For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy (1 Corinthians 7:14).
This is not a holiness as a result of salvation, but a holiness as a result of being under the direct influence of the covenant of grace, under the influence and oversight of Christ-believing parents. Thus, they enjoy the benefits of the promises of God until they become covenant keepers or covenant breakers.
This is one of the reasons, though not the only reason, that we baptize infants. While baptism does not save anyone, bringing our little ones to Jesus Christ does have spiritual blessings from God to the child through the faithfulness of the parents.
I believe that one of the ways God brought me back to Himself after a long prodigal journey away from Him was the faith and prayers of my alcoholic father. I was born into a very broken family, but my father, a prodigal himself at the time of my entrance into this world, knew enough of Jesus to take me to a little Methodist church in New Orleans and present me for baptism. He then knew that his own life was too shattered to raise me, and I was given to his sister. Through her prayers and her touch on my life from infancy, I received the touch of Jesus Christ. That early touch of Jesus led me home even though I wandered far away from God.
Not long ago I was watching a program in which university researchers tagged a baby whale in Monterey, California. For years they watched as that baby grew. She went all over the world, but at the right time in her life she returned home.
The touch of God on a child’s life early on is like a divine tag in which Jesus says, This child is mine. She may wander all over the world, but she has the tag, the early impression of Jesus in her life, the touch of Christ on her life. This is the power of the passage that says,
Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it (
Proverbs 22:6).
This is not hocus pocus religion as if an incantation or a touch by a holy man can bring salvation. It is the faith of a parent or a loved one that says, I will bring this child to Jesus in baptism, in prayer, as I hold him, as I rear him.
The Picture Holds Lessons for Disciples.
The disciples did not have a theology of childhood to sustain them in this time. Once again, Jesus is going to use this time to teach them a lesson.
The issue is about the value of a child in relationship to God. If God is only ascertained through reading, through debating, through studying, through decision making, through self-evaluation, and in using all of the innate faculties of a man, then children are of no use to the Lord. This may have been the thinking of these disciples, so they become ecclesiastical bouncers keeping parents and infants out of the presence of Jesus. They remind me of the giant, frightening image in the Wizard of Oz that tried to frighten Dorothy and her fantastical friends away. “Dare you to ask to see the great Wizard!” I can almost hear them, “ . . . and take that screaming, wiggling little kid with you—and don’t forget that baby buggy when you go!” It is not the most complimentary scene. Here are the lessons they had to learn:
