Is He an exacting, heartless tyrant ruling a cowering creation? Is He an indulgent, kindly, harmless old grandfather-type? Or is He better compared to a super Santa Claus who loves to bestow gifts and demands nothing in return? Is this Being we call God predictable? Dependable? Or arbitrary? Can we know anything for sure about Him? Are we who call ourselves human beings the deliberate, intentional products of His creative work? If so, how do we relate to Him? Does He have a purpose for bringing us here? If so, what is that purpose?

These questions we have posed seem ridiculous to us, of course, because we have long been a part of the community to whom God has revealed the answers to those questions. And as my church community was gathered there that Sunday in that service and baptismal ceremony God was providing another reminder that the mystery of his being had already been largely revealed. He repeated who he was, and reminded them again of who they were, and who I, that little, bundled-up, squalling, red-faced infant, was too. He reminded those people that morning about how we related to him. He said he had called us out of a fallen, darkened world to live as a people of faith in his wonderful light. Like Abraham of old, whom he had called from among all the peoples of the earth to begin a special relationship with, we too were being formed into the people of God in a new era and a new place. As with Abraham, God was promising that He would be God to them and to their descendants too. The people of God, with a history going back to Abraham, was still being added to daily and hourly. And now it was my turn to be sealed into that family.

When God called Father Abraham out from among the peoples of the earth to become his person, he promised that he would do a great work through one of Abraham's descendants, a person who would bring a great blessing to the whole earth. That person, we know now, was Jesus, and the blessing would come through the shedding of Jesus' blood; so as a seal of that promise of a blessing to come through shed blood, Abraham would have to be circumcised (a bloody rite). But God instructed that his male offspring--even as babies--and his slaves and their offspring, the whole community that Abraham was responsible for, were to be circumcised too as a sign of God's promise of blessing which would be brought into the world through a seed of this people of promise, this covenant people.

Through Abraham and through his descendants, the people of Israel, God, after 2000 years of history, would at last bring the Great Sacrifice, the long-awaited Blessing. Yes, finally, Jesus did come. He accomplished his work. He gave his life and shed his blood, and now God could provide this salvation to a fallen and rebellious people over the whole earth, calling them to change their minds about Him, urging them to believe and to know that He was indeed good and wanted to be a gracious Father to them. The mystery about God had been revealed. He had demonstrated his love and his good intentions. Now He could urge His servants everywhere to call people who had been his enemies to become his friends, and those who had been rebels to become disciples; and to baptize them into the community of faith established by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The blood, of course, had now been shed; so now the water of baptism would seal the fact that their sins were washed away. "The promise is to you, and to your children..." The Philippian jailer in desperation had responded with faith to the pleas of Paul and Silas: "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved--you and your household." That very night, after further instruction, the jailer and all his family were baptized.

No, I didn't choose to join this world-wide family of God. But my parents were people of this community of faith, and they brought me to be baptized, just as they had done previously with Henry and Harold and Ruth. The pastor, Rev. D.H. Plesscher, read the baptismal form which explained the purpose of baptism and why children ought not to be excluded from it even though they could not understand these things. We were God's people. All of us there. The little people who didn't realize it at the time too. And like God's people in the old covenant whose children were circumcised as a sign and seal of the righteousness and forgiveness God had granted to them, we, his people of the new covenant, were to receive the sign of baptism. Circumcision, the bloody rite had been replaced with the cleansing symbol of water, but the message was basically the same: "I will be your God and the God of your children. Walk before me as my people. You are called out to be a blessing to all the earth."

And so it was that God spoke to my parents and the 250 or so others assembled there that morning. He told them that I too was a part of his redeemed community, and that through his Son he had done all that had to be done for that to be accomplished. So this baptismal demonstration was not focused on what we had to do to win God's favor, now, or in the future. No, God's favor had already been won, very effectively, through the obedient life and sacrificial death of Jesus. The blood had been shed; the sacrifice completed. We were already in His favor. The sin problem had already been dealt with. It was not that we now had the opportunity to become his people; we already were His people. Our response as the community of faith would now be to accept that as an accomplished fact and walk before Him as his grateful children. Now, on this morning, he was reminding his people gathered there of their favored position and requiring of my parents and of the whole congregation to take that pronouncement seriously--to believe it. "Train up this child. Instruct him in these things, and cause him to be instructed therein." They promised they would; and the promise was sincere, as sincere as flawed people were capable of being.

While God spoke to the community of called-out ones, I was officially, ceremonially, becoming a part of that community; and so God also spoke and demonstrated in my baptism an instruction for me as well. It's like being made aware of belonging to my earthly family. I belonged (in a sense) to my parents. My parents were committed to loving, caring and providing for me. It was not that I was on the outside having to earn that position of becoming their child, or having to do something to eventually win their acceptance. No, I was already in. I was their child and my birth certificate proved it, and I could count on their basic desire to seek my good so that I could become all that I was meant to be. True, I could someday, if I foolishly chose, reject them, run away from home and live as an orphan; but as far as my parents were concerned, I belonged to them and I could count on them to be parents to me. So my baptism was the Triune God's way of demonstrating to me what his attitude was toward me. He regarded me as His child, and I could count on that.

And so what happened that November Sunday morning was focused not so much on what my parents did in presenting me, or even on what they promised to do as their part of the arrangement. Nor was that rite of baptism calling attention to some dramatic decision I would someday be expected to make. Of course, their commitment and nurture was crucial and called for; and, to be sure, I would be expected to respond to God in faith, believing his message and promises to be true and valuable; for not to respond to him is to reject him. But the focus of my baptism was on what God was telling us of his good intentions toward us: "I will be your God; you, then, be my people and you'll be blessed and become a blessing." That's the gospel, the good news, conveying God's attitude toward us. And we can bank on that attitude just as surely as we can produce evidence that we were baptized. That's why a baptismal certificate was made out for me: to prove that God actually spoke and visibly demonstrated that message to us that November Sunday morning.

As the years passed by, I eventually learned of my baptism. It didn't mean much to me at first, or for a long time. My parents were sincere; they did not have me baptized out of custom or superstition. They tried to instruct me and cause me to be instructed in the ways of the Christian faith; but they were, nevertheless, weak in explaining to me the meaning of baptism, and it wasn't until I was far along into my adult years that I understood it. I do not really fault my parents for that failure. They, like many good people who were not well-schooled in things theological, probably did not grasp the full implication of the astounding message which baptism proclaims: We are God's people, and this ceremony seals that relationship. They also, I realize now, were greatly influenced by the popular Arminian understanding that we are born outside of God's grace and must somehow be brought into his grace by a special act of faith. They may have also feared, I suspect, that being too emphatic about God already accepting us apart from anything that we can do--being too Reformed--would encourage complacency. There was a notion abroad in my earlier years that emphasizing too much one's secure relationship with God might lead us to believe that somehow we automatically, irrespective of our faith response, would receive eternal life, and that baptism would encourage that notion. Baptists often were critical of the infant baptism position, among other reasons, for this reason too, believing that one who was assured of his salvation would have no inducement to seek God.

My parents would not be guilty of regarding baptism as an automatic ticket to Heaven. They well knew that faith was necessary, and that the walk of obedience was essential. But in their preoccupation with the necessity of faith and obedience, those two components--faith and obedience--began to take on the aspect of works that we would someday have to produce in order to obtain our salvation. Thus, the gospel message in baptism, which was meant to give reinforcement to that faith and provide a sign by which we could direct the very conduct of our earthly walk, was muted. To the extent that the demonstration of God's message in baptism is dulled or confused, to that extent it fails to be the beautiful certification lesson I believe God intended it to be for us. Baptism, after all, emphasizes not so much what we believe, or what we are doing or promise to do, as our Baptist friends would stress, but rather what God has done, and thus, who we are because of it. It is centered on God's promise--on what he says--not on our faith, our promise, or what we say.

Yes, God spoke to me shortly after my birth. I would eventually hear him, not so much in that message, but in other ways; and I would respond to him, but that message he provided for me in my baptism didn't come through very clearly. I tended to think of myself throughout most of my childhood as being just outside of God's love--a potential child of God, to be sure, but not really accepted yet until I did something. I had the notion that I had to do something first before I could really sing with full honesty: "Jesus loves me." Baptism was, therefore, as a sacrament, not nearly as vital in my life personally as it might have been. But I can look back on it now and bless the God who included me in the community of His called out people and sealed his promises to me that Sunday morning in 1928, even though I wasn't aware of it.

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Looking Back by Paul Assink

Chapter 4 A Promise Sealed

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