Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger. ~Psalm 8:2
Allow me to translate this for today: God doesn’t need influencers to win a fight. He doesn’t need power brokers or PR campaigns. He doesn’t flex like the world’s braggarts. He uses babies, who are weak and voiceless. The very thing our culture discards and dismisses, God uses to silence His enemies. That’s how He works. If that offends your pride and reason, good. You weren’t saved because of your moral or mental strength; you were saved because of your utter weakness.
Think of the picture: infants—those who cannot speak a sentence, cannot defend themselves, cannot articulate faith in words. And yet, God ordains strength in them. Not someday when they’ve grown up and proven their capacity for abstract thought. But now—in their weakness, in their dependency, in their total need.
The strength God ordains doesn’t come from brawn or brilliance. It comes from His own Word—His promises placed in frail vessels. And this verse, whispered in poetic beauty by the psalmist, David, finds its greatest fulfillment in the waters of Holy Baptism.
How strange, then, that so many protest against infant baptism. They say, “But babies can’t believe. Babies can’t confess. Babies can’t choose God.” Exactly! That’s the whole point! No one can choose God—no baby or adult (see John 15:16). If not even the mighty disciples can choose Christ, what hope do we have? Faith is not a product of our maturity but the gift of God, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). And if God says He’s ordained strength from the mouths of infants, who are we to deny them His strength? What horrible child neglect!
Faith itself is the gift God gives, even to babies. The same Jesus who says, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them,” also says, “for of such is the kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 19:14). The word for “little children” here is παιδἰον (paidion), which is a specific word to indicate children below the age of puberty (this isn’t the only word for “children” in Greek). Guess what? That includes infants. They’re below the age of puberty, are they not? And Jesus does not merely bless them as a meaningless, impractical symbolic gesture. Jesus never works that way. He actually gives them the Kingdom. And how does anyone receive the Kingdom except through faith and Baptism (John 3:5)? The conjunction “and” literally conjoins things; it doesn’t separate them.
Thus, He gives them faith. Not because they understand. Not because they choose. But because He is gracious. Because He delights to bring life where there is none, and to plant trust in hearts that have not yet spoken a word. Faith that relies on human understanding is not gracious at all, for what, then, of our elderly who lose their intellectual properties due to Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia and become incapable of rational discernment of the Word? Or others who have some other intellectual incapacity to articulate their faith? Human reason—always—collapses before the efficacious Word of God.
Baptism is not our work—it is God’s. It is He who speaks, “This is My beloved son, in whom I am well-pleased.” It is Christ who clothes them in His righteousness (Galatians 3:26-27), buries them in His death, and raises them in His life (Romans 6:3-5). The Church doesn’t baptize babies (or adults) because they’ve earned it; she baptizes them because God has promised to work through means—water and the Word—to give faith, forgiveness, and new life to all whom He calls, regardless of age and intellectual capacity. How dare we place limits on His grace!
The world says infants are unproductive. They drain resources. They don’t contribute. They rob of us our autonomy. But in God’s kingdom, these little ones silence the Enemy. In their helpless cries, God speaks strength. In their baptismal identity, God declares war on the Accuser of souls and shuts his lying mouth—and yours.
What could Satan—or you—say against a child clothed in Christ? What accusation could he make when the waters of Baptism have drowned the old Adam and raised a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17)? The infant’s mouth may babble, but the Word of God on that child is loud enough to shake Hell itself. And although that child cannot yet confess with words, he believes because Christ is “the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2).
This is why Jesus Himself says, “Unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 18:3). This is no mere sentimentality—this is Christ’s own soteriology. The Kingdom is not for the competent; it’s for the incompetent. And the incompetent live by faith—faith that trusts, even when it cannot yet speak. For even the Holy Spirit must intercede for us adults when our own mouths fail us (Romans 8:26). Babies are not told to convert—to change—to the might of adulthood; we adults are told to change to the humility of helpless infants.
Psalm 8:2 is not just poetry; it’s a promise. In a world obsessed with platforms, God points to a cradle. In a world drunk on power, He speaks through the weak. And in a Church often tempted to measure faith by eloquence or maturity, He reminds us: “Out of the mouth of babies and nursing infants, I have ordained strength.”
Therefore, bring your little ones to the font. Do not let your reason hinder them. Carry them in your arms, just as those parents did on the day Jesus admonished them, and just as He carried the cross. Hold them in the water where the Spirit hovers and the Father speaks just as they did in the days of creation—the same Word of God that efficaciously accomplished what He spoke. And when you do, know this: you are witnessing a divine paradox—God wielding His might in a whisper, declaring through the helpless: “This is My beloved son, in whom I am well-pleased.” Amen.
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