Part 1 – The Sermon – Dr. Brian Borgman
Part 2 – The Interview – Pastor John Samson with Dr. Brian Borgman
The following article is written by a pastor friend of mine, Travis Peterson. He is a remarkable man in that he serves his flock Providence Reformed Church in Las Vegas even as he is legally blind. He is a very gifted teacher of God’s word and this article is a helpful explanation regarding the question, ‘What is a Reformed Baptist Church?’
Pastor Travis writes:
No matter what kind of church one claims to belong to, that label will carry with it definitions and distinctions which make one church different from another. As taxonomic classifications identify organisms from kingdom down to species, certain distinctions help us to know what a church is when we see what they claim to be.
When one sees the word “reformed” in a church’s name or identity, a few possible meanings may be present. For example, a church may suggest that being reformed is particularly tied to a Presbyterian denomination or confession, denying that any can be reformed who are not part of that group. More loosely, another may use the word reformed simply to mean Calvinistic as concerns the church’s beliefs relating to salvation. Still others fall somewhere in the middle, believing that a reformed church is one which has some particular distinctives, but which is not necessarily Presbyterian—Reformed Baptists for example.
Because Reformed Baptist is the context of Providence Reformed Church where I serve, and because many wrestle with exactly how to explain what a Reformed Baptist is, I thought it might be useful to pull together a couple of threads of thought and share them here. This post will include a summary of several key ideas which would take you a while to explain to someone else. Next week, I hope to lay out some strategies for explaining Reformed Baptist to others in a short and simple way. I am not here claiming to be the authority over how the phrase is used, but am only hoping to help explain what we mean in our church when we say “Reformed Baptist.”
Reformed Baptist churches are:1
Christian – Christian churches embrace the true message of the Bible and the gospel of Jesus Christ. The basic beliefs of Christians are often summarized in classic creeds such as the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and the Chalcedonian Definition. These statements focus particularly on the identity of the one true God existing as trinity and the person of Jesus as truly God and truly man. This distinction separates Christianity from other world religions and cults which deny the trinity, the deity and humanity of Christ, or the basic gospel.
Protestant – A Protestant church, unlike the Roman Catholic Church, embraces the five Solas of the Reformation. These churches believe that the Scripture alone is the final and highest authority for the church on earth. They teach that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and to the glory of God alone. Protestants recovered these biblical doctrines during the era known as the Protestant Reformation.
Reformed – A subset of Protestant churches, Reformed churches embrace the beliefs of key doctrinal confessions such as the Belgic, Westminster, or Second London confessions. Much of what is recovered in these confessions beyond the basic faith of the classic creeds has to do with the authority of Scripture, the structure of the church, and the doctrine of salvation including election. Reformed churches are distinct from other Protestant churches which do not embrace these confessions and doctrines.
Baptist – A Baptist church is a Protestant church that expressly declares that only those who are saved by Jesus are part of the true church. Baptists believe that those who are saved obey Christ through the ordinance of believer’s baptism as a public declaration of their faith. Baptists value the autonomy of local congregations and the congregational voice in church government. These beliefs distinguish Baptist churches from our Presbyterian brothers.2
Other theological and practical particulars are often seen as identifying Reformed Baptists as different from non-Reformed Baptists. One author suggests the following five distinctives:3
The Regulative Principle of Worship – This teaching limits the acts of a church in worship to those which God commanded in Scripture. This distinguishes Reformed Baptist churches from others which practice the normative principle of worship, the belief that all things are permissible in worship so long as they are not forbidden in Scripture.
Covenant Theology – This doctrine accepts the covenant of redemption, covenant of works, and covenant of grace. The covenant of redemption is the plan among the persons of the trinity to rescue a people for the glory of God. The covenant of works is the covenant Adam failed to keep when he disobeyed God in the garden and brought condemnation on humanity resulting in the truth that no human being can now earn his or her way to God through good works. The covenant of Grace is the free gift of salvation by grace through faith in Christ who lived perfection and died as a sacrifice to pay for the sins of God’s people. Believers in covenant theology understand that Christ is the fulfillment of God’s promises from the Old Testament and that the Bible is a unified account of God’s accomplishment of his plan of salvation. Covenant theologians, because of these beliefs, are distinct from dispensationalists.
Calvinism – Calvinists believe in the sovereignty of God in the salvation of all who are saved. Calvinism embraces sovereign election and denies that people come to Christ without God first moving them to do so.
The Law of God – A reformed understanding of God’s law includes the belief that the moral law of God is summarized in the Ten Commandments and that no one will fully understand the gospel apart from the law of God. Reformed Baptists will often see the law of God as useful to show a person their need for salvation, to help societies to restrain evil and destructive behavior, and to help the saved to understand the character of God and what pleases him.
Confessional – Reformed Baptists often subscribe to the Second London Baptist Confession (written in 1677, published in 1689). This is not to say that there may not be small points that require further explanation or with which the church may quibble. Yet the Reformed Baptist Church will declare the confession to be a true summary of the church’s beliefs.
While different individuals or churches may disagree with one or more of the points above, they are a fair summary of what is broadly assumed to be a Reformed Baptist Church.
Next week, we will look at how to explain what a Reformed Baptist is in a short and simple way.
1 The 1st 3 items of this list are found in Daniel Hyde, Welcome to a Reformed Church (Sanford, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 2010), Introduction.
2 Baptist began to distinguish themselves during the period of the English Reformation along with Congregationalists. Such Baptists are not linked with the anabaptist movement.
3 This list comes from Tom Hicks, “What is a Reformed Baptist?” (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Ministries) [article on-line]; accessed 15 July 2023; available from https://founders.org/articles/what-is-a-reformed-baptist/; Internet.
Ken Ham in a facebook post October 27, 2023 writes:
Could God have used evolution? Well, first of all, it’s not a matter of what God could have done but what he said he did. Secondly, if a Christian truly understands evolution and its processes of death, disease, and violence over millions of years, and understands the attributes of a holy God, then, no—God couldn’t have used evolution to create life. To do so would be against his own character.
Many Christians today claim that millions of years of earth history fit with the Bible and that God could have used evolutionary processes to create. This idea is not a recent invention. For over 200 years, many theologians have attempted such harmonizations in response to the work of people like Charles Darwin and Scottish geologist Charles Lyell before him, who helped popularize the idea of millions of years of earth history and slow geological processes.
When we consider the possibility that God used evolutionary processes to create over millions of years, we are faced with serious consequences: the Word of God is no longer authoritative, and the character of our loving God is questioned.
Already in Darwin’s day, one of the leading evolutionists saw the compromise involved in claiming that God used evolution, and his insightful comments are worth reading again. Once you accept evolution and its implications about history, then man becomes free to pick and choose which parts of the Bible he wants to accept.
The leading humanist of Darwin’s day, Thomas Huxley (1825–1895), eloquently pointed out the inconsistencies of reinterpreting Scripture to fit with popular scientific thinking. Huxley, an ardent evolutionary humanist, was known as “Darwin’s bulldog,” as he did more to popularize Darwin’s ideas than Darwin himself. Huxley understood Christianity much more clearly than did compromising theologians who tried to add evolution and millions of years to the Bible. He used their compromise against them to help his cause in undermining Christianity.
In his essay “Lights of the Church and Science,” Huxley stated,
“I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how anyone, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception of the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history…what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who, on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksands?”
Huxley made the point that if we are to believe the New Testament doctrines, we must believe the historical account of Genesis as historical truth.
Huxley was definitely out to destroy the truth of the biblical record. When people rejected the Bible, he was happy. But when they tried to harmonize evolutionary ideas with the Bible and reinterpret it, he vigorously attacked this position. He stated:
“I confess I soon lose my way when I try to follow those who walk delicately among ‘types’ and allegories. A certain passion for clearness forces me to ask, bluntly, whether the writer means to say that Jesus did not believe the stories in question or that he did? When Jesus spoke, as a matter of fact, that ‘the Flood came and destroyed them all,’ did he believe that the Deluge really took place, or not? It seems to me that, as the narrative mentions Noah’s wife, and his sons’ wives, there is good scriptural warranty for the statement that the antediluvians married and were given in marriage: and I should have thought that their eating and drinking might be assumed by the firmest believer in the literal truth of the story. Moreover, I venture to ask what sort of value, as an illustration of God’s methods of dealing with sin, has an account of an event that never happened? If no Flood swept the careless people away, how is the warning of more worth than the cry of ‘Wolf’ when there is no wolf?“
Huxley also quoted 1 Corinthians 15:21–22: “For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.”
Huxley continued, “If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if the story of the Fall is merely an instructive ‘type,’ comparable to the profound Promethean mythos, what value has Paul’s dialectic?
Thus, concerning those who accepted the New Testament doctrines that the Apostle Paul and Christ teach but rejected Genesis as literal history, Huxley claimed “the melancholy fact remains, that the position they have taken up is hopelessly untenable.”
He was adamant that science (by which he meant evolutionary, long-age ideas about the past) had proven that one cannot intelligently accept the Genesis account of creation and the flood as historical truth. He further pointed out that various doctrines in the New Testament are dependent on the truth of these events, such as Paul’s teaching on the doctrine of sin, Christ’s teaching on the doctrine of marriage, and the warning of future judgment. Huxley mocked those who try to harmonize evolution and millions of years with the Bible, because it requires them to give up a historical Genesis while still trying to hold to the doctrines of the New Testament.
The book of Genesis teaches that death is the result of Adam’s sin (Genesis 3:19; Romans 5:12, 8:18–22) and that all of God’s creation was “very good” upon its completion (Genesis 1:31). All animals and humans were originally vegetarian (Genesis 1:29–30). But if we compromise on the history of Genesis by adding millions of years, we must believe that death and disease were part of the world before Adam sinned. You see, the (alleged) millions of years of earth history in the fossil record shows evidence of animals eating each other, diseases like cancer in their bones, violence, plants with thorns, and so on. All of this supposedly took place before man appears on the scene, and thus before sin (and its curse of death, disease, thorns, carnivory, and so on) entered the world.
Christians who believe in an old earth (billions of years) need to come to grips with the real nature of the god of an old earth—it is not the loving God of the Bible. Even many conservative, evangelical Christian leaders accept and actively promote a belief in millions and billions of years for the age of rocks. How could a God of love allow such horrible processes as disease, suffering, and death for millions of years as part of his “very good” creation?
The god of an old earth cannot therefore be the God of the Bible who is able to save us from sin and death. Thus, when Christians compromise with the millions of years attributed by many scientists to the fossil record, they are, in that sense, seemingly worshipping a different god—the cruel god of an old earth.
People must remember that God created a perfect world; so when they look at this present world, they are not looking at the nature of God but at the results of our sin.
The God of the Bible, the God of mercy, grace, and love, sent his one and only Son to become a man (but God nonetheless), to become our sin bearer so that we could be saved from sin and eternal separation from God. As 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For He has made Him who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
There’s no doubt—the god of an old earth destroys the gospel.
Now it is true that rejection of six literal days doesn’t ultimately affect one’s salvation, if one is truly born again. However, we need to stand back and look at the big picture.
In many nations, the Word of God was once widely respected and taken seriously. But once the door of compromise is unlocked, once Christian leaders concede that we shouldn’t interpret the Bible as written in Genesis, why should the world take heed of God’s Word in any area? Because the church has told the world that one can use man’s interpretation of the world, such as billions of years, to reinterpret the Bible, this Book is seen as an outdated, scientifically incorrect holy book not intended to be believed as written.
As each subsequent generation has pushed this door of compromise open farther and farther, they are increasingly not accepting the morality or salvation of the Bible either. After all, if the history in Genesis is not correct, how can one be sure the rest is correct? Jesus said, “If I have told you earthly things, and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” (John 3:12).
The battle is not one of young earth vs. old earth, or billions of years vs. six days, or creation vs. evolution—the real battle is the authority of the Word of God vs. man’s fallible opinions. Is God’s Word the authority, or is man’s word the authority?
So, couldn’t God have used evolution to create? The answer is no. A belief in millions of years of evolution not only contradicts the clear teaching of Genesis and the rest of Scripture but also impugns the character of God. He told us in the book of Genesis that he created the whole universe and everything in it in six days by his word: “Then God said . . .” His Word is the evidence of how and when God created, and his Word is incredibly clear.
Death And Dying: A Catechism:
https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/article/death-and-dying-a-catechism-for-christians/
Article “Is the Lord’s Day the Christian Sabbath?” by Luke Plant
Original post: https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/is-the-lords-day-the-christian-sabbath/
Most of this post was written a long time ago, but I thought it would be useful to have somewhere public that I can point people to for my answer to this question, so I’m finally publishing it.
At the outset, I need to say that this issue is one that I think Christians should not divide over. The view I present below is not the one I grew up with, but I have no particular ambition to convert people to my view — except that, with regard to those who have the duty to teach God’s word, it is important to do so properly, “rightly handling the word of truth”, preaching the full counsel of God with all His authority, but never giving human ideas that same authority. It is to people with those duties that the following is really directed. The tone of this article should be interpreted with that in mind — my concern is with those who are not rightly teaching scripture (while being aware that I have failed and probably continue to fail in this extremely demanding privilege in many ways).
Before going on — if you are worried about the length of this article, the last two thirds of it actually consists of an appendix containing quotations from the early church, and are not part of the main argument.
For my definition of the concept of a “Christian Sabbath” or “Christian Sabbatarianism”, I will take this quotation from The Westminster Confession:
Chapter 21 VII. As it is of the law of nature, that, in general, a due proportion of time be set apart for the worship of God; so, in his Word, by a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment, binding all men in all ages, he hath particularly appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath, to be kept holy unto him: which, from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week; and, from the resurrection of Christ, was changed into the first day of the week, which in Scripture is called the Lord’s Day, and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath.
We need to ask if the above statement is biblically grounded or not.
First, a principle: in teaching people to obey God, it is a sin to add to the commands that God has given us. We are allowed to go no further than what the Bible itself requires in the demands we place on people, or we come under the condemnation of Jesus (Matthew 15:7-9).
We must teach only what the Bible teaches, and what can and must be deduced from it. As the Westminster Confession puts it so well:
Chapter 1. VI. The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.
In other words, we are not free to extrapolate, “read between the lines” or “join up the dots” in any way we please, but must teach all of what Scripture explicitly says and what necessarily flows from it, according to its own logic, and only that.
We note that Scripture may teach by precept, example or implication, but precept is stronger than example, as an example of behaviour found in the Bible could be good, bad, or incidental. Implication can be fairly strong or fairly weak, depending on the details.
I will respond to the claims of the Westminster Confession with a series of questions:
This leaves the case for Christian Sabbatarianism on very shaky ground, with neither precept nor example to support it.
However, we still want to answer the question “what should we do with the 4th commandment?”. This could potentially provide a case for a Christian Sabbath concept by way of some biblical logic. Answering this question requires looking at both the OT background to the command, and how the NT treats it.
We find:
On this basis, it seems very unlikely that the Jewish Sabbath is part of the moral law that all the world must obey. The Westminster Confession does not have an adequate biblical basis for saying that God appointed one day in seven to be kept holy by all people “from the beginning of the world”.
Does the NT ever speak directly on the issue of how laws about Sabbath or special day observance are to be handled by Christians? Thankfully, it does:
Negatively, the council of Jerusalem is also deafening by its silence on the issue. It specifically discusses the points where Jewish law impinged upon Gentile consciences. Sabbath observance was not practised among Gentiles, so I think the silence of Acts 15 on this matter is rather difficult to explain if the apostles believed that Sabbath observance was necessary for Gentiles and had been moved to the Lord’s Day after Christ’s resurrection, as claimed by the Westminster Confession.
OT and NT point unambiguously in the same direction. Other texts that are sometimes quoted (“The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath” etc.) simply don’t address the question (unless you have made the unbiblical equation of “the Sabbath” equals “the Lord’s Day”, in which case seeing these texts clearly will require a fair amount of un-thinking).
One text which is sometimes used to support the universality of the Sabbath is Mark 2:27, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”. This argument depends firstly on translating ‘anthropos’ as ‘man’, and then understanding ‘man’ to mean ‘all mankind’. It is perfectly possible to translate ‘anthropos’ as ‘people’ (as per the NET translation) or understand it in that way, and the argument then disappears. If I said “The Highway Code was made for people, not people for the Highway Code”, I would not be implying that wherever there are people, there is the Highway Code, and it will always be that way, time without end. In fact I would more likely be implying the opposite — the Highway Code is an invention that serves human needs, and can be adjusted or abandoned if necessary. The question is then: which meaning is more appropriate for this text? Given the OT history, which gives no hint of Sabbath observance for all mankind, either by precept or example, with the Sabbath being introduced by Moses and understood as a specific sign of God’s covenant with the nation of Israel (as above), it seems far more appropriate to understand this text as meaning simply “the Sabbath was made for people” — and not as a statement of the universality of the Sabbath.
There remains one argument I know of in favour of Christian Sabbatarianism: the Sabbath is part of the Ten Commandments, which are God’s eternal moral law, and therefore must continue.
First, in response, the Bible never states that the Ten Commandments are God’s eternal moral law. The division of the law into moral, civil and ceremonial, while useful, is not strictly biblical, and must always be subject to what the Bible actually says. The NT texts on the Sabbath make it clear that the Jewish form of the Sabbath (one day in seven rest) is ceremonial. We must not allow the systems that we have extracted from scripture (or think we have) to override plain exegesis. It is infinitely better to have holes, even gaping holes, in our systematic theology, than to handle the Bible in such a way that we override or ignore just one of God’s holy words.
The argument that the Sabbath is part of God’s eternal moral law reminds me of the proof that 2 is an odd number. It goes like this:
The proof that the Sabbath is an eternal moral command looks the same:
Even if we were to conclude the Sabbath is a moral command and must continue, we’re not free to make up how it should continue. The NT actually gives us no ground for saying the Jewish Sabbath has been moved to the Lord’s Day. We would be left saying that it continues just as it is in the OT (producing many difficulties which I won’t go into) — or, it continues and applies in the New Covenant age in the way described in Hebrews, that is, in a spiritual way as above (in other words, a long way round to the non-Sabbatarian position).
In fact, the NT is clear that the command is fulfilled in Christ just as other ceremonial commands are. We’re not left in the dark about how to understand it. If we attempt to put observance of the Lord’s Day as a Sabbath into a moral category, we produce an impossible situation when it comes treating people who fail to observe it. For matters of plain morality, we are required by scripture to judge people, to the extent of putting them out of the church and not even keeping company with them — “expel the wicked person” (1 Corinthians 5). When it comes to observing holy days, Romans 14 tells us that we must not judge each other, but rather accept one another (v1, 5, 13). To claim, as some do, that Romans 14 is talking about sacred days apart from the Lord’s Day is simply special pleading, as there is no basis for saying so. This is a simple reductio ad absurdum that shows we erred when making literal Sabbath day observance a NT obligation. Rather than it being logically inescapable that the Lord’s Day is to be observed as a Sabbath — which is the standard required for us to teach other people to so observe it — the reverse is actually the case.
To conclude the argument from Scripture:
The idea stated in the Westminster Confession that the Lord’s Day is to be the Sabbath from the resurrection of Christ to the end of the world cannot be found in Scripture, just as its statement about Sabbath observance “from the beginning of the world” is also insufficiently supported by the Bible. There are no statements whatsoever supporting the claim that the Sabbath must be observed on the Lord’s Day to this effect, either by precept, example or implication. If this idea comes from the Bible at all, it only does so by one possible extrapolation among several, and not by “good and necessary consequence”, which is the standard any teaching must pass before it can be taught from our pulpits. Further, it is an extrapolation that contradicts how the Bible itself handles the subject.
However:
The principle behind the need to set time aside to worship God can certainly apply to how we use Sunday (as well as other times in the week), especially if we have the freedom to use Sunday in a way that we choose. We also have the freedom as believers to “observe” the Lord’s day if we want to, whatever we mean by that — but not to put that requirement onto others (Romans 14:5-6). There is also the pattern that NT believers have handed on of meeting together on the Lord’s Day, and the commandment in Hebrews 10:25 to not forsake meeting together, which also mean that for most people, setting aside time to meet with God’s people on Sunday must be a high priority.
For myself, with my work situation meaning that I have the freedom to rest on a Sunday (when I’m not preaching), I’ve found it an enormously helpful practice, and one that I commend to everyone. In fact, I would be suspicious of myself and my walk with God if I was preferring to do other things on the Lord’s Day — I’ve got the other days of the week when I can work. My practice has changed relatively little since I’ve come to a non-Sabbatarian position. But making this a binding rule on others, or even on myself, is not something that Scripture allows me to do.
There is also the principle of “rest”, which is big topic and it’s not my purpose to look at it in this post. While I couldn’t agree with every word of it, I found Tim Keller’s sermon on Work and Rest to be really helpful.
While it is Scripture and Scripture alone that settles the matter, the Early Church is also of interest. To diagnose our own blind spots it is often helpful to look to what the Church has historically believed. The earlier you go, the less likely it is, in general, that waters are muddied by traditions of men that have been added.
I have not been able to find any evidence of Christian Sabbatarianism at all in the first two centuries. Many sources suggest some Christians continued to observe the Jewish Sabbath (i.e. Saturday) for centuries, but I haven’t yet found an early source for that.
In general, they describe the practice of Christians meeting together on the Lord’s Day as being pretty much universal, but without making it a Sabbath day.
Origen in 220 AD is the first to say that the Lord’s Day should be observed as a day of rest, but he seems to be out of line with most people of his time, who made no such rules.
Very clear quotes on the subject from early Christians, including early believers like Justyn Martyr, and authorities like Tertullian and Augustine etc. can be found at http://www.bible.ca/H-sunday.htm and are copied below.
They are quite explicit about Christians not observing the Sabbath, and not being required to — and in fact you are overthrowing the gospel if you do (Chrysostom)! Where they talk about Christians “observing” the Lord’s Day (which starts from about 3rd/4th century), it is as a contrast to observing the Sabbath, the main requirement being that Christians be joyful and that they meet together, and not that they refrain from any activity — which is called Jewish superstition and idleness.
Put together, they present overwhelming evidence that there is not a hint of a “Christian Sabbath” tradition that was passed down from the apostles.
Justin Martyr is worth looking at in some detail:
This is a report of a long debate with some Jews, in which the subject of Sabbath and circumcision comes up several times. It’s extremely clear that Justin Martyr did not consider Christians to be bound to observe the Sabbath or sabbath days, and had an understanding of the Sabbath exactly in line with what I have written above, often with the same proof texts.
And when they ceased, I again addressed them thus:—
“Is there any other matter, my friends, in which we are blamed, than this, that we live not after the law, and are not circumcised in the flesh as your forefathers were, and do not observe sabbaths as you do?
Trypho:
But this is what we are most at a loss about: that you, professing to be pious, and supposing yourselves better than others, are not in any particular separated from them, and do not alter your mode of living from the nations, in that you observe no festivals or sabbaths, and do not have the rite of circumcision; and further, resting your hopes on a man that was crucified, you yet expect to obtain some good thing from God, while you do not obey His commandments.
Justin Martyr:
I also adduced another passage in which Isaiah exclaims: “ ‘Hear My words, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. Behold, I have given Him for a witness to the people: nations which know not Thee shall call on Thee; peoples who know not Thee shall escape to Thee, because of thy God, the Holy One of Israel; for He has glorified Thee.’ This same law you have despised, and His new holy covenant you have slighted; and now you neither receive it, nor repent of your evil deeds. ‘For your ears are closed, your eyes are blinded, and the heart is hardened,’ Jeremiah has cried; yet not even then do you listen. The Lawgiver is present, yet you do not see Him; to the poor the Gospel is preached, the blind see, yet you do not understand. You have now need of a second circumcision, though you glory greatly in the flesh. The new law requires you to keep perpetual sabbath, and you, because you are idle for one day, suppose you are pious, not discerning why this has been commanded you: and if you eat unleavened bread, you say the will of God has been fulfilled. The Lord our God does not take pleasure in such observances: if there is any perjured person or a thief among you, let him cease to be so; if any adulterer, let him repent; then he has kept the sweet and true sabbaths of God. If any one has impure hands, let him wash and be pure.
“For since you have read, O Trypho, as you yourself admitted, the doctrines taught by our Saviour, I do not think that I have done foolishly in adding some short utterances of His to the prophetic statements. Wash therefore, and be now clean, and put away iniquity from your souls, as God bids you be washed in this laver, and be circumcised with the true circumcision. For we too would observe the fleshly circumcision, and the Sabbaths, and in short all the feasts, if we did not know for what reason they were enjoined you,—namely, on account of your transgressions and the hardness of your hearts. For if we patiently endure all things contrived against us by wicked men and demons, so that even amid cruelties unutterable, death and torments, we pray for mercy to those who inflict such things upon us, and do not wish to give the least retort to any one, even as the new Lawgiver commanded us: how is it, Trypho, that we would not observe those rites which do not harm us, —I speak of fleshly circumcision, and Sabbaths, and feasts?
Therefore to you alone this circumcision was necessary, in order that the people may be no people, and the nation no nation; as also Hosea, one of the twelve prophets, declares. Moreover, all those righteous men already mentioned [Abel, Enoch, Noah, Melchizedek], though they kept no Sabbaths, were pleasing to God; and after them Abraham with all his descendants until Moses, under whom your nation appeared unrighteous and ungrateful to God, making a calf in the wilderness: wherefore God, accommodating Himself to that nation, enjoined them also to offer sacrifices, as if to His name, in order that you might not serve idols. Which precept, however, you have not observed; nay, you sacrificed your children to demons. And you were commanded to keep Sabbaths, that you might retain the memorial of God. For His word makes this announcement, saying, ‘That ye may know that I am God who redeemed you.’
“Moreover, that God enjoined you to keep the Sabbath, and impose on you other precepts for a sign, as I have already said, on account of your unrighteousness, and that of your fathers,—as He declares that for the sake of the nations, lest His name be profaned among them, therefore He permitted some of you to remain alive,—these words of His can prove to you: they are narrated by Ezekiel thus: ‘I am the Lord your God; walk in My statutes, and keep My judgements, and take no part in the customs of Egypt; and hallow My Sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between Me and you, that ye may know that I am the Lord your God. Notwithstanding ye rebelled against Me, and your children walked not in My statutes, neither kept My judgements to do them: which if a man do, he shall live in them. But they polluted My Sabbaths. And I said that I would pour out My fury upon them in the wilderness, to accomplish My anger upon them; yet I did it not; that My name might not be altogether profaned in the sight of the heathen. I led them out before their eyes, and I lifted up Mine hand unto them in the wilderness, that I would scatter them among the heathen, and disperse them through the countries; because they had not executed My judgements, but had despised My statutes, and polluted My Sabbaths, and their eyes were after the devices of their fathers. Wherefore I gave them also statutes which were not good, and judgements whereby they shall not live. And I shall pollute them in their own gifts, that I may destroy all that openeth the womb, when I pass through them.’
I also came across this work, dating from AD 130 to the end of the century, which is relevant for its general tenor:
Chapter IV.—The other observances of the Jews.
But as to their scrupulosity concerning meats, and their superstition as respects the Sabbaths, and their boasting about circumcision, and their fancies about fasting and the new moons, which are utterly ridiculous and unworthy of notice,—I do not think that you require to learn anything from me.
Chapter V.—The manners of the Christians.
For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonoured, and yet in their very dishonour are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honour; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers.
The following are taken verbatim (including comments) from http://www.bible.ca/H-sunday.htm . I have checked the accuracy of some, but not most of them.
Article: Youth and Church Membership—Or, Stop Baptizing Children into the Ether by Alex Duke, editorial manager of 9Marks. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where he also works at Third Avenue Baptist Church as the Director of Youth Ministry and Ecclesiological Training.
So as to begin on the surest footing, allow me to list all the verses that directly address the topic of young people (that is, under 18 years old) and church membership:
That’s right. There are none. Never does the Lord tell us: this is how the new covenant people of God ought to embrace children into its number. (As I say this, paedobaptists grouse and facepalm.)
PRINCIPLED PRUDENCE
This conversation ought to happen in the realm of prudence and wisdom. This isn’t “Thus sayeth the Lord”; it’s “because the Lord hath sayeth thus about this and this and this, we’re inclined to believe this is the best way forward on that.” But the best prudential decisions are informed by principles; the best wisdom considers the law.
So what principles inform our understanding of youth and church membership? I can think of a few.
1. God saves young people.
If you were to take a straw poll at church this Sunday and ask your people a simple question—“How many of you were saved before your 18th birthday?”—it’s safe to say that many if not most people would raise their hands. Why? Because God saves young people. He saves 17-year-olds whose friends invite them to youth group. He saves 5-year-olds who show up at VBS because their unsaved parent simply needed a break and some free child care. God saves young people.
2. Church membership is only for those whom God has saved.
Our local churches—that is, our gatherings of the new covenant people of God; that is, our embassies of true Israel, now reconstituted under the headship of the risen and reigning Christ, filled by Spirit-filled priests—are not mixed bodies by design. National Israel followed a different story, of course: she was mixed by design. But not true Israel. In the new covenant age, God wanted to make crystal clear that new hearts aren’t given at the end of a
birth canal, but at the beginning of a life of faith.
3. When discerning an individual’s salvation, we look for a credible profession of faith.
When discerning whether or not someone should be recommended for membership—regardless of their age—we ought to listen for a clear understanding of the gospel, a clear sense that one has indeed been converted from death to life (even if they can’t pinpoint the day, month, or even the year), and a clear change in lifestyle and desires. If any of those three are absent, you should at least be willing to pause and consider whether or not the person in front of you has indeed been born again.
Not everyone who asks “What must I do to be saved?” really wants to be saved. Don’t believe me? Just consider the rich young ruler whose credible profession dissolved in an instant when Jesus asked him a single question about his life (Mark 10:17–22).
At least for credobaptists, these three principles are relatively uncontroversial. Unfortunately, I fear this fourth one has been largely jettisoned by many if not most credobaptist churches.
4. Baptism almost always accompanies church membership.
In 2002, I was baptized at a church but not into a church. I stood in the baptismal as a free-agent Christian, I went down into the water as a free-agent Christian, and I came up out of the water as a free-agent Christian. Never once did it occur to me—or, apparently, to anyone else—that baptism not only serves as an outward sign of an inward reality, but also as an outward introduction into a spiritual institution: the local church. I knew that baptism began my so-called Christian life, but I had no idea that my Christian life ought to be shaped around my submission to a local church.
Simply put, church membership should almost always accompany baptism. This is the nearly uniform witness of the New Testament, with the only exception that I can think of coming from Acts 8 when Philip baptizes the Ethiopian eunuch. But that exception proves the rule because it’s a baptism that occurs in a region and among a people where no church yet exists.
When we don’t keep baptism and membership close together, we turn membership into something unbiblical. So, unless you’re doing parachurch ministry among some remote tribe, baptism should accompany church membership.
That I was baptized without any connection to a church could only happen in a world that diminishes the role of the local church in a Christian’s life and discipleship. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon.
ONE OPTION OFF THE TABLE
Therefore, a church should not baptize young people apart from church membership. To do so is unbiblical, unhelpful, and unloving.
It’s unbiblical because the Bible never envisions baptized Christians living apart from membership in a local church (except on the missionary frontier, as with the Ethiopian eunuch).
It’s unhelpful because when young people begin to stray, their youth pastors are given a toolbelt with valuable tools already taken out. They can’t push a young person toward his elders; he has no elders. They can’t lay out the process of church discipline that lies before him should he continue on a particular path; he has no church who can discipline him, nor has he ever agreed to any kind of covenant that, upon breaching, would warrant his knowing removal.
And finally, it’s unloving because it hardwires in an individualistic understanding of the Christian life. For example, I was baptized at 12 and only about a decade later did I learn how Jesus intends for my discipleship to be shaped by and connected to a local church—under the authority of godly leaders, in fellowship with other saints.
That’s ten years where I was free to gallivant anywhere I wanted with no one in particular tasked before God to look out for me. Thankfully, God preserved me, but I think of my brother, or I think of literally dozens of friends whose baptism into the ether proved to be just that, the first step on a journey to nowhere. Their Christian life has dissolved, their Christian profession is now silent, and whatever tenuous connection to the local church their baptism established has been severed by a decade and a half of inattention. If a baptized person gets lost in a forest and no one is there to see it, does it really make a difference? Jesus seems to say it should (John 10:1–21).
Sadly, thousands of kids will face the same fate, and the churches they’re connected to have made it so.
They’ve been affirmed in their faith as a young person through baptism. Maybe they were 7-years-old; maybe they were 17. The moment accompanied such joy; it occasioned both a beginning and an ending, the old being washed away and the new finally coming.
But baptism apart from membership has led these young Christians through a doorway to nowhere.
It has ushered them into a place that looks like a beautiful home—a space where they can grow up and learn and explore. But it’s a façade. You see, when we baptize any new Christian, we tell them they’re family, that they can move in here with us, that they can plop down on the couch and pick out a bedroom and fill the refrigerator with their favorite food. After all, they’re going to be here a while. They’re home. But when we baptize someone apart from membership, apart from mutual commitment, we’re not inviting them into a home, but to an open house, 10am–2pm every Sunday. The furniture is staged, no one actually sleeps in these beds, and the appliances don’t even work. It’s all for show.
Churches and pastors and youth groups who make of practice of doing this, I encourage you to reconsider. It’s an unbiblical practice that bears bad fruit. Consider instead what might be helpful for that young person in five or 10 years. Consider how double-minded it is to affirm someone has been born again by God’s Spirit, but to keep them formally shut out of God’s people. Consider how—though I know it seems unthinkable right now, in a moment of such joy—you will one day forget about them, and they will forget about you, and all this would have stood for nothing.
THREE POTENTIAL APPROACHES
So, don’t baptize kids into the ether. That’s not a viable option. As I see it, however, there are at least three ways to approach this question without compromising any of the aforementioned principles. I’ll discuss these below, offering my own assessment as to how they adhere to biblical wisdom and best practices.
Approach #1: Except in unusual circumstances, a church will not accept any youth into membership because they will not baptize them.
A church like Capitol Hill Baptist would agree with the horror story I described above and, so as to avoid complicity in perpetuating that story to future generations, they will generally not baptize a young person who is still under the authority of their Christian parents. I think this practice properly underscores the seriousness with which any person—regardless of age—should take their profession of faith. See CHBC’s statement on children and baptism here.
An added bonus is that it clarifies that baptism is not a familial rite of passage. Baptism means a church has embraced an individual and an individual has submitted him- or herself to an institution other than their family.
The whirring engine behind this approach is that it’s simply hard to discern the credibility of a Christian child’s profession of faith. It’s easy to mistake obedience for regeneration.
Now, in unusual circumstances, a church like CHBC will show more flexibility: perhaps a neighborhood kid from a Muslim family starts going to church on his own and believes in Jesus; perhaps a 15-year-old has gone to public school his whole life and has a flourishing evangelistic ministry. In these made-up situations, the evidence would pile high enough so as to at least consider that young person a candidate for baptism and membership.
This is not my own view, but I’m sympathetic to this practice because it correctly identifies a problem: the scourge of nominal young people that scores of churches baptize year after year after year with no intention of ever bringing those individuals up for church discipline should their lives begin to undermine their profession of faith. In these cases, the problem isn’t the presence of baptism, but the absence of meaningful church membership and church discipline.
Sidenote: If you’re at a church that doesn’t practice church discipline at all, then you should follow this road if only because it keeps you from future disobedience.
Approach #2: A church will baptize a young person into membership-with-an-asterisk.
I’m currently the youth pastor of a church—North Shore Baptist Church in Queens, NY—that takes this second route. It’s a practice I inherited, and it works like this: We’ll baptize a young person into “provisional membership”—which means they can attend members’ meetings, serve in various capacities, receive free biblical counseling, and even be disciplined should they begin to live in unrepentant sin.
In almost every respect, they are members of NSBC except they can’t vote at our meetings, and they might be asked to leave should the topic be deemed (either by their parents or us as elders) too mature for them.
This approach acknowledges reality: they’re children, though most if not all are juniors or seniors in high school. But it also treats them in many respects as equals. It raises our expectations for them even as we’ve raised our own commitment to them—not just through their graduation from youth group but through the rest of their lives should the Lord tarry and should they stay nearby.
Approach #3: A church will baptize a young person into full voting membership.
This is basically the same as above, but with any restrictions removed. Sure, a parent may choose to withhold their child from a particular conversation, but it would not be required of them.
For what it’s worth, I’m partial to this choice because it’s cleanest. “Provisional membership” is an extrabiblical category. If a young person has been born again by God the Holy Spirit; if they are being renewed day by day into the image of Christ; if the Holy Spirit is producing in them such fruit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control, then I’m happy for them to cast their vote on questions of membership, leadership, doctrine, and all the rest. Wielding the keys of the kingdom is a privilege reserved not for adults, but for those who have received the Lord Jesus, those who have believed in his name and in so doing have been given the right to become children of God.
CONCLUSION
Lest I be scolded by my higher-ups, I’m not offering the “9Marks view” on this topic, if there is one—only my own.
No matter which of the three options above you choose, you should help young people understand that the Lord’s Supper belongs to members of the church (or members of other churches in attendance). Like baptism and membership, the Supper is a sign that we belong to the body (1 Cor. 10:17). And so it makes no sense to give someone the Supper but not baptism, as parents sometimes do with their children. We must keep these three things tied together—membership, baptism, and the Supper. To divide them changes their meaning into something unbiblical.
It’s true the Bible never directly addresses the topic of how we ought to introduce young people into the membership of our churches. But it does offer principles about salvation and processes of membership that are non-negotiable and therefore must inform and shape our practice.
Dr. James White and Pastor Jeff Durbin discuss the Early Church Fathers:
Transcript:
James White: They (Roman Catholic Apologists) wanna say, we aren’t really trying to retrieve the early church, and in a sense, they’re correct, because I don’t wanna retrieve the mess at Corinth. Okay. Which continued in Corinth, as we see in First Clement. What I want is the apostolic witness.
Jeff Durbin: Right.
JW: That is the issue. And in a sense, Rome agrees with that, they just simply say that the apostolic witness is not limited to Scripture. You have sacred tradition as the overarching banner. You have the written element of that and you have the oral element of that. And that’s where the issue is.
There’s this oral element and our argument is, you simply cannot demonstrate in any way, shape or form, that what you have defined on the basis of tradition was actually delivered by the Apostles to the first generation of Christians. It’s just not possible. And so that’s where, that’s where everything becomes discombobulated between the two.
But the point is that the Reformation, they were not saying, we’re gonna to start something new, you’ve messed things up so badly, we’re gonna start something new. They weren’t saying that.
They were saying these accretions, these editions of taking place over time where you get someone trying to do something good but they go off track and then that gets built upon by the next person, built upon by next person. And pretty soon you’re in the next County as far as – away from apostolic truth is concerned.
And so there has to be a mechanism of correcting that kind of thing. And once you make the church, the infallible interpreter of both the Bible and tradition, there’s no way of correcting the church any longer because the church now becomes itself infallible.
But this is very, very important because I don’t know about how many you’ve talked to, but I just have lost count of how many people I have talked to and said, “Well, once I started reading early Church Fathers, that’s when I found out I need to become a Catholic because they were Catholics like me, and all the rest of this stuff.” And I’m like, “What exactly were you reading? What exactly were you listening to? What do you do about this?” And I just point out one place and they’re so uncomfortable when they encounter just how variegated and how wide the opinions were.
And I’m like, okay, so if this becomes your authority, if this becomes the lens through which you read Scripture, no wonder you’re gonna deny the perspicuity of Scripture.
JD: Where the Roman Catholics and Protestants, Roman Catholics and the Reformed need to sort of mutually have a certain feeling of frustration with the Fathers. I feel it, and I’ve seen it with Roman Catholics I’ve engaged with, frustration they will have. Where you’ll look at a person and we’ve already said this, but you go, “That’s amazing. That sounds just like Jesus. It sounds just like Paul.” And then he walks to next page – faceplant, “You’re like, that’s frustrating.” And the Roman Catholic has to, if they have integrity, if they have honesty, they have to say they feel the same frustration that these fallible uninspired men, yeah. They say the stuff that I like…
JW: But…
JD: … And then they faceplant.
JW: But dogmatically, they have to believe Satis Cognitum said a long time ago, that the teachings on the papacy are the constant ancient faith of the church. They’ve been told, this is what we’ve taught all along. It’s not and that’s why I’ve said and I think I said this…
JD: And it could be demonstrated that it’s not.
JW: And I said this, I think I said this on my program yesterday. I said, I have for years said show me a single Bishop at the Council of Nicaea, first ecumenical council, an important topic, Nicene Creed (all the rest of that stuff)… show me a single Bishop at the Nicene Council that believed what a modern Roman Catholic has to believe ‘De fide’ by faith as in dogma. And they can’t, because there’s nobody there that believed what a modern Roman Catholic has to believe.
Now there were variances even amongst them, but the point is that the men who gave us the Nicene Creed did not believe in the Bodily Assumption of Mary and Immaculate Conception and Papal infallibility – if they believed in Papal infallibility, why were they even getting together? It doesn’t make any sense. And the whole idea that, well, the Nicene Council could only have been accepted if the Pope approved it, that’s rubbish. That is pure anachronism. So they have to massage the data. And that’s why I’ve said, hey when I teach Church history, I can let the early Church Fathers be the early Church Fathers.
JD: Just be honest about it.
JW: Just, just be who they were. I don’t have a system saying to me, you need to make them all into your mirror images back then or your entire system is actually false.
JD: That’s the point. Having the integrity to say, ‘they’re frustrating.’ An honest Roman Catholic in an honest Reformed person should say that. There, it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating coz there’s moments of great glory and moments of great..
JW: Right.
JD: Big face-plants.
It is not the church that gave us our Bible, rather it is our Bible the gave us the church. When the church made a list of the inspired Scriptures, these were already acknowledged to be so in the Christian community. The Church did not stand over the Scripture in authority but submitted to them, using the Latin phrase “Recipimus” meaning “We Receive.” That is vital to understand. The Scriptures are self authenticating, having their source in God. The church merely recognized and received the word of God. God created the world by His word and creates Christians the same way – “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” (1 Peter 1:23)
– John Samson