January 9, 2026 Show with Tom Hicks on “What is a Reformed Baptist?” (Part 2)

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I'm delighted to have a returning guest today who had so much to say about what a

Reformed Baptist is that we decided to do a part two of that discussion.

I'm speaking of Tom Hicks, who is an author and pastor of First Baptist Church of Clinton, Louisiana, and this is going to be, as I just said, part two of our conversation on a recent book that he has written and has been published.

What is a Reformed Baptist? It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Tom Hicks.

Brother, it's a blessing to be here with you today. Amen, and I highly urge our listeners, after this live program is over at some point, to go to the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio website, ironsharpensironradio .com,

and you can type in the search engine Tom Hicks, H -I -C -K -S, and you will see our

December 2 interview, which is part one of the discussion that we are continuing today.

Well, if you could, once again, let our listeners know something about First Baptist Church of Clinton, Louisiana.

Yeah, well, it is located north of Baton Rouge, and if Louisiana is shaped like a boot, then we are in the shoelaces of the boot of Louisiana.

It's a little bitty town. I don't know if anyone knows where it is, but it's a nice place to live, and it's a blessing to serve there at First Baptist.

And, obviously, we've already made it clear, since we're discussing what is a

Reformed Baptist, that this congregation is a Reformed Baptist church. Yes, it is.

It's a confessional Reformed Baptist church. Well, if anybody would like details on the

First Baptist Church of Clinton, Louisiana, you could go to their website, which is fbcclintonla .com,

fbcclintonla .com, for First Baptist Church of Clinton, Louisiana.

Well, I think it would be helpful, Tom, especially for the sake of those who missed part one of this two -part discussion, if you would give a summary, an overall view, of what we've already addressed, the main primary points that folks need to know on how to identify a genuine, historically and biblically faithful Reformed Baptist church.

Yeah, so a Reformed Baptist church is a church that holds to the

Reformed confessional traditions that have to do with our confessions of faith. And so Reformed Baptists have held to different confessions of faith, but the main one is the

Second London Confession. And earlier, before that, there was the First London Confession in England.

The Second London Confession was first edited and published in 1677.

It was formally adopted by the London Baptist Association in 1689.

So sometimes it's called the 1689 Confession. But that's really what it means to be a

Reformed Baptist. And the way it differs from other Baptists, for example, would be, of course, it's

Calvinistic in its soteriology, but it goes beyond Calvinism, which is sometimes people,

Baptists who are Calvinistic, will identify themselves as Reformed Baptists. But truly, the term

Reformed Baptist goes beyond just having a Calvinistic doctrine of salvation and includes a belief about the law of God, the covenants of the

Bible, distinction between the law and the gospel, the regulative principle of worship, and those things that all go together.

We also are rooted more historically than Baptist churches who are not

Reformed. We're more rooted directly into the Protestant Reformation and the theology that flowed from it.

Reformed Baptists emerged in London out of English independency.

And so we came from the stream of churches over which

John Owen was probably the primary theologian and leader, the congregationalist, the independent.

And Baptists emerged from what was the JLJ Church, the Jacob Lathrop Jesse Church, that studied baptism.

And they said, not only are we independent and congregational, but we believe that we should only baptize babies.

I'm sorry, believers, not babies. We should not baptize babies. And John Spilsbury was a major leader in that movement, and there were others that emerged from the

JLJ Church. And there was the first particular Baptist churches that were formed from that.

But one little thing interesting to note is they really didn't think of themselves as Baptists.

That's much more of an anachronism. It's a modern innovation to call it

Baptist, really. Historically, when we first emerged, we would have called ourselves independent, who baptized believers only.

So that would have been their identity, and they would not have identified themselves with, say,

Arminians, who also emerged. So those general Baptists that are called today, that were related to the continental

Anabaptists, the English particular Baptists, or Baptistic Congregationalists, as Matthew Bingham called them, would never have found common cause with them or wanted to be in the same association with them.

You mean with the Armonian Baptists you're talking about? That's correct. They would never have wanted to be in the same association with Arminian Baptists.

They really found them to be grossly heterodox. Like, they had very strong words to say about the

Arminian Baptists. So our identity, if you were to think of it, is we are not really a branch of the

Baptist tree. Rather, we're a branch of the Reformed tree, and we are, first,

Catholic Christians, little c. Catholic Christians, second, Reformed, and then third,

Baptistic. So Reformed takes primacy over our

Baptistic convictions when you're a Reformed Baptist, although we are very conditionally

Baptist as well. And briefly, if you could define the regulative principle, you happened to mention that, and we sometimes in this program take it for granted that people, everyone listening, understands when we use terms like that, but we very often have new believers listening.

We have those outside of the Reformed orbit listening. So why don't you please define for us the regulative principle?

Yeah, it says that—so what the regulative principle said was that we should only worship

God publicly in the church in the ways that he has instituted in the

New Covenant. So New Covenant worship follows what God has instituted in the

New Covenant. And so to understand this better, you can contrast the regulative principle with what's called—what

Reformed theologians call the normative principle. And the normative principle says that whatever

God has not forbidden is free. So as long as we can somehow justify it from the

Bible, we are free and permitted to do it in worship. And so today, you know, there are—just to maybe make this practical and say, those who hold to the regulative principle hold to a simple form of worship.

So it doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles. It's not attractional to the human senses.

Instead, it's attractional to those who believe, those who have faith.

And it doesn't stimulate human senses. It stimulates faith.

And the regulative principle is basically the Word of God in various modes, because the

Word of God is read, it's preached. The Word of God appears in the two ordinances, the baptism and the

Lord's Supper. That's the gospel, both of those. The baptism is a picture of the gospel. The Lord's Supper is a picture of the gospel and thus preaches the gospel.

We sing songs that are biblical, that are rooted in Scripture—songs, hymns, spiritual songs.

The prayers that we offer should be offered biblically and in the name of Christ and so forth.

And so the offerings that we receive are given to God for his glory.

As 1 Corinthians talks about, they took up an offering on the first day of the week.

And so one way to think about the regulative principle is that whatever Christ did not institute in the new covenant is prohibited.

So we shouldn't add a bunch of other things to it that Christ didn't say we should do, like a puppet show, for example, or a play, or interpretive dance, or mining, or anything else.

I saw one church that had a Wheel of Fortune game, or a big

Xbox giveaway for High Attendance Sundays. These kinds of things that are more business strategies to get more people in the door, but that they aren't what

Christ has commanded, and they really don't help grow the church or strengthen the church. What grows and strengthens a church is the

Word of God faithfully set before Christ's people. So that's an error of worship in modern evangelicalism is to not hold tightly to what

Christ says to do and really don't add to it. Because the more you add to what Jesus said to do, the more you're distracting everyone from Jesus himself.

Because the means of grace—meaning the Word of God, the sacraments—they point us to Christ most directly and most clearly.

And if we add to that in the public worship, what we end up doing is distracting people from Jesus, from God.

And another way that this principle is violated is in the more liturgical traditions.

So like Roman Catholicism, even Lutheranism, Anglicanism, they add lots of pomp and ceremony, and sometimes it's called bells and bells, to their worship service.

But it's really very similar to what evangelicals have done with laser lights and smoke machines and big bands on stage and stuff.

They're both trying to stimulate senses, human physical sensory experiences, instead of stimulating faith through the

Word of God. And what it's really doing is it's not holding fast to what

Jesus has said to do in the Bible and that alone. So that's the regulative principle.

Yes. And basically, if you were to sum it up in a very brief and concise way, would it be accurate to say that the regulative principle responds to the silence in Scripture as prohibitions, and the normative principle responds to the silence in Scripture as liberty and freedom to do things?

Yes. And the reason for the regulative principle's response to the silence of God is because of the

Reformed doctrine of sola scriptura. The Bible alone is enough to regulate our worship.

And we shouldn't go beyond the Bible in the regulation of our worship. You mentioned puppet shows earlier.

And one of the reasons I chuckled was because I can remember vividly years ago in the 1980s, when the church where I was saved, a

Reformed Baptist church, was Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, Long Island, which would later merge with First Baptist Church of Merrick, Long Island and become

Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island. But in those early days, in the 80s, before the merger, we had as a conference speaker,

Greg Nichols. And Greg, who is now pastoring in upstate

New York. And Greg was speaking out against these absurd intrusions into the worship of the church, and he included puppet shows as something to be avoided and even mocked, the very idea of it.

And I just remember jokingly saying that due to Pastor Greg Nichols' sermon,

Calvary Baptist Church has canceled its performance of Burt and Ernie go to Sodom and Gomorrah.

Oh, boy. But having said everything that you said, that does not mean that a church that is governed by the regulative principle cannot and does not have beautiful worship.

And it's especially beautiful to the ears of those who love to hear biblically faithful hymns and songs of worship sung by God's people.

Amen. And the practice of the ordinances and so on. Yeah, absolutely.

What is beautiful about Reformed worship, and this is not just Reformed Baptist. This is the

Reformed tradition as a whole. And it's really only lately that we've gotten away from this.

But what's beautiful about it is that Christ is set forth. I mean, this is what

Galatians—Paul says to the Galatian churches that Christ was publicly portrayed before their eyes, meaning their eyes of faith through the proclamation of the word and ordinances and the singing of songs and hymns and spiritual songs, is that Jesus is sinful.

God is put on sinful display through the one who explains

Him, His own Son, incarnate Son.

And so, yes, I don't know that there's something could be more beautiful than a direct approach to Jesus, and that's the point.

Amen. And you mentioned earlier that initially those who were among the sovereign grace -believing

Baptists were not yet calling themselves Baptists.

They were calling themselves independents. Approximately when in history did the term

Baptist become vogue or in vogue? And, of course, the added word particular to set them apart from the

Arminian Baptists, who might not have used that term either, but they were in contradiction to those embracing the theology of the

Reformation, and specifically John Calvin, which they obviously firmly believed was biblical, first and foremost.

But particular, referring to the doctrine of particular redemption, which is also commonly known as limited atonement and definite atonement.

But when was it in vogue for Baptists to actually call themselves

Baptists? I'd have to go and nail that down precisely, but my instinct is it was in the 1800s, because that's when

Baptists really exploded. Did they not call it the

London Baptist Confession of Faith in the 17th century? No, they did not.

It was just the Second London Confession. Oh, okay. Interesting.

It's actually incorrect to say. It's just not what the title is.

You go to early English books online or something, and you look up that confession, look at its title.

It just says Second London Confession. Ah, interesting. Now, when it comes to Baptists, were those of a

Calvinist persuasion always numerically dominant, or was it a near 50 -50 split between Arminians and Calvinistic Baptists?

The answer is yes, very strongly so. They were dominant because the

Reformed faith and Protestantism in general was Calvinistic.

The turn away from that was always viewed as a degradation from the

Reformed faith. And so this is why, well, not getting too distracted, but you had the

Dutch Reformed church, and then you had the Remonstrants afterward, which were Arminians, and they were looked at as a decline.

Numerically speaking, in England, Calvinistic Baptists, particular

Baptists, were the overwhelming majority. There was a much smaller group of Arminian Baptists, but they were large enough to where they were on the radar, but no one called them

Baptists. They were the Anabaptists. They really took on a lot of the theology of the

Anabaptists, including its synthetic doctrine of justification, doctrine you can lose your salvation, the doctrine of they were suspicious about original sin.

In fact, I'm pretty sure they didn't believe in it. So these were serious departures from the

Reformed faith as a whole. Some got cleaner and clearer, and they started articulating themselves better after their genesis.

That's for sure, but they still were not considered mainstream at all in the

Reformed faith. And even particular Baptists were viewed as a departure. However, some heretic hunters, like Daniel Featley, said that the particular

Baptists, and they weren't called that at that time, but that they had the root of the matter, that they were really warmhearted

Christians, and he was trying to find a heresy in them, and he didn't.

So there were lots of camaraderie and communion between Pato Baptists and Baptists in England.

In fact, a lot of our early English Baptist forebearers were close friends with Pato Baptists and very open -hearted toward them, lots of unity there.

And that was on purpose on the parts of the particular Baptists. The general

Baptists or the Armenian Baptists, that was not the case. They were their own thing, very separate, very much in rebellion against the mainstream of the

Reformation trajectory. And actually, on the road back to Roman Catholicism in many ways.

And it's interesting that if you read especially older literature from over a century ago, if you read literature featuring the writings of Armenian Protestants, those outside of Baptist circles,

Wesleyan, Methodist, and so forth, it's interesting that they will assume in their writings very often, if they're referring to a

Baptist, that that Baptist is a Calvinist. There seems to be an equating of the two automatically.

Oh, yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, you can go back to, I'll just say in America, on the American side, all the early

Southern Baptist churches, we'll just go there. All the early, all, and I really do mean all of them, held to a version of the

Second London Confession. So what could have been the Charleston Confession or the Philadelphia Confession, but it's essentially the

Second London Confession. And that was what formed the convention.

There might have been one or two exceptions, maybe, that they wouldn't have been Armenian. They would have been, they just held a different confession at some time, but it was almost universal.

And that's the root of the Southern Baptist Convention, despite what many today seem to think.

It was never this huge tent that it's this big tent that it is today, and you have all different mixtures of everything kind of with it.

As long as you immerse, then you can be a part of it, you know, and loosely hold to the

Baptist faith and Message 2000. So, yeah, to say Baptist meant

Calvinistic. Now, before we go to the break,

I happen to know some, they are a minority, at least in my experience, they are.

I know some Reformed Baptist men, pastors, who identify as confessional using the 1689

London Confession. And they disagree with a requirement of being bound to the regulative principle.

Would you say that individuals like that are inappropriately identifying themselves as Reformed Baptists, even though the vast majority of the confession would be something they would echo with us?

Yes, I would, but I'd go further, and I would say even the Armenian Baptists became

Baptists because of the regulative principle. So if you want to ask the question, why did

Baptists emerge from paedobaptism? What was the catalyst doctrine that caused them to become

Baptists rather than paedobaptists? It was the regulative principle.

And so here's a question I would put to any professing Baptist brother who doesn't hold to the regulative principle.

I would say, if you don't hold a doctrine that was necessary to the emergence of Baptists in the first place, are you really a

Baptist? And of course, we both know that even churches that adhere to the regulative principle are not monolithic because you have some who take that to mean we are only to sing a cappella in the church or to only sing psalms and not hymns and spiritual songs.

And so you do have differences in the Reformed community when it comes to the regulative principle.

Oh, yeah. I mean, we can duke it out over how it's applied, and that's what we're talking about here.

But that's a discussion within the doctrine that only what

Christ has instituted is permitted. Well, then you have to ask, well, what exactly did he institute and what did he not?

And that's where those debates come in. Well, we have to go to our first commercial break. And if anybody, once again, would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Tom Hicks, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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The Lord bless you in the knowledge of himself. Welcome back, if you just tuned us in.

Our guest today is a returning guest, Tom Hicks, author and pastor of First Baptist Church of Clinton, Louisiana, and we are addressing part two of a conversation we began back in December, What is a

Reformed Baptist? And that is the title of a new book that is in print by Tom Hicks, published by Founders Press.

And by the way, Founders Press has a wonderful discount available for you who are listening.

If you go to their website, which is Press .Founders .org,

and type in, What is a

Reformed Baptist? in the search engine, you can order this book.

And if you use the code BAPTIST, you will receive a 10 % discount.

I'm getting that right, right, Tom? That's correct, yeah.

Okay, so we hope that you take advantage of that discount.

Let me go, before I go into some questions of my own, let me go to Delmar in Vestavia Hills, Alabama.

And Delmar asks, Why did it become so popular amongst

Confessional Reformed Baptists to eliminate the original clause within the

Confession that identified the Pope as the Antichrist? He's asking, why did it become popular?

To eliminate. For some churches to, like, scratch, edit that part out, right?

Right, right. Is that what he's saying? Yeah. Yeah, so I think it's really,

I think it's because it's a misunderstanding. And it probably happened, you know, on the heels of a real emphasis on eschatology and dispensationalism.

And, you know, that was in the water when Reformed Baptists in the 20th century were emerging. And so when it says the

Pope is that Antichrist, it makes us think, well, he is the

Antichrist. You know, the Pope is the Antichrist, which obviously he wasn't in the day that the

Second London Confession was composed. But that's not what the Confession means.

What it means is when it says he is that Antichrist, it means that he is an anti -Christian leader, that he fits the mold of a recurring spirit of the

Antichrist that is at times embodied in various figures throughout history. And the papacy is one of them.

And so I would argue that if you would hold that Roman Catholicism and the papacy is anti -Christian, then you hold the doctrine that is taught in the

Confession, because that's really what it means. It's not making an eschatological statement.

It's instead making a theological statement about the nature of the papacy.

So you're saying that you believe that the Reformed Baptists that diminish the importance or eliminate the importance of that article identifying the

Pope as the Antichrist, you're thinking they are in error in doing so. Well, I think they've misunderstood the

Confession because it's not true that the Pope is the final Antichrist. That's just not true.

And you might read the original Confession and think, well, that's what they thought back in 1677, but they were wrong.

So let's get it out of there or something. Well, that every Pope is the Antichrist or something like that, but that's not what it meant.

It really meant it had to do with their understanding of... I mean, you look at, like, 1 John, it talks about the spirit of the

Antichrist. This is there have been Antichrists, and there will be Antichrists.

There's not just one. So I think they're misunderstanding. I think they're misunderstanding the

Confession. If they're not, if they really think that the papacy is Christianity, then we have a real difference from them.

When they scratch that out of the Confession, do they really mean that the papacy is substantially, fundamentally

Christian? Then that's not what the Reformers would have thought. They believe it had so seriously departed from the gospel and needed massive reformation.

Yes. And, of course, many who are dispensationalists and others, not only dispensationalists, misuse the term

Antichrist to identify a future figure in Revelation when that term is not mentioned in the book of Revelation.

The beast of Revelation is mentioned in the whole of Babylon and so on, but the Antichrist is not mentioned in the book of Revelation.

Yeah. I do believe there will be a final Antichrist, but I don't think that's what the

Confession is talking about when it's talking about the Pope. Right. Okay.

Thank you, Ilmar. Now, one of the things that is controversial in the distinctives of Reformed Baptists, Confessional Reformed Baptists, is our understanding of the covenant, which not only is in distinction from the non -Reformed, non -Confessional, non -Calvinist

Baptist churches, but it's also distinct from, to a degree, the

Presbyterian understanding. And, of course, there isn't really one Presbyterian understanding.

I've interviewed enough Presbyterians to know that they are not in lockstep, identical to one another.

But even we who are Reformed Baptists sometimes disagree with our understanding of what covenant theology means and so on.

But if you could tell us, in your opinion, what you think is the most biblical and historically faithful understanding of the covenant.

Yeah. So, I'm going to get this from the big picture, and without trying to prove every single thing

I say here, you can get the book and see my arguments for that. But when we say covenant theology in the

Reformed sense, we're talking about the metastructure of the biblical covenant, the big picture.

And we're particularly talking about the covenants that are about eternal life or salvation. So, if you ask the question, which covenants promise eternal life?

And there are three that are related to eternal life. Okay? So, the first is the covenant of work that was made with Adam.

And this covenant was kindly established by God.

Adam could never require God to establish this covenant. God did not owe

Adam this covenant in any sense. Rather, this was a kind and condescension of God to the creature, to Adam, to establish this covenant.

But then once it's kindly established, you could say graciously here, but sometimes it's probably not better to say gracious because grace really has to do with demerited favor.

But it is nonetheless a gift. The covenant is a gift. Once God gifts this covenant to Adam, the terms within that covenant are terms of perfect obedience for eternal life.

Adam had to do this and live. And we know that because there's a tree of life, a tree of eternal life, right there in the garden.

But what do you make of that? And there were no second chances. He sinned once, but he was out forever. So, just understanding that, if you just back up and look at it, what that is, is it's an arrangement that's unique, where you have an oath, you have two parties, you have

God and Adam. And you have terms, which are, he had to obey

God perfectly, with no second chances in the garden. And that's the covenant of work.

Do this and live. And, of course, Adam did not, and so he died.

He, in all of his austerity, took the first covenant as the covenant of work.

The second covenant is eternally planned, but is formally actually established between God and Christ at the incarnation, and that's called the covenant of redemption.

So there's an eternal council of peace that is established at the incarnation, and this covenant is also a covenant of work to Christ.

So Jesus didn't get grace in this covenant. He had to obey God perfectly in the terms of the covenant to live.

And we know that he did, because he perfectly kept the law of God in his earthly life.

He took our sins to himself. He died for them, and we know that he perfectly obeyed and he made full satisfaction for our sins, because he was raised to eternal life.

Christ did this, and he lived in that covenant of redemption, and so satisfied perfectly divine justice.

And when he said it is finished on the cross, he completely accomplished the redemption of his chosen people to whom he would apply it.

So that's the covenant of redemption. The third covenant about eternal life is the covenant of grace.

And this covenant, it is nothing other than the application of all the life blessings that Jesus received in the covenant of redemption.

So the covenant of redemption that receives all these blessings accomplishes them, but the elect now don't deserve them themselves, but Christ deserves for the elect to be given all these blessings.

And so the moment any one of the elect in time is joined to Jesus in the covenant of grace, which is formally concluded in the new covenant, then they are regenerated.

They're given the gifts of faith and repentance. They're justified only by faith.

They're adopted only by faith. They are sanctified, they are preserved, they persevere to the end, and then finally they're glorified.

And those blessings are irrevocable, meaning they certainly come to pass for the elect who are joined into the covenant.

They're the only ones who are joined to Christ in this covenant of grace. So the covenant of grace is not as contrasted with the covenant of work because there's no terms of work to us in the covenant of grace such that we have to remain in it.

Like, it's not as though we're in a new Garden of Eden now where we have to work and obey

Christ in order to stay in a right relationship with God, in order to stay in the covenant.

It's just backwards. Instead, here's the terms of the covenant of grace. The covenant of work said, do this and live.

The covenant of grace says, live and do this. So we're given the free gift of life, and from that free gift of life flows doing.

And we keep the commandments of Christ imperfectly, but we do and we repent and we persevere all because of the

Holy Spirit's effectual work within us who will finish all that he's started.

Another way of framing this up a little bit is all five points of Calvinism are in those covenants.

So if you think of, well, except for unconditional election, which is pre -covenantal, so unconditional election is in the decree, but the covenant of works is total depravity.

Adam sinned against the law, and God cursed the whole human race with total depravity, and all men are totally unable to do anything toward their own salvation.

That's a result of Adam's failure in the covenant of works. In the covenant of redemption, Jesus definitely atoned for the elect.

So that's the doctrine of definite atonement or limited atonement. In the covenant of grace, you have irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints, which the

Spirit affects in all of his elect people. So there's Calvinism is tightly connected to our overarching covenantal theology, which is a covenant about eternal life.

And what I haven't gotten into and what people sometimes want to ask, and I'm happy to if you want to discuss it, but there are biblical covenants, right?

So you have the covenant with Abraham, covenant with Abrahamic covenant, the

Mosaic covenant, the Davidic covenant, and then the new covenant. So what do we do with those?

Well, here's where we're getting into the difference between, say, us and Presbyterians.

Presbyterians tend to want to say, the majority report of Presbyterians have said the

Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, and the Davidic covenants were identical with the covenant of grace.

No historic Baptist said that, that they're identical. Now, that might be a little strong.

Let me think. At the beginning, there were certain ones that made that same move, and they were still

Baptists, and they held that. But I was too strong when I said none. But most historic

Baptists and the majority view of the historic Baptists was that the covenant of grace is not identical with the

Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, and the Davidic covenant. Rather, the covenant of grace is either a theological construct—some taught that—or it's just the covenant of…some identified it with the covenant of redemption alone.

But what became the more reigning view over time, the majority view among particular

Baptists, is that it was the new covenant. And that's the view that I hold. That the new covenant was reaching back into time, beginning at Genesis 3 .15

with Adam, and saving all of the elect through time up until Christ came and formally established the new covenant.

That the new covenant was retroactively applying its promises to save all of the elect.

But what that means is, if you're in the Abrahamic covenant, you're not in the…that doesn't mean you're in the covenant of grace.

But if you're in the covenant of circumcision, you're not necessarily in the covenant of grace.

If you're in the Abrahamic covenant of circumcision, you could also be in the covenant of grace.

And that would mean you're in two covenants at the same time, the same with the Mosaic and the

Davidic. And so then that raises the question of what are those other covenants doing?

So what's the Abrahamic covenant doing? What's the Davidic covenant and the Mosaic? If they're not the covenant of grace about eternal life, saving people, what are they doing?

Well, they're carrying the seed, the line of promise. They are carrying the means by which…they're carrying the seed of the

Savior who would come and establish the new covenant and save all the elect peoples.

So it's about preserving the line of promise and also revealing both law and gospel, the original covenant of works, and the coming new covenant in Titus' shadows.

And so that's what's happening in the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, and the Davidic covenant.

And it's more of a typological kingdom of Christ. It's not the actual redemptive kingdom.

It's a shadow of what would yet come in the future. So that's how

I would sketch it. Does that make sense? Yes. In ways I should clarify?

Well, let me just follow up with a couple of questions or clarifications. I'm assuming by what you said you would disagree with a common

Pado -Baptist phrase that God has one covenant with his people but two administrations.

Yes. So the mainstream view of Presbyterian covenant theology and Reformed covenant theology is that God has one covenant with the same substance that is variously administered.

So it looks different in these different covenants, but its saving substance or core is the same.

It actually saves people. So the Abrahamic covenant is actually saving the elect, so is the

Mosaic, and so are the Davidic. But they look different slightly.

And then you come to the New Covenant, and there's a big shift, but it's the same covenant as all those earlier ones.

The New Covenant has the same substance as the

Abrahamic and the Mosaic and the Davidic, where I would strongly differ from them.

And I think the majority of particular Baptists would is we deny that the

New Covenant has the same substance as the Abrahamic covenant, the

Mosaic, and the Davidic. The New Covenant alone has a saving substance, the covenant of grace.

The Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants do not have a saving substance.

Their substance is not about redemption. It's actually about the preservation of the line of promise.

The Abrahamic covenant is a tribal covenant. The Mosaic is a national covenant. The Davidic is a covenant with a kingdom.

And it's all about a people that was carrying the line of promise until Christ would come.

And it's about revealing the law and the gospel, the original covenant of works and the covenant of grace.

And the substance of these covenants was really, it was works. You had to obey the law of God to stay in them.

Like, if you persisted and the nation as a whole rebelled, it brought the curse upon itself.

But we cannot rebel against Christ like that in the covenant of grace, in the New Covenant.

He keeps us by his power. We cannot break covenant. They could break covenant in the

Old Covenant. It was a breakable substance. The New Covenant has no breakable substance.

And, you know, even using the word substance and administration and all that, there's all kinds of debates about this.

I might rather use the word essence or whatever, but you get the point. They're doing different things at their heart.

That's the issue. And to be clear, I know as a

Reformed Baptist, you do not believe, unless anybody listening is confused and draws a wrong conclusion, you are not saying that obedience in the

Old Covenant saved anyone. Absolutely not.

I do not believe that. The obedience in the Old Covenant mostly just kept them alive.

Like, God didn't bring a curse temporally. He brought temporal blessings. So, I mean, it's just real clear.

So if you read Genesis 17, if you didn't circumcise your child, you were to be cut off from the people.

What did that mean? It mean you would die. So circumcising your child meant you could remain with the tribe, you see?

So it was a work, you know, in that sense. You had to do something to stay in and connected.

So the doing was prior to the connection. What you had to do to stay with, to be in the covenant and not to be disinherited from the covenant.

That's exactly backwards from the New Covenant. In the New Covenant or in the covenant of grace, your connection to the covenant guarantees and produces your doing.

And you cannot be disinherited from it. Right. The Old Covenants were earthly, fleshly, and temporal, whereas the

New Covenant is spiritual and eternal. Amen. And one last thing that we differ from our

Paedo -Baptist brethren is that we do not believe, and you could correct me if I'm phrasing this improperly, but we do not believe that the unelect are in the

New Covenant, whereas many of our Paedo -Baptist brethren believe the

New Covenant includes those that will eventually wind up in hell, even though they have an intercessor and a mediator in Jesus Christ, which to me boggles the mind.

I agree with that. That's true. Baptists have, from our beginning, really emphasized

Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8, which says, They shall all know me from the least to the greatest in this

New Covenant. And so in the New Covenant, everyone knows the Lord. And that's presently fulfilled according to Hebrews 8.

And, you know, Jesus says this cup is the cup of the

New Covenant. That's for the church. So right now we're in the New Covenant, and it means if you're in the

New Covenant, you are a believer. And there are no non -elect people in the

New Covenant, therefore. So, yeah. But we do believe that within a church, so the church covenant, we're to admit those into the church who credibly profess faith in Christ.

And no one but a believer has a right to join a church. But unbelievers do, in fact, join church without a right to.

And so within the church covenant, not the New Covenant, church covenants, local church covenants, there are unbelievers that pretend.

And so it is a nicked body in fact, but not by right. There's no right for an unbeliever to be in the church.

And so that's where church discipline comes in and, you know, excommunication and removing unbelievers from it.

But that's another place where we differ from Presbyterians, that not everyone in the church is in the covenant of grace.

We don't know who that would be, but only those in the covenant of grace or the

New Covenant are actually going to push the beard to the end.

And the others will manifest unbelief and may have to be removed from the church covenant or they go on self -deception and it's not revealed who they are.

So we have something similar to Presbyterians, but we say there's two covenants going on.

So the Presbyterians would say that the New Covenant has unbelievers in its outward administration, but we would say no.

The New Covenant has no unbelievers in it. It's only a believer's covenant and it is not a breakable covenant, unbreakable, and it's absolutely fading.

Yes, I have heard Pato Baptist friends and brothers,

I don't want to use the word mock, but in their disagreement with us, where we say we only baptize believers because we believe that is the biblical example of what baptism is, they will often say, yeah, but you often baptize people who are unbelievers because they prove themselves to be false converts later on in their lives when they become apostate and so on.

But there's a huge difference between intentionally baptizing people who you have no clue whether or not they are regenerate and the unconscious baptism of those who are giving some kind of evidence that is fooling us that they are saved and therefore we're taking them at their word that they have repented and everything that we see in their lives, we baptize them because we are not, and no one on this planet is, omniscient.

We can't read the hearts and minds of men like Christ, and so therefore there will be errors made, but this is not done intentionally.

That is correct, and I would say, just kind of playing around with a

Presbyterian who would talk like that, sometimes they talk about the presumptive regeneration of infants that they baptize, and I would say we have biblical warrant to presume the regeneration of anyone who confesses

Christ, because it's all through Acts, and it's in Romans, if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart, you shall be saved.

Well, who's to be baptized in Acts? It's those who profess, those who say that they believe. That's what's going on throughout the whole narrative, and so we actually, as Baptists, we believe in presumptive regeneration of all who credibly profess faith.

But it doesn't mean, it does not mean that an unbeliever has a right, that's the key word, to be baptized.

That's where we really differ, that's the real heart of the debate, is that they believe, infants who don't believe, still have a right to be baptized, and we don't.

They believe the church is rightfully a mixed body.

We do not. The church is in fact a mixed body, but there's no right to a mixture of believers and unbelievers in the church.

And we have to go to our midway break right now, and once again, if you have a question, submit it to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence, don't go away, we'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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That's royaldiadem .com. Before I return to Tom Hicks and Part 2 of a conversation we began in December on what is a

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The question is, Is Baptist a denomination?

I have heard disagreeing responses to that question from Baptists. Well, I mean,

I would not call Baptists a denomination. Very colloquially and sort of broadly, people say that.

So usually a denomination would refer to the name of a church, like a name of a church.

And so you have the Presbyterian Church of America. It's really all one church.

So there is no Baptist church. If you ever hear anybody say something like that's the Baptist church, it's not accurate because there are only individual

Baptist churches. So I recoil from the idea of denomination for that reason, but for another reason, and that is that there are many different kinds of Baptist churches almost that are

Baptist churches, and there is no hierarchy of authority that is determining the way

Baptist churches are. So you have to judge very carefully each church you visit that's a

Baptist church or would look at and try to understand what that particular church believes and how they practice and so on because Baptist churches are not in any hierarchy.

We are instead associational when we're at our best. That is, we associate, but really only to the purpose of doing certain things with other

Baptist churches, and those associations have no power to act within individual

Baptist churches. So to discipline within them, for example, or to exercise any kind of power or control within local churches.

So you can, I think, call a Baptist a denomination only in the sense that it's describing, in general terms, a kind of church polity or ecclesiology that's distinct from other

Protestant churches. You can call it that, but I would shy away from calling

Baptist a denomination. Yes. One of the tenets of historic

Baptist churches is the independence and autonomy of local congregations that are governed only by the

Word of God and by local elders. And a congregationalist form of government, whereas denominations typically have a hierarchical structure with authority outside of the individual congregations.

Am I saying that correctly? Do you think? I think so, yes. That's right. And now let me ask you, is the

Southern Baptist Convention a denomination? I would call it that.

Like I said, it is not. I mean, what's interesting,

I mean, if you want to get real technical here, the Southern Baptist Convention only exists for two days out of the year.

The word convention just means big meeting. Right. So it's a massive business meeting.

And once the Southern Baptist Convention closes on the second day, it doesn't exist.

There are entities that keep on existing, that it established, but it doesn't.

So there are local Southern Baptist associations which really have more substance, supposedly.

They don't anymore. They've lost that, but supposedly more substance than the state and the national levels, which is historically how

Baptists have run. So it's been more like we locally associate with other Southern Baptist churches, primarily for the purpose of missions and historically also for the purpose of working out doctrinal issues somewhat and differences among ourselves, practical issues.

And that if the church, you know, were to become heretical or tolerate some growth, then you could exclude that whole church from the association.

But you couldn't fire the pastor. You couldn't discipline the person that was involved. You could just act to remove them from the whole association.

So that's historically Southern Baptist. Great. And I want to make sure that you highlight things from your book that we failed to cover during part one of our discussion in December to make sure that those things that you find most important in your own writings will not be ignored.

So why don't you highlight some of those things? I'm not remembering everything we talked about in December.

Did we talk about the relation between the law and the gospel? This is very important. You know,

I don't think that we, I have addressed that many times with different guests, but I'm not specifically remembering us having a conversation about it.

Well, let me hit on that because that's really very crucial to reform

Baptist theology in the way that it, and really reform theology and the way that it works out pastorally.

And so thinking maybe in terms of preaching and what this means, very practically,

I'm going to try to show you how it works out. And that is that when we're ministering or preaching the gospel or just teaching the

Bible in any way, or even reading the Bible, we're trying to get it for ourselves. We should think in these terms.

Let me give you an example that would be a bad way to teach. Okay. So a bad way to teach would be, or preach, or even read the

Bible would be something like this. Let's take the law. So the law, the moral law of God is summarized by the 10 commandments.

And what does it say? The fourth commandment is remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, which means stop working from your ordinary labors and keep it holy, meaning gather for a holy day, a day of holy convocation, as Leviticus says.

So I could be preaching that, and I could say, okay, if you're not coming to church faithfully, then you're in sin, and there's guilt there because you are not keeping the commandments.

You're not missing church for any necessity. There's not an illness or some emergency.

Rather, you just don't want to come sometimes, and you just don't show up because of whatever reason or real light reason, like I'm just a little too tired today or have some other things

I need to get done. And I could say, you're guilty for that. Now, Jesus commands you to obey him.

So you need to stop breaking Sabbath and start coming to church on the Sabbath. And then what are the people going to do?

Well, some will think, well, that's really a heavy burden. I don't like hearing that, and I'm just going to keep doing it my way, but you're making me feel guilty all the time now.

Other people are going to say, okay, well, I'm going to start coming to church more often so I can feel less guilty, so I can be less guilty.

But that person is going to become proud. Now he's keeping the law, and he's doing right before God.

He's obeying the Sabbath commandment. He's showing up at church now every Sunday, maybe Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon,

Sunday evening. And he maybe starts coming Wednesday night, and he just feels so glad of his obedience to God.

So there's a real problem with preaching that moves directly from guilt to obedience, or that in any way implies that you can overcome your guilt by obeying.

You cannot overcome your guilt by obeying the law. So this is where the law of gospel theology comes in.

It says the motion is not from guilt to obedience. Okay, stop doing that, then start obeying

Christ so that you're less guilty. It moves from guilt to Christ and his grace to grateful obedience or gratitude.

So guilt, grace, gratitude is the proper motion. So let me redo the scenario with the

Sabbath and say, it would be right to say, to preach. If you aren't being faithful to keep

God's law, there's guilt there. But not only are you guilty for those who are coming faithfully to church on Sunday, guilty, those who are there on Sunday are still not keeping the

Sabbath perfectly, because the Sabbath law doesn't just command outward obedience. It commands perfect worship from the heart, perfect rest in Christ, perfect rest from your labors, perfect faith in Jesus and repentance and love to him and love to the brethren while you're there, prayerfulness, you know, all these things command such perfect obedience that no one is without guilt.

Certainly there's more guilt in some than others, but everyone is laid low beneath the law when it's preached in all of its fullness.

You cannot perfectly obey the law, which leaves you in great need. And there's no way that now changing what you're doing and starting to obey the law can in any way overcome your guilt.

This is why Jesus came. He came, and he perfectly kept the Sabbath his whole life.

We could do with any of the commandments, but I'm just using the Sabbath as an example. His whole life, he obeyed the good law of the

Lord, and he honored his Father, and he worked hard six days, and he rested the

Sabbath on the Sabbath. He went to synagogues and proclaimed the gospel. And then, having perfectly obeyed the law, he got up on the cross, and with love in his heart, he took our

Sabbath -breaking and every other kind of sin to himself, and he died there. And he bled, and his blood washes all of your

Sabbath -breaking. And his righteousness, his perfect Sabbath -keeping is imputed to your account, so that before God, by faith alone, not because you have changed, not because of your obedience, not because of your repentance, but because of what

Jesus did and who he is, you are forgiven, you are accepted, you are righteous before Christ.

And now, having been washed in his blood, don't you love

Jesus? Don't you want to worship him on his day?

Don't you want to rest as he commands you to? And it's more than just, don't you want to?

It's more than just, you should want to. And there is that question, don't you want to keep the

Sabbath of this great Savior who saved you from the guilt of your sin, the shame of your sin, the hell that your sin deserves?

Don't you want to? But there's more than the question, don't you want to? There's the command. This great Jesus now commands you to obey him, but it's for your good.

It's not to get rid of your guilt. None of your obedience can clear your guilt.

You don't obey him to get rid of your guilt. You don't obey him from guilt. You don't obey him in order that he'll accept you or so that you'll look good before other people.

You obey him because he bought you with a price, because he loves you. He loves you, so obey him.

And he promises blessing to you. That is really greater communion with Christ, deeper knowledge of Jesus, more conformity to his image as you keep

Sabbath and all of his commandments. But as you do this, so obey him from a heart of love and gratitude.

And so the law gospel theology says there's a way to obey the law wrongly, which is legally, so that your heart is still corrupt and proud and thinking

I'm going to, you know, something about my obedience is enough to make me acceptable to God.

That's illegal obedience versus gospel obedience, which says I'm going to obey Jesus because I'm already forgiven, because I'm already loved, because I've already been accepted, because he tells me to, and what he tells me to do is for my good, so I'm going to do it because I trust him.

I trust him to save me and to command me. And so I'm going to bend the knee at him and I'm going to come to church.

Lord's day to Lord's day because of who he is and all that he's done.

So that is the motion there, the threefold motion that I'm trying to lay out in a practical way is from the preaching of the law as a covenant, preaching the covenant of works, really, that you have to perfectly obey for life, which none of you can do, to the covenant of redemption,

Jesus did it all for you. He perfectly accomplished your redemption in the gospel through the obedience and his death and his resurrection proves it, to the covenant of grace.

Now obey Christ in the covenant of grace, under grace is guilt, grace, gratitude, or law, gospel, gospel, obedience.

And that's how we should think as Christians so that we're not obeying out of guilt or slavish fear, which would really be a sin.

And that's the point. It's not like we're trying to make it, we're not trying to say, remove motives to obedience that would be helpful.

Now I've heard this before, that when you preach this way, you're taking away the guilt motive and you're taking away the fear motive, which could really get people to obey.

But no, if you obey from guilt, if you obey from slavish legal fear, you're actually sinning because you're somehow obeying because you think you can get rid of your guilt or you're obeying out of a slavish fear as though God is some cool pact master who's ready to hit you over the head and, you know, legal judicial anger or something.

That's thinking wrong thoughts about who God is, but it's rather as our hearts become convinced that God is good, that he is great, he's really, really good, that therefore we can be convinced that his law is good and good for us, and we obey not out of guilt, not out of slavish fear, but out of love and joy.

And there is a negative motive. There is a motive that it's a gospel negative, meaning he will discipline you in love if you don't obey his commandments and the covenant of grace.

And that discipline in love is a discipline that says, I love you too much to allow this cancer to keep eating you from the inside out, and I'm going to get it out of you.

So I've got to apply the rod here, but it's all out of love. It's not a guilt factor. You're guilty.

It's from a father to a son. It's not because I want to push you away from me. I want you closer to me.

I don't want to drive you away. I want you to know who I am more fully. I want to build a relationship with you that's closer.

That's divine discipline, but it is painful. So there is a negative gospel motive and divine discipline.

There's also the right fear of God, the reverential fear of this God who, can you imagine?

God, it took my sins. May it mean that the only way I can be saved is that God the

Son die on the cross. That is, yes, it's gracious and wonderful, but if you think about it, it's a bit fearful.

That's what it took for me to be redeemed. With you there is forgiveness that you may be feared, and that's in the

Psalms. So forgiveness, proper understanding of the cross, leads to the fear of God. So what

I'm trying to get at is, the right motives to obedience are all found under grace.

They're all found. All these motives, the motive of love, the motive of true faith, the motive of joy, reverential fear, the fear of discipline, all of those motives are under grace.

None of them are from guilt or in order to achieve righteousness before God or before men.

They're from a heart of faith in Christ and all that he's done. So that's attempting to get at a practical summary of the way the classic

Reformed law gospel theology is deployed. And there's a good book

I'd recommend beyond my own on this. I mean, I'm just repeating what others have said. My book is an entry -level book, but I would recommend

A Treatise on the Law and the Gospel by John Cahoon. And I would even say if there's one doctrine

I would love to see recovered in the American church today and in Reformed circles particularly, it's a robust understanding of law and gospel.

I guess the last thing I'll say about it is when we say law and gospel, we mean these are the two good words about God, about Jesus.

Both law and gospel are good. They both reveal him. And so we're not dividing law and gospel.

We're rather saying there's a right relationship between them that preserves both law and gospel without destroying either one or collapsing and confusing them.

We have to understand them together. So I would highly commend anyone listening, if you haven't studied the subject, it's really important, and I highly recommend studying it.

Amen. And before we go to our final break, let me take a listener question from Tommy in Kilgore, Texas.

Tommy says, from your understanding and knowledge of church history, what percentage of Calvinist Baptists were also confessional?

And he has a second question that'll wait until you answer the first before I get into that.

That's a very good question. So some of them, like Benjamin Teach, he had his own confession for his church, but he also had, he signed the

Second London Confession. John Gill had his own Goat Yard Confession, and I'm not aware that he used or subscribed to the

Second London, but if you mean, in a broad sense, confessional, they were all confessional.

I mean, they all had their own confessions and they were pretty close to each other, even if there were some things they wanted to put down in their own church's confession that weren't in the associational one.

But here's really where I want to go with it, and that is the London Baptist Association adopted the

Second London Confession. So all of those churches that were in that London Baptist Association, which was all those early particular

Baptists, they held to the Second London Confession as a good summary of what they all believed.

So I don't know a percentage, though. Okay, Tommy, hold on, because I'm going to ask your second question when we return from our final break.

And don't go away, folks, because we are coming back right after these messages.

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Doug McMasters, of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur, and the film

Chariots of Fire, Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt God's pleasure when he ran.

He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God. I sensed that same

God -given pleasure when ministering the Word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.

That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a Savior who died for sinners, and that God forgives all who come to Him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the

Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.

That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.

That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's Word and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

God bless you. I'm Dr.

Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word and to enthusiastically proclaim

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I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love as I have.

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

That's hopereformedli .net or call 631 -696 -5711.

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

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Tell them Chris from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio sent you. ...Grace

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our

Sovereign Lord God, Savior and King Jesus Christ today and always.

I'm Simon O'Mahony, Pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord in His sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession, we embrace congregational church government, and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's Word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost, and the glory of our

Triune God. We are also devoted to living out the one another commands of Scripture, loving, encouraging, and serving each other as the body of Christ.

In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every

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I also want to remind all men in ministry leadership that you are invited to the next free, biannual

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to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, featuring for the second time as keynote speaker

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Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, for details on Trinity Reformed Baptist Church and how to get there, go to trbccarlisle .org.

trbccarlisle .org. And, Pastor Tom, before the break, I asked one of two questions from Tommy in Kilgore, Texas.

The second is, how do you respond to critics of confessionalism by saying it somehow hinders the

Berean spirit and duty of Christians? Yeah, so, I would respond by saying that whether we like it or not, we all come to the

Bible with a set of presuppositions. So we come already with those presuppositions, meaning we think the

Bible means something when it says God, when it says believe, when it says justify. We have some preconceived notion.

Well, the confession is the best of the Church's tradition, basically, helping to set those presuppositions for you so that you can read the

Bible with the Church, basically. Now, that said, that does not mean that if you become convinced that the confession is wrong, you shouldn't believe what the

Bible says over the confession. So maybe I would put it this way, that the Bible has more authority than the confession.

Right? So the Bible has more authority than the confession, but you don't have more authority than the confession as an individual, which means you could come to a place where you differ from your

Church's confession, but you should only do so after thoroughly understanding it, how they got it out of the

Bible, what their arguments were, their hermeneutic to get to this, and then if at the end of the day you're like,

I still can't see them, and I've studied this very carefully from the confessional, either those who edited and wrote it themselves or those who are arguing from it in other contexts, then you can choose a different reading.

So I would argue that it actually facilitates a Berean spirit, but it starts you off as an advanced

Berean so that you can then dig into the Bible with some knowledge that God has guided the

Church into the knowledge of the truth over the ages, and that you don't make the same mistake that everyone through history has always made.

That's a danger would be like going to the Bible thinking you have a blank slate when you really don't, and then you're going to make the same error as everybody else made throughout all of Church history.

So confession will help you from committing those kinds of errors, but it doesn't hinder a

Berean spirit at all. Yes, and the fact of the matter is every Christian is confessional.

Either your confession is true or false, or either it's adequate or inadequate, but even the phrase,

I have no confession but Christ, or creed but the Bible is a confessional statement.

That's true. And it's also just not only self -refuting, but everyone has a confession.

Right, and we have time for one last question from Campbell in Bakersfield, California.

How much difference can Reformed Baptists have with one another in order to be truly identified as Reformed Baptists?

We did cover this, I think, in the last part one of this conversation in December, but if you want to reiterate that.

Yeah, I mean, I think we can differ within our tradition.

So, I mean, that's broad, I know, but I would love to see a spirit among us that says, look, we all agree with the same confession, we're trying to believe it, but then there's disputes about what it means here or there, or other doctrines that aren't in the confession.

Well, let's have a more brotherly discussion about those and not make those kinds of things hills on which to die.

Let's keep that stuff at the level of, you know, we're going to have a paternal, maybe debate or even argument about this, in a formal sense.

We're going to argue about it. But I think that the confession should be our center.

You know, what it says, what it means, and then we're all laboring together to try to understand what it means, and as long as we're all aiming in that direction, we should be patient with one another.

But, I mean, for a Reformed Baptist, I think the line would be the confession itself.

So, that's where we would draw the line. And if you could summarize in two minutes what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

I think if we're asking the question, what is a Reformed Baptist? A Reformed Baptist would say that we believe the

Bible and Jesus. That's really what we are. But then you have to ask the question, who is

Jesus and what does the Bible mean? And that's where Reformed Baptists try to nail their colors to the mast, and they say, look, we believe the

Second London Confession. This is the banner of truth. This is the banner of the truth for us, what the truth means.

And so I would urge that. But then I would also urge that, you know, if you're out there, you're a

Reformed Baptist, I would encourage you to, you know, to build faithfully into your churches.

I would love to see more men planting Reformed Baptist churches. I'd love to see young men raised up to be pastors and deacons within Reformed Baptist churches so that the truth can continue to grow.

And we're a faithful witness in the world. And so I think that's where I'd want to leave it.

Amen. Well, I want to remind our listeners that you can find more information about First Baptist Church of Clinton, Louisiana at fbcclintonla .com

fbcclintonla .com And you can also get a 10 % discount by mentioning this interview when you order the book,

What is a Reformed Baptist? by Tom Hecks from Founders Press. Their website is press .founders

.org press .founders .org press .founders .org I want to thank you so much,

Pastor Tom, for just being a wonderful, extraordinary guest as you were the last time.

I look forward to return visits from you to Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio. I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to send in questions.

I hope all of you have a very safe and happy and healthy and joyful and Christ -honoring weekend and Lord's Day.

And I hope you all will always remember for the rest of your entire lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. I look forward to hearing from you and your questions next week on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio.