I Am Baptized

Baptismal Meditation | Lord's Day—June 15, AD 2025

Your children this morning will not remember this baptism. They will not recall the feeling of the water running down their brow or my hand upon their head. And we acknowledge this reality in the charge we recite, for we say to them, “…and you still know nothing of it.”

So what does this sacrament mean then, if these recipients are too young to remember receiving it? Well, it still means everything. This morning, these children are receiving the sign of the covenant, the sign of the remission of sins, and the washing of regeneration. They are being claimed by God as His own.

In John Calvin’s catechism, he included two questions for children that get at this point. First, they were asked, “Are you, my son, a Christian in fact as well as in name?” And the answer was, “Yes, my father.” Then they were asked, “How do you know yourself to be?” And Calvin’s answer for the children in his church, and for these children now, was this, “Because I am baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

And so it is your great duty before God to remind your children often of their baptism, pointing them to the ongoing reality of salvation that it signifies, all the days of their life. Amen.