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1689 Baptist Confession Chapter 10: Of Effectual Calling - Commentary

Simon Wartanian | 19,761 views | 14,049 words | 1:13:47 hours | 04 March 2015 21:42

...on. Rather, by “elect” they wanted to assert that their salvation is solely by grace and not through deserving it or merit, even if they die in infancy. Furthermore, the phrase is placed in contrast to “elect infants living to grow up.” Those elect infants will be called by the ministry of the Word and Spirit as paragraph 1 makes clear.

In the following paragraphs, I’m going to argue the case that Pastor MacArthur made in Safe in the Arms of God. I think that he made a decent biblical case for Infant Salvation. I do not mean that he answered every question that could be posed, but I thought it was a good case for what happens to those who die in infancy and those who are disabled. I know that some Reformed people disagree with him, usually because of his Dispensationalism, but hear him out. I have also benefited from:

Matt Perman – What happens to infants who die? – He mentions what John Piper believes.
ChristianAnswers.Net – What is the eternal destiny of an infant or young child who dies?
Theopedia – Infant Salvation
Sam Storms – Do All Infants Go to Heaven?
R.C. Sproul – What happens to children who die before they can accept the gospel?
Loraine Boettner, Reformed Doctrine of Predestination - Infant Salvation
Jesse Johnson - Theologians on Infant Salvation – Calvin, Hodge, Warfield, Spurgeon, Boettner.
Albert Mohler - The Salvation of the ‘Little Ones’: Do Infants who Die Go to Heaven?

Infant Salvation

We are now approaching a very difficult and touching subject. It is very emotional and that is obviously understandable. We do not neglect our emotions, but the Scriptures are the infallible standard of truth. So our search for the answer must begin and finish with Holy Writ. What has God said on this subject? This question does not merely concern infants, but also unborn babies and the mentally disabled.

Persons

First, we must begin with the question: “Are fetuses human persons?” I believe that the biblical answer is positive. The first go-to-text is Jeremiah 1:5. There the Lord speaks about Jeremiah’s ordination and election. Before Jeremiah came out of the womb, the Lord knew him and talked about him as a “you” and not an “it.” In Psalm 139:13-16, the writer speaks of God Who formed him from the very beginning in the womb until the end. God had determined his days before there was any. The Lord saw the person, He didn’t see a fetus who became the writer of the Psalm. But He saw him who once was a little fetus. In Luke 1:41-44, upon Mary coming to Elizabeth, the baby John in Elizabeth leaped in her and could express his feelings. Elizabeth does not refer to him as a thing or as merely a fetus, but she says the baby leaped in her. He was able, even in the womb, to be filled with the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:15), which is only for persons and was able to express emotions. The Law gave the same protection for unborn children as for adults. In Exodus 21:22-23, we read of the punishment of someone fighting a husband and who hits his pregnant woman. If there was harm, the lex talionis was to be followed. Calvin observes on v. 22:

If men strive, and hurt a woman. This passage at first sight is ambiguous, for if the word death (39) only applies to the pregnant woman, it would not have been a capital crime to put an end to the foetus, which would be a great absurdity; for the foetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being, (homo,) and it is almost a monstrous crime to rob it of the life which ...

Welcome To The Staunch Calvinist

Simon Wartanian | 13,781 views | 547 words | 0:02:57 hours | 08 March 2014 16:57

Calvinism Absolute Sovereignty Of God Reformed Theology Reformed Baptist 1689 Baptist Confession Calvinist Baptist

... Mediator (including a case for the Substitutionary Atonement, Active and Passive Obedience of Christ, Definite Atonement and answers to passages used against the doctrine)

Of Free Will (with the help of Jonathan Edwards, the consistency of moral agency being found in carrying one’s desires, the inconsistencies of libertarian free will, explanation of necessity and inability)

Of Effectual Calling (with a case for Infant Salvation)

Of Justification (faith is a gift and regeneration precedes faith)

Of Adoption

Of Sanctification

Of Saving Faith

Of Repentance Unto Life and Salvation

Of Good Works

Of The Perseverance Of The Saints (A positive case for the Reformed doctrine and responses to passages such as Hebrews 6 and the like)

Of The Assurance Of Grace And Salvation

Of The Law Of God (Threefold Division of the Law, the Decalogue before Moses, a brief exposition of the Decalogue, ceremonial and civil laws, the abiding moral law under the New Covenant in the OT prophecy and the NT, Threefold Uses of the Law, The Law and the Gospel)

Of The Gospel, And Of The Extent Of The Grace Thereof

Of Christian Liberty And Liberty of Conscience

Of Religious Worship And the Sabbath Day (A case for the Regulative Principle of Worship and the Christian Sabbath)

Of Lawful Oaths And Vows

Of The Civil Magistrate

Of Marriage

Of The Church

Of the Communion of Saints

Of Baptism And The Lord’s Supper

Of Baptism

Of The Lord’s Supper

Of The State Of Man After Death And Of The Resurrection Of The Dead (Intermediate State Hades, Sheol, Heaven; A Case for Amillennial Eschatology; critique of Premillennialism)

Of The Last Judgment (Endless punishment in Hell contra Annihilationism)

...

1689 Baptist Confession Chapter 6: Of the Fall of Man, Of Sin, And of the Punishment Thereof - Commentary

Simon Wartanian | 17,280 views | 7,955 words | 0:42:14 hours | 04 March 2015 21:18

The 1689 Second Baptist Confession Of Faith Confession Commentary Reformed Baptist Chapter 6 Fall Of Man Sin Condemnation Total Depravity Total Inability Original Sin Federal Headship

...ttributed) to all their posterity and also the punishment, hence even children die (that’s the punishment of disobedience). This is not to imply that all children go to Hell anymore than to say that the reason that Christians die is that God is punishing them (see chapter 31 for more on this subject and chapter 10 on Infant Salvation). The corrupted nature was carried over, transmitted, transported and imparted to all his descendants coming by “ordinary generation” (excluding the Lord Jesus Christ, Who was the seed of the woman, not man and conceived by the Holy Spirit).

This doctrine of Original Sin or the Federal Headship of Adam is best seen in Romans 5:12-21. Let’s take a look at Romans 5:12:

Rom. 5:12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—

Here we see the entrance of sin into the world through Adam and by the breaking of God’s law, came the punishment upon sin–death (Gen. 2:16-17). Because of that disobedience and having Adam as the representative, all sinned. This is not referring to people actually committing sin, but this refers to all who were in Adam or had Adam as their covenant head. In the mind of God, when he sinned, they sinned. This is confirmed by the fact that people die not (necessarily, or always) because of their personal sin, but because of Adam’s sin (Rom. 5:15). Death was the penalty for Adam’s transgression and thus it is imputed and transferred to all his descendants. This is seen in the tragic death of many infants who have not yet sinned themselves, but are born sinful in Adam and receive his punishment–death. The wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23), why would “sinless” babies die? Some may want to say that death is just natural in the world, no, it’s not. From a secular point of view, it obviously is, but not from a biblical view. Death came through man. It was not there when God created a “very good” creation (Rom. 5:12, 15, 17; Gen. 1:31). The verse is best understood to refer to the fact that when Adam sinned, we sinned in him. Wayne Grudem notes the following:

The aorist indicative verb hēmarton in the historical narrative indicates a completed past action. Here Paul is saying that something happened and was completed in the past, namely, that “all men sinned.” But it was not true that all men had actually committed sinful actions at the time that Paul was writing, because some had not even been born yet, and many others had died in infancy before committing any conscious acts of sin. So Paul must be meaning that when Adam sinned, God considered it true that all men sinned in Adam.^[2]

John MacArthur says the following on Romans 5:12 –

5:12 just as sin came. Not a particular sin, but the inherent propensity to sin entered the human realm; men became sinners by nature. Adam passed to all his descendants the inherent sinful nature he possessed because of his first disobedience. That nature is present from the moment of conception (Ps. 51:5), making it impossible for man to live in a way that pleases God. Satan, the father of sin (1 John 3:8), first brought temptation to Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:1-7). through one man. When Adam sinned, all mankind sinned in his loins (Rom. 5:18; cf. Heb 7:7-10). Since his sin transformed his inner nature and brought spiritual death and depravity, that sinful nature would be passed on seminally to his posterity as well (Ps. 51:5). death. Adam was not originally subj...