Introduction
“God has no grandchildren is an old saying that expresses a life and death truth.” In the early days of the Congregational Churches in Puritan (Separatist) America, a matter in close connection to this statement arose. The half way controversy arose over the matter of whether children of baptized but unconverted people should be allowed to be baptized as infants, as was the custom of these theologically reformed Congregationalists. In an answer to this question the Half-Way Covenant was adopted as a solution adopted by 17th-century New England Congregationalists, also called Puritans that allowed the children of baptized but unconverted church members to be baptized and thus become church members and have political rights. Early Congregationalists had become members of the church after they could report an experience of conversion. Their children were baptized as infants, but, before these children were admitted to full membership in the church and permitted to partake of the Lord’s Supper, they were expected to also give evidence of a conversion experience. Many never reported a conversion experience but, as adults, were considered church members because they had been baptized, although they were not admitted to the Lord’s Supper and were not allowed to vote or hold office.
Whether the children of these baptized but unconverted church members should be accepted for baptism became a matter of controversy. In 1657 a ministerial convention suggested that such children should be accepted for baptism and church membership, and in 1662 a synod of the churches accepted the practice, which in the 19th century came to be called the Half-Way Covenant. This step increased the diminishing minority of church members in the colonies, extended church discipline over more people, and encouraged a greater number to seek conversion and work for the benefit of the church. Although this solution was accepted by the majority of the churches in New England, it was opposed by a vocal minority. The practice was abandoned by most churches in the 18th century when Jonathan Edwards and other leaders of the Great Awakening taught that church membership could be given only to convinced believers.
Outline
I. The Law brought humanity into the knowledge of God, although it was inadequate to save mankind. (v.23)
II. The Law served as a guardian, leading us to Christ so that we might receive Him by faith. (v.24)
a. Believers can no longer rely on the Law or its modern counterpart; counterfeit grace which is simply Christianized legalism.
b. Children of believers are not kept by the observance of our Christianized legalism.
i. We must train them to receive Christ personally.
ii. We must love those who stray, nurturing the seed of faith that was planted within them.
III. We have received Grace, which calls us to a life higher than the Law.
a. No longer observance, but dedication of the heart. (v.25)
b. No longer instruction, but participation.
c. No longer boxes to check, but love to live out.
d. All of this was always the highest aim of the Law.
IV. Though faith believers are grafted into the eternal covenant of God. (v.26-29)
Transition
Initially, many church members and pastors were in favor of the Halt-Way Covenant. However, in time it proved to be a spiritual disaster. It greatly reduced the high view of the importance of personal conversion to Jesus Christ.
It reduced church membership to a legal matter, rather than a spiritual matter of the highest eternal significance. Rather than relying on outward evidence and personal testimony of conversion as a requirement for church membership, as evidence of the grace of God, the church chose a legalistic route.
While the law of God is of supreme important and teaches us of the holiness of God, it is inadequate to save. If a sinner is baptized but fails to ever receive Christ by faith and profess it public in word and deed, that sinner is simply a wet sinner.
Neither baptism, nor any other religious hoop that we may jump through or throw our kids through saves. Only Jesus Christ saves and He does so through personal faith according to God’s unending grace.
CIT: The law is a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ.
CIS: The law is inadequate to save. Any who come to Christ must come by faith, instructed through the law of their need for God’s grace.
Exposition
This passage of Scripture contains a great deal of important teaching. For our purposes in the context of this sermon series on breaking the chains of religion in favor for the freedom of life in Christ, we will focus on two of the central ideas.
The Law is a poor substitute for faith. (This is the First Point) The Law of the Old Testament was a guide, a safe keeper, of the truth of God’s character, nature, holiness, justice, mercy, love, and grace that would be fulfilled in Christ.
“Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.” (Romans 3:20 NIV84) “The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 5:20-21 NIV84)
The Law highlights our need for grace. The Law teaches us that we can never do enough to satisfy the righteous justice of God which our sin has affronted.
“What, then, was the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was put into effect through angels by a mediator.” (Galatians 3:19 NIV84)
In Matthew 5:17, Jesus says: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” (NIV84) In ways too vast to explore exhaustively here, the Law always pointed to Christ!
Speaking as early as Genesis 3:15 of the way that the Messiah would destroy the works of Satan, the Lord says: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (NIV84)
The Law shows us our need for Christ. As God’s people, the Church has graduated into the fullness of grace in Christ. When we make of our religious rules, regulations, and customs a means of modern Christianized legal bondage, it is as though we flunk out of God’s school for sinners, rather than graduating in grace.
To avoid the pitfall of modern day legalism and a return to the bondage of the Law, we need clarity on the purpose of the Law and our relationship to it today.
Commenting on this passage, one commentator writes that “It is unfortunate that the KJV refers to the law as a “schoolmaster” and that the NIV finds it necessary to work around the operative term by speaking of our being put under “charge” or “supervision” (v.25). The term [translated either schoolmaster in the KJV] is paidagogos, which means “a child-custodian” or a “child-attendant.” The pedagogue was a slave employed by wealthy Greeks or Romans to have responsibility for one of the children of the family.”
The pedagogue had charge of the child from the age of 6 to 16 until that time when the child received the full rights of adulthood. The pedagogue was a guardian which protected the child while that child was being instructed until he graduated to adulthood.
The Law was a guardian of the truth of God which encapsulated the truth until it was revealed in fullness in Christ. Writing in his classic work “The History of the Christian Church,” Philip Chaff says “As religion is the deepest and holiest concern of man, the entrance of the Christian religion into history is the most momentous of all events. It is the end of the old world and the beginning of the new. It was a great idea of Dionysius “the Little” to date our era from the birth of our Saviour. Jesus Christ, the God-Man, the prophet, priest, and king of mankind, is, in fact, the center and turning-point not only of chronology, but of all history, and the key to all its mysteries.”
If we would honor God and live a life of fullness in Christ we must not remain under the guardian of the Law but move into the fullness of Grace! We must cast off legalism in all of its form; maturing in grace.
While this text speaks to some very important prevailing theological themes, most notably of the distinction between Law and grace and our need for it, the passage also raises important practical issues with the most serious of implications for the children of believers and church’s responsibility toward them. (Second Point)
Kids drop out or flunk out of church when, rather than leading them to Christ, we only require their participation in our legalistic rituals.
Rather than planting the seed of the Gospel in children we simply train them to jump through our religious hoops. We are busy taking a “Law mindset” to a work of grace. Religious instruction won’t get the job done.
Training a child in the way he should go has everything to do with pointing them to Jesus. He is the way. “Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6 NIV84)
Neither religion nor entertainment will cut it; no matter how rigid and disciplined or fun and exciting it is. Instruction in religion is not what matters. Modeling and pointing children toward Christ is what matters most.
My heart is heavy by what I hear so commonly… (Churches warring, pastors, etc.)
The sad reality is that in the modern church it is far more common for ministry to children and youth to either be so focused on entertainment as to forgo Bible instruction, leading to conversion or to be so focused on Bible instruction without engagement as to be dry, impersonal, unfeeling, disconnected, and empty.
In Proverbs 22:6 the Bible says that we are to “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.”(NIV84) Parent’s mandate from the Lord and our calling as the Church is to train children in ways that are consistent with how they may best learn.
You or I may have a preference as to how best train children and what their participation in the worship life of the Church ought to look like.
I prefer that children do not interrupt my sermon or distract people from listening to it. One parent prefers that the children are in a Children’s Church or nursery during the service so that they can focus on the Lord.
Still another parent prefers to see children remain in the service because that is the way that they did it when they were a child. We all have preferences when it comes to the way that the Church trains children. Some of our preferences are rooted in valid concerns. No concern, however, outweighs our biblical mandate to train up children in the way that they should go so that when they are old they do not depart from it.
If we should take that responsibility seriously then we must not allow our personal preferences to drive what children’s ministry in the church looks like.
Rather than be self-centered, focused on only the needs of adults and our preferences, we should put children as a priority, seeking to utilize the best methods, the soundest techniques, recruit and train teachers who love the children and are passionate about their future in the Lord. Friends, it is not enough to bemoan the culture and weep for future generations.
I sometimes tease my rambunctious sons when they make a mess of the car or the house by saying, “you better take care of this place. All of this is mine and I just let you use it!” They will usually sort of grin and say something to the effect of “No dad, its all of ours. We’re a family.”
In Psalms 127:3-5 the Bible says that “Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.” (NIV84)
If we care about the future, then we can neither model a Christian life which only consists of the fulfillment of religious duties. Neither can we trust in the Christianized legalistic programs to train our children.
Engaging, even entertaining, disciplined even sometimes rigid, Bible instruction can be important. However, none of it will matter unless our training up of the next generation is driven by a desire to lead children not to the law, not to religion, but to the grace and mercy which comes in knowing Christ.
The question naturally arises: What about when believers stray from the Lord? Children of believers stray most often because they choose to stray. Sometimes their choosing is rooted problems in the life of the church or churches in which they were raised. Sometimes it is because the church community has failed to integrate them completely in to the life of the Church.
We are relying on the law, a Christianized version of legalistic devotion to rituals, rites, and customs and they are flunking out of Church by the droves.
Whatever the reason, our obligation to our children is to not shortchange them into believing that their religious training, upbringing, or heritage will save them.
We must lead them to Jesus by our example, by connecting with them from the Scripture, and if they stray pray for them and love them. The trouble with many is that we are trying to win them to Christ as young adults after having missed to window into their souls as children. Lord; help us be the church to young people.
Conclusion
We have received Grace, which calls us to a life higher than the Law. No longer observance, but dedication of the heart. No longer instruction in religion, but participation in the love of God. No longer ceremonial boxes to check, but love to live out. Amen.
