December 2, 2025 Show with Tom Hicks on “What is a Reformed Baptist?” (Part 1)

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this second day of December 2025.

I am thrilled to have a first -time guest today to discuss a matter that is very important to me, especially because I happen to be a

Reformed Baptist and a member of a confessional Reformed Baptist church, Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Today, we have Tom Hicks, author and pastor of First Baptist Church of Clinton, Louisiana, who will be addressing his book,

What Is a Reformed Baptist? And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Tom Hicks.

Thank you, brother. It's a blessing to be here with you today. Well, the blessing is surely heavier on my side, brother, and the side of my audience.

And first of all, let our listeners know something about First Baptist Church of Clinton, Louisiana.

If I'm not mistaken, my old friend Fred Malone was once the pastor there, correct?

I've interviewed Fred several times and thoroughly enjoyed those interviews.

But tell us about First Baptist Church of Clinton, Louisiana. Yeah, so you're right.

Fred retired from pastoral ministry here. He was my pastoral mentor.

Through my seminary years, I would come home and do internships, and that's the original connection of me to this church.

But Fred Malone, who wrote the book Baptism of Disciples Alone, and who's a beloved pastor in Reformed Baptist circles, is currently our pastor emeritus.

And he retired, I guess it was probably five years ago now. And so very thankful for his ministry.

But First Baptist Church of Clinton is located, if you think of Louisiana, shaped like a boot, we say that we're in the shoelaces.

So we're just south of the Mississippi border, about 15 minutes or so from Mississippi.

But the closest town people recognize usually in our area is Baton Rouge. And so if we ever need to go to a city, it's about 35, 45 minutes south of us.

And so we're just a little bitty town, but the Lord has blessed us. And it's amazing that God did a work here.

Very, very briefly, back in the 80s, Bill Askell, Tom Askell's brother, Tom Askell of Founders Ministry, his brother came and brought

Reformation to our church. He preached the gospel, preached the whole counsel of God.

And there was a great difficulty at our church in the wake of all of that. But the

Lord brought Reformation and has continued to build the church since the 80s upon the

Reformed faith, upon the whole counsel of God. And so I'm third in line after Fred, Bill, then

Fred, then me, since our church has been Reformed. And I've had both of the

Askell brothers, Bill and Tom, on the program. Tom I've had on more frequently.

And by the way, I'm almost certain also that the

Photo Sisters are members there. Is that correct? Yeah, that's exactly right.

The Photo Sisters. And that's spelled with an F -O -T -O. That's right.

And they're not doing their thing as much anymore because most of them have gotten married. They've moved on to other things.

But yeah, you can look them up on YouTube, Photo Sisters. They play beautiful music. Oh, they are remarkable.

They are. And I've had them on this program and was playing clips of their music during the interview with both of them.

We love them. Grateful for that family. Well, if anybody lives in or near Clinton, Louisiana, or you're traveling through there on vacation or for some other reason, or if you have family, friends, and loved ones who live in that area, you can look them up at FBC, for First Baptist Church, ClintonLA .com.

FBCClintonLA .com. And that LA is for Louisiana, not Los Angeles. And so we have a tradition here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

Whenever we have a first -time guest such as yourself, we have those guests give a personal testimony, a summary of that testimony, of what kind of spiritual atmosphere in which they were raised and what kind of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

So we would love to hear a summary of your own salvation story. Yeah. I was born and raised in a

Christian home. Both my parents professed faith in Jesus. I can remember from just as little as I was, as I can possibly remember being taught the gospel,

Bible verses like John 3 .16. It was the typical Southern Baptist background, though.

So that's where I'm coming from. Just a typical, traditional Southern Baptist church, which was fairly atheological.

But what they did teach was that you're a sinner, you need a Savior, and you should follow

Him all the days of your life. And the Bible is His Word. And so I can just remember being six years old and in a

Sunday school class, a Southern Baptist Sunday school class, and they said something like, Have you ever personally trusted

Jesus or closed with Christ? And I thought, I don't think I have. And so I remember consciously thinking,

I want to trust and follow Jesus for Him to forgive my sins and to follow

Him the rest of my life. But since I was so young, my parents and pastor delayed my baptism for a couple of years.

It wasn't until I was eight. And by that time, we were living in Germany, actually. It's a little interesting twist.

My dad was Air Force. And so I was baptized by my grandfather, who was a

Southern Baptist missionary, who came in from Panama to baptize me in Einzidlerhof, Germany, at the church there.

And so I was baptized at age eight. But since then, my story is really one of God has continued to discipline me.

He's continued to show me my sin in light of His law, using His providences to reveal more of Christ to me.

And so I don't have any grand conversion testimony, but what

I do have, it is grand in the sense that Jesus saved a wretch. But I have a history of a life where Jesus has been faithful to me and has continued to pursue me, to show

Himself to me, to break me and to draw me to Himself. I'm married to a wonderful woman.

She's a Christian all the way down to the core of her being. Loves Jesus, loves His word.

God's given us four wonderful children. The oldest three are all soundly converted and walking with Jesus, and we couldn't be happier about it.

Now, you mentioned Southern Baptists several times. And if our listeners began to visit

Southern Baptist churches anywhere in the United States, the odds are that they would not share our theologically reformed convictions.

So were you raised in a theologically reformed home, or was that something you discovered and embraced later on?

Yeah, I was not raised in a theologically reformed home. It was, I would say, theological. Very simple.

It was a simple understanding of the gospel. In fact, when I first started in college getting into Reformed theology, the way it happened was actually in high school.

My high school teacher, Christian studies teacher at Trinity Presbyterian School in Montgomery, Alabama, began to talk about predestination.

And I thought, this is nuts. There's no way this is true. I had the same exact reaction.

And so I began to argue with him, and all he did was keep giving me Bible verses. And I thought, I don't know what to do with this.

And so I began to read and study. And then by the time I came to my early college years, it was really, am

I going to believe what the Bible says or not? Because this is clearly the teaching of Scripture. And if this is what

God says, it's true. And I need to believe it and live on it. And so initially, my family was not pleased by that.

They did not like this change at all, particularly my dad. But since then, the

Lord has been very gracious to them both. And, you know, in fact, my whole family now is

Reformed in its understanding of salvation and the church and the law of God.

And so I thank God for His grace in that way. Well, I'm going to read a couple of endorsements for this book by folks who have been on this program.

And I'm going to begin by reading one of the very prominent men of God who have written endorsements for this, my friend,

Dr. Tom Nettles. And Dr. Tom Nettles says,

The analogy of faith is employed as he demonstrates the pervasive textual data in support of his maturing theological positions, always included in the element of encouragement that the particular truth provides the

Christian in belief and obedience and the formative and vivifying effect that it has on the life and health of the local congregation.

The nine chapters chock -full of edifying biblical and theological development should provide a helpful resource for pastors and a challenging and edifying guide for study groups in the local church.

And as I said before, the program started. The church where I'm a member,

Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, is doing a men's study on this book. But I will read another quote, and it's interesting that the brother who wrote this commendation for your book is a

Pato Baptist, my old friend, Dr. Joel Beakey, Chancellor and Professor of Homiletics and Systematic Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary.

You hold in your hands a comprehensive and accessible summary of confessional

Reformed Baptist theology. By tracing the roots of this movement from the early church to the

Reformation and post -Reformation, Tom Hicks shows the significant continuity between the confessional

Reformed Baptist movement and the Puritan and Presbyterian traditions, particularly in the areas of soteriology, the doctrines of grace, hermeneutics, covenant theology, the law of God, and the regulative principle of worship.

While I respectfully disagree with those areas of doctrine that distinguish

Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians, especially the covenantal baptism of infants of believing parents,

I appreciate the Irenic spirit that permeates this work, as much of this book is a treatment of Reformed theology, much of it reads like an able defense of the broader

Reformed tradition of which I impart. I highly recommend this volume for my

Reformed Baptist brothers and sisters and for Presbyterians and other Pato Baptists seeking to better understand 1689 confessionalism.

And I love that. Now, there have been, as you know, books that detail and outline the major beliefs of Reformed Baptists, even before we were using that label, going back to the days a century or more ago, where the term particular

Baptist was the favored expression. But knowing that, why did you think in your mind, hey, you know something?

Even though I love a lot of the things that are available, there is something more that needs to be said, and I want to say it in print.

What brought you to that point of thinking that? Yeah, well, first of all, practically,

I wanted something that was readable. I didn't want it to be so simple that it didn't challenge the reader a little bit.

So this is probably an intermediate -level book. But something for my own church is really what I was thinking about.

I thought, I want to write something that I could put in the hands of people who are looking maybe to join my church, who are in a worship class, and make it available to our folks.

And so I wrote it first for that practical reason. But the topics that I chose are ones that would help the most, would help a more typical

Baptist today understand who Reformed Baptists are. And so I highlighted those issues where we may differ from them, but then also had a section on the church that could explain who we are in relation to our

Paedo -Baptist brethren. And so if you were to ask, I mean, what is a Reformed Baptist, probably the best thing to do, if you want a full explanation of that,

I would point them to the Second London Confession of Faith and maybe to one of the great commentaries on that.

So Dr. Waldron's commentary that does a lot of exegesis, but then also

Dr. Renahan's commentary, which is probably the best getting at the historical meaning of the confession itself.

And so that would tell you who we are in a full sense. So there are many things in this book I did not deal with.

It's not a full systematic theology. I just chose to pick those topics that I thought would best put us on the map.

But to try to do so in a way that wasn't divisive or didn't give off a sectarian type of a spirit, but rather tried to show how really we're just Christians.

And we have to believe something about these secondary doctrines because they're in the Bible. And here's where we plant our flag right here.

This is who we are. Yes, and even the fact that the particular

Baptists of the 17th century already had their own

First London Baptist Confession. They demonstrated a great

Irenic spirit with the Presbyterians and with the

Congregationalists who are Pato Baptists by using as a framework for the 1689, both the

Westminster Confession of Faith and the Savoy Declaration of the

Congregationalists. Using them to frame the 1689 or the

Second London Baptist Confession with the exception, of course, of having Baptistic distinctives included in there on the ordinances and also ecclesiology.

Which would differ from Presbyterians and would be very similar, obviously, to the

Congregationalists, but perhaps still with some distinctives of their own as Baptists.

But if you could tell us more about that. Yeah, so, you know, in terms of our ecclesiastical distinctiveness, so that separates us as Baptists, I could say, really, you know, even

John Owen, we would agree with John Owen, who was an independent. Which means he believed in independent churches that are independent of one another, even though he also believed in associations, but also not under the authority of the state in any way, or even connected to the state in any way.

So John Owen was a Pato Baptist who basically held our ecclesiology with the only exception that he believed in baptizing babies.

So if you compare Baptists to, say, the Independents or John Owen, the Pato Baptist, the only difference is that we say we shouldn't baptize our babies.

We should only baptize credibly professing believers, which John Owen also believed.

He just went further and said, also their children. And we say not their children. So that's the only difference between someone like us and the

Baptists. But the defining characteristic of Baptist ecclesiology, if I were to just try to get to the real core of it, it's very simple.

It says that the church ought to be composed of believers only.

Now, in fact, unbelievers creep in because there are people who are self -deceived.

There are people who are, you know, who are false professors, and they're baptized.

They've, in fact, become members, but they don't have a right to be a member because they don't have genuine faith.

And so downstream from that flows all the rest of our distinctives as Baptists. So who should you baptize?

As the entry right to the local church, you should only baptize those who credibly profess faith in Christ.

Church discipline is downstream from this. I mean, if you don't continue in a credible profession, but you begin to have a life, a conversation that no longer comports with that of a faithful Christian, then you should be removed from the church.

So church discipline is based on this. Our doctrine of congregational government is based on this.

So who should choose pastors? Who should choose deacons, the officers of the church?

Well, only a church that is credibly professing. I mean, what kind of a pastor would an unbelieving church choose?

It would not be a godly pastor. It'd be one that's suited to say what they want their pastor to say to them, and perhaps, you know, is sympathetic with their way of sinning or something like that.

So a believer's church is necessary to congregational government.

It's a necessary precondition to understanding discipline and the baptism of believers.

And we could keep going. Separation of church and state is based on this. The state, the United States of America, is composed of believers and unbelievers.

The church is composed of—ought to be composed of believers only. That means there's a difference.

The church is not the state. There is a distinction between the two. The church is to be pure.

And where all this is going, the earlier Baptists—and Matthew Bingham wrote a good book on this—is that the early

Baptists believed that the church should be pure or Jesus. That we are holy.

We are converted. We're regenerate because we are the bride of Christ. And the bride of Christ is to be a pure and holy bride so that we offer to him acceptable worship that is from a true heart.

And that we sing his praises. We worship together. These are true believers who are doing this. And so that's the ultimate end of Baptist ecclesiology, is the glory of Jesus from a pure bride.

I mean, there are many other things we could talk about, even like missions. Like, how does a church grow? Well, you know, it doesn't grow by having babies.

It doesn't grow through conquest. It doesn't grow, you know, through cultural missionary enterprises.

It grows through the preaching of the gospel and the conversion of sinners, which is why Baptists have always been on the leading edge of missions for this reason.

Because your understanding of what the church is will determine what you believe its mission is. And then just one other point, how could the church be on board with this mission unless they themselves are converted?

You know? So we need a converted church to maintain focus on the mission that Christ has given to his church.

And we have to go to our first commercial break. If you'd like to join us with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question is of a personal and private nature.

Let's say you are in a church that is not Baptist, and you are becoming more and more convinced of the

Scriptures that you may want to join a Baptist church. And you don't want to identify yourself publicly because you're still a member of a

Pado -Baptist church. Or perhaps you're in an Arminian or non -Calvinistic

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But if it's a general question on the Scriptures, on Baptist history, please give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

Don't go away. We are going to be right back with Tom Hicks after these messages from our sponsors.

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Welcome back. If you just tuned us in, our guest today is Tom Hicks, and we are discussing his book,

What is a Reformed Baptist Church? And we do have Doyle in Johns Creek, Georgia, who has a question.

What is your response to the commonly repeated protest of Presbyterians and other

Pato Baptists, there is no such thing as a Reformed Baptist that is an oxymoron?

I've heard that a lot myself, and not only have

I heard that from Pato Baptists, I've heard it from even thoroughgoing, sovereign grace -believing

Calvinistic Baptists who refuse to wear the label of Reformed because they believe it necessitates the teaching of infant baptism and other

Pato Baptist distinctives. So how do you respond to that? Yeah, well, it's a good question because certainly there are many who say that.

My response would be, I would maybe take it on in several different ways.

First of all, just to note that words tend to broaden in their usage over time.

That's just a general fact, and this isn't just something I've noticed, I think.

I mean, others would note this, but Jim Renahan pointed this out in a podcast that he did on theology in particular.

And what the argument would be here is it would say, what does it mean to be a

Calvinist? Well, originally perhaps that meant that you held tightly to the strict teachings of John Calvin.

But then it's become more acceptable to say, well, it's anyone who holds to Calvinistic soteriology.

And maybe at first it was also baptize your babies. But now, most of those who would have an objection to saying that Baptists are

Reformed, they say you can't be a Reformed Baptist, they would say you can be a Calvinistic Baptist.

And that's because that word is broadened. As for Reformed, the question is how narrowly do you want to take it?

Because if you take it very, very narrowly, do you remember the publisher, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing? Yes, of course.

And by the way, we should pray for Bryce Craig, the president and, I believe, owner of PNR, because he has

Lou Gehrig's disease. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, we should all pray for him. He's been a good friend to Iron Trip and Zion Radio for many years.

Okay. But the name implies there's a distinction between being

Presbyterian and Reformed. And if you're speaking ecclesiastically, that's absolutely true.

The Presbyterians are not the Reformed churches. And so even in the strictest reading of the word

Reformed, even a Presbyterian can't be Reformed. But here's why.

So that's the first line of approach I would take, is that words broaden in their meaning and usage over time.

But the reason I would advocate to continue to use it is that Baptists are clearly

Reformed Baptists, or we say Second London Baptists. I mean, what are you going to call us? Particular Baptists?

I'm not fighting over a word, really, as much as we are part of the Reformed confessional tradition. We're just squarely within the stream of Reformed confessional

Christianity. And you mentioned it earlier. Our confessional tradition is from the

Westminster Confession, the Savoy Declaration, and we incorporate parts of the

First London Confession, which itself was based on an earlier Pado -Baptist confession of faith.

And that is now the Second London Confession that we hold. And so the pedigree of the

Second London Confession is clearly confessionally Reformed. And it's not just me saying this.

Richard Muller says it. So I could quote, I don't have the quote at my fingertips,

I think I put it in my book, but Richard Muller is pretty clear that Baptists should be considered

Reformed because we are within the Reformed tradition, particularly this kind that we're talking about.

And a third reason it's helpful—so first, the word itself, second, the confessional tradition, and then the third reason it's helpful is it distinguishes us from Baptists who have really lost their moorings today and that they're no longer theologically grounded in their own heritage and where they came from.

And so to call ourselves Reformed Baptists distinguishes us from the broader evangelical

Baptist world, which is clearly not Reformed and is actually trending back toward a man -centered theology, sadly.

Yeah, and the very reason why Tom Askell has titled his ministry a

Founders' Ministry, because, as I mentioned before, nine out of ten times, and it might even be less often than that, that you walk into a

Southern Baptist congregation, it will range between being non -Calvinistic and vehemently anti -Calvinistic.

And the Southern Baptist Convention was founded entirely by Five -Point

Calvinists. And that is why Tom named it Founders' Ministries, because it's a

Southern Baptist ministry of sovereign, grace -believing Southern Baptists.

And the very publisher of your book is Founders Press. Yeah, it's actually more than just Five -Point

Calvinists. So the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention, the original churches were composed of churches that all held something like the

Charleston Confession of Faith, the Second London Confession. There may have been an exception, maybe one that I can remember, but anyone can check me on this.

The overwhelming majority were all confessionally Reformed Baptist churches originally in the

SBC. So you're exactly right. Those are our roots. And another thing that I have said on occasion when a

Pato Baptist will make that very same protest, you should stop calling yourself a

Reformed Baptist, I tell them, well,

I believe that I'm more Reformed than you, because the Baptists actually

Reformed more of what the Roman Catholic Church believed, taught, and practiced than Pato Baptists do.

And they don't like that argument. No, they don't. But you know what the irony is?

I have dear friends, very, very dear friends, who are Pato Baptists who refuse to call me a

Reformed Baptist, and they will always say Calvinistic Baptist. And I have said, that makes no sense because you're identifying me by a specific figure from church history who is a

Pato Baptist, and that makes less sense than calling me a Reformed Baptist, because at least you could say that it can be used in a broader sense.

Absolutely. I completely agree with that. Some folks, even Calvinistic Baptists who don't use the label, object to the word

Reformed just because in their minds it often creates confusion in the minds of those not familiar with particular

Baptist history and so on. And Reformed, unfortunately, sometimes immediately strikes a person as meaning liberal.

That may be because the predominant number of churches in communities all over the

United States, the first Reformed church of such and such town, they're in the Reformed church in America denomination that has far departed, most of the time, far departed from their

Dutch Reformed roots. And they are very often very liberal, soft, if not advocating homosexuality, and we could go on and on and on.

Even before they were that extreme of leftism, Norman Vincent Teal and his power of positive thinking,

Robert Shuler. But the Reformed label to them is more of a nuisance.

How do you respond to that? Yeah, I mean, well, so it is true that in the 19th and in the 20th centuries that Reformed churches who wore that label,

Reformed, declined into liberalism. That evolution crept in, evolutionary readings of the

Bible, higher criticism, German higher criticism. And this was happening to all churches, including

Baptist churches at this time. The problem with Reformed churches was their hierarchical or at least more hierarchical system than, say, what

Baptists have. And once the top is corrupted, it's very, very difficult.

Once the leadership becomes liberal, it's almost impossible to turn the ship.

And so this is why these Reformed Paedobaptist denominations, they just went down.

The only way to rescue it was to create a whole new one. And Baptists are a little different because we don't have such a hierarchy.

It is at least theoretically possible, and somewhat we did. We had the conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention.

There's a new fight on today with a version of liberalism. I don't necessarily hold out much hope for the

Southern Baptist Convention today as an institution. We'll see what happens with it.

But Baptists are not under a hierarchy. And so I guess I would just say that if you're identifying the term

Reformed and saying, well, that's liberal, you're right. But it has to do with the hierarchical structure of those churches and how liberalism crept into it at the time.

I would also just say, and we're on the topic, this may not be very popular, but what do you think?

I'll just pose it in the sense of a question. What do you think happens to churches when you baptize babies and the next generation and the next generation?

If you include the children of believers, they're not all going to believe. Now, in terms of their formal theology, you're supposed to have a mechanism of dealing with that.

But in reality, what happens is you have churches that in two or three generations have more and more unbelievers in them.

And we see this as a historical fact. I'm not just theorizing here that Pado -Baptist churches become more and more unbelieving over time.

And as a result, orthodoxy is not loved. The confession is not defended. And eventually, the gospel itself is imperiled.

And you can say liberalism. In the past, it would have been called Socinianism.

And Arianism and all different manner of error creeps in when the heart is unregenerate.

And so the problem at core is not being reformed per se, like the

Protestant Reformation. The problem at core is an ecclesiology that sanctions the inclusion of unbelief in churches.

Now, there'll be people who won't like me saying it, but I believe that's what the historical record shows.

And I think that Baptist ecclesiology alone is a bulwark against that kind of decline into unbelief.

It's not perfect. I mean, Satan can attack. No church ecclesiology man -made system can withstand any judgment of God, for sure.

But it is the system that God has established as a believers -only church is best suited to combating error.

Amen. And let's see, we'll take another question before we go to our midway break.

We have Hobby, just like Hobby Lobby. Hobby in Laurel, Mississippi. And Hobby says,

Yeah, well,

I mean, first of all, let me say I'm very grateful for John MacArthur's faithfulness to stand against error in so many different ways and places.

You know, he stood against charismaticism and, you know, he stood against antinomianism and liberalism.

And so I'm very thankful for him. But we are different from John MacArthur. And I guess

I'd just highlight maybe a couple of things. The first and most obvious one is that he is what he self -describes as a leaky dispensationalist.

That's what he calls himself. Well, at least he did. I don't think he is now. That's right. That's correct.

That's correct. So, you know, John MacArthur and Grace community believe that there is a future for national

Israel in a millennial period that's in the future. And that's because of their way of interpreting the

Bible. They see the Old Testament. They say if you interpret the Old Testament literally, then that means that there are promises that have yet to be fulfilled literally to a geopolitical nation of Israel.

Now, we are covenant theologians as Reformed Baptists, which means that we believe that the church is true

Israel, is new Israel, that Israel was a type of spiritual realities yet to come.

And so in the Old Covenant, in a sense, you could say there were two peoples. There was the true

Israel of God, and then there was the physical nation. But in the New Covenant, there's only one people of God.

And the church is a type of the realities of the

New Covenant that have now come to be. There's one olive tree is another way of putting this. In the

Old Covenant, you had believers and unbelievers all in the same tree. With Christ coming, the unbelieving branches were cut off of the tree, and there's only believers now in that tree.

And so are there promises to the Jews? Yes, if they believe. And so all Jews who believe are grafted in to the one people of God.

So we're not anti -Jewish, but we don't believe in any special future or even present for the nation of Israel.

We believe that all those promises God made in the Old Testament are to us. They're not to another people.

So we would interpret the Old Testament in a Christ -centered way, Christologically, and then being fulfilled in the church as well.

And so that's maybe the first difference with John MacArthur.

A second one that I would highlight has to do with a clear distinction, and this is in my book.

Both of these are actually in my book. In my book, I have an articulation of covenant theology, but the other one is an understanding of the difference between the law and the gospel.

And John MacArthur, maybe a best place to see this, where it would turn up, would be in his understanding of lordship, salvation, and how to get assurance.

And I'm not sure if it's just that he wasn't always clear, but the way I got it when I was growing up and studied

MacArthur, because he had a huge impact on me earlier on, I got from him that the way you can be sure that you're saved is if you obey

God. So 1 John, if you keep the commandments, that's how you know you're saved. And he would just use 1

John in that way. But we would say that the way that you are saved and the way that you are assured of your salvation are the same.

That you cannot have assurance on a different ground than what you have salvation on. And so we would say that your salvation is as follows.

First, the law of God exposes your sin and inability to keep it. It completely breaks you down, the law of God does, so that you have no hope of ever actually completely, perfectly obeying it.

The gospel comes in a strict sense and says, Christ kept the law for you. And he offers you life as a free gift by grace, through faith alone, and you receive him that way.

And then out of gratitude for all that he's done, you grow in repentance and in keeping the commandment, the very same law that you broke.

You grow in keeping that law, which is summarized in the Ten Commandments. And so for us, assurance is not just obey

Jesus. If you're lacking assurance, well, it's because you're not obedient. For us, assurance, which that was devastating to me as a younger man, assurance is look to Jesus.

He alone and what he did objectively at the cross is the ground of your assurance. That's initial assurance.

But then there's full assurance or your assurance grows when you see the works of grace worked out in you and you grow in repentance and keeping the commandments of God.

But what do you do if you don't have works? And MacArthur was trying here.

He was trying to combat no lordship salvation. So I'm not trying to be too hard on him, but I do think he got this wrong.

The way he articulated it is that our assurance is first objectively in what

Jesus did, not in anything I do. And then it's confirmed and strengthened by our repentance and our faithful obedience to Christ.

So I would highlight those two things. There are other ecclesiological things that are different. So here's the third thing I guess

I would mention is, real quick, is that our doctrine of the church is not the same as his. So we are actually

Baptists and his formal church structure is not Baptist. Really? And how is it not

Baptist? In fact, can you pick up when we return from our midway break to answer that question?

Sure, I can. And if anybody else would like to join us with a question, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least. City and state of residence and country of residence. And by the way, our two listeners that have already submitted questions,

Doyle and Hobby, please give us your full mailing addresses because you have each won a free copy of What is a

Reformed Baptist Church? by Tom Hicks. Compliments of our friends at Founders Press. Don't go away.

We are going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We'll be right back. I'm truly grateful for many things that the

Trump administration has ushered in. But here's something that seriously concerns me.

On July 18th, President Donald Trump signed the Genius Act into law.

This new law allows financial institutions to convert your hard -earned dollars into stable coins, a digital token backed by $37 trillion in national debt.

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Chris from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio sent you. We return to our regularly scheduled program today.

We have a new segment on this program, Iron Sharpens Iron, that is dealing with the

Christian and his money and how the Christian can make the most of that which

God has blessed him with. And we have today one of the sponsors of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to discuss this very important topic.

And his name is Wes Peters of Gold Wealth Management. It is great to have you on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Wes.

Hey, Chris. Thank you for inviting me. Looking forward to this segment. And why do you think it's important for people to have some of their hard -earned money invested in physical gold and silver?

Well, Chris, our banking system as we know it is rapidly changing. And I think people are at a point in time where people need to have some of their hard -earned money outside of the traditional banking system and even outside of the

U .S. dollar. Trump signed the genius bill back in July. He signed the genius bill into law allowing financial institutions and banks to use stable coins and tokenization.

And blockchain technology is here to stay. And it's like we're full speed ahead going to a full -blown digital currency.

And a big challenge with that is once we go digital, Chris, people can kiss all privacy goodbye.

Everything is going to be on a ledger, on a grid. They're going to be able to determine in a short period of time whether you're a

Christian, a conservative, a liberal, a Catholic. They're going to know your buying habits.

And, you know, we are living in crazy times, like I mentioned. And, you know, there's talk about it at some point in time, depending on who's in office, you know, how politics go about having a carbon footprint score to where if your carbon footprint's out of line, you're going to have to pay a carbon tax.

So I recommend that people get some of their hard -earned money outside of that banking system and traditional in the

U .S. dollar. And my clients, I've been doing this since 2009, and my clients who have invested in physical gold and silver, they've got that money on the sidelines sitting off -grid.

When everything does convert here at some point in time, and all their other accounts, brokerage accounts,

IRAs, bank accounts are exposed on that grid, my clients have this tucked off on the side, and they can convert it on their terms as they need it into whatever currency they need.

And just real quick, I know we've got just a few minutes here today, but the number one question I get from people,

Chris, is, OK, Wes, I put money into gold and silver. How do I use this when I can't go to the grocery store and buy groceries?

I can't go to the gas station and put fuel in my vehicle, which is true. And I don't think we're going to get into a barter situation in our lifetime, but anything's possible.

But again, my clients will be converting their physical gold and silver that's in their possession as they need it, and we'll be converting them in whatever currency we're dealing in at that time.

If it's still the dollar, it'll be the dollar. If it's something digital, we'll convert it into that digital currency that we're using.

Now, the price of both gold and silver have really gone up this year. What do you say to people who think that they may have missed the boat?

Right, exactly. And we're dealing with that a little bit, but by no means have people missed the boat.

There are a lot of analysts and big -time billionaire investors talking about gold going to $5 ,000 an ounce by the third quarter of next year.

I just read an article today about people saying silver going over $200 an ounce.

And some of these numbers can sound crazy, but again, we're living in crazy times. People have not missed the boat.

Gold and silver are going to continue to climb. The big thing with gold, Chris, is gold is no longer looked at as a commodity.

Gold is looked at as the ultimate currency around the world. Gold used to be a

Tier 3 asset, which meant banks and financial institutions could only count 50 % of its value.

Let's say they had $20 million in gold as an asset. They could only count $10 million on their books.

While gold has since become a Tier 1 asset on par with the U .S.

dollar, which means they get to count the full $20 million. And these banks and institutions are saying, hmm, what do we want to hold?

Do we want to hold dollars long -term that are just going to continue to be devalued and lose purchasing power? Or do we want to replace these dollars with physical gold that's at least going to keep up with inflation?

So that's a big deal being a Tier 1 asset now. But also the Federal Reserve, Trump wants them to lower rates like continually.

He wants rates low. And the Fed is going to lower rates again in 2026. And what people need to realize, when the

Fed lowers rates, that makes the U .S. dollar weaker on the global stage. And a weak dollar is good for gold.

So lower interest rates being a Tier 1 asset, institutions loading up. Yes, gold and silver, people have not missed the boat.

The longer a person waits at this point in time, though, I do feel they're going to be paying more in the future. But, you know, we're all about education.

Our company, we built our foundation on the Marine values that I learned. I spent eight years in the

Marine Corps. Honor, courage, commitment, service to others. If people really want to learn more about this with zero pressure, we encourage people to do their homework.

We have a whole library of all types of information that we'll share with people. They can do their due diligence.

And then if they have questions and they want to talk, it doesn't cost them a penny, doesn't obligate them to anything.

So I would just encourage people that, you know, are seeing all these gold commercials on conservative outlets, you know, get some information and learn more about it.

And if you get to a point where you feel like you and your family, your situation, that you should own some gold and silver,

I know for a fact we can do a great job for people. Now, do your clients actually receive the gold and silver or is it held somewhere?

No, if they're using savings, we ship the metal directly to them, discreetly packaged, fully insured.

They have zero responsibility for that package. They'll have to show an ID and sign for it.

We don't sell any junk. Everything we sell, we stand behind with a 14 -day exchange privilege.

So if someone did get a coin or a bar they're not happy with, they have 14 days to let us know and we'll exchange it for the same type of product, no questions asked.

The IRA, what a lot of people don't realize too, Chris, is if someone has a lump sum sitting in an old 401K or an

IRA, we can help them transfer or roll over those funds with no taxes or penalties into a precious metals

IRA that actually holds physical metal. It's not holding paper. It is physical metal.

But with the IRA, I can't send the metal to the client without getting them in trouble with the

IRS. The IRS would consider that a distribution. So we send the metal to a private depository.

If you're ever talking to a gold company and they talk about storing your metal for you, hang up the phone and run.

That's a big conflict of interest. You never want the company you buy from to store your gold and silver. We use a depository that a lot of people in the industry use, a lot of companies use.

They have a billion dollar per incident insurance through Lloyd's of London, the largest insurance company in the world.

They have a full -time staff that audits all the accounts and products throughout the year.

But what I like even better, Chris, is at the end of the year, a third -party auditing team, this time of year,

November, December, comes in that has nothing to do with this depository and they verify that all the numbers jive.

So if tomorrow morning everyone called and said, send me my gold and silver, every ounce would be delivered.

And if someone does a precious metals IRA, that physical metal is there in that vault with their name on it.

At any time, they could request it be shipped to them, but that would be considered a distribution, a taxable event.

They could request we sell it and send them a check, again, a taxable event. I have clients that did

IRAs 15 years ago when they were working. They've since retired. They might need an extra $1 ,200 a month.

We'll usually sell three or four months' worth of gold and silver at a time. They let me know what day of the month they want that money to hit their checking account.

And like clockwork, it's deposited in their bank. About three months later, we sell another three or four months' worth to keep those funds liquid so that monthly distribution could keep going out.

And we have a whole packet of information on the precious metals IRA as well that people can request. You offer a free investor's kit and market information.

How can people get that in their hands so that they can do some of their own research? Absolutely. They can go to goldwealthmanagement .com.

They can request information there on the home page. They just put in their information. A lot of the stuff we have is e -books.

We can also send hard copy. And then another good way is to call us at 623 -640 -5911.

Again, that's 623 -640 -5911. And we'll be happy to send the information out.

Great. And please, always mention that you heard about Gold Wealth Management on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Thanks so much, Wes, for your invaluable information. We look forward to having you back on the program.

Hey, Chris, thank you. God bless you, and you have a great day, sir. You too. And before we return to Tom Hicks, our primary guest today,

I have some important reminders for you folks. If you love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and you want us to remain on the air, we really need your financial help.

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So please never give your own church less money in order to bless us. And also, please, if you're really struggling to survive and make ends meet, wait until you're back on your feet and more financially stable before you bless us with a gift.

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and put advertising in the subject line. Last but not least, if you are not a member of a

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chrisarnson at gmail .com and put, I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address to send in a question to Tom Hicks on our theme,

What is a Reformed Baptist? Give us your first name, at least, your city and state and country of residence.

And if you could, Tom, right before the break, we were discussing a comparison between a church like Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, a church that I have grown to greatly love, whose pastor,

John MacArthur, was one of my modern day heroes. And Phil Johnson, executive director of Grace to You Ministries, is still a dear friend and who's been on this program many times.

And both John and Phil have written wonderful, glowing endorsements for this program.

But I know that I've always had some differences with them, especially in regard to dispensationalism.

But how is Grace Community not a Baptist church? Well, first of all, they would not want to call themselves

Baptists. So just to start there, yeah, they would disavow that title.

If Baptists only meant to immerse a professing believer, then they are

Baptists. But historically, Baptists included a whole package of beliefs about the church.

And core to that, really central to it, is congregationalism. And so I think

I would just mainly say that that's what I was thinking of when I said they're not Baptists, is that they're not congregationalists.

Their eldership, they appoint new elders from their eldership.

So the eldership gets together and appoints a new elder. The elders lead very heavily in discipline.

Now, I don't know how much the congregation is brought along in it, but they don't make the final decision on those things.

And so the congregation does not decide who the officers are of the church.

The elders or the deacons, and they don't decide, meaning it's their choice whether to discipline a member or not.

That all is retained within the eldership itself. So it's much more hierarchical,

I guess, in that sense than what Baptists have historically been. Okay, great.

And we do have another excellent question from a listener. Joey in New Rochelle, New York.

Hi, Chris. Great show today, and thanks to Tom. And Tom, please share some thoughts on the historical commonalities and differences between particular

Baptists and Anabaptists. Yeah, well, so this is an interesting

Baptist history question. So the general Baptists, think of like John Smith and Thomas Helwes around early 1600s, so 1605 -ish, somewhere in there.

They eventually went to the Anabaptists in Amsterdam and received baptism effusion from them.

So the Anabaptists didn't even baptize, they poured, but they received pouring from them.

And then the particular Baptists emerged differently. So first, I'm just going to give you a historiographical difference, is that the general

Baptists were definitely related to, connected to, and actually held communion, not in a formal sense, but informally with the continental

Anabaptists. So the general Baptists in England, they knew them and they appreciated them.

The particular Baptists, though, did not emerge from that route.

The particular Baptists came out of English independency and meaning reformed.

So John Owen, just think John Owen's group. And so their pedigree is very, very different.

And with that, you know, the Anabaptists were not Calvinistic. They held, they did not believe in an

Augustinian doctrine of human nature the same way that we do. They didn't believe in the imputation of Adam's sin.

They held a synthetic doctrine of justification. They believed you could lose your salvation.

And so particular Baptists would have actually looked at Anabaptists as heretical, especially with their views on justification and more of a, it's an

Armenian view of the doctrine of grace. They would have seen it as a regression, really, to the papacy and would not have wanted anything to do with it.

And I know that because we have in their writings that early particular Baptists did not consider themselves in any way part of the same group as the general

Baptists. In fact, they looked at them and they saw them as heretical, and they would not have held an association with them together.

And actually, it's wrong to call them all Baptists as part of the same group.

So this is a confusion just because the word Baptist is there, that that's somehow the genus of who we are.

That is not who Reformed Baptists would have seen themselves to be. And so Reformed Baptists would have, where they would have agreed with the, okay, so that's disagreements.

Where would they have agreed with the Anabaptists and general Baptists? Probably very strongly on the regulative principle of worship.

Now, the general Baptist went too far. So like John Smith wouldn't even allow there to be a

Bible in the pulpit because the word of God doesn't command you to have the Bible in the pulpit.

Wow. That is bizarre. Yes. So this, they took it pretty intent, you know, with a great deal of intensity.

Bible doesn't say that a pastor must wear pants, you know, I mean. Yeah. So there were some excesses and extremes in the general

Baptist camp and with also probably with the Anabaptists, I'm not sure.

But what I do know is they would have agreed with them on the regulative principle and broad strokes that we should only do in public worship what is commanded.

And so that's a place of agreement. You know, Anabaptists had other weird quirks. So there's many more differences here than agreements.

They didn't believe that Christians should serve in the government or in the military.

Baptists very clearly did. Anabaptists believed things like they had a strange view of the doctrine of Christ.

They really got off track. I mean, they didn't believe that they believe in celestial flesh, like somehow the flesh of Jesus was supernatural, was something other than just the flesh of Mary.

And so there were some problems. Almost sounds like some of the fundamentalist Baptist views of the blood of Christ, who strongly objected to John MacArthur years ago for his comments that it was the death of Christ that was required for redemption.

And the physical blood was not something that supernaturally cleanses men.

And there was a great uproar and outcry against that from a lot of fundamentalists.

Yeah. And MacArthur nailed that one. He's exactly right. There's no special magic in the blood. It was definitely a death.

And we can be thankful to him for that. But so I would say far more differences than areas of agreement.

They were not swimming in the same stream. They were not going the same direction at all.

And it's absolutely wrong to identify Anabaptists with Baptists or with particular

Baptists in any way except perhaps this issue of the regulative principle.

And then also that we believed in only applying the sign of baptism to those who credibly profess faith in Christ and only they should join the church.

That is the only way in which we agree with them in any substantial way. We differed on so much else.

Like I was saying, Christology, soteriology, you know, and they had all kinds of other quirks, too, about the government and so forth.

Now, I have always heard that the

Anabaptists were not monolithic. Well, that is true. And that many of their writings were destroyed because they were a highly, heavily persecuted people.

Can we say that none of them had an understanding of sovereign grace and things that we embrace and love today as Reformed Baptists?

Well, one of the things I've learned in studying history is the moment you say none of anything, you can go find one somewhere.

History is a mess. It really is. It's a mess. And it's not—we're trying to do history.

We're categorizing things best that we can. But, you know, it is a mess.

And so I can't say none. But in general, Anabaptists are—they are not the forerunners of Baptists.

I would say that's pretty clear from the record. And they were Arminian in their doctrine of salvation.

They were not Calvinistic. And, of course, one of the reasons why they weren't monolithic is because anybody who rejected infant baptism was condemned with the label of Anabaptist, from what

I understand. That's correct. Yeah, and that was kind of a way of—you know,

I have suspicions that it was a way of lumping Baptists in with this very undesirable group.

You know, so the Reformed knew that the Anabaptists had all these problems. I hear these other people out here baptizing people, you know, rebaptizing, they would say.

And so we're going to lump them in with this very undesirable other group, the

Anabaptists, and call them all the same thing. So I think that some of that was what was happening.

However, there were faithful Presbyterians or Paedobaptists.

Daniel Featley, for example, strongly disagreed with a particular Baptist, but he actually went and examined them and he said that they are, in every other way,

Orthodox Christians, with the exception of their doctrine of baptism. So even

Daniel Featley, who was a heretic hunter, cleared us of charges of heresy.

And I want to make sure that we highlight some of the primary things that you highlight in your book, because I don't want to let too many listener questions derail that from happening.

And I also already know that if you're up for it, I'd like us to do a part two on this at some point in the near future.

But tell us some more of the primary things that set

Reformed Baptists apart from other Baptists and from our

Presbyterian and other Paedobaptist brethren. Sure.

So in my book, I'm mainly distinguishing us probably from broad evangelicalism and other

Baptists. That's really what I'm doing. The only chapter in my book that—well, maybe

I have two chapters—that distinguish us from our Paedobaptist brethren are the doctrine of the church, which we've already talked a lot about, and the regulative principle, although that really distinguishes us from other

Baptists. So what distinguishes us from other evangelicals broadly and most other

Baptists? And that is that we are, first of all, we're confessional. That's huge. And so what does it mean to be confessional?

Well, it means this, that we believe that we should tell you what we think the

Bible means and write it down. So you can judge for yourself whether you agree that that's what the

Bible means. And so a non -confessional church, they're going to tell you, here's what the

Bible means. And they're going to act like what they're saying the Bible means is the

Bible. So the Bible says this, the Bible says that, and you're going to get it with biblical authority.

But what you're really getting is their interpretation of Scripture. And they're giving it to you like it is the

Bible, the Bible's meaning. There's no other way to take it.

Here's what the Bible means. Well, confessional churches separate out their interpretation of the

Bible from the Bible. The text of Scripture is Scripture, and our confession is what our church thinks the

Bible means. Now, you judge for yourself whether or not that's true. Now, what that protects you from is a kind of authoritarianism, really, that comes from the pulpit, where the pastor is determining the doctrine of the church, and he's telling you, here's what the

Bible means. And the pastor kind of becomes a little pope and isn't himself subject to any higher authority in terms of the meaning of the

Bible, that whatever he thinks the Bible means is what the Bible means. But in confessional churches, even the pastors, the whole church agrees on what the confession is, and our confession is the

Second London Confession, and the pastor himself is under it. So I tell the folks in our

New Members class, I say, look, if I ever come to a place where I differ from our confession of faith,

I will submit my resignation. It's not my job to learn from the

Bible some new thing that isn't in our confession and then drag the whole church through my personal development doctrinally.

I can go find a church that already agrees with me and join it. So the church is agreeing.

When people join our church, they are agreeing that they're willing to be taught in accordance with and not contrary to our confession of faith.

And they know that's what the pastors will be teaching, in accordance with and not contrary to the

Second London Confession of Faith, and all of our officers subscribe to that. And so confessionalism is a big point of difference from a lot of other churches today, which don't have confessions.

A second thing, so moving on beyond the confession, and ours is, as I said, the

Second London, but a second area of difference is the law of God.

This is really huge. I mean, I just can't express how enormous this is, is that I'm convinced that evangelicalism at large,

American Christianity at large, and I would even say perhaps even in some confessional churches this has happened, but in a truly faithful Reformed Baptist church, the law of God is going to be taught correctly.

And what the law of God is, is it's first of all, the moral law of God is rooted in God himself.

So it is his very character. And then it's built into the world that he made.

So the law of God is not only God in God, but it's also built into his world and it's written on our consciences.

Every human being has the moral law of God written on their conscience. No one has to tell you not to murder, not to steal, not to cheat, not to lie.

You know that. You suppress the truth and unrighteousness, but every human being made in God's image knows, they may not be able to list the

Ten Commandments, but when they hear them, they know they're right. They know in their hearts they should do that, but they suppress it.

It's also built into nature, not only that it is revealed by nature that there is one true

God, but if you try breaking those moral laws, well, you're not going to break them. You're going to break yourself against the world.

If you try being a murderer and see how that works out for you, if you try just being a liar or being a thief or being seditious against all your authorities,

God has built his law into the world such that if you break it, there will be severe natural consequences and death of various kinds.

And so the moral law of God is in God. It's reflected in his images.

It's built into his world, and it's summarized in the Ten Commandments. And this is a place where Reformed Baptists insist we have to preach the law thoroughly because this is who we are made to be as images of God.

And our breaches of the law are the reason we need the gospel. Like, why do you even need

Christ to die for you? Well, today, I think it's probably pretty common for evangelicals to say, well, we have sinned against God.

But what is a sin? I do not think you will get any kind of a clear definition from most evangelicals as to what a sin is that they'll say something like disobeying

God. Well, how do you know if you've disobeyed him? Well, the

Bible says in 1 John 3, sin is lawlessness. And our old catechism says, you know, what is sin?

Sin is any transgression of the law of God or want of conformity there unto. And so if you don't have a doctrine of law, you can't have a doctrine of sin.

And then if you don't have a doctrine of law and sin, what is your understanding of the gospel? What did Jesus do on our behalf to save us?

From what and unto what? And then if you don't have a clear doctrine of law, you also don't really know what

God expects of you. I mean, it was a common question when I was young, growing up. Young people would always ask, what is

God's will for my life? You know, what does he want me to do in my life? Well, the

Bible is clear. His will is your sanctification. It says that plainly. This is the will of God, your sanctification.

Well, what is sanctification? It is conformity to his standard from the inside, in our hearts.

This is Ephesians 4 and 5, particularly 5. Conformity to the standard of God's law, from the heart, by faith, under grace, and worked out in our lives to the glory of God.

Becoming more and more like Jesus, who is the lawful one. So the law of God is grossly neglected today.

And I guess I would just end this by saying, you know, if you look at what do you love about Jesus?

Do you love him? And isn't what you love about him that he always told the truth?

Isn't what you love about Jesus that he never murdered anyone, but instead he gave his own life for murderers to save them from?

Themselves. Don't you love that Jesus never stole anything from anyone, but that he only gave?

The Son of Man did not come into this world to be served, but to serve. Isn't what you love about Jesus that he died on the cross for your sins against the law?

I mean, the thing that is so lovely about Christ is that he is a true image of God. And what does it mean that he's a true image of God?

He is the embodiment of lawfulness. And so the beauty of the law of God is on full display in Christ, according to his human nature as he lived on earth.

And so the law of God is preeminently important, and it has been forgotten. And there are reasons for that.

It's because we live in an age that wants to locate authority in the human heart and feeling.

Instead of saying that there is a transcendent truth and goodness and beauty that is in God himself and revealed in Jesus.

And that's what we're made to be as human image bearers. And so I have a chapter on the law of God, defending the

Ten Commandments. And I guess we could also say here that the place where this is most disagreed with today by many

Baptists, even other Calvinistic Baptists, is the doctrine of the Sabbath. That's a slightly other issue.

People don't like the Sabbath anymore, which is always mystifying to me. It's like you don't like a day of rest.

You just want to work all week long, work seven days. You know, the one commandment you don't like that you would resist is the commandment about that there is one full day given by a good

God to his people as their day of rest. But we can talk more about that if you want.

I'll stop there and see if you have any reflections on that. Well, I think there's such an excellent question that was just submitted.

I don't think he'll object to me giving his full name. He happens to be a member of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, where I am a member.

And he has been publicly and formally identified by us as a gifted brother.

Ryan Gaiman has sent me a question. I think this may be the first time he's submitted a question during the live show.

Perhaps not, but I can't remember a question coming from him before. But he says, can you please ask

Pastor Tom Hicks, what is the greatest danger to the Reformed Baptist movement today and how to remedy it?

Man, that could be a book all by itself. Got any comments on that?

I mean, I guess I have to look into myself to answer that question because I'm a Reformed Baptist. It's going to be in her pastors and in her leaders and being led in a full and balanced way.

The greatest danger is not keeping our hearts and our eyes set upon the whole

Christ for all of life, for everything. And it's getting distracted to the left or to the right from anything other than Jesus himself, who he is, crucified and risen, and that we live unto him by faith and in personal inward repentance for his glory and keep his commandments.

I know that sounds general, but it's a positive answer as opposed to giving a negative one, because I'm sure the devil's at work in all different ways.

Perhaps it seems to me that Reformed Baptists are—and

I'm right here in this—because we believe the truth is under attack today in various ways, in very insidious ways.

And we feel the burden that we have to defend the truth, and that's part of our command in Scripture.

We're required to, as pastors, as leaders, we have to defend the faith once and for all delivered to the saints, contend earnestly for it.

We have to be very careful. I think self -righteousness can come after anybody in different ways.

Southern Baptisters can be self -righteous because they're the ones who do missions better than anybody else.

And I suppose self -righteousness could attack and does attack every single group.

That's the root sin. And so I guess I would say we have to watch pride and self -righteousness and thinking that we're right about—or not thinking that we're right, but thinking that our righteousness is in our rightness as opposed to in the righteousness of Jesus, even while we continue to defend the faith once and for all delivered to the saints.

So I guess I have to watch my own heart in that. And I'm being very transparent here that we need to humble ourselves and remember that the goal of our instruction, according to Paul, writing to Timothy, is love from a sincere conscience, a pure faith.

The goal of our instruction is love, not just that everyone have right doctrines. And I'm saying this as one who wrote a whole book on right doctrine, right?

So keeping our hearts centered on Jesus and love to him and being very careful that we're not distracted.

Now, I don't know how much of this you're going to agree with that I'm about to say, but one of the things that immediately popped into my mind when

I saw Ryan's question—and by the way, I do remember at least one other time

Ryan sent in a question. So sorry about forgetting that, Ryan. Reformed Baptists have become known and have received a dubious reputation amongst our

Presbyterian brethren. Not that they can, with a straight face, claim guiltlessness over which they observe in us.

But we have become known as a group of people hungry and searching for matters of less importance.

Not that they're unimportant, but matters of secondary and tertiary importance over which to divide and over which to disfellowship.

And it almost seems that we're determined to become a microscopic group of people.

And very often we have deserved the negative reputation of lacking in grace.

I'm not talking about the grace in our theology of unmerited favor, but our graciousness and kindness and tolerance and so on.

Not that we're supposed to tolerate heresy. I'm not talking about that. But do you have any response to that?

I think that we have to overcome that by repentance and changes in the way we conduct ourselves in those things.

And I don't know what you have to say about that. Yeah. And part of me wonders if some of this is just because we're new.

So the Reformed Baptist movement is really since the, you know, the 70s or so.

And so we're relatively new on the scene. Although we're reclaiming things that were taught centuries ago.

That's correct. Reclaiming things. But in that there's a lot of learning curves that are taking place. So people are coming to our movement from different perspectives.

They're reacting to different things of their own. You know, we're learning together.

And some of this is just the nature of, I think, the Reformed Baptist movement itself and what's happening to us.

But I think you're right. I wouldn't just point it at us. I want to try to be very gracious here.

I really think all Christian churches struggle with self -righteousness because I think there's this thing in us that is that.

That's what it is. And it's a matter of sanctification. But yes,

I mean, I do agree with you. We need to be careful about picking too many fights.

We need to be careful about, you know, finding our righteousness and our rightness. And I'm talking to me here.

Please don't let anybody hear me talking to you unless you need it to talk to you. This is to me. And so, yeah,

I agree with you. To find small matters to divide on.

Now, one of the things here, some of the things that used to be thought small, you know, or that might be thought of as small in evangelicalism broadly, aren't small when it comes to theology.

Because, you know, we have a nation of bad doctrine right now.

It's everywhere. And so to insist on any doctrine is almost thought of as, you know, you're dividing over non -essentials.

Now, there is such a thing as dividing over non -essentials. But I think we have to grow in love and patience.

But we have to stand on the whole counsel of God at the same time. So I agree with you is what

I'm trying to say. But I also want to be gentle with our Reformed Baptist brothers because I don't think it's their heart to be this way.

As I know, though, I don't think they want that reputation. I think they want to be gracious, hearted men.

But it is something we have to grow in. And we have to go to our final break. And if you'd like to join us with a question of your own, send it to ChrisOrenson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. And by the way, both of my last questioners will receive a free copy of What is a

Reformed Baptist Church? And if I do not have it already, make sure

I have your mailing address. Don't go away. We are going to be right back right after these messages from our sponsors.

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And we're now back with Tom Hicks, and he is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Clinton, Louisiana, and the author of the book that we have been addressing, which is,

What is a Reformed Baptist Church? And one of the things that I think that we have to constantly fight as Reformed Baptists is that, to our credit, we are known as being people who are attempting to be meticulous in discovering, teaching, and preserving truths of Scripture.

But all too often, Reformed Baptist people have earned a reputation for becoming haughty about that.

And it's ironic, because the doctrines of sovereign grace are intended by God to humble us to the very dust of the earth, and to rely solely upon Him, and give praise, honor, and glory solely to Him for everything that we receive from God.

And that includes our regeneration and our eternal salvation. But isn't that the constant balance that we have to seek, being meticulous, but not to be arrogant and sectarian about our discoveries as we search through the unsearchable riches of Christ?

Yes, I think that's exactly right. And there's another doctrine I would add to that. It's actually the last chapter in my book, and I was surprised.

I got probably some of the strongest feedback that's positive about the last chapter, which is on Christian liberty.

And so, what does that mean? Well, Christian liberty, in its broadest sense, says we're free from the curse of the law.

We're free from God's judgment. We're free unto sanctification.

Free from Satan. We're free from all those things. But then there's also this liberty of conscience that's a subset of Christian liberty.

And liberty of conscience is that no man has the authority to dictate our conscience.

And so, how does that work out in a confessional church? Well, it should work out this way in that, you know, among the officers, it's my belief, and Reformed Baptists do differ on what

I'm about to say here, but it's my belief that among officers, we should all subscribe in a full sense to the

Second London Confession. But then on things that aren't in the confession, there's liberty of conscience.

Like, what do you believe about this or that that's in the Bible, or this or that practical matter about how to live our lives as Christians?

We can leave people's consciences to the Lord and to the

Word of God for themselves. So, among officers, I think there should be a full subscription.

And I make a case for that in my book. But then in the church, I have argued that the church should only have a subscription of unity, which is that in order to join the church, all you have to do is trust in Jesus and then agree to be taught in accordance with the confession, and then you're not going to be divisive about anything.

You just trust in Jesus, you agree to be taught, and then you agree not to be divisive. And so within a church, there's even more liberty of conscience granted in the sense that, or that is applied, liberty of conscience is applied in the sense that there could be people who have all manner of differences.

They don't even necessarily aren't sure they can understand or agree with the confession at this point or that point, but they're willing to be taught.

Or maybe someone even disagrees in a minor point with the confession, but isn't going to be divisive about it.

And certainly always willing to be taught from their elders, but they just don't think they agree with it at this point.

And so this is how one of the ways that we can keep on going as Christians together when we have differences of opinion.

I think the minutiae of theology matters. I really do. I think we ought to be splitting hairs.

I mean, some don't think we should. I think we should. But the question is dividing over it. Well, if we understand the doctrine of Christian liberty and liberty of conscience, and then we do what you said earlier, we need to understand, look, what do we have but what we've been given?

If I'm right in my understanding, it's all of grace. And we need to be as gracious to others as Christ has been with us in our own development, in our own sanctification, and be patient.

And that keeps us in a humble posture, and then not trying to coerce or force the consciences of others.

Even if we're right, we can pray and trust them to the Lord and keep on going. Because what we have in Christ together are the essential things.

We have Jesus. We have the hope of eternal life. We have the same Spirit who dwells within us.

We all believe the same Bible. We're just trying to work out what it means. And this doctrine of grace and of Christian liberty will keep us unified.

And I'll say, just on a very practical note, it's kept our church here at First Baptist unified.

The history of it is one in which people were coming from all different backgrounds, believed all different things, and there was conflict over it.

So the doctrine of Christian liberty doesn't do a conflict or disagreement. What it does away with, if it's applied properly, is division.

We don't have to divide over matters of liberty of conscience or differences where the confession isn't clear.

Yeah, and I think we have to be careful about becoming overly sectarian in our eschatology, where the confession is not detailed enough on eschatology to make either historic premillennialism, amillennialism, or postmillennialism a demanded point of view.

There are historically Reformed Baptists that have had all three of those views. Yeah, I mean,

I think the confession has latitude there for sure.

You can have Dr. Waldron on and he'll argue the point with you, but I don't think he would be divisive about it at all.

Right. Oh, I've had Dr. Waldron on the show, and I love his ironic spirit as well. Well, if you could, in a minute, give us what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today about our topic.

Yeah, to be a Reformed Baptist is to be someone who is a part of a church that is trying to understand the

Bible as a whole, and that confesses the Second London Confession with Christ at the center and wants to be a

Christian in all of their life. And that's what it means to be a Reformed Baptist.

We have continuity with those who've gone before us. And we're just Christians trying to believe the

Bible and be faithful. I want to mention one other thing for your listeners. Founders Ministries graciously wants to give 10 % off to anyone who's listening to this show.

And you can put in the code BAPTIST, just capital B -A -P -T -I -S -T,

BAPTIST, and you'll get 10 % off by book if you want to buy it directly from Founders. Great.

And the website, once again, of First Baptist Church in Clinton, Louisiana, is fbcclintonla .com,

fbcclintonla .com. The website for Founders Press, who was kind enough to provide us with some free copies that we've been getting away, press .founders

.org, press .founders .org. I want to thank you so much for being such a superb guest,

Pastor Hicks. And I want everybody listening to always know and always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater