Today’s Readings Podcast Description

Leave the pomp. Water, the Name, the promises, the prayers of the Church: that is Christ’s institution. Taper, chrism, exorcism, and spittle bury it. Immersion or sprinkling is not the point. Churches may use either. What is not indifferent is who baptises. The office belongs to those Christ sent, not to any private person, and not to women even in supposed necessity. Augustine doubted the emergency practice. Carthage forbade women without exception. Zipporah is no precedent. She acted in passion, under the eye of Moses. The dogma that none are saved who miss the water makes the New Testament poorer than the Old. Before the eighth day the promise already saved. Children of believers belong to the body of Christ by the covenant first; the sign seals what was already theirs. If the sign is omitted without sloth or contempt, they are not shut out of the kingdom. Grace is not chained to the element.

### Today’s Readings:

John Calvin — Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Chapter 15, Sections 19–22

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Today’s Readings Podcast Description

Cornelius already had the Spirit when he was baptised. He was not seeking a new pardon, but a pledge. Ananias told Paul to wash away his sins by baptism: receive the promise and be secure. The sign is nothing without faith; with faith it is God’s own seal. The worth of baptism does not rise or fall with the minister. A letter is valid if the hand and seal are the king’s, whoever the messenger may be. Donatists and Catabaptists measure the sacrament by the man. We were baptised into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—not into the ignorance of those who poured the water. Unbelief can bury the promise for years. It cannot cancel it. God remains true though every man is a liar. Josiah did not recircumcise Israel. He called them to a new heart. Paul did not rebaptise the disciples at Ephesus. He laid on hands, and the visible gifts of the Spirit came. If every later correction of ignorance required another washing, no rivers would suffice.

### Today’s Readings:

John Calvin — Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Chapter 15, Sections 15–18

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Today’s Readings Podcast Description

A larger gift of the Spirit after the resurrection does not make a second baptism. Ministers still give water. Christ alone gives the Spirit. Whoever baptises, Christ presides. Israel was baptised in the cloud and in the sea: Pharaoh drowned, yet still on the shore; the cloud covering them from the heat. So baptism promises that our Pharaoh is drowned, though he still threatens, and that we are covered from wrath by the blood of Christ. Baptism does not restore Adam’s nature. Original sin remains a seed. What is withdrawn is condemnation. Righteousness in this life is by imputation. Concupiscence is not extinguished until death. It is not to reign. We are on the way. Paul groans under the body of death and then says there is now no condemnation to those in Christ. Baptism is also our confession before men: we have sworn allegiance. Receive the sign as from Christ’s own hand. In the water see the thing signified. He does what he figures.

### Today’s Readings:

John Calvin — Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Chapter 15, Sections 8–14

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Today’s Readings Podcast Description

Baptism is the initiatory sign by which we are admitted to the Church and accounted children of God. It is not a soldier’s badge first. It is a sealed instrument that our sins are covered and will never be imputed. Water does not save. It seals the gospel that announces washing by the blood of Christ. The washing is once for the whole of life. When we fall we do not seek another sacrament. We remember our baptism. The keys do not replace it; they preach what baptism already signs. A second benefit is mortification and new life: we are buried with Christ and raised to walk in newness of life. A third is union with Christ himself. We put him on. John’s baptism was not another baptism. Same doctrine, same repentance, same remission. He pointed to the Lamb who was coming; the apostles pointed to the Lamb who had come.

### Today’s Readings:

John Calvin — Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Chapter 15, Sections 1–7

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Today’s Readings Podcast Description

Does Paul set baptism above circumcision when he speaks of the circumcision of the letter? Calvin says the same could be said of baptism. God regards no external washing unless the mind is purified. Circumcision made with hands is set aside only because, after Christ, the shadow must yield to the reality. The Colossians were buried with Christ by baptism: that is now what circumcision was then. “Shadows of things to come” names the mode of signifying, not emptiness. Until Christ appeared in the flesh, the signs pointed to him as still expected. Separated from him they are null. Augustine’s high praise of our sacraments is hyperbole of presence, not a different power. The fathers drank the same spiritual drink. The rock was Christ; what is set on the altar is Christ. The opus operatum is foreign to the nature of a sacrament. Believers bring nothing. They beg.

### Today’s Readings:

John Calvin — Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Chapter 14, Sections 24–26

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Today’s Readings Podcast Description

Ordinary sacraments are ceremonies by which God trains a people in one faith. They seal his promise and mark our profession. Gentile mysteries show that men cannot live without signs; they do not make those signs holy. The signs have changed with the dispensation. Circumcision, washings, and sacrifices led the fathers by the hand to a Christ still expected. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper testify to the same Christ now come. Circumcision sealed the righteousness of faith. The washings promised another laver. The sacrifices demanded a priest and a victim. All three were Christ. Water and blood from his side are, says Augustine, the fountain of our sacraments. The Scholastic claim that the old signs only shadowed while the new confer grace must be exploded. The fathers ate the same spiritual food, and that food was Christ. We have no privilege that gives us hope of impunity. The ceremonies avail nothing until we arrive at him.

### Today’s Readings:

John Calvin — Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Chapter 14, Sections 19–23

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Today’s Readings Podcast Description

Augustine distinguishes the sacrament from the matter of the sacrament. Sign and thing can be separated. The cup was poison to Judas, not because he received what was evil, but because he wickedly received what was good. Christ is the substance of every sacrament. Out of him they promise nothing. The ordinance remains what God made it even when the wicked receive it without fruit: “If you receive carnally, it ceases not to be spiritual, but it is not spiritual to you.” Two faults are to be avoided: treating the signs as empty, and stopping at the visible sign as if it were the gift. Sacraments offer Christ as the word offers him. They pour no grace from themselves. The Spirit must open the vessel. The term sacramentum covers every sign God stamps with his word—the tree of life, the bow in the cloud, Gideon’s fleece, the shadow on the dial. A tree remains a tree until the promise is written on it. Then it is a seal.

### Today’s Readings:

John Calvin — Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Chapter 14, Sections 15–18

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Today’s Readings Podcast Description

The word is seed. On hard ground it dies; in a heart the Spirit has prepared it bears fruit. He that plants and he that waters is nothing. God alone gives the increase. The sacraments are instruments of that same kindness, not causes of it. When God withdrew the tree of life from Adam, he did not take away a medicine that could have restored immortality. He took away the symbol of a promise already broken, lest Adam trust the sign. Bread feeds, the sun gives light, fire gives warmth—yet none of them is to be trusted as the giver. So with the sacraments. The first use of a sacrament is to help faith in God; the second is to attest our confession before men. Those who invert the order make the mystery frigid. Those who go the other way and ascribe a secret virtue by which the sacraments justify without faith teach a righteousness that is not of faith, and turn the eye from God to a corporeal object. Augustine’s distinction remains: there may be invisible sanctification without a visible sign, and a visible sign without true sanctification.

### Today’s Readings:

John Calvin — Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Chapter 14, Sections 11–14

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Today’s Readings Podcast Description

Do sacraments cease to be signs of grace because the ungodly receive them? Calvin says no. The gospel is still grace when it is spurned; Christ is still offered when he is not received. The seal of a prince remains a seal though many deride it. Faith, if it is good, can still be made better. “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” To believe with the whole heart is not to believe perfectly, but to embrace Christ sincerely. Faith is the work of the Spirit, yet the Lord uses three gifts: he teaches by the word, confirms by the sacraments, and illumines the heart so that word and sign do not stop at the ear and the eye. The sacraments have no secret power of their own. Without the Spirit they are sun on blind eyes. With him they have a true ministry. Honouring that ministry does not rob the Spirit. He prepares the mind; then the signs confirm what he has begun.

Today’s Readings:

John Calvin — Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Chapter 14, Sections 7–10

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Today’s Readings Podcast Description

What is a sacrament? Calvin calls it an external sign by which the Lord seals his promises on our consciences and we, in turn, testify our faith before God, angels, and men. The Latin sacramentum is the old rendering of the Greek μυστήριον (*mystērion*): a sacred thing made known under a sign. There is never a sacrament without an antecedent promise. The sign does not make God’s word more true; it props up a faith that is slender and would otherwise fall. Word and element belong together. A muttered formula in an unknown tongue is not the sacramental word. Augustine’s rule stands: let the word be added to the element, and it becomes a sacrament—not because it is said, but because it is believed. The sacrament is a seal on a deed already written, a visible word, a pillar under the house, a mirror of grace.

### Today’s Readings:

John Calvin — Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Chapter 14, Sections 1–6

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