Consider that possibly our children do not become the children of God by believing in Jesus. Rather, God says, “They are My children. Believe it. It is because they are in Christ Jesus and heirs of adoption, in virtue of the promise to Abraham (Gen. 17:7).” Flinn goes on to say, “Natural birth never gave one the automatic right to be part of the people of God, just as it did not give a right to circumcision. The command of God established the right to circumcision.” If Christian baptism is of God, then why don’t we believe Him? One proponent of "faith alone" has said, "…He (God) will give you the gift of faith. Upon believing you are once and for all justified. You are once and for all secure in Jesus forever. The justified person…cannot apostatize." This is what I would call a forceful conviction. Does a forceful conviction about something make it true? Could Joshua be strong and of a good courage simply because he conjured up a forceful conviction of the same? Did Peter jump out of the boat onto the water by suddenly developing a forceful conviction that he could walk on the water? If a person has a forceful conviction that his sins are forgiven, are they in fact forgiven? Of course not. A forceful conviction is warranted because it is true! God explained to Joshua that he could have strength and courage because the God of all the earth had commanded him to have it (Josh. 1:9). Peter had a word from Jesus to come to Him (Mat. 14:29). Jesus mercifully forgives our sins covenantally. Baptism gives us warrant to believe that we have obtained God’s mercy. It is not, I say, because we finally feel a forceful conviction that we are elect and indeed are His children.
The best thing that can result from our continued barring of little children from communion with the rest of their family at the Lord’s Table is that our families will suffer from crises of spiritual identity or stunted growth. We are not uniting and spiritually nourishing all of God’s children to the maximum. We are not properly discerning the body of the Lord.
The most likely result of continued denial of little children from the Lord’s Table is that they will abandon our church when grown. They will move into a church where doctrine and practice more nearly align or will drift away entirely from a lack of spiritual nourishment as they were growing.
On a related subject but even larger in scope Robert S. Rayburn concluded his treatise The Presbyterian Doctrines of Covenant Children, Covenant Nurture, and Covenant Succession thus,
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.'
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