DEBATE ｜ Is the Lutheran Doctrine of Baptism Biblical? Jeremiah Nortier vs Marc Gajeton

Debate Introduction and Moderator’s Format Overview

Everybody to Standing for Truth. My name is Donnie, and I am your host and moderator for tonight's formal debate on baptism. It is a privilege to have Jeremiah and Mark here with me to debate the specific question, is the Lutheran doctrine of baptism biblical?

An important question for sure. Mark here would say yes, and Jeremiah would say no. What I like to do before we get into the debate itself is get to know our guests a little bit and kind of break the ice.

I must say it is always great to have new faces for these debates. Jeremiah from the Apologetic Dog YouTube channel, this is your first time here on the program. I want to thank you, firstly, for giving us your time for this important debate.

Why don't we hand it to you first in terms of an intro. Firstly, how are you doing today? Love the Christmas background. A little bit about yourself and your channel there, Jeremiah.

Thank you, Donnie, for having me on. By the way, congrats on 12K subs. If some of your subscribers want to show the Apologetic Dog a little bit of love, flow over to my channel and like and subscribe.

My channel is an apologetics ministry, very similar to yours. I have a running archive of a lot of the preaching and teaching that I'm a part of my church, 12 -5 church. I serve as a pastor and an elder there.

What I seek to do, Donnie, on my channel is to contend for the gospel of grace. When you can see the Apologetic Dog, the verse that I try to ground my ministry in is 1 Timothy 6 -20 that says, O Timothy, guard the deposit that's been entrusted to you.

People ask me, why a dog? I'm like, well, it's a guard dog mentality. All Christians and disciples of Jesus were to guard the gospel of grace. We do so by exposing those worldviews that say they have knowledge, but it's false and it contradicts itself.

I have a very presuppositional mindset when I do those things. Donnie, I told my wife I would give her a shout out. Shout out to Allie Nortier. She is the babe of all babes.

I love it. That's awesome. Shout out to your wife. That's awesome. Yes, as you said, anybody in the audience, if you like what you're hearing from the Apologetic Dog, make sure to click the link in the description box.

I have linked the relevant links to both Jeremiah and Mark in the description box. Go give them a subscription. Mark, I think I've got a website link for you. I'm not sure if you've got a channel exactly, but why don't we, Mark, let's hand it over to you.

Thanks again for being here. You were here a few months back debating the Bible translation topic and you were a true professional. And so it's a privilege. It's a pleasure to have you back here again for a debate on this important topic.

So for the audience sake, a little bit about yourself and how you doing.

Tonight? I'm doing well. And thank you again. Thanks for having me back. We're not here to debate Jeremiah's last point, so I'll just leave that there. I don't think my wife is watching right now anyway, so I think I'm safe.

But just to give a little bit of a personal background about myself, which is actually kind of relevant for tonight's topic. You know, I was raised in the Baptist church from, you know, as early as I could remember.

It was my mother who would take us to church, and I was baptized at the age of eight, September 1st, 1996. From there, I would say, you know, I fell away from the faith for a time, for a long time, probably between middle school through most of college.

And it was during my time studying for a degree in religion at Liberty University, of all places, that I was convinced of the truths of Lutheranism. And so I think that that's just some personal background people might find interesting, give you a little bit of context as to where I'm coming from, a little relevant to tonight's debate.

And so hopefully, you know, people take that for what it is. Thank you, Jeremiah, for engaging in this debate with me on this important topic. And again, thank you,.

Donnie, for having me back. My pleasure, Mark. Thank you so much for that introduction. It's great to have you back. And to Centurion in the live chat informed me that my mic was a little echoey, and I realized the external mic wasn't attached.

So I'm guessing I sound a little better now. So I do appreciate that. And I got to keep up with Jeremiah and Mark here. You guys sound great, look great. I'm excited for this debate. And Jeremiah, thanks for the congratulations on the 12 ,000 subs.

So this is the first debate, and what a debate, that we are hosting under 12 ,000 subscribers. And it's also, we've hosted about 250 debates on all sorts of interesting topics. And this is the first time we're having a formal debate specifically on baptism, the great baptism debate.

So I am incredibly pumped for this one. And what I want to do before we get into the opening statements is for the audience sake, go over the format for tonight. So again, it is going to be formal, and we are going to be having 15-minute opening statements.

And Mark, since he is in the affirmative tonight, he is going to be starting us off with that. Then we're going to have 10-minute uninterrupted rebuttals, followed by a 15-minute discussion, everybody's favorite part of a debate.

And how we're going to structure this discussion portion is we're going to break it up into two rounds, 20 minutes each of cross-examination. Then we'll have five-minute closing statements where the debaters for tonight can wrap up their thoughts and points.

And then this is where we get you guys in the audience involved. We're going to have a roughly 25 to 30-minute audience question and answer period. So please make sure if you have a question, we'll keep it as on topic as possible.

And just make sure you're tagging me at Standing for Truth or at Donnie, just kind of something that stands out, and that way I won't miss them. And I'll save the questions for an audience Q &A period.

So with that, Mark, Mark Gageton, we're going to hand it over to you. And whenever you're ready, you have 15 minutes for an opening statement. If you need to screen share or anything like that, just let me know, and I can work that from my end.

And there we go. I've seen it pop up. And so it looks like it's up on screen, Mark. Whenever you're ready, the floor is yours.

The Means of Grace, Baptism, and the Lutheran Case from Scripture

All right. Well, let's begin. Oops, sorry. Now, Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and honorable because by him, the Lord had given deliverance unto Syria.

He was also a mighty man in valor, but he was a leper. And the Syrians had gone out by companies and had brought away captive out of the land of Israel, a little maid. And she waited on Naaman's wife.

And she said unto her mistress, would God, my Lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria, for he would recover him of his leprosy. And one went in and told his Lord saying, thus and thus said the maid that is of the land of Israel.

And the king of Syria said, go to go. And I will send a letter unto the king of Israel. And he departed and took with him 10 talents of silver and 6 ,000 pieces of gold and 10 changes of Raymond. And he brought the letter to the king of Israel saying, now, when this letter has come unto thee, behold, I have therewith sent Naaman, my servant to thee, that thou mayest recover him of his leprosy.

And it came to pass when the king of Israel had read the letter that he rent his clothes and said, am I God to kill and to make alive that this man does send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy. Wherefore, consider, I pray you and see how he seek at the quarrel against me.

And it was so when Elisha, the man of God had heard that the king of Israel had rent his clothes that he sent to the king saying, wherefore hast thou rent thy clothes? Let him come now to me and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.

So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger unto him saying, go and wash in Jordan seven times and thy flesh shall come again to thee and thou shalt be clean.

But Naaman was wroth and he went away and said, behold, I thought he will surely come out to me and stand and call in the name of the Lord his God and strike his hand over the place and recover the leper.

Are not Abana and Farpar rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. And his servants came near and spake unto him and said, my father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it?

How much rather than when he sayeth to thee, wash and be clean? Then went he down and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God. And his flesh came again, like unto the flesh of a little child.

And he was clean. And he returned to the man of God, he and all his company and came and stood before him. And he said, behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel. Now, therefore, I pray thee take a blessing of thy servant.

But he said, as the Lord liveth before whom I stand, I will receive none. And he urged him to take it, but he refused. And Naaman said, shall there not then I pray thee be given to thy servant two mules burden of earth?

For thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the Lord. Throughout scripture, indeed, from the very beginning, God has willed to deal with us, his creatures through created means.

Thus out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the site and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, of every tree of the garden, thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it.

For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. But after that they had transgressed the commandment, the Lord God said, behold, the man has become as one of us to know good and evil. And now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.

Therefore, the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken. Now I introduce these passages of scripture to introduce the concept of what we call the means of grace, which is going to be extremely important for this discussion.

And what I mean by the means of grace is that the Holy Ghost employs external and visible means by which he produces in men, their illumination, conversion, regeneration, and renovation and appropriates to them salvation in Christ.

Now, the means of grace are threefold. First, the Word of God. Second, the sacraments, of which there are two, baptism and the Lord's Supper. Now, because the Word of God is the chief means of grace, we do have to say a few words concerning it before getting into the doctrine of baptism.

And in fact, the sacraments are designated as means of salvation under the general idea of the Word. They are the visible Word, as it were. More on that in a little bit. Furthermore, it would seem that the idea of the Word as a means of grace would be the least controversial.

And therefore, again, it is important to introduce the concept of the Word as a means of grace before moving on to baptism. So in John 6, chapter 6, verse 63, we read, it is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.

The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. And in Romans 1, 16, we read, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

And the Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, we read in Hebrews 4, chapter 4, verse 12.

Additionally, the Word affects illumination, 2 Peter 1, 19, regeneration, 1 Peter 1, 23, justification, 2 Corinthians 3, 9, and sanctification in John 17, 17. The sacraments, then, are the visible Word, as mentioned earlier.

That is, they are rites which have the command of God and to which the promise of grace has been added. The sacrament is the visible form of invisible grace. The Word is added to the element and it becomes a sacrament, as Augustine says.

And with that, we can finally introduce the doctrine of baptism. What is it, first of all? Baptism is not simple water only, but it is the water included in God's command and connected with God's Word.

Which is that Word of God? Christ our Lord says in the last chapter of Matthew, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Now, on these first two points, I don't think that there will be any disagreement among us that baptism, first of all, is no ordinary institution, and second of all, that it is, in fact, instituted by Christ himself and in ordinance, at the very least, for his church.

But it is the question concerning what baptism gives or profits where the disagreement, I believe, lies between us. And so what does baptism give or profit? It works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.

Now, it'll be my task during this debate to defend this understanding of baptism, that it works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this.

And the question before us specifically is whether or not the Lutheran doctrine of baptism is biblical, which I think it is, and what I'm going to do with the last few minutes of my presentation is to simply run through the biblical passages touching on baptism.

But before that, we must talk about a few rules or ideas concerning the legitimate interpretation of Scripture. I think we all agree that Scripture is the very Word of God, and that the Holy Spirit speaks to us in and through it.

The voice and way of thinking of the Holy Spirit sounds in its very words. Therefore, we are to draw and hear meaning from the words of Scripture rather than reading anything back into them. Scripture is sufficient, as 2 Timothy 3, 15, and 16 make clear.

It is perspicuous, especially in those passages dealing with the chief articles of the faith and what one must know for his salvation. It is through such passages that the Holy Spirit wishes to enlighten our minds and dispel the natural blindness of our intellect.

With that, I offer a couple of rules for sound biblical interpretation that I would hope you would keep in mind throughout the rest of this debate. First, that it is in most instances, therefore, we ought to retain the particular meaning of a passage which is called for by the grammatical sense or the nature and phraseology of the words.

And secondly, that individual articles of faith have their own setting in clear passages and statements of Scripture, and it is from these that the true meaning of each locus is to be established without any ambiguity.

For all dogmas could be overturned and destroyed if in the case of passages of this kind we permit some opinion counter to the proper and natural sense of the words, as long as it is so astutely developed and explained that it seems to be in agreement in some way with certain other passages of Scripture.

Now, with all that in mind, again, what I'm going to do here with the last few minutes of my presentation is simply to run through and just read some of the passages in the New Testament which touch on baptism.

And I hope you'll keep in mind everything leading up to this point as we go through them. And again, I'm just going to read through them, and I'm sure that the remainder of tonight's debate will be focused primarily on the best way to interpret these texts and what they mean.

So in Acts chapter 2, verses 38 and 39,. Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. And ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, for the promise is unto you and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.

And in Acts 22, 16, we read,. And now, why tarryest thou? Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord. Know ye not that so many of us, as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death?

Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. And in Galatians chapter 3, verses 26 and 27,.

For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus, for as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power, in whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, and putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, wherein also you are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead, Colossians 2, 10 through 12.

For Christ also hath suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit, by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a-preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water.

The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him, 1 Peter 3, 18 through 22.

Now, the next few passages I did save for the end because they do not specifically mention or explicitly mention the word baptism, and yet throughout history these texts have been understood as touching on the doctrine of baptism throughout most of the history of the Christian church.

So John 3, 5, Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. And in Ephesians 5, 25 through 27, husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish.

Ephesians 5, 25 to 27. Am I out of time, Donnie? No, good question. You have just over a minute, about a minute and 10 seconds. Okay, perfect. And lastly, Titus 3, 4 through 8,. But after that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by his grace we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

This is a faithful saying. With the last few seconds left, I would say perhaps you haven't seen all of these references to baptism gathered at the same time, so I hope that what you'll do is you'll look at them and try to remove any kind of presuppositions you bring to the text or any tradition, and again, based on all that I've presented up to this point, draw some kind of conclusion as to what these baptismal texts are really suggesting to us as to the proper meaning of the doctrine of baptism.

And again, I'm sure that for the rest of the debate we'll be focusing on how these ought to be interpreted, and so with that I will end my opening presentation.

Mark, thank you so much for that 15-minute opening statement. Now we're going to hand it over to Jeremiah. Jeremiah, whenever you're ready, you have 15 minutes as well, and the floor is yours. I'll.

Baptism as a Sign of Repentant Faith and New Covenant Membership

Start your timer whenever you're good to go. Thank you so much, Donnie and Mark. I appreciated that opening statement, and I just want to also thank my church family, 12 Five Church. Without y 'all this wouldn't be possible, and thank you so much for all of your prayers.

And so Mark said a whole lot. I really appreciated the verses that he got into there towards the end, and the part on him explaining what baptism is, I'm very focused on when he said it works forgiveness.

So when we asked the question this evening, is the Lutheran doctrine of baptism biblical? It's no surprise that no, I don't think it is, and so I want to briefly lay out what I think the biblical view of baptism is, and then I want to show you where I feel like Lutheranism is wrong.

And so firstly, I believe the scriptures teach that baptism is to be firstly by immersion as an act of faith, that is to be worked out by regenerated repentant believers in sanctification. And so to many people's surprise, baptism doesn't just merely start with Christians and the New Testament and the book of Acts.

Rather, this has a rich history. This begins all the way back to Jewish ceremonial laws or practices, and so there are many examples in the book of Leviticus of someone who is unclean. They must go through a process of purification, and it says that they have to be bathed, bathe their body in water so they can be ceremonially clean.

And so this ceremony would be by immersion. This provides the actual backdrop for the New Testament with John the Baptist, and I believe John the Baptist typifies many things of what Christian baptism looks like.

One thing that they share in common is that you have a baptizer and a baptizee, and they both go down into the water fully immersed, and then they come up out of the water. And so I'm really glad Mark brought up this important text in Acts chapter 2.

I believe this is one of the central defining passages for baptism being for repentant believers. So I want you to hear Acts 2 38 again, and I want you to hear the next few verses. So Peter just got done preaching the gospel of grace to this Jewish audience, and they were cut to the heart.

What must we do? Because we feel condemned when we look to the blessing and curses of Deuteronomy. And Peter says to them, repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And so who is this promise of the Holy Spirit, this gift of the Holy Spirit for? Well, we continue to look in verse 39 where Peter says, this promise is for you and your children. And so something that wasn't brought up with Mark, but is important for the Lutheran doctrine of baptism is they baptize infants.

And a lot of times this is a verse that says this is a means of grace that imparts a regeneration onto an infant. And so I question that. Is that really what Peter was saying here? Because I agree with Mark when he brought out their grammatical historical method of interpretation.

Words always have meaning in their context. Well, I find it odd if the train of thought is, well, we look at children here in verse 39 and we go all the way back and connect it to baptism, but why stop there?

Why not also include the word repent? Well, even with that falling short, I don't even think that's really Peter's point here. He says, for you and your children, this would have been a Hebrew expression of covenantal language.

It's because Israel was a nation. They kept strict accounts of their lineage. They kept up with what land promises belong to who in their inheritance. And so please listen to the next phrase in verse 39.

It says, for all who are far off. Now, this would have been a Jewish idiom referring to the Gentile world. The term of far off is found in many places in the Old Testament scripture, like Isaiah 49, 57, to show people outside of Israel were worshiping Yahweh.

And so the last phrase in verse 39 is so important to understanding Peter's point. He says, and everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. Now, personally, I believe this is unmistakable language talking about God's sovereign, unconditional election.

That is the point. That is the underlying point of the whole world, both Jew and Gentile, and why they come to saving faith. This is echoed later in the book of Acts. Acts 13, 48 says, and when the Gentiles heard the gospel, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord.

And as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. Peter goes on to say, and with many other words, he bore witness and continued to exhort this Jewish people saying, save yourselves from this crooked generation.

And lastly, verse 41 is very key to understanding baptism. It says, and those who received Peter's word were baptized. And they were added that day, about 3000 souls. This is important because those who received Peter's word, this gospel proclamation, they would have received it with repentance.

This means that they would have had a changed mind. In Acts chapter three, we see that to have a changed mind, to repent is also to have faith in the name of Jesus. And so this is the consistent theme we see all throughout the book of Acts.

We always see repentance and faith being together. And those are the types of people, those who are repentant believers, they are the ones being baptized. And so when we read this verse again, so those who received this word, this gospel with repentant faith, they were baptized.

And so baptism is merely a demonstration of someone who has faith in Christ. And so now I want to pose a question for everybody to think about, including Mark. How do we know that this is normative and prescriptive for the church today?

There are so many truths in the book of Acts that are normative, like the gospel of grace. We see that this was the same gospel that Jesus preaches, the same gospel that was prophesied in the Old Testament.

So when we read the book of Acts, this is normative for us to preach that same gospel. And so I want to say though, when we're reading through the book of Acts, there's a lot of things that are narrative, right?

They are descriptions, not necessarily things that we are to import and do today. And so the way that we can distinguish with this grammatical historical method is understanding the nature of the book of Acts.

It's a story. And so the way that we learn what to do today is we go outside the book of Acts and we go to the explicit doctrinal epistles, letters to the church. That informs us of how we are to read the book of Acts and practice what is being done there.

So this is important because I want to submit that credo Baptist and pedo Baptist both have a burden of proof. We both have to show what is normative from the book of Acts. I do a lot of apologetics ministry and encounters with the church of Christ.

And I've just noticed they're kind of simple answer for why they don't baptize babies is because we don't see it in the book of Acts. Well, I want to tell you that that's not really a good answer. That doesn't really account for the nature of the book of Acts.

This is a transitional book. This is a evangelical, evangelistic book, right? We see people going into the uttermost parts of the word, sharing the gospel. And so we got to ask the question, how is a evangelized culture community, somebody that's been evangelized, how should they practice baptism?

What is the definitional prescribed means of what baptism looks like? And so there's a burden of proof, I believe, if you're Lutheran or you're Presbyterian, whatever that may be, you must show why these household baptisms would include infants who did not receive the word in repentant faith.

These would actually be children that could not confess Jesus as Lord. So what is the standard of proof to how to interpret that and apply it to our lives? I think Mark would agree with me that we're not going to appeal to some infallible magisterium or infallible church tradition to be able to inform us of this.

No, Mark and I hold to the supremacy of Holy Scripture. And so I believe in order to make this case, there's only two options. And so option number one, I believe you can go to Old Testament, to the Old Testament, to the nature of the old covenant, which are types and shadows that define categories of how we are to understand definitions of the new covenant.

So that's one move you can do is you can go from the book of Acts to the Old Testament, Old Covenant. I don't hold that view. I believe in a second view that says, or we can go to the nature of the new covenant and allow the new covenant to define how we should receive the sign and seal of baptism.

And so the way that I would submit to you to do this is look to the book of Hebrews. The writer is making the case to Jews. Think about those at Pentecost in Acts 2 that were hearing the gospel. He's saying, you have nothing to go back to.

This is just like what Peter said. He says, save yourself from this crooked generation. The old covenant were simply types and shadows of a greater fulfillment. The old covenant gave the sign of circumcision to those who did not have changed hearts.

The old covenant had priests who had to continually mediate sacrifices that could not forgive sin. And they would do this for both regenerate and unregenerate people. The new covenant is something so much better.

We have a high priest who is established differently than the high priest of the old covenant. The new covenant has a perfect mediator that saves completely and does not fail. This means that the new covenant is everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.

That's Acts 2 39. And so the Lord promised in Jeremiah 31, what the new covenant would look like. It would be they that know me, the Lord says from the least of them to the greatest, for I will be merciful to their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.

This is explicitly telling us that the new covenant or the elect of God, those who know God relationally and have their sins forgiven and make note of this and confess Jesus as Lord. And so when we confess Jesus as Lord, this gives evidence to a new heart that has repentant faith that was effectually given by the Holy Spirit in regeneration.

The Holy Spirit is the one that begins that good work in you and then brings it to completion. And so those of us that are in the new covenant that are regenerated, we are new creations in Christ. And now we live out our faith in sanctification to glorify God.

Jesus said, let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and give glory to your father in heaven. And so the sign and seal of baptism is a sanctifying work that we participate in signifying the work that God has already done in us.

And so the new covenant sign and seal baptism is not to be defined by old covenant types and shadows, but it is for those that profess to know God relationally. I hope you see that this provides the very foundation of why Acts 2 38 through 41 is normative along with all the other baptisms that we see in Acts.

It is those that is demonstrating their faith, working out their salvation and fear and trembling, which would be sanctification. This would be regenerated, repentant believers living their lives to glorify God.

And so my final minutes here, I want to explain why I think the Lutheran doctrine of baptism is not biblical. I've already outlined how their primary mode of baptism is by sprinkling or pouring, and that just simply misses the mark.

It doesn't see the adult baptisms as something as being normative. It skips over examples of the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip going down into the water in complete immersion and then coming up out of the water.

And so I believe Lutherans do not see the strong continuity of John the Baptist ministry, his baptism, typifying Christian baptism, because he would have the Israelites confess their sins, something that I see being normative in Christian baptism.

And then obviously they went down into the Jordan River and came out. And this is all in the backdrop of Jewish purification washings. And so number two, Lutherans baptize infants in order to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit gives that infant faith.

Now, I believe this totally misses the point of baptism being for regenerated, repentant believers in their sanctification. And so a lot of this stems from, I believe, a misinterpretation of Acts 2 .39, for the promise is for you and your children.

Lutherans have to interpret this to mean, yes, the infants were baptized a part of the household, even though they weren't repentant, they did not have faith, and they could not confess Jesus as Lord.

And so Lutherans look to the old covenant types and shadows in order to define the new covenant sign and how we should receive it. I believe this goes a hundred percent against the nature of the book of Acts being normative, and the book of Hebrews telling us don't go back to those old types and shadows.