Sermon Tone Analysis

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There Paul expressly argues that Abraham’s circumcision was not for his justification but for the seal of that covenant by faith in which he had already been justified

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion & 2, ed.

John T. McNeill, trans.

Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 1280.

6.

The sacraments as signs of a covenant

Since the Lord calls his promises “covenants” [Gen.

6:18; 9:9; 17:2] and his sacraments “tokens” of the covenants, a simile can be taken from the covenants of men.

The sacraments, therefore, are exercises which make us more certain of the trustworthiness of God’s Word.

And because we are of flesh, they are shown us under things of flesh, to instruct us according to our dull capacity, and to lead us by the hand as tutors lead children.

Augustine calls a sacrament “a visible word” for the reason that it represents God’s promises as painted in a picture and sets them before our sight, portrayed graphically and in the manner of images.9

They are not reasoning closely enough when they argue that the sacraments are not testimonies of God’s grace because they are also offered to the wicked, who, however, do not find God more favorable but rather incur a heavier condemnation.

For by the same argument, because the gospel is heard but rejected by many, and because Christ was seen and recognized by many but very few of them accepted him, neither gospel nor Christ would be a testimony of God’s grace.

In one place Augustine, meaning to convey this, said that the efficacy of the Word is brought to light in the sacrament, not because it is spoken, but because it is believed.

Accordingly, Paul, in speaking to believers, so deals with the sacraments as to include in them the communicating of Christ.

For example, he says, “All of you who have been baptized … have put on Christ” [Gal.

3:27, cf.

Vg.].

Again: “All of us who have been baptized in Christ are one body and one spirit” [1 Cor.

12:12–13].

But when he speaks of the perverse use of the sacraments, he treats them as nothing more than cold and empty figures.

By this he means: however much impious and hypocritical men may, by their own perversity, oppress or obscure or hinder the working of divine grace in the sacraments—still that does not prevent these (wherever and whenever it pleases God) from bearing true witness to the communication of Christ, and the Spirit of God himself also from revealing and fulfilling what they promise.

We have determined, therefore, that sacraments are truly named the testimonies of God’s grace and are like seals of the good will that he feels toward us, which by attesting that good will to us, sustain, nourish, confirm, and increase our faith.

We must also note this: that God accomplishes within what the minister represents and attests by outward action, lest what God claims for himself alone should be turned over to a mortal man.

Augustine also wisely admonishes this.

“How,” he says, “do both Moses and God sanctify?

Not Moses on God’s behalf; but Moses by the visible sacraments through his ministry, God by invisible grace through the Holy Spirit.

There, also, is the whole fruit of the visible sacraments.

For without this sanctification of invisible grace, what is gained from these visible sacraments?”

But our present intention is specifically to discuss those sacraments which the Lord willed to be ordinary in the church in order to nourish his worshipers and servants in one faith and the confession of one faith

We have already taught that they are seals by which God’s promises are sealed, and, moreover, it is very clear that no promise has ever been offered to men except in Christ [2 Cor.

1:20].

Consequently, to teach us about any promise of God, they must show forth Christ.

cTo this pertains that heavenly pattern of the Tabernacle and of worship under the law, which was put before Moses on the mountain [Ex.

25:9, 40; 26:30].

There is only one difference: the former foreshadowed Christ promised while he was as yet awaited; the latter attest him as already given and revealed.

And he leaves us no shred of privilege which could make souls hope to go unpunished.

cNor is it lawful for us to attribute more to our baptism than he elsewhere attributes to circumcision when he calls it the seal of the righteousness of faith [Rom.

4:11].

Therefore, whatever is shown us today in the sacraments, the Jews of old received in their own—that is, Christ with his spiritual riches.

They felt the same power in their sacraments as do we in ours; these were seals of divine good will toward them, looking to eternal salvation.

If our opponents had been skilled interpreters of The Letter to the Hebrews, they would not have been thus deceived.

But when they read there that sins were not expiated by the ceremonies of the law, indeed that the ancient shadows had no importance for righteousness [Heb.

10:1], overlooking the comparison discussed there while grasping this one point, that the law of itself does not profit its keepers, they simply supposed the ceremonies to have been figures devoid of truth.

But the apostle’s intention is to reduce the ceremonial law to nothing until the coming of Christ, upon whom its entire effectiveness depends.

But by way of objection they will quote what they read concerning “circumcision of the letter” in Paul [Rom.

2:29], that it has no place with God, confers nothing, and is empty.

For such statements bseem to press it down far beneath our baptism [cf.

Rom.

2:25–29; Gal.

5:6; 6:15; 1 Cor.

7:19].

Not at all!

The very same thing could justly be said of baptism.

But this is even said, and first by Paul himself, when he is showing that God cares nothing about the outward washing with which we are initiated into religion [cf. 1 Cor.

10:5], unless the heart also be inwardly cleansed and persevere in purity to the end.

Then it is said by Peter when he bears witness that the truth of baptism rests not in outward washing but in the testimony of a clear conscience [1 Peter 3:21].

He therefore admonishes believers to forsake the old shadows and stand fast in the truth.

These teachers (he says) urge you to have your bodies circumcised.

Yet you have been spiritually circumcised both in soul and body.

You therefore have a revelation of the reality, which is far better than the shadow.

But someone could have objected, on the other hand, that men ought not to despise the figure because they had the thing itself, inasmuch as among the patriarchs too there was that putting off of the old man, of which Paul is there speaking; yet outward circumcision was not superfluous for them.

Paul forestalls this objection when he immediately adds that the Colossians had been buried with Christ through baptism [Col.

2:12].

By this he means that baptism is today for Christians what circumcision was for the ancients, and that therefore circumcision cannot be enjoined upon Christians without injustice to baptism.

I repeat what I have already touched upon—that Paul does not make the ceremonies shadowed because they have no reality, but because their fulfillment had been, so to speak, held in suspense until the appearance of Christ.

Then I say that this must be understood not of efficacy but rather of mode of signification.

For until Christ was manifested in the flesh, all signs foreshadowed him as if absent, however much he might make the presence of his power and himself inwardly felt among believers.

But we ought especially to note that in all these passages Paul is not speaking simply but by way of controversy.

Since he was in conflict with false apostles who wished piety to consist in ceremonies alone without regard to Christ, to refute them it was enough only to treat what value the ceremonies had of themselves.

The author of The Letter to the Hebrews also sought this end.

But if you require a clearer answer to objections, the whole matter comes to this: first, all the pomp of ceremonies which was in the law of Moses, unless it be directed to Christ, is a fleeting and worthless thing; secondly, they looked to Christ in such a way that, when he was at length revealed in the flesh, they had their fulfillment; lastly, it was fitting that they should be abrogated by his coming, just as shadows vanish in the clear light of the sun.

But because I defer further discussion of this matter to the place where I have planned to compare baptism with circumcision,55 I am now touching upon it only briefly.

Perhaps those immoderate praises of the sacraments which are read in ancient writers concerning our signs have deceived these miserable Sophists.

Such is Augustine’s statement: “The sacraments of the old law only promised the Savior; but ours give salvation.”

Failing to note that these and similar figures of speech were exaggerated, they also published their own exaggerated dogmas, but in a sense wholly at variance from the writings of the ancients.

For Augustine only meant there the same thing that he writes elsewhere: “The sacraments of the Mosaic law foretold Christ, but ours tell forth Christ.”56

And against Faustus: “Theirs were promises of things to be accomplished; ours are tokens of things already accomplished.”57

It is as if he had said: “Those represented him when he was still awaited; but ours show him as if present who has already come.”

c(a)Further, he is speaking of the manner of signifying, just as he indicates elsewhere in these words: “The Law and Prophets had sacraments foretelling a thing to come; but the sacraments of our time attest that what the former proclaimed as a future event has come.”

But his understanding of the thing itself and its efficacy he explains in many places, as when he says that c(a)the sacraments of the Jews were different in their signs, but equal in the thing signified; different in visible appearance, but equal in spiritual power.

cLikewise: “In different signs there is the same faith; it is the same with different signs as it is with different words; for words change their sounds from time to time; and words are nothing but signs.

The fathers drank the same spiritual drink, but not the same physical one, as ours.

See, therefore, how faith remains while signs change.

With them Christ was the Rock [1 Cor.

10:4]; for us Christ is that which is put upon the altar.

They drank, as a great sacrament, water flowing from the rock; believers know what we drink.

If you look at the visible appearance, they drank something different; if you look at the inner signification, they drank the same spiritual drink.”

Another passage: “In the mystery they had the same food and drink as we; but in signification, not in appearance.

For the same Christ represented to them in the rock has been manifested to us in the flesh.”

2. The meaning of baptism determined

First, it is a doctrine well enough known and confessed among all godly men that a right consideration of signs does not rest solely in external ceremonies, but depends chiefly upon the promise and the spiritual mysteries, which the Lord ordains the ceremonies themselves to represent.

Therefore, let him who would fully learn the value of baptism, its object, and indeed its entire nature, not fix his thought upon the element and the physical appearance, but rather raise it to God’s promises which are there offered to us, and to the inner mysteries which are represented in it.

He who grasps these things has attained the solid truth of baptism, and, so to speak, its entire substance.

And from this he will also be taught the reason and use of outward sprinkling.

On the other hand, he who contemptuously disregards these things and has his attention fixed and bound wholly to the visible ceremony will understand neither the force nor the character of baptism—and not even the meaning of the water or its use.

This statement is proved by so many and such clear testimonies of Scripture that it is not necessary to pursue it further for the present.

It therefore now remains for us, from the promises given in baptism, to inquire what its force and nature are.

Scripture declares that baptism first points to the cleansing of our sins, which we obtain from Christ’s blood; then to the mortification of our flesh, which rests upon participation in his death and through which believers are reborn into newness of life and into the fellowship of Christ.

All that is taught in the Scriptures concerning baptism can be referred to this summary, except that baptism is also a symbol for bearing witness to our religion before men.

Accordingly, the children of the Jews also, because they had been made heirs of his covenant and distinguished from the children of the impious, were called a holy seed [Ezra 9:2; Isa.

6:13].

For this same reason, the children of Christians are considered holy; and even though born with only one believing parent, by the apostle’s testimony they differ from the unclean seed of idolators [1 Cor.

7:14].

Now seeing that the Lord, immediately after making the covenant with Abraham, commanded it to be sealed in infants by an outward sacrament [Gen.

17:12], what excuse will Christians give for not testifying and sealing it in their children today?

The covenant is common, and the reason for confirming it is common.

Only the manner of confirmation is different—what was circumcision for them was replaced for us by baptism.