For Southern Baptists, adopting a revised and expanded version of the New Hampshire Confession of Faith was not an act of division but a means of ensuring unity. As Mullins explained, he believed it would “clarify the atmosphere and remove the causes of misunderstanding, friction, and apprehension.” The differences between Northern and Southern Baptist Conventions over the past 100 years can be explained many ways—but they cannot be explained apart from the question of confessionalism and the need for doctrinal fidelity. 

One hundred years ago, the nation was gripped by an antagonizing struggle over whether or not a Baptist convention had the authority to disfellowship a church for doctrinal drift. The church in question was the most famous in America—home to the Rockefeller family—and pastored by one of America’s most influential pastors: the brilliant and eloquent Harry Emerson Fosdick. How the Northern and Southern Baptist Conventions responded differently to questions of confessionalism and dissent determined their trajectory for the next century.
The question is, have we learned from their mistakes, or are we doomed to repeat them?
In 1925, the famous Park Avenue Baptist Church of New York City called Harry Emerson Fosdick to succeed the liberal Cornelius Woelfkin as pastor. Though ordained a Baptist, Fosdick had previously been preaching minister at New York’s First Presbyterian Church, until coming under investigation by the local presbytery for his liberal doctrinal views. Fosdick hoped that the autonomous nature of Baptist churches would provide greater freedom for advocating modernist positions.
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Written by Jonathan E. Swan |
Wednesday, December 6, 2023
John Gill’s biblical vision and example of marital masculinity stands as a needed corrective to the disorderly egalitarian, destructively passive, and disastrously macho versions of masculinity that our confused culture has put forth in recent decades.

A short time before his death, eighteenth-century London Baptist pastor John Gill (1697–1771) put the finishing touches on his monumental Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity. Near the end of this work—which comprised a summary of the doctrine he had taught over the course of his fifty-one year ministry to the same congregation—Gill turned his attention to practical theology, the study of theology that concerns itself with the proper worship of God.[1]
Drawing from Ephesians 5:33, Gill summed up the duties of husbands and wives to one another as love and reverence.[2] Husbands, he instructed, are called to love their wives while wives are called to revere (that is, respect) their husbands.
Gill then outlined how husbands should love their wives in four points, articulating characteristics of what complementarians have recognized as biblical masculinity. These four points can be summarized in four words: provide, protect, pastor, and please.
According to Gill, the husband has a particular responsibility to provide for his wife. The husband is to “nourish” and “cherish” his wife as his own body (Eph 5:29), which includes “food and raiment, and all the necessaries of life.” Those who do not, Gill noted, are worse than unbelievers (1 Tim. 5:8).[3]
The husband not only provides, but protects his wife “from all abuses and injuries” as she is the weaker vessel (1 Pet. 3:7). The husband’s responsibility may call him “to expose himself to danger, and even risk his life in her defense, and for her rescue” (1 Sam. 30:5, 18).[4]
Faithful husbandry also demands that each husband seeks the spiritual welfare of his wife. In other words, he should be the spiritual leader—the pastor—of the marriage. The Christian husband should be active in seeking the salvation of an unconverted wife, and the “spiritual peace, comfort, and edification” of a believing spouse. The Christian husband, according to Gill, should lead his wife as a fellow “heir with him of the grace of life” in all forms of spiritual devotion.[5]
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The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness so that Christ could drive the wild out of the wilderness. He is redeeming all the broken things. That means us.

I will tell of the decree:The Lord said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. 8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. 9 You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” –Psalm 2:7-9
At Jesus’ baptism the Spirit descends upon Him and the Father proclaims, “You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.” It’s obvious that in this declaration there is a call back to Psalm 2.
So what happens immediately following this inauguration? Psalm 2 would seem to indicate that the Son of God will take up sword and begin his quest of kicking tail. But it’s not. The shift in Mark is jarring, sadly broken up by our section divisions.
The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.–Mark 1:12
The word for “drove him out” is ekballo. It’s a word that is most typically used by Mark of Jesus driving out a demon. When you’re a bouncer and you need to remove some cat who doesn’t belong, you’d use ekballo to say you bounced him out on his head. Matthew and Luke use a different word (anago). It’s less jarring. It has the Spirit leading—or guiding by the hand—into the wilderness. Mark uses a word that would bring to mind a whip instead of wooing word.
At this point commentaries and sermons tend to get caught up on the dynamic between the Spirit and the Son. Did the Son not want to go and so had to be driven? Of course not, but that’s getting sidetracked from what Mark is actually telling us.
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