In 2002, Tim Gallant published a book entitled, Feed My Lambs, in which he lamented with these words, When the Lord's Supper is celebrated, little hands do not hold the elements and little mouths do not chew. Now, since 2002, Gallant's work has borne much fruit. Over the last decade or so, there seems to have been an increase of Reformed churches which practice what is now commonly called, Paedo-Communion. For our purposes here, I define paedo-communion as that practice by which infants or little young children are admitted to the sacraments of the Lord's Supper. This position believes that in order to maintain a consistent reformed sacramentology and covenant theology, both sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper, should be administered to covenant children. It is argued that if we allow children of the covenant to the waters of baptism, then we should also allow them to the Lord's Supper as well. Just as infants were circumcised under the old covenant and then therefore should be baptized in the new covenant, So, likewise, infants or children were admitted to the Lord's Supper under the Old Covenant, excuse me, to the Passover Supper in the Old Covenant, and therefore they ought to be admitted to the Lord's Supper under the New Covenant. They say that this is important in order to maintain consistency in our theology. Now, indeed, consistency is an important point. Who, after all, wants to be known for being inconsistent? who wants to be reformed in our practice of baptism, but then become baptistic in our practice of the Lord's Supper. And that is part of the argument of paedo-communion, is that you Presbyterians, if you really want to be consistent in not being baptistic, then what you need to do is to also admit children to the Lord's Supper. However, we will here seek to show that consistency, the actual idea of consistency, lies on the side of what I'm calling credo communion. Furthermore, we will show that to speak of the reformed practice of credo communion as Baptistic entails a confusion of categories. Such a charge is high on rhetoric, but it is low on common sense. And so, to show this, we will situate our understanding of the nature of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper in the context and from the perspective of the Kingdom of God, the topic of our conference. Now, in order to get there, it will behoove us first to map out a biblical theological understanding of what the Kingdom of God is. Now, before we can talk about what the Kingdom of God is, it is helpful for us to perhaps clear the table, clear the field of misconceptions about what the Kingdom of God is, and talk about what the Kingdom of God is not. So I'm going to start with the negative, what it is not, and then I'll go to the positive. what it is. So first of all, the kingdom of God from a biblical, theological, or redemptive historical perspective is not the mere sovereign reign of God conceived in terms of the exercise of his omnipotence and providence. It is true that in this sense we must affirm the absolute royalty of God. He is indeed the king of all creation. His power is sovereign. It is absolute. Nothing, hear this, nothing can thwart the plan and the eternal decree of God. It is set in the heavens. It can never change. Nothing escapes God's control. He is omniscient. He is omnipotent. He is always and everywhere providentially reigning supreme. His law is binding on all people everywhere. There is only one King of Kings and one Lord of Lords. But his sovereign power is not the kingdom of God, as we are speaking about it here. And while God's sovereign rule is not disconnected from the kingdom of God, this is not what is in mind when Jesus announces the arrival of the kingdom of God in the gospel narratives during the inaugural days of his earthly ministry. Secondly, the kingdom of God is not a mystical experience that I feel in my heart. It is not a subjective experience at all. The kingdom of God is not to be confused with something that takes place inside of me. It is not Jesus setting up his throne upon my heart. It is not Jesus knocking me off the throne of my life and taking over control. As important as it is to have Christ as Lord over our lives, and hear this, it is all important, properly speaking, it is not, however, the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God, therefore, is not an ethic. There are ethical implications of the kingdom of God, but it is not itself the implementation and practice of a supposed ethical lifestyle, whether on a personal or societal level. Third, The Kingdom of God is not the institutions or the geopolitical entities of this present age. The Kingdom of God is not a school that has been Christianized. The Kingdom of God is not God reigning and ruling over a land through godly civil magistrates. The kingdom of God is not God breaking into the world's institutions, moralizing them, and bringing them into conformity with his holy law. It is not, in other words, the transformation of culture. As important and as glorious as it is to have godly men and women exercising their gifts in the common created order and bearing witness to Christ in their doing good, hard, honest work, these things are not the kingdom of God. Fourth. The kingdom of God is not the future reign of Christ here on earth when he supposedly returns to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and exercise his sovereign authority over the state of Israel. Whether to rebuild, as is found in the pre-millennial eschatology, or to destroy, as is found in preterism, the temple, we are not speaking about a singular event whereby Jesus returns to the earthly city-state of Jerusalem. The kingdom is neither an event that is already completely realized, nor is it something from the perspective of Jesus that is wholly future. In the New Testament, the kingdom is spoken of as being, in some ways, already present in the life and ministry of Jesus, as well as being a future anticipated reality. But the kingdom of God is neither something wholly realized in the present, nor something wholly realized exclusively in the future. Okay, so what then is the Kingdom of God? More positively now. First of all, the Kingdom of God is a redemptive historical phenomenon. The Bible knows nothing of an abstract idea or ideal which serves as the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is not a philosophical notion, but rather it is a reality which is progressively revealed and gradually realized throughout redemptive history. It has its eschatological or we might say final or ultimate fulfillment and manifestation in the fullness of time. It begins its revelation in seed form early on in the book of Genesis and comes to its glorious, full, final, ultimate manifestation in the arrival of Christ. And so we can say that the kingdom is already manifest and inaugurated by Christ. But it is also not yet consummated until the time of Christ's return. The parousia marks the consummation of what Christ began in his first coming. And so the kingdom, as an eschatological reality, is said to be both already and not yet. It is already here. It has been here since the first coming of Christ, but it is not yet completed until the last day. A day somewhere in the future. Second, the kingdom of God is not a thing or even a place, rather it is a people. The kingdom of God, in fact, is first and foremost a person, namely Christ. Christ in the Gospels is closely aligned with the kingdom such that what he does indicates the presence of the kingdom. So, for instance, in the Gospel according to Luke, in chapter 11, verse 20, and here I'm quoting from the Good News Translation. I don't normally do that, but I think that the Good News Translation here happens to translate this verse very well. When it says this, the kingdom of God has already come to you. Therefore, all those who have been united to Christ, people realize, not a geopolitical entity or a thing, right? Or a place. It is those people who have been united to Christ in this once and for all finished work of Christ that are constituted by his grace, the kingdom of God. When we are united to the king of that kingdom by faith, we are made citizens of his kingdom. Where the king is, there is the kingdom or his people as well. In other words, the kingdom of God is the redeemed people of God. Even as Paul says, and has said, when he writes, Now if you look at 1 Corinthians 15, and in particular verse 23, you'll see that the kingdom is a reference to the harvest fruit of all those who have been redeemed by Christ, who is the first fruits. And so the kingdom is the manifestation of God the father's grace which has called sinners by the power of the Holy Spirit out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the light of his son. Colossians chapter 1 verse 13. So in this sense the kingdom of God is equivalent with the church. As such, the kingdom is indeed present under the Old Covenant, albeit administered by types and shadows and pictures, laws that are fulfilled and then abrogated by Christ. And so when the types and the shadows give way to the fulfillment in Christ, it is said in the New Testament that the kingdom of God is finally here. It is present through the arrival of the King, who is Jesus. Third, the kingdom of God is both visible and invisible. Reverend Clary made reference earlier today to the visible-invisible distinction. The visible and invisible nature of the kingdom needs to be redemptive historically qualified. In so much as we can speak about the kingdom as being already, it is visible. Where the Bible speaks about the present reality of the kingdom, it speaks about the kingdom's visible manifestation as those who have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness to Christ. This therefore then is what elsewhere in scripture is called the body of Christ, right? The body of those who have been united to Christ. It is roughly equivalent to what in reformed dogmatics we call the visible church. The visible church, which is the kingdom of Christ, Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 25, Paragraph 2, we are told, is made up of those who profess the true religion along with their children. But the invisible church, or the not yet aspect of the kingdom, consists of all the elect who have been gathered into the body of Christ, Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 25, Paragraph 1. Lastly, the kingdom of God then is characterized by Christ's special redemptive reign and rule. We understand that Christ is the sovereign Lord over all things, but the kingdom of God is not a reference to the general sovereignty of Christ as the king of all creation in history. Rather, the kingdom of God is Christ exercising his rule in a special, redemptive way. The kingdom of God, then, is not a domain consisting of all people everywhere, or all territories, or all institutions everywhere. Rather, the kingdom of God is the special domain of God's people redeemed by grace. It is the gathered elect from out of the world, a people from every tribe, nation, and tongue. The exercise of Christ's special redemptive rule and the fulfillment of the guarantee of the gospel's success is seen precisely, then, in the church. The church is the special sphere where we find the success of the gospel. Already we see Christ then in the church victoriously exercising his redemptive rule whenever and wherever we see God's people being gathered together and nurtured through the word, sacrament, and prayer. It is not as if Christ is not victorious when the church remains a remnant on the church. When the church remains, as Dr. Hart mentioned last night, pilgrims and strangers in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation. Rather, it is actually precisely in the church's marginal but faithful status that we see the power of King Jesus made perfect in human weakness. The time of the elimination of the church's enemies is still not yet. It is still a time in the future. But the time will come when Christ returns to put an end once and for all to the evil one and to all those that he gathers to raise up against the Lord and his anointed. But we must be careful not to intrude this not yet aspect of the kingdom into the already, which inevitably results in all sorts of triumphalism, what we call the immunization of the already into the present age. We must not confuse or conflate the invisible aspect of the kingdom with the visible aspect. To be sure, the already and not yet, the visible and invisible aspects of the kingdom of God must be related in such a way that they are neither separated on the one hand, nor conflated on the other. And so, let's move on to, if you're looking at your outline, point number Roman numeral 3, the relationship between kingdom and communion. Letter A, let's begin with the Old Testament shadows and types. Entrance into the kingdom of God has always been by faith. Under the old covenant, the concept of the kingdom is already present, albeit in an opaque and shadowy way. But we see the foundations of the kingdom of God embedded within the very creation before the fall. Without getting into all of the details here, the creation is the realm and domain of God's special sovereign reign. He makes the heavens and the earth, and he is therefore the king of heaven and earth. Adam and Eve serve as what we might call vice-regents under God who is to rule over the earth. Now, while not an undisputed point, scholarship today has shown parallels between the arrangement that God makes with the creation through Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis on the one hand and the ancient suzerain treaties on the other. These treaties are covenants in which a greater king, a king who rules over all the other kings, agrees to give the little kings, the small kings, the vice-regents that are under him, called vassals, protection in exchange for fidelity and obedience. And so when we look at God as he relates to Adam, we see that God is that vassal and he is a... we see that Adam is that vassal and he is a king over the earth ruling on behalf of the suzerain Lord who is God Almighty. Now after all, of course, everything falls apart after the fall. Kings increase in their rebellion against God such that God brings judgment. He brings judgment upon the earth and preserves Noah through the entirety of the flood. Now Noah is kind of a king. He is a man who is declared righteous by faith, and as such he is placed as a ruler over the new creation. And you know the story of Noah and his family, right? Noah, representing his family, is placed into the ark, and there the ark endures through the judgment to come out the other side in this new creation. And we see that this new creation in part is, as it were, packed into the ark and then unpacked by Noah on the other side of the flood once the land, the dry land, reappears. Now we know because the fall is still in effect what happens to Noah after he gets out of the ark into this new creation. What does he do to the new creation? Well, kind of like Adam did, ruins it, right? He comes out and he grows a vineyard. Noah is supposed to rightly handle, he is to subdue, he is to work, he is to handle the vineyard properly. But instead, the vineyard handles him, and he becomes drunk with wine. Instead of drinking a cup of blessing, he drinks, in fact, a cup of cursing. Now Abraham would come soon on the scene. He is given a land by the Lord. He is there to rule over it. Abraham is called to be a king over the land because he believes God and it has been credited to him as righteousness. The promise is to Abraham and to his household relative to this land, the land of Canaan. At this point then circumcision is introduced as a sign and seal of a covenant between God and Abraham. But as king, Abraham experiences fellowship with God, as we know, over a meal. You'll remember the incident, don't you? When the three angels come, and they come to Abraham's tent, and Abraham scrambles to put a meal in front of, as it were, God, and he sits and he dines with God Almighty manifested in the form of these three angels. We see a similar situation with Moses and Israel. Moses and Israel are to celebrate the Passover meal. The meal is a sign and seal of God's graciousness towards Israel. By the shedding of the blood of a lamb, and you know the story, don't you, in Egypt, of the Passover, the animal is to be slaughtered, the blood put over the posts of the homes of the Israelites, and the angel of death comes and passes over them who have been covered by the blood of a lamb. And so later on, after Israel leaves Egypt, in Exodus chapter 24, we are told the sealing of this covenant between God and Abraham and his people. In Exodus chapter 24, we are told about the sprinkling of the blood in verse 8, and then, guess what comes next? a sharing of a meal in verse 11. The language is very similar in verse 11 to what we'll find later on in the New Testament in the institution of the Lord's Supper. In verse 8, excuse me, where it says this, And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words. And so do you see the way in which Exodus chapter 24, even more so than the Passover event, Exodus chapter 24 here anticipates the Lord's Supper because King Jesus later on will use the words of Exodus chapter 24 in the institution of the Lord's Supper. And so what we have here in Exodus 24 is we have Moses as kind of a prophetic priestly king who baptizes, as it were, the citizens of God's kingdom with blood and then celebrates with them a meal. Now other meals are prominent throughout the Old Covenant revelation, other kingdom meals. Most significant is perhaps the one with Mephibosheth, who eats at the king's table, King David's table. And so you see the covenant of grace always and everywhere is indicated by the sharing of a meal in the presence of the king. It has always been a sign and a seal in some ways of this graciousness, the abundance of the graciousness of God. and is always and everywhere portrayed as a royal meal, a meal that is instituted by the king for his people, the kingdom. Now, moving into the New Testament, when we get here, we see that in the New Covenant, particularly the Lord's Supper, we find similar things manifest themselves, as I indicated already. Of greatest significance is the common language that Jesus picks up from Exodus 24. The Last Supper does, in fact, have priestly kind of overtones to it because of the timing of the meal during the Passover sacrifice. The Passover that Israel eats in Egypt is, in fact, one of the examples of the Old Covenant which foreshadowed the Lord's Supper. It is, in fact, a meal that signifies and anticipates the meal of the Lord's Supper in the New Testament, but it's not the only manifestation is that the only anticipation of the Lord's Supper, in fact, the Passover meal celebrated in Egypt, is not the closest or the most proximate type and shadow of the Lord's Supper. There are other anticipations of the Lord's Supper in the Old Testament, namely, as I've mentioned already, Exodus 24, The legal nature of the covenants that is being manifest there in Exodus 24, where God gives the law to the people of Israel. We can see this kind of suzerain treaty becoming ratified, right? And so there is the king who gives his law, who gives his rule to his subjects and to his people. And so likewise, Elsewhere within the New Testament we see other foreshadows, namely David's covenant with Jonathan, which manifests itself later with David's graciousness that he shows to Jonathan's son Mephibosheth, and so forth and so on. We can also make reference as well to a more proximate reference to the Lord's Supper, namely the Passover meal as it was celebrated or the Passover festival as was celebrated in Jerusalem in the days of Jesus. It's interesting to note that in Deuteronomy 16 we see that only the adult males were required to keep the feast and in fact in Jesus' day we see in Jerusalem that generally speaking it was the males, the head of household that would come to Jerusalem in order to celebrate the Passover and to observe it. And so while it is certainly the case that the Passover meal in Egypt is indeed an anticipation of the Lord's Supper, it is not the only nor is it the most logical reference going back to the Old Testament that anticipates the Lord's Supper. And so while the Supper then has all these priestly overtones, we know that as well there is kingly overtones as well. And just once again, and I owe a lot of these insights and ideas to at least two sources. First of all, I've spoken at length with Glenn Cleary about this, and he has brought to my attention the connection with Mephibosheth particularly. Here you have a subject of the king, a citizen of the kingdom, Dining at the table with the King David, and I think that that is particularly striking to point out the royal or the kingdom nature of the Lord's Supper and of these covenantal meals that we see sweeping across the history of redemption. Also, I've got to give credit to Cornell Venema. Venema's book on paedo-communion is available at the book table in the back. So, if you want to read more, please pick up Venema's book on paedo-communion. It does what I'm trying to do here only more extensively and much better. So, please do avail yourself of that if you want to learn more. Okay, so I've kind of anticipated some of the positions and some of the arguments for paedo-communion, but in some ways I haven't treated it fairly because I have reserved stating the paedo-communion position until now. But let me do that at this point. We've situated now the Lord's Supper in its kingdom context, and here I want to unpack the paedo-communion position. According to Venema, there are three basic paedo-communion arguments. The first is a historical argument. Paedo-Communion has been the practice of the church, they say, since its earliest days. The Eastern Orthodox Church, which still practices Paedo-Communion today, can trace their practice all the way back to the earliest days of Christian church history. The West, however, deviated from the practice, and the reason why the West deviated from that practice doesn't need to detain us here. Suffice it to say that paedo-communists believe that they have historical precedence for the position, and in some ways, and in many ways, they do. Now, Cornelius Venema calls into question, however, the validity of the historical argument. We don't have the time or the space to get into that now. I'll simply refer you to Cornel Venema's arguments against the historical argument. I'm going to focus in other areas. Second, paedo-communion makes a covenantal theological argument as well. We've already anticipated this argument previously, but simply put, the traditional Reformed practice, they say, is not consistent with its covenant theology. Rather, they say, it's more in keeping with a baptistic and dispensational hermeneutic. Such an approach functionally leads to what they call excommunication of covenant children. In other words, it's dispensational to pit the old covenant practice of Passover in Egypt against the New Testament practice. And so we must take serious, they say, the analogy between the Passover on the one hand and the Lord's Supper on the other. Children are admitted to the Passover meal. The Passover meal is the Old Covenant equivalent of the Lord's Supper. Therefore, by parity of reasoning, children should be admitted to the New Covenant sacramental meal. Now, third is their argument from 1 Corinthians 11. In short, the paedo-communist argument is that when Paul exhorts the Corinthians to discern the body, it means they are to recognize the unity of the church and not expel anyone from the meal. And so, paedo-communion basically argues that since the Lord's Supper is about the unity of the church, that stands over and against the type of divisions within the church at Corinth. So, for instance, in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, right, we see already the sectarian nature of the church where Paul says, you know, some are following Paul, others are following Apollos, and so there's a division, there are divisions within the church. The church is just fracturing And of course that comes up again in first Corinthians chapter 11 and so the Pato communionists are saying look the Lord's Supper is about unity. And because it's about unity, to not exclude anyone, how dare we, how can we actually exclude children or infants from the Lord's Supper? So, they argue that 1 Corinthians 11, far from being a proof text against paedo-communion, it is actually a proof text in favor of paedo-communion. That's their argument. Now let me talk, letter B on your outline, about the Reformed objection to these arguments. Now, these are some of the arguments of paedo-communion in shortened, encapsulated form that I've just given you. I recognize that if standing up here was an advocate of paedo-communion, you would get more in-depth, a larger, bigger, more perhaps friendly presentation of the paedo-communion position. So I recognize I'm giving some short shrift to the arguments. Now, if you want to read more, more in-depth arguments for paedo-communion, I can commend to you Tim Gallant's book that I mentioned at the beginning of the lecture. But now, I do want to consider something of the historically-reformed objection to the observance of paedo-communion and the practice of paedo-communion. Once again, we're going to have to be short here, so I've given short shrift to paedo-communion, I'm going to give some short shrift to the historical arguments against it as well. So let me begin with just a historical perspective. At the time of the Reformation, the reformers across the board rejected the practice of paedo-communion. There are some exceptions to that rule, however, like Wolfgang Musculus, as Venema points out in his book, page 24. But Wolfgang was an exception, actually, that establishes the rule. The Lutheran and the Reformed churches on both the continent and the British Isles rejected the practice. And it's not simply that they inherited the Western practice, they were well aware of the practice of paedo-communion in the Eastern Church. They were aware of it and they consciously rejected it. For instance, Calvin says about paedocommunion that while the practice is accepted in the past, he says this, that it has deservedly fallen into disuse. So Calvin is aware of the practice and he rejects it self-consciously. Now, in what follows, we will be considering a reformed approach to why we should continue to reject paedo-communion, and I'd like to begin with considering what we have already said about the relationship between the kingdom and paedo-communion. So, letter C, there under Roman numeral 3, how a biblical theological view of the kingdom is inconsistent with paedo-communion. Okay, so let's go back to what we were saying before. The Church is the Kingdom. The Kingdom is the Church. Salvation is connected to the Kingdom, and salvation is connected to the Church. As Cyprian, of course, has famously said, outside the Church there is no possibility of salvation. So, how do I get into the church? Well, the primary way of getting into the church is through the word of God read and preached. The way I enter the kingdom and the way in which I am nourished in the kingdom is through the word. But not just the word, the sacraments also as well. For the sacraments seal the word. The gospel that is preached by the way from pulpits is the same gospel which is communicated to the believer in the sacraments. It's not as if we move from the gospel being preached to now the sacraments where there is something else that is at play other than the gospel. The sacraments seal and they signify the same gospel that is being preached from the pulpit. And so the Word gives meaning then to the sacraments. The Word of God, the Bible, makes the sacraments what they are. They set the sacraments apart from being ordinary things. So if it weren't for the Word, when we sprinkle a baby with water, the baby is just getting a shower. If we have a meal without the word, then we're just having dinner, or we're just having lunch, or we're just having breakfast. But you see, it is the word of God that explains the table as a meal and constitutes that table as a sacrament, not an ordinary meal. And same thing, of course, with baptism. The word of God explains that this baby is not just getting a bath or a shower. This baby is being baptized by virtue of the name of the triune God. Therefore, in order to discern the body in the Lord's Supper, in order to understand the supper for what it is, to understand that it is not an ordinary meal, but it is a means of grace, the meaning of the meal must be made known to the recipients, and the recipients must understand that it is not an ordinary meal. The meal understood through the divine interpretation of it in the word is what makes it then a means of grace, a blessing. Without the divine interpretation of the sacraments in the word, the meal is simply a brute fact. It's an ordinary common meal that has no particular meaning or significance. And so we understand that in order for the meal to be a blessing there must be some level of understanding, some level of discerning, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, in the minds of the recipients. The recipient must understand that this is something other than a mere rite. Now, the objection may be raised, but what about baptism? We baptize infants, and infants don't understand the meaning of the sacrament, so why does an infant have to understand the meaning of the sacrament when it comes to the Lord's Supper? Now, there's some truth to that, but the answer resides in the fact that baptism is, of course, if we can state the obvious here, a different sacrament than communion. Baptism is not communion. Communion is not baptism. The differences between the sacraments is articulated well within our tradition. For instance, in the Westminster Larger Catechism, Question and Answer 177 says this, and I'm going to abbreviate here but it says this the sacraments of baptism in the Lord's Supper differ in that baptism is to be administered but once whereas notice the contrast the Lord's Supper is to be administered often to confirm our continuance and growth in him and that only to such as are of years and ability to examine themselves you see the way in which they differentiate the different sacraments. Baptism is received once. It is initiatory. It is inaugural. Furthermore, it is a sacrament which is passively received. Baptism is not something, properly speaking, that one participates in, but something that is done to a person. The recipient does partake of the sacrament of baptism, but only passively so. One does not baptize him or herself. One is baptized. Baptism doesn't need to be discerned, then, as with the supper. The rite of the sacrament of baptism is wholly objective. It must be done with water and in the triune name. Communion, however, according to the injunction of the Apostle Paul, must be received with examination and discernment, not gross introspection, by the way, but with proper examination and discernment. It is not wholly passive, but it is also active. One comes to the table. One eats, one drinks, one partakes of the elements, and as such the supper is a repeated sacrament, that is to say, the more frequent the better. It is repeated as a means of nourishment, of grace, of strengthening, and of growth. It is particularly the word which makes the sacraments of communion effectual to those who partake. It is the word, then, as the word is given, as the word is proclaimed, as the word is received conscionably by the believer, that it is an effectual means of grace. and then it becomes, and therein it becomes a means of blessing, and it is a means of blessing only when received by faith. And so you understand the way in which the Lord's Supper is a two-edged sword, right? Meredith Klein in his book, By Oath Consigned, brings this out brilliantly about the sacraments, that it is a double-edged sword when it is received by faith, It becomes a means of blessing, it becomes a means of grace. But when it comes outside of faith, when it comes in rebellion against God, it actually cuts as a curse against the recipient. But notice here, That the larger catechism, back to larger catechism 177, speaks about it being only for those who have the ability to examine themselves. Now, children are really good at examining things. Us with children know that. My kids are really good at examining the cookie jar. They're really good at examining the iPad, the 3DS, and the television. Yes, from an early age they can sing Jesus Loves Me, This I Know. They can sing the doxology at a very early age. They can even begin to recite the catechism. But they are not particularly efficient at examining themselves. Now the Lord's Supper, wisely in my opinion, doesn't place an age on the ability for self-examination. The Bible doesn't tell us when that age is. Every child is going to be different. But understanding the sacrament, even at its most basic level, and understanding the gospel, not to mention understanding and discerning ourselves, it takes time. It takes maturation, doesn't it? It takes even more time, by the way, on the other end, for a session to get to know a child well enough to make sure that that child has the requisite knowledge, understanding, and discernment to come to the Lord's table in a way that is beneficial and effectual. So how admitting infants and young children to the table squares with the confessional standards of the Reformed faith at this point is beyond me, and it is certainly beyond the Reformed tradition. The kingdom of God then is entered into through the waters of baptism, but the citizens of the kingdom are cared for, protected, nourished through the body and blood of our Lord, really and truly, as He is received by faith through the eating and drinking of the bread and the wine. In the Lord's Supper, then, believers are not only recipients of God's grace, sitting at the banquet feast of the Lamb, but also undeserving citizens and vice regents. Remember what Peter says in 1 Peter, you are a what? A royal priesthood, right? So, having been united to the King, we are, as it were, in the King, vice regents. We are vice regents under the great King. The king of kings and the lord of lords sitting at his table, his royal table, his royal banquet feast. But the receiving at that table must be by faith. It is for those who have entered into a treaty with the great king. In fact, the supper is a treaty meal, a blood covenant between the vassal vice regents, us, and the suzerain great king, Jesus Christ. Such a covenant is fiduciary in nature then. Now, another difference between baptism and the Lord's Supper has to do with the timing of faith. Faith is not necessary at the time of the administration of baptism. Baptism initiates one to the faith. The Lord's Supper nourishes the faith of the one already initiated. That is the Heidelberg Catechism 81. That means that baptism ordinarily is administered upon faith, but not only administered upon faith. It may be administered before faith, in the instance of covenant children. because the grace which it signified is not necessarily tied to the time of its administration. But with the Lord's Supper, things are very different, and to me this has got to be the most compelling argument for the traditional view of the Lord's Supper. With the Lord's Supper, the blessing, get this, this is very important, the blessing of the Lord's Supper, that is to say the reality to which it points, namely to the body and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and the blessing that comes from him and having communion with him, the blessing of the Lord's Supper is really received at the time of its administration. at the time of its administration. After all, we believe, don't we, in the real presence of Christ at the Supper. At the Lord's Table, we are not going through a mere memorial service where we're just kind of remembering Jesus, but we are actually communing with Jesus at the Lord's Supper, at the time of the Supper, right? We believe that when we commune with the resurrected and reigning Lord Jesus, that we have been, as Calvin would say, lifted up with him in the heavenly places. So while faith is not required at the time in which baptism is received, as in the case of infants, so in the Lord's Supper, faith is absolutely required for the receiving of the blessing of the sacrament. because the blessing comes precisely at the time of the administration of the sacrament. But now the question becomes, as the paedo-communionist may respond, what about the Passover? I mean, that's still kind of lingering out there. According to paedo-communion, children are obviously present at the Passover meal. And we see this in Deuteronomy 12. However, there are reasons to be cautious about concluding that such children participated in the meal. Were they present? Yes. That's undoubted. That's not even a question. But did they participate in the meal? That's another question altogether. According to Venema, there was in the Passover meal, the eating and drinking of certain elements, namely bitter herbs and wine, which would have precluded the participation of infants and very small children. Furthermore, in Jerusalem, only males were required to partake of the meal. There was furthermore an instructional exercise for children who asked about the meal. We see that in Exodus chapter 12 verse 26. This is the kind of self-conscious question that we would not expect from an infant, and would be rare even among smaller children. Nevertheless, as we saw before, the typological antecedent to the Lord's Supper is not just the Egypt Passover. It also includes the Egypt Passover, but more than that. So, Cornelius Venema says this, Since the Lord's Supper marks the New Testament in Jesus' blood, it must be governed by the New Testament's teaching regarding the Lord's Supper. It is important to note that the Lord's Supper points to the fulfillment of all sacrifices of the Old Testament legislation. Get that? All sacrifices. There is no single Old Testament precedent for the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. No single one. Not even the Passover feast, which might superficially appear to be the most obvious candidate for this status. And I think Venema is right. Venema goes on, he says this, "...and there are significant differences between the annual celebration of the Passover at a central location in Jerusalem and the frequent administration of the Lord's Supper in the sanctuary and assembly of God's New Covenant people. It is simply impossible to determine the proper administration of the New Covenant by a direct appeal to these kinds of alleged Old Testament precedents." Now, that's not to say that this discontinuity between the Lord's Supper and the Egypt Passover speaks directly to the question of children at the table, but it does point up that we cannot simply, as the argument is often made by paedo-communists, we cannot simply carry over all the details from the Egypt Passover meal into the New Testament Lord's Supper. There is continuity, but there's also discontinuity as well. Couple this discontinuity with the fact that there is some question about little children actually participating in the Egypt Passover meal, and the paedo-communist argument is hardly supported with any kind of, thus saith the Lord. But now I want to consider some other New Testament passages which seem to indicate that conscious and self-aware faith is required for participating in the New Covenant sacramental meal. Let me first take John 6. There's much debate about John 6 and whether or not this is his version of the institution of the Lord's Supper. I'll simply take Calvin's position, which is basically something along these lines, that while it is not the institution of the Lord's Supper itself, it is nevertheless quite connected to the Lord's Supper. Especially if we compare the language of John chapter 6 with what we find in the teaching of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians, particularly in chapter 11. You see, if the bread of life discourse on the one hand and the Lord's Supper are connected, it would seem that faith union with Christ is something which is absolutely necessary for the proper partaking of the sacrament. After all, what does Jesus say in John chapter 6? When in John chapter 6 he says, whoever eats of my body and drinks of my blood will have eternal life, what is he saying there? He is not speaking there literally, he is speaking there metaphorically, speaking there in a way that is communicating this idea. Whoever eats of his body, that is to say whoever believes upon him, has eternal life and so if John 6 is anticipating the Lord's Supper we might conclude then that in fact one must eat of Christ's body in order to eat of Christ's meal. That is to say one must have faith before coming to the supper. Now, we might make the same or at least a similar argument from 1 Corinthians 10. And 1 Corinthians 10 verses 16 through 17 is oftentimes overlooked in these discussions. Now, we need to remind ourselves that the paedo-communionist position argues its view precisely on the basis of 1 Corinthians 10 and chapter 11. They argue that it is precisely these passages which establish their point. The emphasis in these passages is, after all, the unity of the Church, etc., etc. And so, they argue that this meal, as it is communicated in 1 Corinthians, is a meal of unity and also ought to be inclusive of young children. But you see what is happening here in 1 Corinthians, particularly in 1 Corinthians 10, where it says this, verse 16, "...the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread." In this passage, you have to remember what Paul is doing. Paul is polemicizing against those who would advocate for participating in pagan food rituals, namely food sacrificed to idols. The implicit idea is that it doesn't matter, that is to say those who wanted to participate in these meals, it doesn't matter that we eat their meals because after all these are idols and these idols are no gods at all. So as long as we don't believe in those gods, it doesn't matter what we do with their food. But Paul notes that eating at the table of idols is not any type of neutral action. To eat at the table of idols is to fellowship with the idols. We do not come as non-cognitive beings to the table of idols. Rather, we come and we discern that the table is to be avoided. Why? Because it is a table of the false gods. And so likewise with the table of the Lord. When we come to Christ's table, we come to bless the cup that the cup might become a blessing to us. We come discerning that this is not the table of idols. This is the table of the one true and living God. And therefore, rather than it being a curse to us, it becomes a blessing. This helps us to understand later what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 11 when he tells us about discerning the body. Discerning the body of Christ means more than recognizing the unity of the church. And that, by the way, is the argument generally of the pato-communionists. That what is in view here is Paul just simply saying, look, you need to discern that the church is one. And since the church is one and united, that means that children as well as adults should come to the table. But you see, Paul is telling us that the bread is real and true communion with the body of Christ. It is participation with Christ and not with demons. In other words, before we even dare come to the table, any table, we need to know whose table it is. We need to discern the body of Christ and realize this is the body of Christ and not, for instance, the body of demons, idols. So once again, notice that it is precisely at the time of the administration of the Lord's Supper that we are to exercise this discernment. It is, as it were, in the moment. Because when we are at this table, it is precisely at this table that we are participating in and fellowshipping with the body of Christ. And the way in which we do that, the way in which Christ's body is really present with us at the table, is not by the bread becoming the body of Christ. That's the transubstantiation view. No, it is by faith in Christ, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, that we have benefit by faith at this table. Now, conclusion. By way of some concluding thoughts, I want to speak pastorally and confessionally. If the cause of Christ and the kingdom of God are both advanced through the regular and the ordinary means of grace—word, sacrament, and prayer— then the issue of paedo-communion is no small matter. It's no small matter because if it is a practice that is an aberration, then it is striking at the vital organs of Christian worship, doctrine, and practice. There are plenty of areas in which Reformed Christians may legitimately disagree, because our confession doesn't take firm positions on certain things, such as, let's say, the infralapsarian-superlapsarian debate, and views of eschatology, etc. But it is exceedingly clear, our standards are exceedingly clear, on the nature and practice of the sacraments in general, and the Lord's Supper in particular. So the Confession of Faith, for instance, says Westminster Confession 29.1, "...our Lord Jesus instituted the sacrament of his body and blood for the perpetual remembrance of the sacrifice of himself and his death, and for the sealing of all benefits, therefore, unto true believers." And then larger catechism, question 171. They that receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper are, before they come, to prepare themselves unto by examining themselves of their being in Christ, of their sins and wants, of the truth and measure of their knowledge, faith, and repentance. Now notice in particular the timing of the supper. It is at the time, precisely when the supper is given, when it is received, that it is required of the worthy recipient to feed upon Christ by faith. The Lord's Supper, in other words, is not a passive reception of divine grace. The Lord's Supper benefits only those who receive it by faith at the time in which it is given and received. This benefit, which is growth in grace and nourishment of soul, is indeed a divinely ordained means of advancing the kingdom of Christ. For the supper of the Lord is never a neutral tool, a meaningless event. It is always significant, and its administration and reception is either a blessing or a cursing. The supper is always a two-edged sword, and if it is not being received unto blessing, then it is going to be received unto cursing. Because of this, then, we should be careful about how we receive the supper, how we administer it, and to whom we give it. Lastly, all this is not to say that children should be absent from the supper. We have no evidence that children were excluded from being present at the Lord's Supper in Corinth or anywhere. Rather, they should be present at the supper. they should be present with us they should be with us so that they may see Christ portrayed before them as crucified to see how it is a blessing to God's people but they should not partake of the supper they should be present without partaking for to do so for them to partake of the supper would, far from advancing the cause of Christ, would actually hinder it. For in partaking in such a way that they neither discern nor examine themselves, they participate in a way not keeping with the instruction of the Lord. And if we worship God in a way not prescribed by the Lord, how can we ever expect his name to be glorified through us and his kingdom to advance? For these reasons, let us give up practices that are novel for the Reformed Church and let us return back to the basics. Let us return to retrieve the blessing of the proper, regular, and ordinary means of grace so faithfully taught to us by our Reformed forefathers.