BAPTISMAL REGENERATION & THE EARLY CHURCH w/ Dr. Tony Costa @tonycostatorontoapologetic5307

The Apologetic Dog

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:20

Hello, and welcome to The Apologetic Dog, where it's our heart's desire to contend for the gospel of grace.

00:28

I'm your host, Jeremiah Nortier, and I serve as a pastor and elder at 12 Five Church in Northeast Arkansas, specifically in Jonesboro, Arkansas, where we are the only

00:38

Reformed Baptist church, and we love our evangelical brothers that we pray for before every service, and we gotta lock arms with the gospel of grace.

00:48

And so, I have a very special guest this evening that I want to formally introduce you all to, and I want us to dive right in.

00:55

My guest is none other than Tony Costa. He is an instructor at the University of Toronto.

01:01

He's received his BA and MA from the University of Toronto and a PhD in theology and New Testament from Radboud University, Nijmegen in the

01:13

Netherlands. Tony is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society. His lectures are at various conferences, and he teaches and engages in academic debates in North America and abroad on various topics related to Christian apologetics.

01:27

He has had 40 years of ministerial and academic experience. He's an ordained minister and a pastor of Parklawn Baptist Church in Toronto.

01:37

He is the author of Worship and the Risen Jesus in the Pauline Letters and Early Christian Creeds and Hymns.

01:45

In the forthcoming book, No King But Christ, Tony is also a writing contributor to various books and academic journals, including book reviews with various theological journals and the review of biblical literature.

02:00

Tony is married and lives in Toronto, Canada. Mr. or Dr.

02:07

Tony Costa, did I get all of that in there okay? Yeah, that was pretty good. Very good. I mean, the fact that you can pronounce

02:13

Radboud University name again, that's quite a feat. We'll say I love your accent.

02:19

I love it. You'll have to excuse my Southern drawl down here. We talk a little bit slower in the deep sound.

02:25

Love it, we love it. Well, Dr. Costa, do you care to tell us a little bit more about who you are and where people can find your content?

02:33

Yeah, sure. As I said, I live in Toronto, Canada, and I'm born and raised here in Toronto, and I am a

02:42

Christian apologist. I've been in apologetics since the age of 18. So that's about 40 years now, 58 now, or going on 58.

02:52

And I'm also a pastor. I pastor a church in Toronto called

02:57

Parklawn Baptist Church. I'm also an academic. I do teaching with the

03:03

University of Toronto in various areas, archeology of the ancient Near East in the

03:08

Bible, and also gospel studies. And I'm a former professor of various seminaries in Canada and the

03:15

United States. And I continue to put out apologetic resources on my

03:22

YouTube channel called Toronto Apologetics. And so there's a wide spectrum of various topics, not just one, it's variegated.

03:32

So yeah, so that's my ongoing ministry. And my passion is to edify the body of Christ, to teach them, to equip them with the tools they need to not only proclaim

03:43

Jesus Christ, but to defend Jesus Christ and to defend his gospel, which is so, so needed in our day.

03:51

Amen, brother. Well, I just wanna encourage people, go check out Toronto Apologetics with Dr.

03:57

Costa. He has blessed my heart for many years in learning apologetics. You and Dr.

04:03

James White, y 'all have been a huge influence in me stepping in to the apologetics arena.

04:08

And we have so many mutual friends. I just wanna give a shout out to Anthony Uvino at, his channel is

04:16

Reformed Rookie. And y 'all had a discussion on baptism a few years ago,

04:22

I believe, and y 'all were able to talk about, you know, is it credo Baptist? Do we baptize people in light of a confession that they profess faith in Christ?

04:30

Or do we baptize infants? Do you remember having that interview with Anthony? Absolutely, I love

04:36

Anthony and his family. I have broken bread with him in Long Island, and I've spoken at his church several times, a

04:44

Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Long Island. And so he's a dear brother, and I just love

04:52

Anthony. He moderated one of my debates with a Roman Catholic apologist, Dr. Robertson Jennis.

04:58

And so he's a wonderful brother. Well, he sure is. He's had me on the

05:05

Reformed Rookie, and I was like, hey, I'll let you know a little bit of what I'm learning over here. What we discussed was how

05:11

Sola Scriptura is the heartbeat of a Christian, how God's word is truth, that's what everything has to ultimately be grounded in.

05:19

And so I wanna encourage people, go check out Reformed Rookie. And so the reason why I had you on today is

05:24

I wanted us to continue this conversation of baptism in one resource, and we might talk more about resources at the end as well.

05:32

I have a few books I'd like to recommend people. But you and Anthony talked about this book right here.

05:38

Now, this is more aimed at showing the theological development of paedo -baptism.

05:43

Is there anything else that you'd like to tell people about this resource? Well, the wonderful thing about Dr. David Wright is that he was not raised as a credo -baptist.

05:53

He was actually a paedo -baptist. And when he started studying church history and the various treatises written on baptism, he was struck with the fact that infant baptism was not there from the beginning.

06:07

In fact, he argues that infant baptism evolved in Christian history, and it was really with Augustine that you have the catalyst for this push of infant baptism.

06:19

So I found it a very, very intriguing work. He's a very honest scholar, very straightforward.

06:25

It's very well documented with multiple sources. So this is a book

06:31

I would highly recommend. Well, thank you so much for that resource.

06:37

On my channel, I try to educate people the best of my ability, the importance of baptism and how it's not merely a symbol.

06:47

It does more than that. The Spirit is involved to what degree. I get in awesome conversations with my

06:53

Lutheran friends and Anglican friends, and I try to salvage, hey, something is going on efficaciously with the

06:59

Spirit sanctifying the believer as a celebration to the body. And so it's for those that confess faith, that know

07:09

Jesus and how Romans 8 quoting the Old Testament, those who have all their sins forgiven.

07:16

And so then the question always gets brought up. Yeah, Jeremiah, but what about infants? The promise is to you and your children.

07:23

And so that's where you, Dr. James White, of looking at Acts 2 .38 into Acts 2 .39

07:28

was saying, hey, we gotta be consistent with context here. But this does kind of pertain to why

07:34

I wanna have you on is I wanna focus, I guess, both on the history of baptism as it relates to baptismal regeneration.

07:43

And I'd like for us to discuss some of the quote -unquote proof texts of saying, how can you deny baptismal regeneration with Titus 3 .5

07:52

or Acts 2 .38? And so once again, on my channel, I heavily evangelize the

07:59

Church of Christ. Are you familiar with that kind of restorationist movement? Yeah, I am, yes.

08:05

Yes, so in my estimation, the Church of Christ, so you and Anthony, y 'all focused on patal baptism and talked about that historical development.

08:15

I'd like to kind of engage a little bit with the Church of Christ. Now, what's interesting with the Church of Christ is they're very anti -creed.

08:22

I would almost say anti -church history. Now, when you look at the spectrum of the

08:28

Church of Christ world, this gentleman here on the screen, I've actually debated, and I have a lot of respect for, and so he is a moderate right -leaning

08:35

Church of Christ that actually will talk about Alexander Campbell, will talk about Pelagius, and he will talk about historical development.

08:44

And he sent me a video a long time ago. He goes, Jeremiah, you've all been lied to. Saying that baptism is not necessary for salvation, that was the universal standard for all of church history for all of these years until Aldrich Zwingli.

09:01

Have you ever heard of an objection like that before? Not exactly like that. No, I've dealt with Church of Christ folks.

09:08

I even dealt here in Toronto. We were having a serious issue with an offshoot of the Church of Christ. You've probably heard of it, the

09:15

Boston Church of Christ. And they were a break -off group, and they were targeting a lot of the university campuses.

09:21

So I remember I was invited to speak on this and speak to challenge them at Ryerson University, which is one of the universities here in Toronto.

09:33

It's now known as Metropolitan University. And they invited me, and they had their lawyers there.

09:39

They were just ready to pounce on me if I said anything scandalous.

09:45

All I did was quote it from their sources. So a long story short, that group has kind of fizzed out.

09:53

And I've dealt with Church of Christ, and you're exactly right. One Church of Christ minister told me, he says, you know,

09:58

Tony, we have no creed. I said, well, that is your creed. Your creed is that there is no creed.

10:04

So it kind of went into a circular argument, begging the question and so forth. So I'm very familiar with them, the

10:10

Campbellites. And yes, you are right. They're very cult -like in that they believe that they are the only true church, and that you need to be baptized in their church in order to be saved.

10:22

And your baptism, if it was done in a Baptist or Pentecostal or Methodist, Lutheran, is invalid.

10:27

And so you need to come under their authority. Yeah, and I get accused of being a meanie for using the cult word.

10:37

And I kind of said, I kind of have two definitions for cult. One is historically, those that have led movements that have been led astray and capitulated on doctrines of Christology, believing in right

10:50

Jesus, and compromising the gospel of grace. And so what a leader, a figurehead that can be pinpointed with this restorationist movement is

10:59

Alexander Campbell. And so that's kind of my historic point. And biblically,

11:04

I would say, you know, 2 Peter chapter two talks about destructive heresies. And this is where the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, we have to be so careful because as we look at church history, not every person that said baptismal regeneration or things close to that meant the same thing.

11:22

And it's right on the cusp, and I'd love to hear your thoughts about this, of compromising justification by faith alone.

11:29

I agree. I think that, I think one of Luther's, I mean, we need to distinguish

11:35

Luther, the pre 1525 Luther and post 1525. Before 1525

11:41

Luther, and even Zwingli, when they were looking at the scriptures afresh, they began to look at, you know what?

11:49

Baptism usually follows faith, confession of faith, belief, and so forth. And you need to understand as well that the people like Conrad Grebel and other

11:58

Anabaptists, they came to Zwingli and they presented the case. They said, look, Zwingli, we love your reformation, but you're not going far enough because baptism, the baptism of infants is something that is unbiblical.

12:13

And I think it was the rise of the Anabaptists that pushed Luther back and Zwingli, and I think Calvin to some extent.

12:19

But the pre 1525 Luther, very strong on justification by faith. He wrote a track called

12:25

Jesus Christ was a Jew. He was very amicable towards the Jews. And so very strong, sola fide, sola gratia, and so forth.

12:33

And then of course, with the wars that took place when he was in the Wartburg Castle, you get these peasants revolting, they're smashing churches and Roman Catholic churches.

12:42

And Luther is so shocked by this that there's a change.

12:48

You could see it after 1525, he starts focusing more on baptismal regeneration. He goes ballistic on the

12:54

Jews. He writes a tract against the Jews and their lies. He withholds fellowship from Zwingli over the

13:00

Lord's Supper. And so I think the situation with Luther is in one sense, he's talking from both sides of his mouth.

13:08

First he says, it's justification by faith alone, very strong election. He wrote the bondage of the will against Erasmus.

13:15

And then you got this baptism regeneration. So which one is it? Is it, are you justified by faith alone?

13:22

Or is it justification by faith and baptism? So that's where I find with our

13:29

Lutheran friends and I love them. I have many Lutheran friends, dear brothers in the Lord. But the one thing I just find, there's this tension that you wanna hold on to the sola fide, sola gratia aspect, but then you need baptism in order to be saved.

13:44

So I see a tension between those. And the response that I always hear is that, well, it always comes down to a mystery.

13:51

It's this mystery. Luther was a theologian of the heart. Calvin was a theologian of the mind.

13:57

So when you start going into these areas of, well, it's a mystery, it's mysterious. I mean, it becomes,

14:05

I just find that it becomes unfalsifiable if you start arguing that way. Yes, so true.

14:12

As we continue to develop our conversation, I wanna encourage the side chat. If you have any questions, send them in the side and preface it with Q or question, because this may be your only chance to ask

14:24

Dr. Acosta a question. And I wanna integrate y 'all in along just to kind of organically develop this.

14:31

We're gonna talk about church history. And Dr. Acosta, I love what you said about, we believe that it's faith apart from works, including baptism, that justifies a believer.

14:45

And so what we're saying is baptism and faith are not identical or they're not synonymous terms.

14:52

They relate to one another. But I would argue baptism demonstrates faith.

14:57

It takes, baptism is faith working itself out. And so apologetically,

15:03

I'd like for you to speak to this, like in debates, like I said, I've done this. I don't even know how many debates with Church of Christ specifically, but defining terms, defining terms like faith and works, showing how they are inextricably linked, but they are distinct.

15:17

Justification and sanctification relate to one another, but they are different. You can't conflate those two categories and commit the

15:24

Roman Catholic error and damage goods of how they conflate law and gospel. And defining terms like obey, obedience, and how that is not synonymous with faith.

15:36

Your faith produces obedience. But would you say that that is, how important is that in terms of the debate, defining your terms like that?

15:45

Very important. I mean, I've always said that if a doctor does not know the difference between appendicitis and tonsillitis, it could be a matter of life and death.

15:53

And if he confuses those two, you're gonna be dead from a birth appendix. Same with law, in the area of law, if a lawyer doesn't know the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony, you could be doing life for a parking ticket and be just paying a fine for murder.

16:08

So if language is vital in the areas of medicine and law, how much more in theology?

16:13

This is where the Trinity, when you have all these heresies popping up in the first three centuries, it's because people are confusing categories, confusing person with being.

16:22

And so you get all these confusions and this leads to heresy. So language is extremely, extremely important here.

16:28

So faith is the means by which God justifies the ungodly.

16:34

Our father Abraham was justified by faith. He believed on the Lord and he was credited unto him as righteousness.

16:40

Genesis 15 verse six, Hebrews 11 gives us the great hall of faith, where all of these men and women of God in the past, they were made right with God by faith.

16:50

And so works, however, works is the fruit of faith. Faith is the root and of course, works is the fruit.

16:58

And so James goes on to say, look, if a man says I have faith, but he has no works, can that faith save him?

17:06

Can that kind of faith save him? And the implied answer is no, because true faith generates good works, which again,

17:13

God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in faith. And Christ in Titus 2, 10 to 11, or verse 14, rather, it says that he sanctified a people for himself that are zealous for good works.

17:25

So we keep those two distinct. They're not the same. And faith always precedes works and works is the natural outgrowth of our faith, but it's not the means of our salvation.

17:36

It's the product of our salvation. So good works are not done to be saved.

17:42

We do them because we are saved. Well, thanks so much for saying that. I wanna encourage everybody, if you would like to show some support to the apologetic dog,

17:51

I will better see the Super Chats as we do every live stream. So if you want me to really see your questions or express your gratitude to Dr.

18:01

Costa, I would really appreciate that. I do have a question here before we get into some of your slideshows that you have prepared.

18:07

Born Again RN says, I have a question. When Polycarp wrote he was a

18:14

Christian for 70 plus years, Pato Baptist will say that he was baptized as a baby, but does this just mean that he became a believer and lived a really long time?

18:25

So Dr. Costa, do you kind of get the essence of what's being asked here? Yeah, I mean, Polycarp is put on trial and he is asked to recant, to deny

18:35

Christ. And he says, why would I deny my king who's done me no wrong? And I've been faithfully serving him for 70 plus years and so forth.

18:44

So he's not talking about infant baptism here. In fact, Dr. Wright mentions this in his book.

18:50

He's simply talking about how long he's been serving Christ. And so if Polycarp saw himself as God's elect, which if you look at Clement of Rome, he talks about God electing his people from the foundation of the world, then he's correct.

19:04

He could say, yeah, for these many years I've been serving God because he saw himself as one of God's elect. There is no mention in the apostolic fathers.

19:12

This is important. Irenaeus, Ignatius, Polycarp, all of these men are called the apostolic fathers.

19:18

They followed the apostles. None of them talk about infant baptism. And so those who are paedobaptists will read

19:26

Polycarp and they have to read this into his quote here. But there's nothing in that quote to insinuate that he was baptized as an infant.

19:35

He's simply talking about how long he's been faithful to Christ as one of his. Well, hey, thank you so much for addressing that.

19:45

We have a number of questions in the side chat. So I wanted to address them throughout our live stream, but kind of going back

19:51

Dr. Costa to this right here, you've been lied to. And so, like I said,

19:56

I've heard this in so many different shapes and forms from Eastern Orthodox to Roman Catholics and certain strands of Church of Christ of saying believing that baptism is necessary for your salvation,

20:10

I think the implication is justification. So tell me if this is good, because this is what

20:15

I try to bring out in some of my discussions. Not all baptismal regeneration is equally as bad.

20:21

I do let people know it's bad, like don't go that route. But it's baptismal justification.

20:27

If you think of the moment that you enter into the watery graves of baptism, that's a phrase the Church of Christ like to say, well, that is the means of literally having your past sins washed away.

20:39

I'm saying that's a Galatian one heresy. And you've confused the representation with the reality and you've conflated law and gospel.

20:49

So speak to that. Has the church for 1500 years before the

20:54

Reformation, was everyone in total agreement on what baptism even meant? Well, again, whenever you hear people say, this is the consensus of the fathers, you have to be wary.

21:05

Because if you look at the various fathers of the church, there was a lot of disagreement on various issues.

21:11

When you look at baptism, there were debates about how do you baptize. The didache from 112

21:19

AD says you baptize in running water in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Or if there's no living water, that means a creek or a river, then do it in still water.

21:29

And if you can't do that, in certain cases you could pour water on the head. And then of course you have people like Basil the

21:38

Great, the great Cappadocian father, who said that when you baptize, you should be baptized, you should have multiple immersions in the names of the

21:49

Trinity, and you should be facing east as well. And then you have Tertullian in the year 200 saying that there's this weird practice going on where people are baptizing their children.

22:02

And then he says, this is something neither the Lord nor the apostles ever commanded. And so there you've got

22:08

Tertullian basically saying that the tradition in the church has been to baptize adults.

22:15

And then of course you have people like Augustine who was baptized at a much later age.

22:22

John Chrysostom was about 18 years old or even younger. Basil the Great was 34 years old when he was baptized.

22:30

Constantine the Great, he waited for his deathbed to be baptized right before he died.

22:36

And so when you look at some of these church fathers, like these are giants. Even the reformers went to them like John Chrysostom and Basil the

22:45

Great, even Augustine. And he's the one who really propelled this idea of baptism regeneration, especially infant baptism.

22:54

It was Augustine because of original sin, his idea of original sin. But Augustine was in his confessions and in his various books, he chides his mother

23:04

Monica who was a very godly woman, prayed for him all his life. He was a pagan and a heretic and she prayed for him.

23:12

And he was involved with Manicheanism which was a Gnostic heresy. Anyway, one of the things he chides his mother for was that when he was a young boy, he fell ill.

23:21

He was very ill and he thought he would die. And he would chide his mother later on in life for not baptizing him.

23:28

Now here's the question, if baptism, if infant baptism was the common tradition in the church, why did

23:34

Monica not baptize Augustine when he was an infant or when he was a toddler? And so Augustine was a little cross with his mother that she didn't baptize him.

23:44

Well, that's the point. And it's not until you get to the Council of Carthage around 418 where the council condemns those who deny baptism to children.

23:55

Well, why would they do that unless people were not baptizing their children? And so what I'm saying is there's a wide spectrum of views on baptism.

24:03

There's church fathers after Augustine, there's definitely this wide spectrum of baptism regeneration.

24:11

There's no doubt about that. But then there are other fathers like Justin Martyr and Clement, excuse me,

24:16

Cyril of Jerusalem who show us and tell us that, no, there are cases where regeneration takes place before baptism.

24:24

And they go to Cornelius in the book of Acts where he receives the Holy Spirit before he's baptized in water.

24:31

So, and again, we need to be careful here too, Jeremiah, because there's views that the fathers held to that people in the

24:39

Church of Christ wouldn't hold to today, like infant baptism, for example. But we need to be very, very careful here because at the end of the day,

24:48

I mean, majority vote does not necessarily mean that something is true. That's the fallacy of argumentum ad populum, arguing for the majority.

24:59

The majority in Nazi Germany wanted the Jews dead and killed so majority never proves truth.

25:06

But I'm not saying that that is inconsequential. Of course, there was this majority view. But we need to be careful that at the end of the day, the fathers of the church are subservient to the scriptures.

25:20

Even Augustine said that scripture trump everything, that the scriptures have the final say on all things.

25:28

And even Augustine was willing to admit that the councils could, or even Luther in his defense at the

25:33

Diet of Worms would say, councils and popes have known to contradict and to err against each other.

25:39

And then he says, unless I'm convinced by plain reason and by scripture, I will not recant.

25:46

And here I stand to help me God. So this is where we need to be careful that there is a spectrum of various views.

25:55

If you go to the Eastern church, John Chrysostom didn't believe in original sin. He actually said children are not born sinners.

26:03

He said they receive baptism so that they can receive the gifts of sanctification. But in the

26:08

West, Augustine said, no, you got to get that kid baptized as soon as possible because Augustine believed and Anselm believed and Gregory the

26:17

Great believed that if infants were not baptized, they would be condemned. Although their suffering would be light, it wouldn't be as worse as a murderer or an adulterer.

26:29

But this idea of limbo came out of this Augustinian thinking that children who were unbaptized could not be admitted into the presence of God.

26:38

So we need to be careful when we study the fathers. And one more thing, Jeremiah. Sure.

26:44

Perfect. We need to stop reading ourselves into the fathers.

26:50

The fathers were not Presbyterian. They were not Roman Catholic. And yes, they were not

26:55

Eastern Orthodox long before the schism. They were Christians. And so we sometimes wanna make them reformed

27:02

Baptist. We wanna make them Pentecostals or Methodists, whatever it may be.

27:08

The one thing they were agreed on is the gospel, the death, burial, resurrection of Christ. A lot of them spoke about justification by faith alone.

27:19

I'm thinking of people like John Chrysostom who also believed in penal substitutionary atonement, which the

27:26

Eastern Orthodox Church rejects. But he was a very strong advocate that Christ sustained the wrath of God for us.

27:33

So with the fathers, you need to be very careful. They said some things that were really weird.

27:40

Clement of Rome believed the phoenix was a real bird, that it went back to its place of origin and that it combusted into flames.

27:48

And then out of it came a new bird. And so, and again, we can go.

27:54

And I mean, the fathers were not infallible. They were errant. If you don't believe me, read

27:59

Augustine's retractions where he goes back and says, okay, I goofed up here, I goofed up here,

28:05

I need to correct myself here. So we need to be careful. The fathers were not inspired writers.

28:11

And so we need to judge them by the dictates of scripture. I love that so much,

28:17

Dr. Costa, because what I try to help people think about, and maybe you can even help me articulate this, but let's think about Ephesians chapter five.

28:26

So Christ is sanctifying his bride. That's true of the part as well as the whole.

28:33

And so what we see throughout church history is the sanctification of the bride. Christ building his church and the gates of Hades will not prevail.

28:42

And so you got God's revelation intact that we contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.

28:47

We have the gospel of grace, that silver thread all throughout church history.

28:53

But what we see is the church being refined. And so our position as Reformed Baptists, and maybe there's some more nuance to this, but it's a taught baptism, it's a learned baptism by immersion and regeneration precedes faith.

29:07

And so kind of on just those handful of points, we can show in part how much of the early church believed those things.

29:15

Maybe they don't all believe them together at the same points in all their life. And so I'm saying that's okay.

29:20

The Reformed Baptist position, as we see growth, we see development, we see sanctification over time with the bride.

29:29

So, and that's everything being grounded in Sola Scriptura, God's word is the final say.

29:35

So therefore, the standard that I hold a Dr. Tony Costa to is the word of God and everything that I would want our listeners to say, okay,

29:42

Dr. Costa is saying this, well, what hath God wrought? And my point is, that's the same standard that we hold the early church fathers to.

29:51

They're not gonna get everything right. And many of the early church fathers would say, hey, I don't have it all figured out, test what

29:57

I'm saying, ultimately to the bar of scripture. So I got a few other questions. I want to let

30:03

Born Again get your thoughts on this real quick, Dr. Costa, if that's okay. He asked, can you address the difference between how

30:09

Catholics and Eastern Orthodox understand baptismal regeneration versus Protestants like the

30:16

Lutherans? What is the difference there? Right, so in the case of Roman Catholics, as like Lutherans as well, and again, you need to understand that out of all the reformers,

30:27

Martin Luther was a much more closer to the Roman Catholic side of things.

30:32

You see that as well with Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, you've got this angle Catholic, high

30:38

Anglican, which is very similar to Rome or Roman Catholicism, and then low

30:44

Anglican, more Protestant like, but the thing with the Roman Catholic Church is they believe that at baptism regeneration, original sin is removed.

30:52

So you've got this sin that you've inherited from Adam, you're born a sinner, infants are born sinners.

30:58

And so what baptism does is it cleanses the soul from sin. And so you've got a tabula rasa, you got a blank slate.

31:07

And so you've been infused with grace, not imputed, very important. The reformers argued for imputation.

31:14

The Roman Catholic Church teaches infusion, infusion of grace. So baptism is a means of grace.

31:20

It infuses you with grace. The child they believe is born again at that point. He's born again or she's born again.

31:26

And so they're in a state of grace. That's why they believe that if you die, if an infant dies after baptism, they go directly into the presence of God.

31:33

They don't even go to purgatory. Now in the Eastern Orthodox, they don't believe in original sin. They don't believe that children are born with original sin, but what they do believe is that what baptism does for children, and mind you,

31:44

Roman Catholics will pour water. The Eastern Orthodox, they got the right mode.

31:50

They immerse the child three times. But in their view, the regeneration opens their soul to receive sanctification, to receive the gifts of God, and so forth.

32:02

The Lutherans believe that baptism makes the child a child of God.

32:09

So Lutherans, after a baptismal service, will say, this child, we welcome this child into the family of God.

32:15

This child is now a child of God. And so they also believe the child receives the

32:22

Holy Spirit. And so there are some nuanced differences between those three.

32:29

The only issue with the Lutherans, I believe, is that you've got this emphasis on the five solas, but then they attach this baptism regeneration to it.

32:40

So those are basically the differences, but the Roman Catholic view, in particular, says that baptism removes the stain of original sin, and therefore the child becomes a child of God, and is in the covenant.

32:56

So this covenantal language is very important. They are part of the covenant. I dealt with, here in Canada, I dealt with a lady whose son had, she said, had walked away from the faith, and they were part of what's called the

33:08

Christian Reformed Church, here in Canada, which has gone, most of it has gone liberal.

33:14

But she said that her son left the faith, but he was baptized, and God made promises to him in baptism.

33:24

And it creates this idea that, well, as long as this child was baptized and received into the covenant, that they're okay,

33:32

God's gonna take care of them. Now, again, I believe that infant baptism makes babies wetter, not better.

33:41

And so my view is, no, you're not in the covenant. The only ones in the covenant are those who are not only chosen by God's election, but those whom he regenerates by the

33:54

Holy Spirit. He writes his laws in their hearts. So in Jeremiah 31, just named after you,

33:59

Jeremiah, your namesake, Jeremiah 31, 31 to 34, I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

34:06

It will not be like the covenant I made with them in Horeb. In other words, it will not be like the covenant he made at Sinai.

34:12

He says, I was a husband to Israel, but they violated the covenant. They were adulterous, worshiped other gods.

34:18

So this new covenant is gonna be different. It's not gonna be a national covenant like Israel had.

34:24

It's gonna be a covenant where God is gonna write his laws, not on tablets of stone, but he's gonna write them on the hearts of his people.

34:32

And it says, no man will have to say to them, know the Lord for they shall all know me from the least to the greatest.

34:38

And so in the new covenant, the only ones in the new covenant, Jeremiah, are those who are regenerate. And so it's what

34:44

Augustine would call the mystical church, the invisible church. Because in the visible church, there are counterfeits.

34:51

There are tares among the wheat, there are goats among the sheep. And so those two coexist in the visible church.

34:58

And that's why you have Judas Iscariot in the church as well. And you can only tell when they apostatize, when in time they leave

35:07

Christ altogether or leave the church. And John tells us in 1 John, they went out from us because they were not of us.

35:13

If they were of us, they would have remained with us, but their going out has shown they were never part of us to begin with.

35:20

Something I learned recently is there are some people within the church of Christ world that actually believe that Judas Iscariot did not go to hell, but actually repented in a genuine sense and actually went to heaven.

35:33

And I just tell, I point, sometimes you don't even have to expose the faulty logic and contradictions.

35:39

You can just let them speak for themselves and you're just like, that's all a bundle of mess.

35:45

I wanted to, before I ask you another question from the chat, I've had the question from Keith Foskey and some other people that have been on their channel.

35:52

And this is always a question that gets brought up and I really appreciate it. Jeremiah, why are the church of Christ considered a cult?

35:58

That some of them will use the phrase baptismal regeneration and if they won't do it, they're really just trying to distinguish themselves from Rome, but when you ask enough questions, they believe that you're regenerated in the waters.

36:10

Why is that a heretical, damnable position as where we would not see the Lutherans as the same thing?

36:17

And what I have said is not all baptismal regeneration doctrines are the same. And when you conflate, when you bring in justification into the picture and you deny justification by faith alone, that is the

36:32

Galatian one heresy. So like you said, even though I think the Lutherans are holding two things that do not comport with one another,

36:40

I do not think justification by faith alone can be held onto in baptismal regeneration. Now the

36:45

Lutherans, which may reflect many of the early church thought, which I think they're kind of contradictory in some of their things too, they would fundamentally affirm justification by faith alone, where many of the restorationist groups along with Mormonisms and so forth, they deny along with Roman Catholics justification by faith alone.

37:05

So would you make another distinction in there to show why? Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right because Lutherans will tell you we don't believe in works righteousness.

37:14

We don't believe that one is redeemed by their own works. At the end of the day, Jeremiah, there's really only two types of religions, right?

37:21

There's the religion of the do, do, do, do, do, which is do, do in the end, right? Because all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags, right?

37:29

And then there's the religion of the done. And that is Christ has finished it. It is done. It is consummated, tetelestai.

37:35

And it means it is done. It doesn't mean to be continued in purgatory or in hell as the faith teachers would have us believe.

37:42

It doesn't mean to be completed at a future date.

37:49

Tetelestai literally means in Greek, it literally means paid in full. And it was used in receipts in the ancient world to indicate that debts were paid in full and they were done.

37:59

The person owes nothing. So when Christ cried out that it is finished, it is consummated, he meant that the payment for sin was done.

38:09

It was satisfied, it satisfied the justice of God. The father accepted his sacrifice and that it's that righteousness that he exchanges with our unrighteousness.

38:19

He imputes his righteousness to us and he takes our unrighteousness on himself.

38:25

So the great exchange takes place at Calvary. And so when the father looks at you and I, Jeremiah, and all of God's elect, he sees

38:32

Christ. And so he sees the righteousness of his son. We've been clothed with Christ, right?

38:39

As many of you has been baptized into Christ have been clothed, you've put on Christ. And that goes right back to Genesis three where God slaughtered two animals and he clothed

38:49

Adam and Eve because their fig leaves were their own works. It was the works of their hands and they were still naked.

38:56

And so God had to clothe them. Just like Abel, Abel trusted in the blood of the lamb where Cain brought the produce of the land that God had cursed, he cursed the ground.

39:04

And so it was the work of his hands, the sweat of his brow. And so you see this God rejecting this idea of works or contribution to any of your righteousness with God.

39:14

It's all rejected. God always takes the initiative. It's God who walked in the garden. It's God who says, where are you,

39:20

Adam? It was Adam who ran from God. He didn't run to God, he ran from God. And so it's God, if God does not take the initiative, we're done, we're finished.

39:30

And so that is grace. That's the unmerited favor of God. Praise God. Dr. Costa, so born again, actually says, this is news to me.

39:39

He said, one reason I heard that Roman Catholics thinks Judas went to heaven is because Judas going to hell refutes a limbo which leads to unbaptized babies going to hell.

39:48

So have you heard anything about that kind of thing going on in Roman Catholic? Not really. I mean, that's news to me, but I think scripture is very clear that Jesus said that none of them have been lost except him who is the son of perdition.

40:03

So again, the whole point is that the ones you've given me, I've kept them except the one who was meant to go.

40:10

The scripture might be fulfilled. So I think what you see with the Roman Catholic church, and then you get these

40:15

Gnostic, the gospel of Judas that makes Judas to be the, he's the poster boy for Jesus, right?

40:21

He's the real disciple and that he was doing Jesus a favor somehow. You get these really corny ideas that pop up later.

40:29

But I think the Roman Catholic churches is they're beginning to backpedal. In fact, they have backpedaled limbo.

40:35

They've rejected limbo now. And I think if you look at the face of Roman Catholicism today, there's a lot of changes going on, especially with Pope Francis, obviously.

40:51

Pope Frankie, as I call him. So I haven't really heard that argument, but I wouldn't be surprised that they would argue that.

41:01

Yes, well, like I said, news to me. Question from Deneen. Thanks so much for your support. She says, what about verses,

41:07

Dr. Costa, in the book of Acts that say believers are to baptize their whole household?

41:14

And she said, by the way, I'm believer's baptism. So I'll let you through that in there. Yeah, well, hi, Deneen. I know

41:19

Deneen, she's a frequent viewer of my channel. Very good question. So in the book of Acts, it talks about believers, people being saved, and then it says they were baptized and their household.

41:30

So a lot of paedobaptists will say, well, the household includes infants and children.

41:36

Again, here's a case where you're reading into the text something that's not there.

41:43

Because if you look at the normative description of people being baptized in the book of Acts is they hear the gospel, they believe the gospel, and then they, plural, they, plural, third person plural in the

41:56

Greek text, they are baptized. So look at the jailer in Acts 16. Paul, he's with Silas, they're in jail, and then there's this earthquake.

42:04

The jail opens up and the jailer's about to commit suicide. Paul says, don't, we're all here, we're all accounted for.

42:11

And then he says, what must I do to be saved? And he says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be baptized.

42:17

No, he didn't say that. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and obey the Sabbath and come under the Mosaic law.

42:22

No, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, you and your household. And then it goes on to say that they invited

42:32

Paul, he and his family, the jailer and his family heard Paul. Paul preached to them.

42:38

It says they heard, they, plural again, they heard and they believed and then they were baptized.

42:45

So Cornelius, same thing, believed and then they were baptized. It's the consistent theme over and over again.

42:54

So every time in the book of Acts you see baptism, it's always preceded by belief.

43:00

It's never, you're baptized, you're regenerated and then you believe. Because you know,

43:05

Jeremiah, you know, in your work, your ministerial work and my work, I've seen tons of people who

43:11

I've seen God work in them and God regenerated them before they were baptized.

43:17

And that seems to be the modus operandi that God redeems people, they are regenerated and then they go through baptism.

43:24

And, you know, the way I try to explain it is, for example, in Canada, we're part of the

43:30

Commonwealth. So Canada, the British crown, King Charles III is the

43:36

King of Canada because he's the head of state of the Commonwealth. Well, think of it this way, his mother,

43:43

Queen Elizabeth II, the late queen, when her father died, she automatically became queen before her coronation.

43:51

So she had to wait 14 months before she was officially formally coronated as the queen.

43:57

Does that mean she wasn't the queen until that ceremony? No, she was the queen by right, she was the queen.

44:03

But the coronation was the formal declaration of her monarch monarchial power.

44:10

In other words, baptism is the official pronouncement, the official announcement, the official ceremony.

44:18

Or let's say you graduated from the university or from college, you graduated and they said, you've completed your degree, you've graduated.

44:26

Now you haven't gone to the graduation ceremony officially where they recognize you and give you that piece of paper, you already graduated.

44:35

That graduation ceremony is just an affirmation, it's a ceiling of your graduation.

44:41

It doesn't mean you're not a graduate, it means it's a formal ceiling. So baptism in the same way is for regenerate believers.

44:49

And baptism is not prescriptive for salvation, it's descriptive, it's a reenactment of what

44:56

God has done. So you die with Christ, you are buried with him in the waters of baptism and you rise again to new life.

45:04

And so Paul says, we've been buried with him in the likeness of his death, not an actual death.

45:12

So here we come to what the reformers called and the fathers called the sign and the thing signified.

45:18

And so the thing signified is our regeneration, but the sign of that is baptism.

45:26

The same thing with circumcision. Circumcision, which many of Calvin and others tried to equate circumcision with baptism, the whole covenant right was circumcision.

45:39

Well, circumcision didn't really save you. I mean, Esau, I hated, but Jacob I loved.

45:45

Esau had the sign of the covenant in his flesh, but he was hated by God. The whole generation of Israel that came with Moses out of Egypt, that generation was taken down in the desert.

45:58

Only Joshua and Caleb came into the promised land with the second generation, but they all had the sign of the covenant, but why were they not redeemed?

46:06

Well, because as Paul says in Romans 2 .28, 2 .29, it's not just physical circumcision, but the circumcision of the heart that matters because physical circumcision is it's a stand in for the heart, the circumcision of the heart, which is regeneration.

46:24

And so baptism is a stand in. It's a sign of something that God has already done in your life.

46:31

It doesn't, it's not causative. It's not causative. It doesn't cause regeneration.

46:38

It describes and it's a reenactment of regeneration. And since it is a sign,

46:46

I argue if the spirit indwells the believer and the baptizer in the

46:52

Koinonia and Ecclesia, the Holy Spirit is present, therefore it cannot be an empty sign, an empty seal.

46:59

That's right. So something else with those household baptisms, I think we see a federal head principal, a patriarchal principal of, household can be rightly called baptized if the head of the household was baptized.

47:12

And so we gotta be careful. What is absolutely clear is those that believe, then as a result, I would argue in their sanctification are obedient to all that what

47:20

Christ has commanded us. And so Dr. Kostom, I would like for you to speak to this because this is one of the,

47:26

I know this person identifies as Church of Christ. I know on the inside, they are a fan of the apologetic dog.

47:32

And so this is the question I get. And I try to address it a lot of times this way, and I wanna hear your thoughts.

47:38

They say, how does a person obey the gospel per all these verses that use that terminology?

47:45

I say we obey in faith alone, in Christ alone. Because in the

47:50

Church of Christ mind, obey or obedience always necessarily entails some type of working participation that you are doing.

47:59

And once again, the Church of Christ, many people don't know this, but they deny original sin. So it's the true

48:05

Pelagian mindset of you do not need, the grace of God is not sufficient.

48:10

It might be necessary in some cases, but you have the capability to obey in and of yourself.

48:17

We are born the same way that Adam and Eve were created. So I'm just saying, when they hear the term obey, you have all the abilities and capabilities at your fingertips.

48:27

And so I try to front load the conversation and say we are to obey the imperatives that Christ gave, repent and believe the gospel.

48:35

But that is not obedience in terms of your works. You have disobeyed the gospel if you have conflated law and gospel or you've added works to faith.

48:45

So how would you answer? How does a person obey the gospel? Yeah, I would answer that by first saying, Philippians 1 .6,

48:51

Paul says, it has been given unto you to believe. I believe it's Philippians 1 .6. 1 .29. I think it's

48:57

Philippians 1 .6, I'm not sure. But, or it's 1 .19, I'm not sure. But he says, it has been given unto you to believe.

49:03

That's a divine passive in the Greek, meaning it's something God has done. It has been given unto you to believe.

49:08

And so to obey the gospel means, like Acts 17, Paul says, God commands men everywhere to repent.

49:14

Not suggests, but commands men everywhere to repent. And so obeying the gospel means to repent, as Jesus said, repent and believe the gospel.

49:22

You repent, you trust in Christ for your salvation, that he died in your place, that he rose again the third day.

49:31

If you confess with your mouth, the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.

49:37

For the mouth, with the mouth you make confession, and with the heart you believe unto righteousness. But remember, it is

49:43

God who gives you that gift. Jesus said in John 6 .44, no one can come unto me unless the

49:49

Father draws them to me. So if you obey, just like Lazarus in the tomb, he didn't obey

49:55

Jesus because it was his will to obey. He obeyed because the resurrection and the life called out his name and brought him to life, regenerated, gave him physical life in that case, and then brought him forth.

50:10

And so when we are called to obey, like you said, Jeremiah, there are prescriptive commandments in scripture, there are descriptive as well, but God gives us his prescriptive commands because that is our accountability.

50:26

As reformed Christians, we don't believe that we're puppets, that God has us on strings.

50:32

We hold to what's called compatibilism, and that is to say that God's sovereign will and moral accountability on the part of his creatures are not contradictory.

50:42

In fact, they are complementary. And therefore, when God says do not commit adultery and do not steal, those are

50:51

God's prescriptive commandments. That is the mirror of his holiness, the character of God. So the very act of obeying, see, it doesn't mean

51:00

I'm gonna obey and therefore this involves me doing something to be saved. No, that's not the scripture teaches.

51:06

We are called to obey because that is our moral duty to God to obey our creator, but it is only

51:12

God's people. It's only those that hear the voice of the son of God who will come forth and come to life.

51:18

They're the only ones. And so if you credit your salvation or your choice to follow

51:24

Christ, if you credit that to your own choice and your machinations, I'd go back to the drawing board because the work of God is a work that he does to the praise of his glory.

51:38

And he does all things according to the counsel of his will, not your will, his will. And it's for his glory, sole deo gloria.

51:45

So the obeying of the gospel is to repent and to turn to Christ and to believe on him.

51:51

Yep, so I try to highlight to people, you have to retain certain categories that are distinct, but strongly related.

51:59

And so justification, sanctification, justification is that moment where you were declared right judicially before God.

52:07

And now we are called to live ongoing sanctified lives before God, before the world.

52:14

And this goes back to doctrines like Genesis 15, six, where Abraham believed

52:20

God and it was credited, counted to him as righteousness. And then another often quoted verse in the

52:26

New Testament is Habakkuk 2, four, that the just shall live by faith.

52:32

And Dr. Costa, those categories, justification and sanctification, they are related. And the moment you are justified, you are set apart from the world, but you can't superimpose sanctification before justification, or ultimately kind of looked at those as intertwined, because that's where you might can speak to this.

52:51

Eastern Orthodoxy, you got the doctrine of impartation. And then with the West, the

52:56

Roman Catholic Church, it's the doctrine of infused righteousness. Right, right, right. Well, I mean, we've got to, before we were able to do anything,

53:04

I mean, you need to be regenerated. You didn't have a choice in your physical conception. You didn't have a choice whether you would be born a male or a female.

53:13

So what makes you think that you have a choice in your spiritual conception? It is God who regenerates us.

53:20

But in order to believe, you have to be born. You have to be made alive, like a baby.

53:25

A baby doesn't breathe air until the baby is ex -utero. And so we need to be alive first in order to believe.

53:35

We need to be alive first before God gives us the power to do anything.

53:43

And so, like you rightfully said, justification is the past tense of salvation. It's forensic.

53:49

It's a forensic term where God declares you to be not guilty. Now, that doesn't change the person.

53:57

It changes their status. So just like a minister when he performs a wedding ceremony and he declares a man and a woman to be husband and wife, they haven't changed as persons, but what has changed is their legal standing.

54:12

They are now a married couple in the eyes of God and the eyes of the state. So what changes is their legal status.

54:18

Now, what changes you inside is the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. And so you've got this justification, declared not guilty.

54:27

The Spirit of God is conforming you to the image of Christ. And then at the end, so you've got the past tense of salvation, justification, present tense, sanctification.

54:35

Future tense is glorification. So when we leave this world and go into the presence of Christ, we are glorified.

54:42

Our glorification is complete, however, when we receive our resurrection bodies. So what the

54:47

Roman church has done and the Eastern Orthodox is they have collapsed justification and sanctification together.

54:56

So in the Roman view, you're sanctified by baptism and you receive grace through the sacraments and you get these merits.

55:05

And then every time you sin, you get these demerit points and you gotta go back and get filled up again. Now, if you commit a mortal sin, like adultery or murder, your tank is empty.

55:14

That's a mortal sin. It destroys the grace of God. So now you gotta go to penance. You gotta rebuild that, but then you gotta pay temporal punishments and purgatory for what you did.

55:23

So it's a completely different view. And therefore, when

55:28

Luther started reading Erasmus' Greek New Testament in the Wartburg Castle, he came across the command to repent and repent

55:39

John the Baptist preached. And he noticed it was the Greek word metanoia, which means change the mind.

55:45

But in the Latin Vulgate, it says do penance. And so immediately Luther recognized, wait a minute, the

55:51

Latin is not faithfully translating what this Greek word says. The Greek word doesn't mean to do good works, to obtain forgiveness of sins.

56:02

It says to change, metanoia means to change the mind, to change your worldview, change your perspective.

56:09

And so that's when Luther began to realize that, no, wait a minute, it is justification first.

56:16

The just shall live by faith. And then right now, you and I, we're being sanctified by the

56:22

Holy Spirit. And then when the Lord comes or when we leave this world, then we are glorified.

56:27

We are redeemed from the very presence of sin. So these words are very, very important.

56:36

And you see, this is why the Reformation happened. How is a sinful man made right with God?

56:42

And this is what Luther said, the doctrine of justification is the hinge upon which the door of the church moves.

56:50

It's on fundamental principle. Now, I know you have some slides we'll get to in a moment, but I saw some of this brought up in the side chat.

56:58

And this is the same types of conversations I get with Church of Christ, which I think are outside of the fold. It's a similar kind of conversation that I have with Lutherans and Anglicans.

57:08

And it's this idea or this conversation about is baptism a work?

57:15

And so what immediately that devolves into, well, it's a work of God, but it's not a work that we do.

57:21

And then, you know, kind of Lutherans and a lot of the other traditions will say, well, since Ephesians four verse five says, there's one baptism, one faith, one

57:29

Lord, one baptism. Baptism of the Holy Spirit is the ceremonial right in to water baptism.

57:36

So I want us to maybe touch on this a little bit because it's so important. What do you say to someone asking you the question, is baptism a work that you do,

57:46

Dr. Kostom? Yeah, well, again, we need to look at the context. There's different baptisms, right?

57:53

There's the baptism of the Holy Spirit. First Corinthians 12, 11, he grafts us into the body of Christ.

57:58

So the word baptism carries the idea of identification. So when you're baptized in the name of the

58:03

Father, Son, Holy Spirit, you are being identified with the triune God. You belong to the triune God. And so when you die, when you're baptized, you're identified with Christ in his death, his burial, his resurrection.

58:16

So baptism itself is a work because I mean, you need to get to a pool of water.

58:22

You need to get to a source of water. You need to be there. You need to submit to that. And so I think what the questioner may be getting at is this idea in Roman Catholicism, you have what's called ex operae operatum, which means from the work, the work is done.

58:41

So what that means is, it's not so much the priest that is doing this, it's by the very act, the thing is being done.

58:51

So by the act of baptism, this person is regenerated. That's ex operae operatum.

58:57

So the way Augustine put it was, whether Christ baptizes or Judas baptizes, it is

59:02

Christ ultimately that baptizes. And so the idea then in ex operae operatum is it has nothing to do with the officiant or the candidate.

59:11

It's the very act that does what the act signifies. Now, the Protestant view is more in line with ex operae operantus, which this is all, again, this is

59:22

Latin. The ex operae operantus means it has to do with the disposition of the candidate.

59:31

That is to say, you come to the waters of baptism and you receive it in obedience to Christ's command.

59:40

And so baptism is efficacious for you. And we're gonna see where Cyril of Jerusalem says, the waters could either be poisoned to you or a gift of the

59:48

Holy Spirit. So we need to understand the fact that at the end of the day, it's not the act that does what the act is supposed to signify.

59:57

It's the recipient. You know, Augustine also said that at the Lord's supper,

01:00:03

Judas, when he took the bread, the supper became poison to him. But to believers, it becomes this life -giving signification.

01:00:13

So again, the idea that baptism is a work of God is based on this ex operae operato, that the act itself does something.

01:00:27

And so it's not the act itself that does something, it's the disposition of the person in obedience to Christ.

01:00:36

Because Simon Magus accepted baptism, but Peter said, may you and your money perish with you.

01:00:43

You know, Peter was a fisherman and where he spat, the grass never grew green again.

01:00:49

So you probably told this guy, you know, you and your money can go to hell in so many words. But he was baptized, but the baptism did nothing for Simon Magus.

01:00:58

But if it is the work of God, then it should have regenerated him. But it didn't, because his heart was not in obedience to God.

01:01:07

His heart was in how can I make money out of this? I can make profit. I love that because I'm the first to defend saying there is something efficacious and sanctifying in baptism.

01:01:20

And for the one who is not believing, trusting in Christ alone by faith alone, then their baptism will be a witness against them on the day of judgment.

01:01:31

So I liked how you kind of included how it's poisonous there. Tell me if this is helpful in this conversation.

01:01:37

I try to highlight, there has to be a massive distinction. It's related. The sign seal, the things signify, all these get wrapped into.

01:01:47

Our ceremonial rite signifies the realities of what God has already done in our heart and life.

01:01:53

And one of the best ways to demonstrate this is that Pentecost, the baptism of the

01:01:58

Holy Spirit preceded those identifying in the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ being baptized in his name and authority, which you already did a podcast on this, but identify in the name and authority of Christ, which is the triune name,

01:02:13

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So to me, you can't go back to Jesus' baptism by John to fulfill all righteousness, which all righteousness is obedience and obeying and complying with.

01:02:28

So you're not merely passive, like you're saying. Even as we maybe look at some proof texts here in a little bit, when

01:02:34

Titus 3 .5 says, and not by righteousness that you've done, well, Jesus' baptism was to fulfill righteousness.

01:02:42

So, and I've looked at Anglicans say, well, it's your passive obedience. Okay, great. Your obedience, the things that you do not contribute to your justification before God.

01:02:52

And so, yeah. Let me add one thing. I mean, Jesus' baptism by John, it's recorded in all the four gospels.

01:03:00

Baptism, John's baptism was a baptism for the remission of sins. Jesus had no sin.

01:03:07

So this perturbed a lot of Christians in the early centuries of the church. Why would Jesus receive baptism, which was a baptism for the remission of sins if Jesus was sinless?

01:03:17

Well, it goes back to what I said about identification. Baptism has to do with identification. Jesus identified with us in his baptism.

01:03:25

He identified with sinners, not because he was a sinner, but as the sin bearer, he identified.

01:03:31

That's why John said, hey, I should be baptized of you. Why do you come to me? It's the other way around.

01:03:37

And Jesus said, suffer to be so, for in so doing we fulfill all righteousness. So in his baptism, he identified with sinners.

01:03:44

And in Christian baptism, we identify with him. So you have this crisscross.

01:03:50

Christ identifies with sinners, not because he's a sinner, but because he's the savior of sinners. And in Christian baptism, which is not

01:03:56

John's baptism, in Christian baptism, we identify with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. So in a real sense, baptism is a union with Christ, just like the

01:04:07

Lord's Supper is a union with Christ. Paul says, the bread that we break, is it not a participation or communion with the body of Christ?

01:04:16

And the cup we bless, is it not a communion or participation in the blood of Christ? And so the ordinances or the sacraments are, they are ways in which we are unified to Christ.

01:04:29

At his table, we are unified with him. And baptism, why do we only have one baptism?

01:04:34

Why is there only one baptism? Because Christ died once. And so baptism reflects that once for all sacrifice that Christ committed by dying once for all, and therefore it's never to be repeated, ideally not to be repeated.

01:04:48

But the Lord's Supper is the only ongoing ordinance that is to continue until the Lord comes. And so notice there's a difference.

01:04:55

One is a once for all act, and the other one, the Lord's Supper continues until he comes.

01:05:02

I appreciate you bringing that out, because when we're going back to the doctrines of like regeneration and sanctification, something that Martin Lloyd -Jones said is we cannot confuse the growth with the birth.

01:05:16

And when we're talking about regeneration, justification, sanctification, these all have a semantic domain and etymology that clearly are articulating specific things and they relate together, but they are communicating different aspects.

01:05:29

And so sometimes in Lutheran circles, it's really interesting how they talk about renewal and they'll make exceptions for adult conversions to say, well, the word can actually do regeneration before getting into the font.

01:05:43

And that's what I'm saying, praise God, because that is our view consistently. And there's a different understanding from infant baptism, washing away original sin and so forth.

01:05:53

And I tell people, the infant is not doing anything to gain it, it's all being done to them.

01:05:59

And so I just have covenant theology discussions about who's to receive the covenant sign, then the adult that believes that they are being regenerated by their participation and justified in baptism.

01:06:11

I'm saying that is where the heart of the gospel is at play. And so Dr. Costa, I want us to consider some of the slides that you've brought us, because we are talking about the early church and once again, we're wanting to demonstrate that we can ground our position in part with much of early church history was what's been said.

01:06:33

Yes, well, Justin Martyr is a very important figure. He's one of the apostolic fathers. And you can see from his dates, he's quite early, born in the early beginning of the second century.

01:06:45

Well, in his dialogue with Trifle, who's actually a Jew, chapter 13, he speaks of baptism, but you'll notice he refers to it as repentance.

01:06:55

For Isaiah did not send you to a bath there to wash away murder and other sins, which is interesting, which not even all the water of the sea were sufficient to purge.

01:07:05

So notice he says that this water cannot purge you of your sins. It cannot even purge the water, excuse me, it can't even purge the sins of a murderer, for example.

01:07:14

But as might've been expected, this was that saving bath of the olden time, which followed those who repented and who no longer were purified by the blood of goats and of sheep or by the ashes of a heifer or by the offerings of fine flour, but by faith through the blood of Christ and through his death, who died for this very reason, as Isaiah himself said.

01:07:37

And then he goes on and he quotes from Isaiah 53. But if you notice here, he's equating the saving bath with repentance.

01:07:48

And if we go to the next slide, Justin Martyr will, do

01:07:54

I have to change it or do you change it? Yeah, I think it's all on your end. I just got a screen share going.

01:07:59

Okay, here we go. Okay, so in the 14th chapter, Justin goes on to say, by reason therefore of this laver of repentance, notice it's the laver of repentance.

01:08:10

So he's using the word repentance as a bath or a laver and knowledge of God, which has been ordained on account of the transgression of God's people.

01:08:20

As Isaiah cries, we have believed and testify that that very baptism which he announced is alone able to purify those who have repented and this is the water of life.

01:08:31

So what Justin does here is he goes back and forth with this idea of repentance and baptism, but he focuses on this idea that baptism is actually that laver that cleans us.

01:08:43

And so here he is showing how baptism can be used differently. Even in the history of the church, you have the baptism by blood, which was usually used of martyrs.

01:08:53

So martyrs in the early church who did not get water baptized, if they were arrested and martyred and killed, the

01:09:02

Christians would say they were baptized by blood. And then of course, you have what later is called baptism of desire.

01:09:09

So you get Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century picks up on this idea that even people who never got an opportunity to be baptized by water, they are still accounted as saved by God because of their desire, their baptismal desire.

01:09:25

So it's very clear that Justin Martyr here is equating this language of water and baptismal water as regeneration, excuse me, as repentance from sin.

01:09:37

And if we go to the next slide, I wanna show you how Cyril of Jerusalem, we're now in the fourth century, his catechetical lecture.

01:09:46

He's speaking here of Cornelius in the book of Acts. Peter came and the spirit was poured out upon them that believed, notice that, that believed, and they spoke with other tongues and prophesied.

01:09:56

And after the grace of the spirit, the scripture says that Peter commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, Acts 10 48.

01:10:05

In order that, notice this, this is Cyril of Jerusalem, in order that the soul having been born again by faith, notice the past tense, the body also might by the water partake of the grace.

01:10:20

So notice, according to Cyril of Jerusalem in the book of Acts chapter 10, Cornelius is already born again, but he's born again by faith.

01:10:30

And then later he says, the body then later will partake of, the body will partake of the water.

01:10:37

And so according to Cyril of Jerusalem's own exegesis of Acts 10,

01:10:43

Cornelius was already born again. He was already saved and regenerated. Cyril of Jerusalem goes on to say, neither does he that is baptized with water, but not found worthy of the spirit receives the grace and perfection.

01:10:56

And so somebody could be baptized in water, but if he's not worthy of the Holy Spirit, he receives the grace in perfection.

01:11:07

In other words, he doesn't receive that. If he's just merely baptized in water, if he's not worthy of the spirit, if he's not regenerated by the

01:11:15

Holy Spirit, there is no perfection here. So what Cyril is saying here is that, just because you're baptized, if you're not regenerated by the spirit, if you are not found worthy by the

01:11:27

Holy Spirit, you're not gonna get this grace. And so what this does is, it shows us that Cyril of Jerusalem is actually opposing ex opere operato.

01:11:40

Because you see, ex opere operato means the very act itself does what it's supposed to do.

01:11:46

So Adolf Hitler, for example, was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church as an infant. So according to Roman Catholic doctrine, when

01:11:53

Adolf Hitler was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church, he received the mark of Christ because they believe that baptism leaves an indelible mark on everybody.

01:12:04

Every Christian or every Roman Catholic who's been baptized receives an indelible mark. This is why, for example,

01:12:10

Jeremiah, this is why priests that are defrocked, that are removed from the priesthood, because they received the sacrament of ordination, because they received the sacrament of being appointed or ordained, they have the power, they still have the authority to transubstantiate bread into the body of Christ, even though they've been defrocked.

01:12:37

Why? Because that mark that they receive by holy orders, the sacrament of holy orders, that mark cannot be removed.

01:12:45

It cannot be erased. It's indelible. And so this is one of the fears of the Roman Catholic Church is that these defrocked priests blaspheme the body of Christ by defaming it, by doing something considered irreverent.

01:13:01

But that authority, they still possess the authority to transubstantiate bread. And so, yes, go ahead.

01:13:08

That kind of sounds like the anti -lordship position, free grace, that just says, you know, if you believed in Jesus, prayed the prayer, essentially, assented to the facts, then you could become an atheist, walk away from the faith, and you're still sealed, essentially.

01:13:23

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then again, Serial of Jerusalem, this is in this prologue, paragraph four.

01:13:31

It says, a long notice is allowed you, those are those who want to receive baptism. You have 40 days for repentance.

01:13:38

You have full opportunity both to put off and wash and to put on and enter. But if you persist in an evil purpose, the speaker is blameless, that is the officiant that baptizes.

01:13:49

But you must not look for the grace, for the water will receive you, but the spirit will not accept you.

01:13:55

If anyone is conscious of this wound, let him take the self. If any has fallen, let him arise.

01:14:00

Let there be no Simon Magus among you. No hypocrisy, no idle curiosity about the matter.

01:14:07

So notice he's saying, look, you can go through the actions, you can go through the motions, you can go into the water, but he basically says here, you're not gonna receive anything out of it because if the

01:14:20

Holy Spirit does not accept you, baptism is meaningless. So what does this say about all these children in the

01:14:28

Lutheran, in the Roman Catholic, in the Eastern Orthodox, all these children who receive baptism, who they know nothing about what they're doing.

01:14:38

And so the way Cyril is talking about here, it's clear that he's implying that the candidate knows what they're doing, that there's an understanding of the importance of this ordinance or this sacrament.

01:14:49

And so to our Lutheran friends, I quote here one of the great

01:14:54

Lutheran theologians, Johann Erhard, one of the most notable theologians.

01:15:01

When therefore they are baptized who have already been regenerated through the word as a spiritual seed, they have no need of regeneration through baptism, but in them, baptism is a confirmation and sealing of regeneration.

01:15:19

So there, Erhard basically has taken the words out of our mouth,

01:15:24

Jeremiah. He's saying exactly what you and I have just said. So this is a Lutheran theologian who does believe in baptism regeneration, but he understands that there are those who have already been regenerated through the word.

01:15:37

And the example is Cornelius again. Notice he says they don't need regeneration through baptism because they're already regenerated.

01:15:45

So in this particular case, baptism is a confirmation of sealing. And to that, we would say a hearty amen.

01:15:52

That is exactly our position. So we have a great Lutheran theologian here who actually agrees with us.

01:15:59

So those are my slides, Jeremiah. Well, hi, thank you for those. Hopefully that'll be a good resource to many people.

01:16:06

And just to echo another resource that you've recommended in the past is this book, Infant Baptism in a

01:16:13

Historical Perspective, essentially. And if you're okay, I'd like to shift gears. I really wanna respect your time, so you just cut me off.

01:16:20

I know in the side chat, there's a lot of questions about certain proof texts. Proof texts aren't always a bad term.

01:16:26

You gotta start somewhere. But you have to be willing to develop context.

01:16:33

And so this is where I wanna maybe machine gun style, but maybe as we begin to develop some of the context with certain baptismal texts in scripture,

01:16:42

I'd like for you to be able to speak to that. And here's a good question from Roman 6, because I have a personal question for you.

01:16:51

And it's so funny, because we talk about certain verses like you quoted in 1

01:16:56

Corinthians 12, talking about literally baptism of the spirit. And so there are certain verses like that,

01:17:05

Ezekiel 36 that just talk about being cleansed of the spirit where God takes that heart of stone and gives you a heart of flesh.

01:17:14

Definitely a baptism not made with human hands is what I like to emphasize. And so when we get to Roman 6,

01:17:21

Roman 6, three and four, Galatians 3, 27, but also 26 mentions faith.

01:17:27

I've seen a lot of good discussion within orthodoxy of saying, okay, which verses pertain to the baptism of the

01:17:34

Holy Spirit more exclusively? Because it always pertains to the ceremony. But the conversation is what is being exegeted and taught firstly, and then what are applications and inferences?

01:17:45

Or the other way around? Is it talking about the baptism, the ceremonial right into water in Roman 6 and Galatians 3?

01:17:53

And so before I ask this question from Kentucky Lee, specifically with Roman 6 and Galatians 3, do you think

01:18:00

Paul has in mind the principle of unity and perhaps the baptism of the Holy Spirit first?

01:18:06

Or do you think he has more in mind the baptism into waters? Yeah, I think the context is key.

01:18:14

The context of Roman 6, three and following is clear that he's talking about,

01:18:20

I mean, there are some exegetes who think that that baptism is the baptism of the Spirit, that we die with Him and we're buried with Him.

01:18:28

I'm not convinced of that. I think that there Paul is clearly talking about, because the whole objection is, well, if grace abounds where sin is, then we might as well sin all the more.

01:18:40

And Paul is basically saying, may it never be. Don't you know that you die to sin?

01:18:45

And then he recalls their baptismal commitments that when they came to Christ, they identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection.

01:18:56

And so in Galatians 3, it's kind of hard to tell. Because again, baptism, the thing with baptism and salvation,

01:19:05

Jeremiah, is that they're so closely aligned. I mean, the thought of an unbaptized

01:19:11

Christian in the early church was an oxymoron. Exactly. Christians, if you're a believer in the

01:19:17

Lord Jesus Christ, you should never delay baptism. I'm not against catechism or anything like that, but I know people,

01:19:25

I can personally attest as a pastor, I know one person in particular who basically stopped coming to church because she didn't wanna get baptized because she had stage fright and she didn't wanna give her testimony.

01:19:38

I said, that's not an excuse. That is a command of the Lord and you're walking in disobedience.

01:19:44

And so in Galatians 3, Paul says, as many of you have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ.

01:19:51

And so baptism represents our union with Christ, but it's used in such a way that it is the sign that points to the thing signified.

01:20:04

And that is why it's used in such close proximity. And sometimes you're wondering, okay, is he talking about spirit baptism or water baptism?

01:20:14

Or is it both? Because water baptism represents our union with Christ. And it's no surprise that when the

01:20:21

Lord Jesus Christ was baptized, it's no surprise that the spirit of God descended upon him after his baptism.

01:20:28

And so there is this link between baptism and the spirit, but it's the spirit who baptizes us into the body of Christ.

01:20:38

He identifies us with the body of Christ and that identification is visibly demonstrated in our baptism in water.

01:20:48

Yes. And I've told everyone in those conversations, we shouldn't try to look at baptism of the

01:20:54

Holy Spirit as a rescuing device. I literally think all the baptismal texts we could concede for the sake of argument that it is talking about the ceremony in the waters and it doesn't change our position.

01:21:05

Why? When we get into the word baptizo, like you've mentioned, there's a semantic domain of identification.

01:21:11

You can identify with the leadership and authority of someone. You can identify in suffering and so forth.

01:21:19

Baptizo, there is continuity that I would press comes from deeper into the Torah and the

01:21:25

Old Testament about engaging of being ceremonially unclean to clean in these ceremonies, especially when we go back to Yom Kippurim, never forgave sin.

01:21:37

And so when we look at Acts 2, all of this to a Jewish audience that had been pricked to the heart, they are thinking about the

01:21:44

Messiah, the Mashiach that they crucified, the Lord of glory. Now Peter's like, hey, there is still hope.

01:21:51

You can be identified with him. Repent, and the backside of repentance is always faith. Put your faith in him.

01:21:56

So that first command is an imperative, I say, to justification. And then that imperative to sanctification.

01:22:03

And that's a Jewish audience. So in Luke 3, it's similar with John the Baptist. What shall we do? What shall we do?

01:22:09

Because they are all pricked to the heart and they know they deserve the covenantal curses of Deuteronomy 28.

01:22:17

All hope is lost. The ax is laid at the root, but John the Baptist is saying, repent, cleanse yourself, and look to the only

01:22:24

Savior. So a question here, just with some of this, as we're getting rolling, Dr.

01:22:30

Kostick. Kentucky Lee, back to Romans 6. I have this question a lot. I know how I'd answer.

01:22:35

I really would like for you to deal with it. Romans 6, 7 says that he that is dead is freed from sin.

01:22:43

How do we die to be freed from sin? Verse 4 says baptism. Most early church fathers say that this is water baptism, correct?

01:22:51

So just real quickly, tell people what comes before Romans 6 is Romans 4 and 5.

01:22:58

And baptism is a likeness. And so someone in the side chat says, verse 17 says that you have to obey from the heart.

01:23:06

And I'm saying, what is that form of doctrine but the gospel that Paul's already developed in Romans 4 and in the headship of Christ in chapter 5?

01:23:16

And so clearly we're freed from sin judicially by faith apart from works, and baptism is that likeness.

01:23:22

So what would you add to that? Yeah, so the one who is dead is freed from sin. And this has to do, of course, with our legal standing.

01:23:30

As you said, in Romans 5, 1, therefore being justified by faith, having been justified, it's a past tense, it's an aorist, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God, we have shalom with God right now.

01:23:42

And so positionally, in terms of justification, you are dead to sin. God has declared you not guilty.

01:23:50

And so positionally, you are, from God's perspective, dead to sin.

01:23:56

And Paul is using that to argue that, well, if you're dead to sin, then you shouldn't be gloating and living in sin.

01:24:04

It shouldn't be your desire to live in sin because you are positionally dead to sin. When Christ died, you died with Him.

01:24:12

When Christ was buried, you were buried with Him. When Christ rose from the grave, you were raised again,

01:24:17

Ephesians 2, what does it say? It says, you who were once dead in trespasses and sin, He has quickened and He has made you alive and He has seated us with Him in the heavenly places.

01:24:28

So positionally, we are seated with Christ, why? Because He's our federal head.

01:24:34

The federal head, this is the one in the many, the principle of the one in the many. The one, the federal head, represents

01:24:41

His people, just like the president of the United States represents the American people. If President Biden were to declare war against China, all of America would legally be at war against China because your federal head represents you.

01:24:55

When Adam declared war against God, we declared war against God, forensically and legally.

01:25:01

And so our federal head, the last

01:25:06

Adam, the second man, because we are in Him, we have died to sin.

01:25:13

So positionally speaking, in terms of justification, we have died to sin. Paul just described justification in Romans 5, 4 and 5.

01:25:23

Now, in terms of sanctification, this is what's happening now, our ongoing confirmation being conformed to the image of Christ.

01:25:32

And Luther put it this way, Jeremiah, he said, the believer is, he said, justos et peccator, meaning the believer is both just and sinner.

01:25:44

Just positionally, but he's still presently in the flesh, engaging with the world, and therefore, because we are in this world, we are going through a sanctification.

01:25:55

If we confess our sins, He is just and righteous to forgive us. So we have this ongoing cleansing.

01:26:01

We have this fountain filled with Emmanuel's blood, and we could access that fountain in our sanctification walk with God.

01:26:13

So we need to be careful. This is why language is so important. In terms of justification, you have been declared not guilty.

01:26:20

And the reason why the law cannot touch you, when Paul says you're not under the law, but under grace, is because the law brings death.

01:26:28

The law brings condemnation, because when you transgress the law, you become a transgressor. And if you become a transgressor, then you must meet the penalty of the law.

01:26:38

Well, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being a curse himself, and therefore the law,

01:26:44

Paul says the power of sin is the law. The law cannot condemn you because there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

01:26:54

There's no more judgment. And so we need to be careful here because in one sense, we're dead to sin.

01:27:02

And in another sense, Paul says, I die daily. And so we need to keep those terms distinct.

01:27:08

And that's why language is so vital here. Now with the church of Christ, they will object and say, well, of course we're not justified by the works of the

01:27:17

Mosaic law. And I try to emphasize, look, the

01:27:22

Mosaic law is holy, righteous, and good. But if those works of law aren't getting you in, no other set of commands, no other divine commands are gonna get you in either because they all flow out of love

01:27:34

God and love neighbor. And the idea was you were never supposed to obey enough in order to merit salvation with God, whether you wanna substitute merit for something else.

01:27:44

It's not on the conditions of what you do. It's about on the basis of what Christ has done. And you're latching onto Christ with the empty hand of faith, not with your baptism, not with your list of obedience, but Christ alone.

01:27:58

And so I think this might could really help. I appreciate the question. Thank you here for Dr.

01:28:04

Costa. What do you believe the Bible is trying to say when describing water baptism as being for the forgiveness of sin, like in Mark 1, 4,

01:28:14

Acts 2, 38, and what we see though, like we're getting at justification, but please answer that.

01:28:20

Sure, well, in the case of Mark 1, 4 is referring to John's baptism. Remember what John said.

01:28:25

John said, bring forth fruits that are meat for repentance. In other words, bring forth fruit that is worthy of repentance, right?

01:28:34

And then baptism, of course, is the picture of that. Now, the whole thing hinges on that word for, like in Acts 2, 38.

01:28:43

So we have a preposition there. It's ace, E -I -I -S. And the word ace, and many scholars have written on this,

01:28:51

A .T. Robertson among them, the preposition ace has a spectrum, a wide semantic range.

01:28:59

One of the things it means is to be baptized on account of the forgiveness of your sins or on the basis of the forgiveness of your sins.

01:29:07

And so when it says that John was preaching a baptism for the remission of sins, it was a baptism that was conducted upon the person's confession of repentance.

01:29:21

That's why he says, bring forth fruits that are meat or worthy of repentance. So it's not the actual baptism that brings forgiveness of sins.

01:29:30

It's your repentance that brings forgiveness of sins. And John displayed that.

01:29:37

He demonstrated that by baptizing people in the Jordan River. And so once again, the basis of forgiveness of sins, there can't be any forgiveness of sins without repentance.

01:29:48

Like you can't go be baptized and say, well, I got my sins forgiven now. But again, John preached repentance, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

01:29:57

Jesus preached the same word, Mark 115, repent and believe the gospel. Peter, Acts 2 38, repent and be baptized, all of you.

01:30:06

So it is repentance first. You repent and then you are baptized. Yes, thank you.

01:30:13

So this is some of the confusion from the Church of Christ world and maybe extends even beyond.

01:30:19

Faith has to have obedience, Dr. Costa. It can't be alone. James 2 17 says, even so faith, if it has not works is dead being alone.

01:30:30

Now, I definitely want you to speak to this, but James 2 is talking about that empty said faith that does not produce anything.

01:30:37

But this goes back to the fundamental teaching of all the scripture. We're justified by faith apart from works.

01:30:43

And then a believer sanctification is gonna be vindicated for the world to see. We see that grounded in Abraham and Hebrews 11 with the hall of faith.

01:30:52

And so James 2 is speaking to that human perspective that if you don't see any works, then they just had an empty said faith.

01:31:00

Correct. So Paul and James, and this is where Luther, Luther tripped up a bit. You know, he thought it's a straw epistle.

01:31:08

It doesn't have the fullness of the gospel. Thank God he changed his mind later in life. And so Luther was going through these transitions.

01:31:17

Paul and James are talking about two different types of works. Paul is talking about justification before God, which is based on faith alone.

01:31:24

James is talking about justification before men. And what does that mean? Justification before men.

01:31:30

What did Jesus say in Matthew 5 16 in the Beatitudes? He said, therefore let your light shine before men so that they may see your good works and praise your father in heaven.

01:31:43

So what James is pointing out is this. If you claim to have faith, there's two types of people in the church,

01:31:49

Jeremiah, those who have faith, but have no works and those who have faith and have works. And James says, which of the two do you think actually has saving faith?

01:31:57

It's the one that has works. So what does he mean by justification before men? Well, men can't see your heart.

01:32:04

God sees your heart. God saw the heart of Abraham. And God saw his heart that Abraham trusted in him by faith alone.

01:32:12

And God credited him as righteousness. But men cannot see other men's hearts.

01:32:18

So how can a man see, Jeremiah, that you are a man of God? How can they see that you honor the

01:32:25

Lord Jesus Christ? Well, by your actions. Exactly. And so Paul uses the example of Abraham.

01:32:31

And so does James. James says, well, look at our father Abraham. When he took up Isaac to sacrifice him on Mount Moriah, he says he was justified by his works.

01:32:41

Well, think of this. There's father Abraham. He's going up to the mountain with Isaac, right?

01:32:48

Isaac's carrying the wood on his back. Now, this is very interesting. Isaac carries the wood on his back.

01:32:53

Do you know another son of Abraham who also carried the wood on his back and took it up to the same mountain, which would later be

01:32:59

Mount Zion, where Jerusalem would be built? Well, the rabbi said that Isaac carried the wood on his back like a man who carrying the cross to his death.

01:33:08

That's what the rabbi said. And so the son of Abraham, the chosen son, the one, the son of the promise, the father is gonna sacrifice his son.

01:33:18

There's so much typology going on here. And so you remember in that story, Abraham takes

01:33:23

Isaac up and God already knows. It's not that God needed to test

01:33:28

Abraham and say, wow, Abraham passed the test. That was for Abraham's sake, not for God's sake.

01:33:35

That was to confirm Abraham, not to confirm God. So Abraham goes up there and we could see it visually in our minds.

01:33:43

He goes, I can't believe it. He's actually gonna do it. He takes his son, he binds him up and he puts him on an altar and he raises that dagger and he's about to plunge it into the chest of his son.

01:33:53

And then the angel of Yahweh, who is our Lord himself, the angel of Yahweh says,

01:33:58

Abraham, Abraham, do not harm the child or the lad for I now know that you fear

01:34:04

God. So we see Abraham justified by the fact that he was actually gonna pull through.

01:34:11

He was actually gonna do it. So when we see that, we say, wow, Abraham really trusted

01:34:17

God. So Abraham is justified by his works before our eyes, but not before God.

01:34:23

God already knew that Abraham was gonna pass the test. And so we need to be very careful here.

01:34:29

Paul talks about the works of the law in Romans. James is talking about the works of faith, the works that come from faith.

01:34:37

Those are two different things. And so when Church of Christ and Mormons and all the cults, when they equivocate between Paul and James, what they're doing is they're actually committing the categorical fallacy.

01:34:50

They're not talking about the same thing. Yeah, and Dr. Costa, I mean, this is the language the

01:34:56

Church of Christ use. Paul begins and ends Romans with obedience to the faith.

01:35:02

This new system of faith, the law of Christ, we're no longer bound by the

01:35:07

Mosaic law. So my point is, it's still law to them. It's just a new law.

01:35:13

You gotta obey a different set of rules. And my heart breaks because they're misunderstanding obedience.

01:35:19

And it goes into the deeper categories about being justified by faith apart from works, and then the just living their faith out in obedience.

01:35:29

Exactly, and in Ezekiel, what did he say in Ezekiel? I will put my spirit in you and cause you to walk in my statues.

01:35:37

Wait a minute, I thought I had, that's me. But the Lord says, part of the new covenant is,

01:35:43

I'm gonna give you the spirit. The promise of the spirit is a new covenant promise. And he says, I'll put my spirit in you and I will cause you to walk in my ways.

01:35:52

Whoa, that sounds like God is working in you. Work out your own salvation,

01:35:58

Paul says, Philippians 2 .12. But then verse 13 says, for it is God who is at work with you to complete his will and his purpose.

01:36:08

And so those good works, Ephesians 2 .10, we are his workmanship in Christ created to do good works, which he has foreordained that we should do.

01:36:18

So you see, in the church of Christ, you've got this Armenian, not so well, it is Armenian, but more of a

01:36:23

Pelagian. It's this, it has to be me. It's me and God, it's synergistic, very synergistic, not monergistic.

01:36:31

It's me and God. I'm the co -pilot in the cockpit with God. And so this self -righteousness that I have to have a say, well, if you had a part in your salvation, then how could

01:36:45

God receive all the glory? I mean, you shouldn't be singing Jesus paid it all. You should be singing Jesus and I paid it all, all to us we owe.

01:36:54

So this is the difference. A God that saves alone for his own glory is worthy of more honor and respect and praise than a

01:37:04

God who depends on his creatures to accomplish his purposes. Well, something we've been kind of doing all evening is talking about certain proof texts, even how early church fathers,

01:37:16

Martin Luther wrestled through certain ideas and concepts. And so I wanna encourage people to go back and listen to your interview with Anthony Uvinio at the

01:37:25

Reform Rookie, because y 'all really dive in to some of those proof texts. And one that y 'all didn't cover, because like I said, y 'all did a fantastic job, is in Colossians 2.

01:37:35

So this is kind of a big one. I was thinking maybe you could touch on here. So this context goes all the way up back and around verse nine, talking about being in Christ, in him.

01:37:46

I know when Dr. White did a series on just preaching about what biblical baptism looks like, we eventually get to this circumcision of Christ, a circumcision made without hands.

01:37:58

And so here's the big kicker, and I'd love to have some of your thoughts on it. Having been buried with Christ, with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.

01:38:14

Now, earlier, you made a great point. Why can't baptism sometimes necessarily be involving both the baptism of the spirit and the ceremonial right into water with having those proper distinctions?

01:38:27

So do you have any pointers of how to understand verse 12 here in the context? Well, I think we do need to look at verse 11, the circumcision of Christ made without hands.

01:38:39

Now that's important, because water baptism is done with hands. You need an officiant, you need a candidate, right?

01:38:46

You need someone to immerse you. And so that is a work done with hands. Whenever you see the phrase made without hands, we're reminded of the book of Daniel chapter two, where you have that great image that King Nebuchadnezzar sees in a dream.

01:39:01

And Daniel talks about the head of gold and silver and works his way down to the two legs of iron and then the feet mixed with iron and clay and so forth.

01:39:08

But then he says, but then a stone came, a stone made without hands crashed against, struck the image and destroyed it and reduced it to dust.

01:39:22

So this stone made without hands means that this stone is a reference to a divine person.

01:39:29

This is not a regular stone that you chisel out of a mountain. This stone made without hands is a reference to the coming of Christ.

01:39:37

He's the stone, the cornerstone that was rejected by the builders has become the chief cornerstone.

01:39:44

So when it speaks of the circumcision without hands, this is a divine circumcision.

01:39:50

Deuteronomy 10, what did Moses say to the Israelites? Circumcise your hearts unto the Lord. They couldn't do it. Jeremiah talks about circumcision of the heart.

01:39:58

In other words, physical circumcision was a stand -in for what it signified. And that was circumcision of the heart.

01:40:05

What is circumcision of the heart? It is regeneration. The circumcision of the heart is regeneration.

01:40:11

Notice how baptism here follows regeneration. It's not baptism and then regeneration.

01:40:17

It's regeneration, circumcision made without hands. And then baptism, remember we talked about Jeremiah how baptism is union with Christ.

01:40:28

We're buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith. Notice this, through faith, right?

01:40:35

We're back to faith again, through faith in which you were also raised with him. Excuse me, through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.

01:40:43

So here we have an echo of Romans six that we've been buried with him in the likeness of his burial and the likeness of his resurrection and so forth.

01:40:52

So it is faith that has done this just like 1 Peter 3, 22, 21, the favorite pet text of the baptism regeneration camp.

01:41:00

There's, you know, in this way, baptism now saves you. It saves you, antitype, antitupon is the word that Peter uses there.

01:41:08

The same word he uses about the tab, the writer of Hebrews uses about the tabernacle being a type of the real tabernacle, the heavenly tabernacle.

01:41:17

So, yes, it corresponds. Or the King James says it's a figure. So - King Jimmy. Yeah, that's right,

01:41:23

King Jimmy. So there in Colossians 2, 12, it reminds us that it's not the baptism that does this.

01:41:32

It's actually our regeneration through the spiritual circumcision made without hands. And then it reminds us again that it's this faith in the power of God.

01:41:41

And therefore it's not baptism itself that accomplishes that. It is something that God has already done.

01:41:48

And if you look at Abraham, again, was he declared righteous before circumcision?

01:41:53

Paul says, or after circumcision? Well, clearly, or before circumcision. And therefore the

01:41:59

Gentiles who do not need circumcision, God will count them as if they were circumcised.

01:42:05

And because they have the circumcision of the heart, which is what the physical circumcision ultimately points to.

01:42:10

So I think Colossians 2, 12 to 13, I think it's very clear that the baptism in verse 13 follows the regeneration, the circumcision of the heart in verse 12.

01:42:21

Okay, so that's a good, like I said, there's ongoing conversations, because I know some people just say the circumcision made without hands is referring to regeneration.

01:42:31

And baptism is carrying that same idea of being immersed by the spirit into Christ. And so I've heard the other view of circumcision without hands, regeneration, and then it's talking about the ceremonial right into water, which kind of reflects or represents all those things.

01:42:45

Something else, apologetically, Dr. Costa, I don't know if you've run, I'm sure you've run in this with Roman Catholics and so forth.

01:42:50

You referenced Abraham being justified by faith before his circumcision.

01:42:57

When I bring up Romans 4, which to me is, I love Romans 4 with getting to the heart of the gospel.

01:43:04

It's right before the great conclusion of Romans 5, 1. So what I've run into is starting in verse 4, and now to the one who works, they talk about that this is the one who does works of law.

01:43:17

And they don't like the implication that we take from this, because I say, well, Romans 6, talking about baptism, it's not gonna be a different kind of ceremonial working participation that's now gonna make you right before God.

01:43:29

And so do you have anything you could offer us of just saying, hey, is this referring to works of the law?

01:43:36

Would that matter if he was? Or is he talking about a principle of works like with Abraham before the

01:43:42

Mosaic law was even written on stone? Yeah, I mean, it is the principle of work.

01:43:47

I mean, even before the Mosaic law was given, there was still, Romans 1 talks about how

01:43:52

God has put his moral law in the hearts of all people. All people have moral code. That's why they recoil at the murder of a child or the rape of a young child.

01:44:03

We naturally recoil. You don't have to be a Christian to have this moral disgust. That's there because God has put his moral law.

01:44:09

And that moral law, I mean, even Cain, before the Mosaic law was given, Cain knew that he did something wrong.

01:44:15

He knew that he deserved to be killed. If someone found him, they would kill him for murdering his brother Abel. And so there is a cognition of that law.

01:44:22

And that moral law can be summed up in two commands, that God is to be loved and worshiped. Love him with all your heart, mind and soul.

01:44:29

And we ought to love our neighbor. That is a summation of the law. So in terms of Abraham, there was no

01:44:35

Mosaic law. You know, the law of Moses, Paul says, came 430 years after the promise was made to Abraham in Galatians 3 and 4.

01:44:44

And so, I mean, the works of the law of God that God gave to Moses, I mean, any work, any work you do cannot save you because it doesn't matter what code of works you appeal to, you never keep them perfectly.

01:45:01

And so in this particular case, Paul is talking about Abraham. And the point still stands that when he says that Abraham was counted righteous by God, not by what he did, but by his faith in God.

01:45:16

And so the idea here is that no one can be saved by any works whatsoever.

01:45:22

Whether you want to call it the works of the law or you want to call it your good work, whatever it is, there is no one who does right,

01:45:29

Romans 3. There is no one good. There is no one who does right. And then he says, there is no one who seeks after God.

01:45:37

And Romans 5 .30, they're called God -haters. And this is where defining terms, like when

01:45:43

I debate church Christ, there's about six terms I always define, and I'm going to painfully be consistent.

01:45:49

And one of those is faith, pistis, firm trust. This is a heart category. This is spiritual. You can't put faith in a jar, measure it, see what color it is, how much is there.

01:45:57

No, it's a spiritual category that God sees the heart. And works here are being contrasted.

01:46:03

Ergon, or God's mind, the things that you do that are external that can be quantified, seen, and all the rest.

01:46:09

And the point I'm pressing is, notice Paul is making this a kind of antithesis.

01:46:15

They are not the same. They are related. That's why when you quoted that verse later in Romans 11, verse six, if you make the basis of which we're justified by works, it's no longer of grace.

01:46:27

And so you can't conflate law, gospel, faith, works, justification, sanctification.

01:46:33

That's right. It's either grace or works. And if it's by works, it's not by grace. And if it's by grace, it's not by works.

01:46:39

It's like oil and water. You can put them together, but they don't mix. And so grace is by definition, charis,

01:46:47

God's chesed in the Old Testament. Grace is unmerited favor. It's favor that you didn't earn.

01:46:54

It's favor that you didn't deserve. Grace has been called, you may have heard of the acronym, Jeremiah.

01:47:00

Grace is God's riches at Christ's expense. And so it's something that is unmerited.

01:47:06

A work though, right? A work is something that you merit and you deserve either a wage or you deserve recognition for.

01:47:14

And therefore, when the Jews in John six said to Jesus, what works may we do that we may work the works of God?

01:47:21

And Jesus said, the work of God is to believe, to believe on him whom he sent.

01:47:27

And so he takes their idea and he turns it on its head. And so they're looking for something they can do.

01:47:33

And Jesus says, you don't know what the work of God is? The work of God is for you to believe on the one he sent. I'm glad you quoted

01:47:39

John six because the church cross will use that to say, see, believing is a work that you do.

01:47:45

And I kind of shake my head. I'm like, okay, let's back it up. They are searching Jesus for all the things that can benefit them.

01:47:52

And they're asking, what can we do? And Jesus is saying, no, no, it's not something you can do. It's something

01:47:57

God does. And guess what? If Nicodemus couldn't understand these categories, neither are these people that are gonna be searching

01:48:03

Jesus for the wrong reasons that the majority will eventually depart anyway. So I'm glad you brought that up because John six, the longest chapter in John gives us the necessary context to say, this is a divine work of God that you may believe.

01:48:18

Dr. Costa, you go ahead. Go ahead. Well, I was gonna say in John six he says, the hard doctrine is not just eating the flesh of the son of man and drinking his blood, which means to believe on him and to come to him.

01:48:34

But he goes on to say that, I told you, unless the father draws you, you cannot come to me.

01:48:40

And that is why if you notice, they were offended at the fact that he questioned their autonomous free will.

01:48:48

Even in John eight, when Jesus said, whoever's as a sinner, whoever sins as a slave to sin, they say, well, we've never been slaves to anyone.

01:48:57

Like, really? You mean Egypt, Babylon, Rome? We've never been slaves to anyone.

01:49:04

And Jesus says, whoever sins is a slave to sin. But if the son sets you free, you'll be free indeed.

01:49:10

And so it comes back to that church of Christ mentality that there's this desire that, no,

01:49:16

I must have a part in my salvation. And that's self -righteousness. Dr.

01:49:22

Costa, I could talk with you all night. I don't wanna take away your time. We'll just have to do another episode together.

01:49:31

I'd be happy to. Well, do you have any more kind of encouragements, final things that you wanna say?

01:49:39

Any other book recommendations? I keep on plugging this book because it's something I wanna read to kind of get more of that historic understanding that patal baptism, historical development over time, baptismal regeneration being worked out over time.

01:49:55

And you can see Serial of Jerusalem, that quote that you brought up earlier, that's the one I point people to to say, look, the early church were working out the relation of baptism, how it relates to justification by faith alone.

01:50:10

And so just because I can point to a number of church fathers that even said those exact words, justification by faith alone, doesn't mean that they've totally worked out how baptism fits into that equation.

01:50:24

And so I know another point that I'd like for you to weigh on is I talked to a

01:50:29

Methodist gentleman, and he said, Jeremiah, it seems like you can't affirm the creed that says baptism, the one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

01:50:38

And I just said, well, I can affirm that. I mean, we're stepping into a historic context that says, you know, is this the work worked or the one or the one working?

01:50:49

And I just said, I can affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sin, because it signifies the finished work of Christ for those that have put their faith in him alone, not trusting into themselves.

01:51:00

And so I can affirm the creeds, recognize charitably the things that have been developing and maybe aren't totally solidified, with the recognition that, hey, justification has always been by faith alone.

01:51:15

Yes, absolutely. And so we do believe in the one baptism for the remission of sins. We do believe that the basis of our remission of sins is faith and repentance, but it is expressed in the ceremony of baptism.

01:51:33

And that's why there's only one baptism, because it goes back to this idea that baptism represents our union with Christ in his death, burial, resurrection.

01:51:41

To have multiple baptisms is to convey the idea that Christ suffered repeatedly or that he had to die numerous times, as the book of Hebrew says.

01:51:50

And so, and it goes the same way with the word Catholic. You know, in some churches, people get, they get jolted when they hear the word,

01:51:59

I believe in one Holy Catholic Church. And they said, oh, and I've been accused of, you know, one lady once accused me of being an undercover

01:52:08

Jesuit. And so, even though I came out of the Roman Catholic Church, and many of my family members have come out of the

01:52:14

Roman Catholic Church, but that could be a topic for another day. But the interesting thing is that the word

01:52:22

Catholic, as you know, means universal. It means global. And unfortunately, we have given up that wonderful term to the

01:52:29

Roman Catholics. We just refer to them as Catholic. And the reformers believe they were part of the

01:52:35

Catholic Church. They believe they were part of the universal church. And so, this is where context again comes into play.

01:52:42

We need to define these terms in context because a text taken out of context becomes a pretext.

01:52:50

And you can prove anything from a pretext. But there's one more book I would like to recommend,

01:52:55

Jeremiah. Sorry, I didn't have time to send it to you. It's also by David Wright. And it's called,

01:53:01

What Has Infant Baptism Done to Baptism? It's published by Pater Noster Press, 2005.

01:53:08

So, it's by the same author, David Wright. And it's entitled, What Has Infant Baptism Done to Baptism?

01:53:15

If you want, maybe put that on where your screen share is and maybe

01:53:20

I can show people that because like you said, context is king and that even goes for church history.

01:53:29

And something else that maybe you can touch on here in just a moment is because the Church of Christ mentality is we are the one true church.

01:53:36

We are Christian plus no other labels or titles. And so, when they heard you say something earlier like we don't look at the early church as being

01:53:45

Reformed Baptist. To them, that sounds like an admission on our part that we are not a part of the one true church.

01:53:52

So, do you wanna maybe speak to what we mean by that? By which phrase again? Can you repeat that? Yeah, so the

01:53:58

Church of Christ say, we are the one true church. Romans 16, 16, the Churches of Christ. You can't show me anywhere in the

01:54:05

Bible where it says the Baptist Church is the one true Christ. Right, right. Well, I mean, the church is known by many names.

01:54:14

It's not just the church. It is called the Church of God, Acts 20, 28. So, why don't we go with the

01:54:20

Church of God? In fact, there are denominations called the Church of God. And they use that same argument. Well, Acts 20, 28, the

01:54:27

Church of God. Paul says, do not cause offense to anyone, to the

01:54:32

Jew, to the Greek, or to the Church of God. So, why don't we take Church of God? The same argumentation. The Church of Christ is also known as the

01:54:40

Body of Christ. It's called the Bride of Christ. It's called His Elect. It's called the

01:54:47

Little Flock, and so forth. So, the moment we start going into these technicalities, you know, they treat this as if they're a

01:54:55

CEO of the Church of Jesus Christ. This is the name that we go by. And what

01:55:00

I would say is, obviously, you don't need, you know, I usually joke that, you know,

01:55:06

John the Baptist was a Baptist because he was called John the Baptist. But no, no, of course, that's just all kidding aside.

01:55:14

Yeah, you got it now, okay. Reformed Baptists are basically believers who believe that, you know, baptism is by immersion, cradle

01:55:22

Baptists, and we are Reformed because we believe that the doctrines of grace are clearly taught in the scripture.

01:55:29

And what I find with the Church of Christ as well, Jeremiah, is that they're very selective. They play the eeny, meeny, miny, moe game with church history.

01:55:36

So, they'll take the church fathers that tend to agree with them, but reject others. And my whole argument is this.

01:55:44

Let's let the church fathers be the church fathers. You don't have to make them Presbyterian. You don't have to make them

01:55:49

Lutherans, Methodists, Roman Catholic. I have Roman Catholics telling me that all the fathers were

01:55:55

Roman Catholic. No, they weren't. All the Eastern Orthodox, all the fathers were Eastern Orthodox.

01:56:00

No, they weren't. And why can't we just let the fathers be the fathers? And what we find is that when we study them the way the

01:56:10

Reformers did, what did Luther and Calvin say? They got their doctrines of justification by faith and election.

01:56:17

They said, we got them from Augustine. We got them from John Chrysostom. We got them from Ambrose.

01:56:24

And so, as Christians, we ought not to shy away from the patristics.

01:56:31

We should appreciate the fact that God used Augustine, God used Athanasius to defend

01:56:37

Orthodoxy when Arianism was basically taken over the empire. And I think at the end of the day,

01:56:43

Jeremiah, we have to be aware of the fact that God uses crooked sticks to make straight lines. So, we are crooked sticks, and it's not the crooked stick that makes the straight line.

01:56:53

It's the hand that holds it. And so, God uses us, leaky vessels, crooked sticks, and he uses us to accomplish his purposes.

01:57:02

Wesley and Whitefield had their differences, but no one can deny that God mightily used

01:57:08

John Wesley. Even though he was a very strong anti -Calvinist and called it the work of Satan and so forth, there is no doubt, as Spurgeon said, that Wesley was one of the mighty, mighty men that God raised to revive

01:57:23

England. And even Whitefield, when he was asked, are you gonna see John Wesley in heaven? And he said, no, because he'll be so close to the throne that I won't even see him.

01:57:33

And so, this is our God. He uses us, he uses us in our brokenness, and he uses us, he uses those in the past to bring about his purposes in the world.

01:57:44

Are they perfect? No, but the hand that held them was perfect. I love that.

01:57:51

Because was it, maybe it was Greg Bonson, but he always talked about how God can strike a straight blow with a crooked stick, and I've always thought only a sovereign

01:58:00

God can do that. And when it comes back to like a Roman 16, 16 verse that says the churches of Christ, that is just describing what the church is, but you have to develop, because I would say that the church of Christ are those that have been called out by God's grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

01:58:22

And so, just being able to say, well, the sign on my church out front says churches of Christ, that proves nothing.

01:58:30

You know what I mean? Why not the church of God? You know, Acts 20, 28, 2

01:58:36

Corinthians, where Paul talks about do not make, do not cause offense to the church of God. Why aren't they called the church of God?

01:58:43

So again, why don't we just accept the fact that the assembly, the called out ones, the body of Christ, his ecclesia, there are various names.

01:58:51

The church of the firstborn is used in Hebrews 12 to refer to the church. Also, let me see if I can share my screen here.

01:58:59

Is this the book that you were talking about? What has infant baptism done to baptisms?

01:59:05

Yes, that's it. Okay, I was working hard over here trying to get that. I just want to give people a visual.

01:59:11

So I've not read this. Yeah, I was gonna bring it up. There it is. I was gonna bring it up myself.

01:59:17

I beat you. I see you trying to share it with me now. Yeah, and I'm using the

01:59:22

Canadian Amazon FCA. Yes. Yeah, hey, I like how the Deep South and the

01:59:28

Canadia, the Canadia, we can join forces. By the way, Donnie from Standing for Truth, he's in Canada.

01:59:37

So I don't know if y 'all are anywhere close to each other. Donnie's last name, what's his last name?

01:59:43

Oh, I'm gonna mispronounce it, but it's like Brzezinski or something like that. Don't tell him

01:59:49

I butchered it that bad. You know the channel I'm talking about, Standing for Truth? I've heard of it.

01:59:55

Okay, yeah, you'd love it. He does basically, it seems like a live debate every evening. And so I've been on there debating church of Christ and Lutherans on baptism.

02:00:04

So that's been a lot of fun. Well, us in Canada, we're God's frozen chosen. Oh, yeah, hey, and that's where the best syrup is, right?

02:00:12

That's right, Canadian maple syrup, that's right. And back bacon, Canadian bacon. Oh, nice.

02:00:17

Well, Dr. Costa, any final words, anything that you would like to leave us with? Yeah, I would like to just leave you with the idea that salvation is a free gift of God, that salvation is costly.

02:00:32

It costs the blood of the Son of God. It was his work, not our work. The scripture tells us over and over again, salvation is of the

02:00:39

Lord, and that we're not demeaning baptism. Baptism is an incredibly important ordinance.

02:00:45

It is incredibly important sacrament. But if you're trusting in baptism as your salvation, if you're trusting in any of the sacraments, you could be a

02:00:55

Roman Catholic, or you believe in the mysteries, as you call it in the Eastern Orthodox Church. If you're trusting in those means of grace as a means to save yourself, you're going to be severely disappointed.

02:01:11

Those are signs that point to the Lord Jesus Christ, just like the signs on the highway point you to the direction that you're going to.

02:01:20

They're not the end. They are pointers to the end of all things, which is the

02:01:26

Lord Jesus Christ. And so if you're trusting in your works, in your baptism, then you are, as Paul says, if you think that you can be justified by the works of the law or by any works, he says, you have fallen from grace and you have been severed from Christ.

02:01:46

That is a very, very horrific thought. To be severed from Christ is to be damned, to be anathematized.

02:01:55

And so please recognize that Christ alone is the only savior of sinners.

02:02:03

It is Christ alone that saves. If the law could save you, if keeping the commandments could save you,

02:02:10

Christ died in vain. And so we're not here to demean baptism because it is an important ordinance and it's commanded by the

02:02:19

Lord Jesus Christ, but it's not the cause of salvation. It's not causative.

02:02:25

It is descriptive of what has already happened in you. So I implore you, as Paul says in 2

02:02:32

Corinthians 13, verse five, examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith, because otherwise, he says, you have lost.

02:02:41

You have failed the test. And so my prayer for you is that make sure that Christ is your anchor, that he's your only hope and your only salvation.

02:02:51

Amen, brother. Well, thank you again. I think I was, in the initial, I was thinking, I'll have

02:02:56

Dr. Tony on for about an hour or so, and look at us. We just accidentally tipped over the two -hour mark, but I have, well, thank you for coming on.

02:03:05

I would love to do this again. And like I said, you getting to speak to this topic, I wanted other people to know,

02:03:11

I'm not crazy. I'm not the only one that teaches this way, and for you to be able to come on, yeah.

02:03:17

Our mothers had us tested. We're not crazy. Yes, yes. All right, Dr. Tony Costa, thank you so much again for giving us your time, and keep contending for the gospel of grace, brother.

02:03:29

Thank you, brother. Appreciate that. All right, take care. Well, thank you so much for tuning in for this two -hour livestream.

02:03:37

Like I said, didn't know how long this was gonna go, but we covered so much good ground, and I hope that was helpful. Dr. Tony Costa has been a blessing to me, and we wanted to show that what we believe about baptism is grounded in the early church.

02:03:51

When we look to the early church fathers, the patristics, we don't believe in everything in whole, but we believe the gospel of grace is present.

02:03:59

We believe that we can demonstrate that baptism has been by immersion with the early church, how it was a taught baptism, how it has been on the basis of someone that's been repenting and trusting in Christ alone, and how there are people that believe that regeneration preceded baptism.

02:04:16

And so I thought Dr. Tony was able to really bring a lot of clarity with that. And so one of the last things that I just wanna let people know of is

02:04:24

I have membership now on YouTube, and so this is a way for you to be able to give monetarily support to Apologetic Dog Ministry, and something, and I'm really looking forward to doing this,

02:04:36

I've done this once, I plan on doing this again real soon, is this content is geared towards the members asking me questions, where I wanna maybe do some shorter videos, 15, 30 minutes or so, but just answering questions that get submitted to me.

02:04:51

And so this is something that I wanna be able to do more apologetic content for the support out there.

02:04:59

So I just wanted to make you aware of that. Thank you so much for hanging in there, and until next time,