1. Reformed Baptist Distinctions: What is Reformed?

What does the word reformed and Baptist mean?

Okay, so I use the term reformed. So everybody thinks that, oh, if you're a

Calvinist, you're reformed. So what is Calvinism? Calvinism is holding to the doctrines of grace, to TULIP, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints.

That's Calvinistic theology. Okay, but reformed theology goes much further than Calvinistic theology.

So Calvinistic does not necessarily mean reformed, okay? All reformers have

Calvinistic doctrine. They are all Calvinists, but not all Calvinists are reformed.

And we're going to go through what the distinctives of reformed theology are this morning.

So there's going to be seven distinctions that I make. Actually, there's an eighth one there, and I couldn't come up with a

C. It's called the regulative principle of worship. So all reformers hold to the historic creeds of the church, so we're creedal, the historic confessions of the church, so we're confessional.

They hold to covenantal theology, Calvinistic theology, TULIP, and the five solas.

They are Christ -centered. Christ is the center of all of our theology. We hold to keeping the commandments, not for your salvation, but as a reflection of the change that God's done in your heart.

We're cessationists, which means that we believe that the apostolic sign gifts that were throughout the book of Acts and the

New Testament have come to a close. We have the completed canon of Scripture that gives us everything that we need for salvation and life in Christ.

And then we hold to the regulative principle of worship. Now, just to let you know, we could do a complete whole lesson on each one of these topics, and we have done some of these in the past.

The five solas, in fact, I did a series on. If you go onto the Reform Rookie website, you can go through the five solas.

I'll put up a link in the description so you guys can follow along. So those are the distinctives of reform theology.