In his helpful little booklet, The Implications of Public Confessions (trans. Henry Zylstra, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1934]), Abraham Kuyper wrote about the aspects of public confession of faith. In it he commented on baptized children and the Lord’s Supper: should kids partake?
An infant “is not yet qualified to receive the sacrament of nourishment. We must remember that the sacrament of the holy supper requires that only he may partake of it who has made his confession and his deeds a matter of personally appreciated responsibility. Hence, it is inevitable that some years must elapse between these two sacraments in the life of every individual; as many years, in fact, as are required to make his confession and his approach to the Lord’s table a morally responsible action. The intervening time may not be longer than that and it may not be shorter….”
“The number of those intervening years is not the same for all. Some are qualified for public confession at sixteen, others at twenty-three years of age…. Irrespective, however, of whether the holy supper be divided from baptism by sixteen years or by twenty-three, the close relationship between the two remains the same. Throughout those years baptism sounds the plea: Seek the Lord’s holy supper.”
See pages 16-17 for the above quote.
shane lems
sunnyside wa
The Reformed Reader Blog 