Sacraments

In my last article , I noted that a covenant has three basic elements: parties , promises , and conditions . The parties of the covenant of grace vary depending upon which perspective of the covenant is being considered. Externally or administratively speaking the covenant is between God and all...

J ohn Knox’s position on the Lord’s Supper is most formally set forth in his 1550 A Summary, According to Holy Scriptures, of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper ( Works , 3:71-75.) This short work of only 3 pages is nonetheless full in its contents and provides real insight into Knox’s views. In...

S tephen Marshall (1594-1655) argued that infants of believers should be baptized because 1) they are within the covenant of grace and belong to the kingdom of Christ, 2) they are made partakers of the inward grace of baptism. In a previous article , I attempted to explain his second argument but...

I n the previous two articles (see 1 , 2 ), we have considered one argument for and one objection to infant baptism from the writings of Stephen Marshall (1594-1655). We are now going to turn our attention to a benefit of infant baptism. There are several avenues we could explore in this regard,...

I n my previous article , I discussed one of Stephen Marshall’s arguments for infant baptism: infants of believers (covenant children) should be baptized because they partake of the spiritual realities signified and sealed by baptism. This is not to say that all covenant children partake of the...

Exuberant over an experience, an oh-so-sweet manifestation of divine providence, you delightedly seek to give God praise in telling your story. “It was such a ‘God thing’,” you proclaim. As you see it, God wove together an otherwise inexplicable combination of events to deliver a wonderful—even...

The idea of ‘the means of grace’ has undergone an encouraging rehabilitation in the life and ministry of many Reformed churches in recent years. This has come as a healthy corrective to pressure from the wider church to embrace ideas and practices that seem more effective vehicles for church growth...