The Nurture of God’s Children – Part 2

Whose Children?

Ezekiel 16.20-21

In Ezekiel 16, God rebukes his people for spiritual adultery. They were giving lip service to the living God who loved them while having spiritual dalliances with the false gods of the nations. Of all the manifestations of that spiritual adultery, none was more heinous than what God describes in Ezekiel 16.20-21. A number of his people were not only worshiping false gods, they were sacrificing their children in the fire to those gods. As shocking as that is, God makes it clear that the deepest aspect of this sin was not that his people were sacrificing their children, but that they were sacrificing his children (Eze 16.21). How were they his children? God tells us. They were born to him (Eze 16.20). They were his before they were the parents’.

In God’s response to this horrific sin, we learn the true identity of little ones born to God’s covenant people then and now. They are God’s children, born to Him (Eze 16.20-21). The truth here is simple, yet profound. If a ram and a ewe belong to one shepherd, the lambs they bear belong to the shepherd as well. This is doubly true when God is the Shepherd. He not only owns the sheep, he made them, and when they wandered off he brought them back, and now he weaves a new life in the mother’s womb (Isa 53.6; Psalm 139.13). God’s children, born to him – what difference can that make? It makes all the difference in the world.

First, because they are God’s children, born to him, we should give them God’s sign.

Shepherds put their sign on each of their sheep, including each new lamb born to the flock. As the Good Shepherd, God does the same. In the Old Testament, God’s sign was circumcision; in the New Testament, it is baptism (Col 2.11-12). The shepherd puts his sign on the sheep not to make them his, but because they are his. So it is with God and the children of his children. We do not baptize them to make them God’s children; we baptize them because they are God’s children. They are born to him, and he claims them as his own (Eze 16.20-21). Baptism is not the child’s sign or the child’s testimony. Nor is it the parents’ sign or the parents’ testimony. It is God’s sign and God’s testimony. This is why God commands Christian parents to raise their children in the faith, not to the faith (Eph 6.4).

Every Christian parent I have ever met has instinctively known that their baby is a gift from God and should be raised up to God. Accordingly, they teach their children at the earliest age to believe God’s word, to pray, to confess and repent of their sins. But what we get right instinctively, we often get confused theologically. Christians are often confused by the fact that converts to the faith are baptized only on profession of faith. How does that fit with baptizing babies simply because they are born to Christian parents? God established this pattern with Abraham, the father of all who believe (Rom 4.11). We often take Abraham with a grain of salt, thinking that his covenant with God pertained only to physical things — children and land — whereas our covenant with God pertains to spiritual things — new birth and heaven. Our problem is that we have separated what God has joined together — heaven and earth, spiritual and physical.

Observe how Paul describes Abraham’s old covenant experience and relates it to our new covenant experience. According to Paul, God preached, and Abraham believed, the gospel (Gal 3.8-9). And Abraham believed before he was circumcised (Rom 4.10). Then God gave him the sign of circumcision (Rom 4.11). What was circumcision a sign of? The righteousness of the faith which Abraham had back while he was uncircumcised (Rom 4.11). In evangelical parlance we would say Abraham received believer’s circumcision. But no sooner had God given it to him than God commanded Abraham to pass it on to his children at the ripe old age of eight days (Gen 17.10-12).

If God claimed the children of believers like Abraham who looked forward to Christ, how much more does he claim the children of believers who look back on Christ’s completed work? (1Cor 7.14.) Now as then, they are God’s children, born to him.