Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Another Objection: Abraham Pleased God Without Being Baptized. Answer Thereto. Old Things Must Give Place to New, and Baptism is Now a Law.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XIII.—Another Objection: Abraham Pleased God Without
Being Baptized. Answer Thereto. Old Things Must Give Place to New, and
Baptism is Now a Law.
Here, then, those miscreants8678
| 8678 i.e. probably the
Cainites. See c. ii. | provoke questions. And so they say,
“Baptism is not necessary for them to whom faith is sufficient;
for withal, Abraham pleased God by a sacrament of no water, but of
faith.” But in all cases it is the later things which have
a conclusive force, and the subsequent which prevail over the
antecedent. Grant that, in days gone by, there was salvation by means
of bare faith, before the passion and resurrection of the Lord. But now
that faith has been enlarged, and is become a faith which believes in
His nativity, passion, and resurrection, there has been an
amplification added to the sacrament,8679
| 8679 i.e. the sacrament, or
obligation of faith. See beginning of chapter. |
viz., the sealing act of baptism; the clothing, in some sense, of the
faith which before was bare, and which cannot exist now without its
proper law. For the law of baptizing has been imposed,
and the formula prescribed: “Go,” He saith,
“teach the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”8680
The comparison with this law of that definition, “Unless a man
have been reborn of water and Spirit, he shall not enter into the
kingdom of the heavens,”8681
has tied faith to
the necessity of baptism. Accordingly, all thereafter8682
| 8682 i.e. from the time
when the Lord gave the “law.” | who became believers used to be
baptized. Then it was, too,8683
| 8683 i.e. not till
after the “law” had been made. | that Paul,
when he believed, was baptized; and this is the meaning of the precept
which the Lord had given him when smitten with the plague of loss of
sight, saying, “Arise, and enter Damascus; there shall be
demonstrated to thee what thou oughtest to do,” to wit—be
baptized, which was the only thing lacking to him. That point excepted,
he had sufficiently learnt and believed “the
Nazarene” to be “the Lord, the Son of God.”8684
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
