LBCF Chapter 29: Of Baptism

Okay, we're up to chapter 29 of the confession, which is of baptism. Now, remember what we've looked at last week? We looked at the sacraments, the communion of the saints, and then the sacraments as a general topic.

And if you remember, I told you that following the baptism and the Lord's Supper, the framers of our confession deal with each one individually. So this one is, again, very, very short. And it's interesting, you wouldn't think that it would be this short, excuse me, since one of the things that distinguishes us from most other denominations is baptism, you know, is our view of the ordinances.

So this chapter is divided into three parts, four paragraphs, albeit they are, in fact, very brief paragraphs. But nonetheless, so this chapter differs dramatically from the Westminster Confession of Faith.

This is one of the ones that absolutely is different, you know, in many of the ones I've said, you know, the chapter is essentially the same as the Westminster, even though the wording might be different.

This one is virtually different in every respect. Having introduced the ordinances of the church, the 1689 now addresses them individually, and hopefully we'll get through both baptism and the Lord's Supper tonight.

The 1689 in this chapter answers three basic questions, and you'll see that as we go through it, this is kind of the overview of it. What does baptism mean? Who should be baptized? And how should baptism be performed?

That's basically the outline that we're going to follow. Part one, it's spiritual significance, okay? And in paragraph one, this is paragraph one, notice what it says. Baptism is an ordinance of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ to be unto the party baptized, a sign of his fellowship with him in his death and resurrection, being engrafted into him of remission of sins and of giving up unto God through Jesus Christ to live and walk in newness of life.

Now, I went through that rather quickly. Let's break that down a little bit. Notice what it says. Firstly, it's a New Testament ordinance. This is part of the new covenant, all right, in Christ's blood.

It was ordained by Jesus Christ. He is the one who commanded this, all right? And again, I'm not going to go through the proofs for that. If you just want one, you know, Matthew 28, 19 through 20 is perfectly sufficient enough to understand this.

So baptism is an ordinance of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, and then it tells you what's the significance of it. What is baptism symbolizing? Firstly, a sign of our fellowship with Christ.

That's why we are said we are baptized into Jesus Christ. We're baptized into the church. Maybe I should just expand on that just a little bit. One of the things that we go through when we go through the baptism and new members class is to show that membership in the church is equated with baptism.

So we don't just come and baptize somebody here and tell them, okay, now you're free to go wherever you desire. If somebody comes to Christ and desires to be baptized, they should be baptized in the church that they have chosen to fellowship in, okay?

So because that's the symbolism, and if you're choosing this local body, then this is the local body you should be baptized in. So it's a sign of fellowship with him, and notice what it is, in his death and his resurrection and being engrafted in him, a remission of sins.

All right, let's just stop there for a moment. Notice this is the significance of baptism. And by the way, the Presbyterians would not disagree with most of what we're saying here. They also admit, and you'll see that because I think I put a couple paragraphs of the Westminster in here, notice, what is this symbolizing?

Your fellowship with him in his death and resurrection. In other words, what does the scripture say? We have been crucified with Christ, we have been buried with Christ, we have been raised with Christ, we have been seated with him in the heavenlies, right?

And obviously this is all spiritual, all right? This is what the outward sign of baptism symbolizes of the inward spiritual grace. So you can see we're engrafted into him, and it's symbolizing the remission of our sins.

All right, so let me ask you a question. How can a baby rightly be given this ordinance, if this is what it symbolizes? You see why we have trouble with the Presbyterian or any Pado-Baptist view, is because they would admit that this is what it means, all right?

And yet, how can a baby then be said to have been remitted of their sins when the baby has not been converted? So this is one of the biggest dividing points between Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians, okay?

All right, and giving up of God through Jesus Christ, to live and walk in newness of life. When somebody comes and wants, desires to be baptized, that's why we question the person, examine the person to see if their profession of faith, if their life is in line with their profession of faith, okay?

Because it's important, all right? Because this is what, otherwise you're just giving the sign, the sign of the New Covenant frivolously, which is something that we don't want to do, all right? Part two, the proper subjects.

Who should be properly baptized? And the Confession is very clear, this is the whole paragraph. Those who actually profess repentance towards God, faith in and obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ, are the only proper subjects of this ordinance.

This is what, again, this is what one of the paragraphs that makes this a distinctively Reformed Baptist Confession, okay? It's outward elements, paragraph 3a, with the use of water. The outward element to be used in this ordinance is water, okay?

We're in the party is to be baptized, and then in the name of the Trinity, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And again, this is found in the Great Commission, baptizing, we're supposed to baptize disciples, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, okay?

But water is the outward element, all right? And then we get to paragraph 4, still in part 3, it's outward element, by the immersion of the person. Immersion, or dipping of the person in water, is necessary to the due administration of this ordinance, okay?

Now, that is a very short and concise statement, all right? And that's why we baptize as we do, all right? The Presbyterians, the most Paedo-Baptists don't immerse. Some of them do, if they're baptizing an adult, some of them do.

Now, the interesting thing, and I have to say, I have to pause there and say a couple of things. Why would we say immersion is the only due administration of this ordinance? Well, the word that's used in the Greek, all right, is baptizo.

Do you know what baptizo means, literally, if you translate it from the Greek? It means to immerse, all right? So, in a sense, what has happened is the word baptize, which is a transliterated word, all right?

Which means that the letters were pretty much taken one by one, and now it became an English word, baptize, from baptizo in the Greek, okay? Which has allowed people to give it new meaning, meaning that was never intended in the Greek.

The Greek word, there was never a case where baptizo, used especially in Scripture, meant anything other than to immerse, because that's exactly what it means. In fact, I think it was, I think it was Spencer.

They used to call him the pastor of New York about, he lived a hundred years ago. He actually took his Bible, and every time the word baptize occurred, he crossed it out, and he put immerse. He was that strong on it.

He says, why, otherwise we're being, you know, you have to immerse by immersion, you know, that's redundant. Okay, so anyway, it means immersion. That's why we hold to that, because we take that literally, all right?

Okay, and then we move to the Westminster Confession of Faith. I'm just, I just did this to show you what the difference are. Dipping of the person into the water is not necessary. So you can see, this is one of those chapters, you can't reconcile either, say, oh, it means the same thing.

No, it doesn't, all right? But baptism is rightly administered by pouring or sprinkling water upon the person. Now, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tick off my Presbyterian friends, if anyone watch this, but immersion is rightly administered by pouring or sprinkling water upon the person, because that's what it says.

Okay, unless you give meaning to this word that is not in the original language. You follow? Ask a Presbyterian. They are careful, most Presbyterians will not use that analogy. They have a, they use a different analogy.

Yes, yeah, okay. They'll use the analogies of your sins being remitted and other things like that, but they won't go so far as to show that it's a symbol of dying with Christ, because when, if you've never noticed when I baptize, I usually say something to the effect of, you know, this is symbolizing when the person goes under, you know, it's symbolizing that they are dying with Christ, they're dying to self, but they are being raised in newness of life, all right?

And sometimes I even throw in a little, a little commentary, and I say, now this is rightly only for believers, because if we carried a symbol and I'm baptizing a non-believer, I hold them under, and I won't let them back up, because they haven't been raised with Christ, all right?

So, I mean, that's, that's the symbolism that's, that's used, okay? Yes? They also relate baptism with the Old Testament circumcision? Yes, they do. They equate those as, that's the New Testament version of the...

Yeah, they would say that baptism and the Lord's Supper take the place of circumcision and the Passover, all right? There's some elements of truth in that, but they take it to the extreme, all right? Not under, not giving forth all of the meaning of what, what is new in the New Covenant.

See, there is continuity between the covenants, there's always continuity, but there is greater discontinuity than the Presbyterians would admit. We hold to greater discontinuity, yes. When an adult gets.

Saved in the Presbyterian faith, do they get baptized? Yes, if they've never been.

Baptized. The Presbyterians will take any, what they would consider to be Christian baptism. In other words, if somebody was christened in a Lutheran church and they come into a Presbyterian church and they make a profession of faith, they would accept that Lutheran baptism.

Interestingly enough, they also accept, most of them accept Roman Catholic baptism, because they claim that it's also Christian, because it's done in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. We do not, of course, we don't accept any infant baptism.

It's our, based upon our confession and what we believe the Scripture teaches, we will only accept into membership those who have been baptized upon profession of their faith. Okay, and lest you think that I'm a hypocrite, all right, I was christened as a Lutheran, okay, when I was a baby.

Now, I had no say in that. If I could have talked, I would have said, you know, Mom and Dad, please, I haven't professed faith yet, and no, but when I came to faith as an adult, I submitted to Believers' Baptism, because I was convinced at that point that I needed to be baptized properly, and not, even though the Lutheran baptism was a Christian baptism, okay.

When I say Christian baptism, it was done in a Christian church, an evangelical church, not, yes. Oh, I'm sorry. You have a.

Question? In the Reformation Study Bible, R .C. Sproul makes a point that in the early church, like, the early church fathers didn't even, like, have contestation themselves about baptizing their sons and their daughters.

What would you provide as, like, a counter-rebuttal to that? Okay, you won't.

Hear me say this very often, R .C. Sproul is wrong. I have a book, in fact, I just loaned it to Pastor Anthony, and it's written by a couple Presbyterians, and they've done research about baptism in the early church, and there is no mention in most of the early fathers of infant baptism, and if you read the Didache, everybody familiar with what the Didache is?

The Didache is a document that is believed to be the teaching of the Apostles. It was written down by the early church fathers. The church fathers were those who immediately followed the Apostles, and it's kind of like an instruction manual on what to do when you have new converts.

It gives you instructions on baptism, gives you instructions on the Lord's Supper, and a lot of other things to do with the church, and it's highly regarded. If you read the Didache on baptism, it talks about belief.

There's no mention of baptizing children, and in fact, what the Didache says is that you should baptize in much water, okay, and it doesn't matter if it's hot or cold, it goes into that, hot or cold, running, but much water, and the person being baptized and the baptizer should fast and pray for several days before the baptism.

That doesn't sound like infant baptism, okay? So you can pick out individual church fathers who may allude to one view or the other, but to say that, you know, that there is no mention of it, that's just not accurate, okay?

Not only those that actually profess faith and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing parents are to be baptized. That's what they hold to. I just want to show you, again, you cannot reconcile these two chapters.

You either come down on one side or the other. You can't say, well, you know, I can hold to this and I can hold to that. No, okay? All right, that's...any questions? It's really a fairly short statement on baptism, and it's a very simple statement.

It doesn't, you know, you don't have to be a brain surgeon to understand what our view on baptism is. Yes, Ted? Going back to the early paragraph about the faith of the remission of sins phrase that was in the 1689, and how can that square with what's in the Westminster, do they actually use that phrase of words for the purpose of...

They use similar wording, but then, because they would say that, you know, as an adult you have to profess faith, all right, but then they extend it because of their doctrine of the covenant, how they view the covenant.

They include what they would call the covenant children in that covenant, and it's based upon Acts 2, where Peter says this promises for you and for your children and for all those who are far off, all right?

They just, they stop with those who are far off. They go, this promises for you and for your children, so that's one of the texts they use to say that that's why we baptize our children. But would they also say for the remission of sins?

No, this is where they, you know, this is our one of our big arguments with them, is they say they're in the covenant, but they're not necessarily saved. They would say that the children of believing parents are in the covenant, even though they haven't professed faith, and may never profess faith.

Right, which is why you have certain segments of the Presbyterian Church that are now pushing forth the doctrine of paedo-communion, so that as soon as a baby is old enough where they can ingest, they actually give them the element.

Yes? That's my question. I asked it first. No, they hold to the doctrine that in the New Covenant it is still a mixed covenant, which includes both believers and non-believers. We hold that that's not true, based upon Jeremiah 31, that in the New Covenant, not like I made with their fathers, and they will all know me.

So are they saying that, like, their children will be saved just because they're in the covenant? They say there's a presumption, yeah.

They differentiate between the visible church and the invisible church. So a baby who's baptized, according to them, is in the visible church, which the visible church consists of believers and unbelievers.

They are not in the invisible church, which are those who are spiritually born again. So they say they're in the church, but they mean the visible church, not the invisible church.

But they do say they're in the covenant. See, and that's, I don't have a problem with them saying that they're in the church. I really don't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is if when they say, no, they are members of the New Covenant, that's where I draw the line.

So, Pastor, if they're baptized as infants, and then they are unsaved, and then they do become saved, do they have to be re-baptized? No. Oh, in that...

That's why they won't re-baptize. If a Roman Catholic comes into their congregation, gets saved as an adult, they don't re-baptize them. They believe that they're already baptized. Okay. Now, I mean, they have many convincing arguments.

I'm not standing here saying that, you know, that this is this simple. No, they come up with many convincing arguments. I just don't believe that they're biblical, that they're scriptural, and we disagree with them.

That being said, and this is, by the way, this is an important issue. This is not a minor issue. I mean, you're talking about the ordinances or sacraments of the church. Yet, with our Presbyterian brothers, those who are truly, you know, evangelical Presbyterian churches, we have great fellowship, great...we do a lot of...we can do a lot of things with them.

They can come and preach in our pulpit. Well, they won't let us preach in their pulpit. That's a different story, but because unless you're a seminary grad ordained in the Presbyterian Church, they won't let you preach, okay?

But we've had Presbyterians come here and preach, and as long as they don't try to preach infant baptism, they're welcome here, okay? Because we are closest with them in our theology than anybody else, much more close...much closer...much more close...much closer than we are with General Baptists, okay?

We are closer and theologically with the Presbyterians, okay? Any other questions?