Why am I Baptist? Why not a Presbyterian? Why not a Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, or a Pentecostal? Is the issue of baptism really so important so as to break fellowship over it? Besides, Baptists were, generally speaking, the last to enter the game, they were even after the Reformation and aren't even, technically speaking, part of the Protestant movement of the 16th century, so why think they got it right and the rest of the church got it wrong for so long?
For most Christians, I suspect that they don't give a lot of thought to the denomination they belong to so much as the church they attend. What I mean is that most Christians are probably like one of my other friends: He used to be a Catholic, but due to certain behaviors by the church (largely involving the sexual abuse scandals and the physical abuse he saw, and experienced, at Catholic schools when he was younger) he decided as a grown man that he wasn't going to attend Catholic churches any more. Now he attends an Anglican church, though he will tell you he doesn't really know or understand what the differences in theology between the two are. He attends the church that he enjoys, not because of its theology, but because the people there have expressed love, and the worship is such that he enjoys it.
You might be surprised by me saying this, but that doesn't bother me very much. I understand the theological differences between many of the major protestant and post-protestant groups. Again, I can only say "many" because I'm sure there are a great number of small denominations that I don't know of and that have very minor or subtle differences from other groups. However, in my opinion, the most important thing isn't knowing every specific difference between certain denominations, but it is simply the question, "Is the gospel preached?" If a church is preaching the true gospel, despite what I might consider theological error or differences, then I'm content to trust God to save people by the power of his word and let him sort out the differences himself.
That doesn't mean I don't think theology matters, or that I would simply join any church, so long as they preached the gospel. Where I am now, there are multiple churches that preach the gospel. My wife and I decided to join the church we're now members of because we believe it is the best church in our area in terms of attempting to model the early church and be obedient to the word of God. For us, questions of membership, leadership, church polity, discipline, and biblical theology really matter. We want to be part of a church that is faithful to the word of God.
Which brings me back to the purpose of this essay, or post, or whatever you want to call it. Why did I choose the Baptist tradition? What makes me think that the Baptist view of church polity is the right one?
I was brought up in the Baptist tradition. But that isn't why I remain. You see, my father left the Assemblies of God, which he grew up in. He told me of talking with one of his cousins who asked him where he was going to church after he had married my mother, and when he told him, his cousin responded, with some distaste and confusion, "You're a Baptist?" So, though I grew up a Baptist, part of my childhood was knowing what we believed and why.
It wasn't until Seminary that I really ran into anyone who would challenge my choice of tradition though. Of course, I graduated from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, so you might imagine that the "Baptist" part of the seminary meant that I was encouraged by professors and friends to really embrace my Baptist identity. Certainly the professors taught from a Baptist position, and certainly they held a Baptist theology, but not all the students at the school were Baptists. There were several Presbyterians I knew, who attended SBTS because of the conservative theology, but who were in no ways interested in becoming Baptists. It was in conversations with them that I was challenged to really examine my own reasons for being a Baptist.
It all begins with a Covenant
Turn to Ephesians 2:11-13. Notice what Paul says here? "remember you were at that time... strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world." (Ephesians 2:11, ESV) This section, if nothing else, convinced me that God engages with his people through covenants. This is the key of covenant theology, understanding that God engages with his people through covenant, and that his covenants are the only way to walk with him. And, without Christ, I was alienated from those covenants, I didn't know God, indeed couldn't know him, because I was not part of the covenant community he chose to be his people.
Look though at verse 13, "But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." (ESV) What this tells us is that we are joined to God with a new covenant, not the old, to which we were aliens, but rather a new covenant, that draws us in. The New Covenant which joins us to God is the covenant God made in the blood of Christ. Paul is clear about that: we are brought near by the blood of Christ.
The fact that this is a Covenant is seen in what Christ himself said at the Last Supper, "For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." (Matthew 26:28, ESV) Christ understood that he was making a covenant between God and man. God, the initiator, was making a promise that those in this covenant would enjoy the forgiveness of sins. Further, God made this covenant open not to the few of Israel, but to the many of the world. God's covenant is to any who comes to him by the blood of Christ. This plays out in Ephesians 2:19-21, "So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord."(ESV)
Yet, with all covenants there is a sign of membership. For instance, I wear a wedding ring on my left hand, on my ring finger. This ring is a visible sign to the world that I am married. This is part of our Western tradition. If you see a man, or a woman, wearing a ring on the left hand, on the ring finger, your assumption is that this person is either married or engaged to be married. This is a sign of a specific covenant that remains in our day.
So, this is where the rubber meets the road. This is what makes me a baptist: What is the sign of the covenant?
This may surprise you
What's the sign of the covenant? Well, I'm a Baptist, what do you think I'm going to say? This may come as a shock to you, but, as a Baptist, I believe the sign of the covenant isn't Baptism.
Wait, what?
That's right, the sign of the covenant isn't Baptism. Believe it or not, this has long been part of the Baptist tradition. Our tradition has long understood that baptism belongs to believers. But, before you can be baptized you have to first be a part of the community. This is the irony of being a Baptist. We put so much emphasis on Baptism because it isn't the sign of the covenant. Baptism in the sign of entering into the church, but only Christians, only those who are in the covenant already, are invited to enter into the church.
Let's go back to the Old Testament to understand things.
For what we want to talk about, we'll begin with Abraham and the covenant that set the Jews apart as a people. The Law was not ultimately what set the Jews apart. Before Moses came to lead the people of God out of Egypt, already a covenant had to exist that set these people apart as the people of God. The first covenant that set apart a people for God, at least the first one we find detailed in Scripture, was the covenant God made with Abraham. Every male of the lineage of Abraham was to be circumcised, a sign of the covenant God made with Abraham.
So, in the Old Testament, the sign of the covenant people of God was circumcision. Even today, among Jews, this is practiced stringently. A boy must be circumcised on the eighth day, because this is the sign that he is part of the covenant community. Those who are not circumcised are cut off from among their people. (Just as a quick aside, note the irony there: those who are not cut in their bodies are cut away spiritually. There must be a trade off, so to speak, of physical flesh for spiritual community.)
For this reason, many today take baptism to be the sign of the New Covenant with God. But, do they have it right? Is baptism the sign of the covenant? Is that what Scripture teaches?
A New Covenant in the Old Testament
Now, I know this may be shocking to some Christians, but the New Covenant didn't originate with Jesus. I mean, it did, but it didn't. Christ, in his blood, initiated the New Covenant, but the idea of the New Covenant isn't found initially in the New Testament. Long before Jesus was born, Jeremiah had already prophesied of a New Covenant. In the book of Acts, it was not primarily the words of Jesus that Peter quoted, but of the prophet Joel. The New Covenant is very Old Testament.
This is where we find the answer to the question asked above: What is the sign of the New Covenant?
Here's Jeremiah 31:31-34:
Behold, the days are coming, declared the Lord, when I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, "Know the Lord," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.(ESV)Likewise, we read in Joel 2:28-29:
And it shall come to pass afterward,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophecy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
Even on the male and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit.
The sign of the covenant, in the Old Testament, isn't baptism. The sign is the pouring out of the Spirit of God. In Jeremiah we see this as God says that his people shall know him and his law will be within them, written on their hearts. In Joel we see it explicitly as God promises to pour out his spirit upon "all flesh" in the day of the New Covenant. We know this is the correct application because this was what Peter sited as the section of Scripture that explained what took place at Pentecost.
We are informed here by what we read in Hebrews 8:13, "In speaking of a new covenant he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete is growing old and is ready to vanish away." The old covenant, made in the flesh via circumcision, has passed away. The old covenant defined the people of God by marks in the flesh and a physical ancestry. The new covenant, however, is different. The new covenant, or more appropriately, the New Covenant, is marked not by the flesh, but by the Spirit. Those who are members of the New Covenant have come to God by Christ, they have received the Spirit of God and are joined to a new body.
Why it matters
So, what's the point? Why does that matter, and why does that make me a baptist? The answer here is because I believe that the only persons who belong to the New Covenant are those who have been joined to God in Christ. Only those who have been joined to God in Christ bear the mark of the Spirit and are rightly called partakers of his blood. Because they have been joined to God through the covenant relationship established in the blood of Christ, they then are the ones who are to be baptized into the church. Already they are members with Christ, but the baptism is the symbolic recognition of this fact by the church.
My children have not been baptized because they are not yet members of this covenant. The church isn't a mixed people, or at least it isn't supposed to be a mixed people. The reality is that it will be a mixed people until the return of Christ. However, that is despite our attempts at purity, not because we simply baptize all people into the church and then remove the ones we discover weren't Christians in the first place.
The implications of the question of who we baptize are profound. For instance, we see church discipline as a command in Scripture. It isn't optional. But what sense does Church discipline make if we baptize children into the church who haven't yet reached an age where they have any understanding of the gospel?
We would have to publicly rebuke rambunctious and rebellious children who show no thought of Christ, because they are 5 and 6 years old and don't know Christ yet. We would have to remove our children from the church from the moment they begin to show rebellion and sinful attitudes because they aren't Christian yet. We would baptize them in, and then, in the vast majority of cases, we would have to remove them from membership, only to add them back later if they came to Christ. But those churches that practice infant baptism do not do this by and large.
Instead we make excuses. We say, "Of course children aren't going to show the same behavior as adults." Scripture commands us to remove the non-Christian from our midst. If we are honest, the vast majority of our children only come to Christ years after we know they aren't Christian. But at what point do we begin to exercise church discipline upon them? At what point do we expect them to act like Christians? And are we expecting non-Christians to act like Christians because they come from Christian families? What sense does that make in light of Scripture?
Further, baptism is linked to faith by Scripture itself. So baptizing our children doesn't make sense in light of what Scripture says about baptism. Consider Ephesians 4:4-6: "There is one body and one Spirit--just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call--one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all and in all." Notice that baptism is included here with everything that belongs to salvation: One body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. Are we arguing that baptism belongs to those who are not saved, as the sign of a covenant that they are not partakers of, and that they, who are alienated from God and without Christ, are supposed to call him Father?
The error that we make is that assuming that because the old covenant was passed on in familial line, so the New Covenant is passed on in the same way. That simply isn't true. Our children are not partakers of the covenant unless they have the sign of the covenant. And the sign of the New Covenant is not a sign that we can give via the flesh. The sign isn't baptism, the sign is the Spirit of God. We baptize those who have demonstrated that they have faith, that they are joined to Christ via the Spirit, so that we are all part of the family of God. Baptism is the entrance into the family of God publicly, and so it is reserved to those who are members of that family.
I'm sorry for having to end this so abruptly. There is much more that needs to be said, and much more that needs to be fleshed out. Hopefully I'll have time to come back and add more. However, I am a father myself, and my children call for my time. Forgive me for being so abrupt in the last few paragraphs. May this encourage you and challenge you to consider the proper place of baptism, whether you agree with me or not.
May the peace of God and the grace of Christ be with us, and may he guide us into all truth through his Spirit. Amen.
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