When Adam delved and Eve span,
  Who was then the gentleman?

These words represent a once well-known and widespread rhyme in Europe in the late Middle Ages.

We are talking about the years between 1300 and 1500 — a turbulent time on our continent, filled with catastrophes, problems and social unrest. In this rhyme the disgruntled farmers expressed their aversion of the nobility and their power.

This nobility had emerged from the military ranks. After all, they had the job of defending the country against enemies and to protect the farmers’ possessions. They were, as it were, professional soldiers, who together formed a rank of officers and held a position of the knightly class. They belonged to the “retinue”, the entourage of the king, the duke or the lord of the castle, who ruled the region and to whom the peasants were indebted. Of the nobles it was expected that they cooperated with the ruler of the land and would protect it.

However, the practice was often very different than all these beautiful words might suggest. The knights were high on horseback — literally and figuratively. In days of war they fought indeed, but for the remainder they lived a life of hunting and seeking adventure, often combined with violence and adultery.

Knights were revelers — and while they were living it up the peasants worked their fingers to the bone. The feasts at the court had to be earned by the toil of the peasants, who had to strain to harvest the fruit from a barren soil in all kinds of weather! They could do the dirty work where no knight was willing to lend a hand. In the meantime the peasants were despised as stupid and ignorant creatures —   insensitive clods who were good only for hard work.

It could easily happen that these fanciful knights with their grand manners, sent out to collect the annual rent, would plunder the products of the peasants. If a farmer dared to oppose this corruption he ran the risk that the knights would burn down the entire place. The knights were robber knights!

Everyone understands: such abuses simply called for revolt, and the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have seen a lot of peasant revolts. In the earlier rhyme we hear a small sample of the peasant protest as well as a small sample of farmers’ pride. At the beginning of history there was indeed an Adam who had to dig as he was working the ground and there was an Eve who spun wool threads, but a gentleman (i.e., a knight) was nowhere to be seen under the sun. Apparently, knights show up later on in history; they actually do not belong at all. And when they do appear on the scene, they would do well to realize that everything started in the countryside and by the peasantry. Through this rhyme we are introduced to a fragment of medieval societal relationships within the European culture of that time.

It is interesting to involve ourselves in this subject. After all, the question arises how the church could function in that social situation. For many peasant protests were also directed toward the church. There too one could find a lot of loafers, partying people and profiteers: the so-called clergy — especially the clergy in the neighborhood of the richly decorated episcopal palace — also knew how to live it up! As a rule, such clergy was involved a lot more in land management and exploitation (you can think also of the profitable sale of indulgences) than in Bible study and in preaching. These individuals of the so-called spiritual clergy also lived at the expense of the peasants. How often did the farmers not have to counter both the aristocratic knights and the “papists”? That is the subject of another rhyme:

All papists know where there is something to eat.
But when it involves work, to their churches they retreat.

When we imagine this world, the question that interests us is: what did the church say and do in this situation? However, we cannot go deeper into these problems at the moment — however important and interesting they may be. In the Middle Ages, the church undoubtedly endeavored to make the knights into good Christians and to purify the knights’ ranks. But we cannot tell that story now. At this moment we only want to hone in on a detail — one which is still relevant in our present day. We will focus on the expression that arose in those days — the last period of the Middle Ages, just before the Reformation of the sixteenth century — all Christians are knights and belong to the knighthood.¹

This was not said to overthrow the social order of that time. The intention was to accentuate the high dignity of the Christian, the baptized church member. Before Luther was able to say in the sixteenth century: all Christians are priests — they had already concluded the related statement: all Christians are knights.

And what was meant by it? Of course it did not imply that every Christian had become a courtier of some prince or another. But it did mean that he belonged to the retinue of the greatest king: the heavenly King: Christ. Christians form a spiritual knighthood. That is the resonance we capture at the same time as when the angry farmers revolted. That sound became more powerful at the beginning of the 16^th century, and came to full strength in the Reformation of the church. It became so strong that it still resonates today and also reaches us, at the baptism of ourselves and of children and in the catechism, which we hear explained in the church and use in the catechetical instruction.

For a “knight” is everyone who serves the King and fights against the devil — that is the call we hear already from the time of the Middle Ages.

What is actually going on here? What train of thought is this? A metaphor is being used that was derived from the contemporary situation, and this imagery is applied to the position of the church members. In an angry fit one could say that such a figure of speech is like an easy and cheap way to put bad things in a positive light: a way of glossing over things. Typically a trick of a “clergyman”: with beautiful imagery they can escape a hard reality.

But it is not as simple as that. After all, for centuries the church had made use of military imagery as it relates to baptism. The strory about knights from the late Middle Ages was easily applied.

No doubt you have all heard of the phrase, “militia Christi” — the army of Christ. This is a metaphor that goes back to the apostle Paul with his well known instructions about the armour of God (Eph. 6:10-17; also Rom. 6:13; 13:12; 1 Thess. 5:8). Christians are soldiers of Christ in the fight against the devil and his many ploys.

In addition, the familiar word “sacrament” originally had a military connotation (in the time of the Romans). It was an indication of the oath that a soldier took on the banner when he was ceremonially incorporated into the Roman legion. At that moment he solemnly promised that he would never be unfaithful and would rather die on the battlefield than to abandon the banner. That ceremony was well known in the Roman Empire. That is why it is not surprising that the Christians applied this use to their own Christian life. They started to call their baptism a “sacrament”, an “oath to the banner”. In the baptism they were, after all, connected to Christ. They had been “incorporated” into him at that time and from now on they would have to carry themselves as soldiers of Christ.

In order to make this characteristic of baptism even more clear, it became customary at an early stage that the baptismal person was anointed in addition to the actual baptism. In the ointment a cross was drawn on the forehead. This “sign” was the “seal” of the person who was baptized, the hallmark of his incorporation into the army of Christ. From now on he served under the “banner of the cross”.

We are still reminded of that use when, in article 34 of the Belgic Confession we confess that baptism is the mark and emblem of Christ. This is a military imagery that comes from the first centuries of the Christian church.

However, we are not done with our story. Between those first centuries and the time of the Reformation a lot has happened. Christianity spread to the North and gained a dominant position in the countries of the Franks and Germans, the Saxons and the Frisians. In all those centuries that we call the Middle Ages the church has attempted to Christianize culture, and also to mobilize the knights and the aristocracy for the protection of the church.

Also within the walls of the church all sorts of developments got underway, also in the matter of that “mark” and “emblem”. The entire ceremony of marking the baptized person with the ensign of the cross started to become separated from baptism itself and grew into an autonomous sacrament for children between the ages of seven and twelve. To this day Roman Catholics call this the “initiation” or the “confirmation” to this day. It functions as some sort of completion of baptism. It assumes to present the gift of the Holy Spirit through anointing and laying on of hands, by which the child receives strength for a brave battle of faith under the sign of the cross. And it is easy to understand that in the time of the knights this ceremony was compared with the inclusion of young men in the knighthood. The church administered its sacrament of confirmation as an instrument to prepare young Christians for a brave knightly battle.

It is this tradition that we can still find today in our baptismal form, and that is the point we are addressing at this moment. The reformers detested the sacrament of confirmation wholeheartedly; they regarded it as a ridiculous spectacle and a robbery of honour in regard to baptism. Yet they did not want to lose the idea of ​​the chivalrous battle. They returned this notion to its proper place, namely in the ministry of baptism. When we are baptized, we are incorporated into the army of Christ; we are engaged in the valiant fight against the devil and all his henchmen. Luther noted in the introduction to his baptismal book of 1523: “Consider it well that it is not a joke to fight against the devil. That’s why we have to pray to God that he will strengthen this child so that, like a knight, he can stand against the devil in life and death.”

When forty years later the baptismal form of Heidelberg (= our baptismal form) becomes ready, the church there prays for the baptized infant: “We pray...that you will always govern this child by your Holy Spirit...Grant that he/she may he live in all righteousness under our only Teacher, King, and High Priest, Jesus Christ.”

Very concretely this means: this child after all has become a courtier — he/she may live directly under Jesus Christ, in his immediate vicinity. “Grant, Lord, that he/she will fight valiantly against sin, the devil and his whole dominion, and will eventually conquer.” In the original it actually says literally to fight “as a knight” (“ritterlich”). We hear in it the language used in the Middle Ages in the sacrament of confirmation and we can taste something of the cultural and social atmosphere of that time.

We can picture him before us: the knight armed with shield and sword (weapons of defense and attack, given to him by the king himself), who serves his prince and knows how to resist the great enemy. The shield is the shield of faith, and the sword is the sword of the Spirit, i.e., the Word of God. This shield and this sword cannot be handled by a person by his own strength or impulse. Therefore we also pray for a Christian and god-fearing upbringing and for the acknowledgement of God’s fatherly goodness and mercy. So we pray for good family nurture and effective catechesis. That belongs to the nobility, the rank to which God has elevated our children.

That is why it is part of the dignity of these children that the training at the seminary in Kampen delivers good catechists, who will be able to make the children understand the battle and to teach them how to handle the weapons. In this way Christian fighters will be able fight a good fight. That is a struggle that every member of the church has to carry out first of all in himself — the struggle against a lack of faith, temptations and all kinds of shortcomings in his imperfect life.

It is also an outward struggle — that same battle that the Heidelberg Catechism speaks of: together with the anointed Christ “to fight as king with a free and good conscience against sin and the devil in this life” (QA 32).

The Christian life is not a life of adventures and feastings, but it is an existence full of challenges and defeats. Every time we have to start over again, for Christ sets our conscience free through the righteousness that he grants us.

Luther was absolutely right when he said that it is not a joke to fight against the devil. But it is also true that we can serve cheerfully under this banner and joyfully bear our cross. For it is a high honour to live directly under Christ. He does not allow us to be discouraged, but he continually gives the enthusiasm and strength to his service.

So if an angry farmer would ask us today: “When Adam delved and Eve span, where was then the gentleman?” — then the answer is: that gentleman or nobleman was Adam himself. Did God not take him away from the devil and place him, with Eve, in the battle against the devil? Is that not what we can read in Genesis 3:15? And everyone who fights against the devil is a knight. Adam, who betrayed the kingdom, became a knight with God. When Adam was digging the soil and Eve was spinning the wool, their humble work was touched by grace. In this way it was possible that in the 16^th century the everyday work of all those ordinary people, who had to work in their sweat every day for their daily bread, received a new sparkle. Manual labour and professional work were no longer despised and social and economic life started to blossom. God’s elite forces lived not only in churches, monasteries and castles. Each farm became a garden of God under the sun and under that open sky the good fight of Christ was executed.

That we all may live like this — that is what the whole church prayed for each of us when we were in church for the first time. Together we form a church of knights and we know ourselves to be connected to each other in the one fight. That fight may be a chivalrous struggle — befitting our heavenly Lord and corresponding to our Christian position.

To fight as a knight — that implies fighting according to the rule of our position:

• not high on horseback, but as humble servants;
• not in self-assurance, but in self-denial;
• not in self-reliance and self-confidence, but in the dependence on our Lord;
• not complacent, but marveling about our high position;
• not being narrow-minded, squeamish or with cramped ideas, but generous and unselfish;
• ​not stubborn, but friendly and accommodating;
• not under compulsion, but as free children of God;
• diligent, but not overly critical;
• insistent, but not rigid;
• professing, but not with using big words;
• maintaining what is good, yet not frenetically conservative;
• with love for the law and an aversion to legalism.

This is the image of the knightly church. The world must be able to see in it what kind of people Christ is calling forth in this world as renewed people.

People who live right before their radiant King have a high status. They do not have to behave like a fanatical group or a scared army. They do not act pompously and they do not have to drown one another out. They can permit themselves such an attitude: for after all, their King is coming. Yet a little while and they will reign with Christ as kings over all creation (2 Tim. 2:12; see also HC Lord’s Day 12, QA 32).