Complete Surrender

Daily Reading: Genesis 45, Luke 18

Then Jesus called for the children and said to the disciples, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children. I tell you the truth, anyone who doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.” Luke 18:16-17

We can take this passage along with similar passages found in Matthew (19:13-15) and Mark (10:13-16) to understand that Jesus is calling us to approach our faith with childlike qualities such as, “trust, openness, and the absence of holier-than-thou attitudes,” (Expositor’s Bible Commentary) and we would be right. We can also look a little deeper at the implications of Jesus’ invitation and move, I believe, into a deeper walk with God.

One of the practices that Methodists observe, along with many other Christian denominations, is that of infant baptism. When we perform baptism we believe we are initiating a person into the church. We believe that in the act of Baptism the Holy Spirit is working in the life of the baptized to incorporate that person, young or old, into the Body of Christ. I do not see this act as one of salvation but of initiation. In this act of initiation the baptized (again young or old) is not taking the stance of trust and openness, but of complete helplessness! Like an infant we are totally dependent on God’s grace and God’s work for our initiation into the family. There is simply nothing I can do that will initiate me into the family.

For the adult who has experienced salvation, as well as for the infant who is being raised in a Godly home, baptism is not so much his/her declaration of allegiance to God, but more so their launching off point as a new child within the family of God. Theologian Theodore Runyon says of baptism that in baptism God is the primary actor and in this all baptism becomes infant baptism. (Runyon, New Creation, 140) What he is saying is that every person who approaches entrance into the family of God approaches as an infant, and that the act of initiation is totally the act of God. 

Several years ago I was blessed to welcome, through baptism, a mother and her children into the Body of Christ through our Celebrate Recovery ministry. Through this act of initiation we are able to see Christ initiating this entire family––even her young children who were still years away from making a faith commitment––into the Body of Christ through God’s prevenient grace. Even thought the mother was probably somewhere in her mid thirties she entered that day into the family on an equal level of infancy as did her children and in entering in such a fashion of complete dependence on God through His Holy Spirit she put herself in a place of future growth.

When we practice the ceremony of remembering our baptism we are given the privilege to remember that, as children, God invited us, washed us and welcomed us into His family where we could become active in growth and in producing fruit for the Kingdom.

Lord, help us understand your grace and surrender ourselves anew to your work in our lives. Amen.