I plan to offer quotes and commentary based on the writing and speaking of OPC ministers, teachers, pastors and ruling elders from time to time. We'll call it, OPC Cooking. Supper's on boys, come and get it.
Below is a quote by the late Charles G. Dennison, an OPC pastor. I have greatly valued his writing and speaking. If you get a chance to pick up and listen to his lectures on the OPC's history and culture done at Mid-America Reformed Seminary, I believe he did these lectures back in 1992 or 1993, get em. They're superior scholarship, well-delivered and practically insightful.
OK. To Mr. Dennison's paragraph from an OPC publication,
...all in the covenant legally speaking are beckoned and judged by the covenant "communionally" speaking. At issue here is not just an accounting for covenant desertion but more positively an approach to covenant children. They are in the covenant and at the same time beckoned and scrutinized by the covenant in its ideal form. The sign and seal by which they are included in the covenant is a testimony to the radical character of sin and God's grace. Far from a witness to their superiority, it evidences a common heritage in sinful humanity from which they have been separated by a gracious covenant for fellowship with God. From the book, Pressing Toward the Mark, "Thoughts on the Covenant," pp.10-11.
Comments:
1. Commonly, theologians refer to the legal arrangement of the covenant in that there's a bond between two parties. Simply put, there's a legal tie between the parties; it's an agreement.
2. Next, theologians speak of the intimacy, closeness, fellowship or communion between the two parties of the covenant. Mr. Dennison calls it the "communional" aspect. The parties of the covenant are to draw near, come close, and enjoy the sweetness of living fellowship. Only the eternally elect know this closeness with God.
3. Mr. Dennision speaks of the role that the communional aspect plays with the legal. His point? The absence of the communional aspect is telling. When a man, woman or child does not tend to the conditions of drawing near to God, he or she backslides, grows cold, maybe eventually hardens himself or hershelf and falls away from the covenant. Such ones desert God, cutting off themselves from intimacy and fellowship. In the words of Jesus, fruit is missing. The presence or absence of covenant communion becomes a standard of judgment---is this person walking with Christ or deserting Christ?
4. Next, Mr. Dennison speaks of covenant children. What strikes me here is how Dennison speaks of baptized covenant children as a model for all humanity, for all ages over the span of life. All covenant members are being summoned about something seen in the sign and seal applied to covenant children. Along with other reasons, the sign of water baptism is applied to children to make sure all of us grasp two things: 1) our sin is ugly, real and must be continually brought under God's love and forgiveness over one's lifetime, 2) God's grace is beautiful, real and must be relied on over one's whole life. Once again, Dennison is saying: Covenant communion judges our walk with the Lord--do we keep acknowledging our sin and need from cleansing, from the start of our days on earth? Do we keep acknowledging that where sin abounded, grace abounds more and more, deeper and deeper from start to finish, from our earliest age to our last breath?
5. Baptized children show us the truth about all humanity. Children, right from the get-go when a baby comes into the world----boom----right out of the womb, from the youngest days of life, carry the billboard sign: Sinners Need Washing.
G. Mark Sumpter
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