Q & A Apologetics Philosophy (Baptism/Missions)

2. Baptize
I believe in believer baptism.
This issue is why I’m a Baptist and not a Presbyterian. As a matter of fact, I would rather be a member of a Baptist church tolerant and accepting of a Reformed theologian, although as a church they are not quite there, than a Presbyterian church, who throws away a precious doctrine for the sake of their inability to fully reform.

I joke with my Presbyterian friends that this is the issue on which they are just “hopelessly Catholic”.

It is on this issue that Presbyterians drowned us Baptists in 1525 and on in the Reformation as execution issuing from the church/state for not placing our children in the covenant community by infant baptism.

I’m proud of my Baptist heritage. Not because I value being Baptist above being Christian, but because I find biblical reason for identifying with being Baptist.

My desire is not to be contentious. Most of my heroes were infant baptizers. I just respectfully disagree.

I believe the Westminster Confession has a few blind spots. I love that document, but, it, as all of us, has it’s blind spots.

We don’t need to view this document or the Presbyterians that adhere to it with suspicion spiritually or morally. It should not hinder partnership for we have more in common than we do in distinction, but we need to be clear on what we believe.

Your thought on this issue can and should progress through the biblical text. There are a three stages that I see and we often cast away the third stage for fear that it makes Westminster’s point, when in fact it makes our point.

Stage 1: Every baptism recorded in the Bible was the baptism of a person who had professed faith in Christ. Nowhere in Scripture is there any instance of an infant being baptized.
1. Acts 16:15, 33
2. 1 Corinthians 1:16
These household baptisms are exceptions to this ONLY if you assume that “household” includes infants.
a. Acts 16:32
1. Luke steers us away from this assumption by showing that
a person needs to hear and believe “the word of the Lord” in
order to be baptized.
2. This is at least as plausible as the assumption that
unmentioned infants were in the jailer’s household.

Stage 2: The order of Peter’s command was, “Repent and be baptized.”
1. Acts 2:38
2. Romans 6:1-11
Romans 6:1-11 is not conclusive for either point except to affirm immersion as the normal mode in the early church because it does not contain a word about faith or any conscious response to the Gospel until verse 11.


Stage 3: Baptism is an expression of faith in God’s glorious work of the Gospel
1. Colossians 2:12
a. There are two mataphors in play here: 1. Circumcision 2. Baptism
1. Grammtically verse 12 is modifying the word circumcision in
verse 11.
Baptism is an internal work of the Gospel (via the means of the Holy Spirit) whereby a person’s sinful body of flesh is removed and they are baptized in the powerful work of God with Christ Jesus through faith.

In other words, by faith in Christ, one is circumcised by the work of God and baptized into Christ.

The external acts is a visible symbol of what happened on the inside.

2. 1 Peter 3:21
“1 Peter 3:21 is the nearest approach to a definition of baptism that the New Testament affords.”

This text scares many off because it seems to come close to the Roman Catholic notion that the rite of baptism saves (baptismal regeneration).

This text is our most powerful argument.

“Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,”

a. Romans 10:9 “because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is
Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you
will be saved.”
1. Does that passage affirm that a person is saved effectually
by confessing with their mouth Jesus? No!
2. Verse 14-17 They call on the one they believe in and they
believe because of the preaching of the Gospel. Faith comes
and they confess.
3. The confession of the mouth is a result of faith in the heart
resulting from the preaching of the Gospel.

b. 1 Peter 3:21 makes the same affirmation regarding baptism.

“The movement of the lips in the air and the movement of the body in water save only in the sense that they give expression to the single justifying act, namely faith.”

Baptism is an expression of faith in the glorious work of the Gospel.

Application:
1. Baptism celebrates a new heart and the turning away from the dead state a person was in.
a. This directly says that the former way of life was deadness and effectively
shames Islam or any other religion as devoid of life but full of death.

2. Baptism creates a new community called the church
a. Acts 2:41; 46-47
1. The community of the church “grew” as people repented in faith
and were baptized into Christ as their new identity.

3. Baptism is key to the completion of the Great Commission
a. Baptism only happens if we go to the UPG’s of the globe
b. Baptism only happens if we preach the Gospel to make disciples

4. The church IS THE ONLY community of the saved and is the communal result of the baptizing work of the Holy Spirit in the Gospel
a. The Gospel is not propagated inside Islam or Hinduism
1. E. Stanley Jones and Paul Chandler Warren are wrong.
2. Evangelicals proposing “inter-faith” methodology are wrong.
3. We must be clear on our goals and our methods.
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TasteAndSee/ByDate/2009/4337_Should_Christians_Say_That_Their_Aim_Is_to_Convert_Others_to_Faith_in_Christ/
a. We do seek the conversion of the nations to faith in Christ
and inclusion in his church that takes the indigenous shape
of that distinct culture

Great Commission TRCC Style

1. Make disciples of all nations
A. Make disciples
1. Individuals who come after Jesus
a. Repent
b. Believe the Gospel (faith)
1. Mark 1:15 “...repent and believe the Gospel.”
2. Just one of the reasons I’m not an advocate of child
evangelism.
3. Jesus said to not prevent the children from coming
to him. That’s right. Don’t either by preventing them
if they understand and desire to come or preventing
them by allowing them to pursue bad doctrine and
practice.
B. All nations (panta ta ethne)
1. People groups, ethno linguistically unique people groupings. Not
geographical political countries.
2. This is the church’s mission and this is missions. www.joshuaproject.net
a. 16,360 people groups
b. 6,641 UPG
c. 6.7 billion people in the world
d. 2.74 billion people in UPG
e. 41 % of the world’s population are unreached. That is,
there is no church and no Christians there. That defines
our task!
3. Misson’s is not maximizing the number of people who believe in
an area. That is the church’s task in evangelism and missional living.
4. The church’s task is seeing disciples made and the church birthed
to begin the work of evangelism and missional living.
5. Romans 15:17-21
a. Paul says the ministry of the Gospel of Christ was fulfilled
from Jerusalem to Albania! How is that?
b. It is because the Gospel had been preached, disciples made
the church functioning and now it was time to move on to
continue missions, and the church would then do evangelism
and become missional in it’s function to maximize the number
of disciples and to begin it’s own engagment of the unreached.

Strategy (transitive verbs)(participles = verbal / adjectives).

With participles, as we have here, it is not uncommon to assign the force of the main verb, “make disciples”, to the participles, which serve as transitive verbs (in the world of English).
However, the participles have clear meaning in definition of the strategy employed in carrying out the command.

1. Go
A. Often exegeted “as you are going”. This misses the contextual part of
translation and exegesis.
1. This gives the feel that as one goes about their daily routine if
they are preaching the Gospel they are doing Great Commission
work. Not true.
B. Literally: “going”
C. Going Strategy: Make disciples = Repent / Believe the Gospel
1. Learn where the Gospel has not been preached
“Find where hell is breaking loose and go”
a. We cannot avoid the hard places. We are mandated to go
to them.
b. This demands repentance from unbiblical values:
1. Safety
2. Independence
3. Internal ministry first or dominant
4. Exceptionally high pastoral salary

2. Begin praying about where to engage (which UPG)
1. Assess the skills of the congregation and determine what you can do in the region
3. Look for help from trusted sources engaged in that part of the
world (missions agencies, etc.)
4. Make the first trip
1. Take church members that are not Elders
2. Ask for workers to be sent
3. Look for people of peace and work with them
4. Heal – do good works that are needed
5. Teach the Gospel of the Kingdom
(see Luke 10:1-12; Matthew 9:37-10:24; Mark 6:7-13; )
5. Engage by the “front door” (be honest about who we are and
what we will and will not do)
6. Preach the Gospel
1. Baptize
2. Get the scriptures in their language
3. Allow them to take the scriptures and form the church in
their context with the Holy Spirit using the Scriptures as the
manual