Grace is Gratis
"When I was a child I would sullenly read the cereal box during breakfast. Because I was raised in Canada it meant that I learned a few words of French in those sullen moments (it's no wonder my French was so poor!). The word that most firmly stuck in my head was "gratis." Every children's cereal promised a "free" gift in the box. Only later did I realize that the French word was related to the English word for grace. However, the gift given gratis in the box of cereal was not really free, as my mother pointed out to me on many occasions while shopping for groceries. The gift was only there to motivate you to buy a product you wouldn't normally have purchased. The gratis gift was to get you to do what you wouldn't normally do.
Some people treat God's grace like it's the free gift in the cereal box, as though grace would get you to be inclined toward God or open your heart to the Holy Spirit. But grace is given by God not for the sake of anything else but out of absolute love and compassion toward fallen humans on God's part. Grace doesn't coax something out of us; it changes our status in the presence of the God who gives it.
Infants are the test case for grace. Infants become believers, and thus part of the church, through the gift of grace bestowed on them by baptism. Grace is the divine act of compassion given to those who are weak and unable to find God by their own efforts or works. What would better describe a newborn infant than that he or she is weak and incapacitated? Yet, exactly such as these are the ones whom the God of all grace has determined to save through the work of His only begotten Son. Sometimes moderns think that adults are the paradigmatic case for grace. This presupposition arises not from an understanding of grace as a gratuitous gift from God, but from the presupposition that humans need to provide God some sign of their inclination toward Him, that they are seeking Him, that they are worthy of grace, or that have opened their hearts to Him. Such views are prevalent in American evangelicalism, and yet have more in common with classic doctrines of prevenient grace as taught by the Roman Catholic Church. Prevenient grace is the grace, which disposes the person toward God. Prevenient grace is a contradiction of grace. Earned grace is never grace (Rm 4:4).
Those who are in the light of Christ are in the church and are believers. Those who have not the light of Christ are not believers and remain under the wrath of God. There is no middle ground. This is true for all persons, young, old, and infant. All persons are under the grace of God irrespective of their age. Age is no impediment to the grace that saves. If age were an impediment, grace would no longer be grace. Grace is God's. Grace is the attitude of God's heart toward fallen humans. If grace is truly God's how could age hinder it?
Baptism then, is not a human accomplishment but a divine gift. You are not proving anything to God by being baptized. God is proving something to you in baptism. He is proving His unchanging mercy in that He is immersing you into the death and life of Christ our Lord in it. You are receiving something that could not be yours except on the initiative of the gracious God. Again, this is why no one can boast, at least not before God (Eph 2:9). If grace is grace, it is free."
Rev. Dr. Scott R. Murray
Memorial Lutheran Church
John 12:44-50 (ESV)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+12%3A44-50&version=ESV
Augustine of Hippo:
"Christ says, 'I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.' (Jn 12:46). Now what does this passage show us, but that every person is in darkness who does not believe in Him, and that it is by believing in Him that anyone escapes from this permanent state of darkness? What do we understand by the darkness but sin? And whatever else it may include in its meaning, at any rate he who does not believe in Christ will 'abide in darkness,' which, of course, is a penal state, not, as the darkness of the night, which is necessary for the refreshment of living beings. Consequently, infants, unless they join the number of believers through the sacrament which was divinely instituted for this purpose, will certainly remain in this darkness.
"However, some think that as soon as children are born they are enlightened; and they derive this opinion from the passage: 'The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.' (Jn 1:9). Well, if this be the case, it is quite astonishing how it can be that those who are thus enlightened by the only-begotten Son, who was in the beginning the Word with God, and [Himself] God, are not admitted into the kingdom of God, nor are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. Such an inheritance is not bestowed upon them except through baptism, as even those who hold the opinion in question acknowledge. Then, again, if they are (though already illuminated) unfit for entrance into the kingdom of God, they at all events ought gladly to receive the baptism, by which they are fitted for it. But, strange to say, we see how reluctant infants are to submit to baptism, resisting even with great crying. And this ignorance of theirs we think lightly of at their time of life, so that we fully administer the sacraments, which we know to be beneficial to them, even although they struggle against them."
Augustine, On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins and the Baptism of Infants, 1.35-36
Prayer:
"Lord Jesus, I have not merited Your mercy toward me. Help me to live in that grace that I might never doubt Your compassion for poor sinners. Amen."
Memorial Moment
Rev. Dr Scott R. Murray
Memorial Lutheran Church
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