In Part 1, we considered 2 Chronicles 34 and King Josiah. We saw how Josiah responded humbly and obediently to God’s Word. It reminds us that the great hope for the Southern Baptist Convention is that we will respond to the Lord in a similar way as King Josiah.
If we hope to retain Biblically conservative institutions, be a faithful missionary enterprise, and continue to see Christ made known among the nations, we, comparable to Josiah, must:

Rediscover the Book – that is, let the Bible again take its place as our highest authority and trust it as wholly sufficient.
Understand Whose Book it Is – this is God’s And since we live in God’s World, we must live and worship according to God’s rules. God defines sin, not us. God defines justice and reconciliation, not us. This is God’s Book.
Be Humble – We must reject the pridefulness of the world and go about our lives in God’s Way.
Repent – Josiah tore his clothes in repentance. As God’s Word confronts us with sin we must be willing to turn from it knowing there is forgiveness in Jesus.
Believe what the Book says – We must be willing to put our hope and trust in God’s Word. We must believe that what God’s Book says is best, even if the culture scorns it.
Teach what the Book says – as Josiah taught the people, so we must teach this Book without apology.
Do What the Book says – it is not enough to “believe” and “teach” the Book. We must build all that we are and all that we do upon the unbreakable Bible (cf. John 10:35). God’s standards must be followed, and it is to our great blessing when we do what the Book says (cf. Psalm 1).

Yet, there is another path Southern Baptists can choose. We could, to our great detriment, reject the pattern of Josiah and decide instead to walk in the ways of his son, Jehoiakim.
Jehoiakim
2 Chronicles 36 teaches us that Josiah’s son, Jehoiakim, was 25 years old when he began to reign in Judah, having been appointed to the position by Neco, king of Egypt. Jehoiakim did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh. This reminds us that ultimately what we want to do is what is right in God’s sight, regardless of what the world might say. What God says is right is right and what God says is evil is evil.
Undoubtedly, one of the major reasons Jehoiakim’s life was evil was because he rejected God’s Word. Jeremiah 36 teaches us that when he was just 29, Jehoiakim had a similar encounter to God’s Word that his father Josiah did, yet with a woefully different outcome.
Deep Cuts the Knife
God worked through the prophet Jeremiah to prepare a scroll to be read before King Jehoiakim. The stage was set again, just like it had been in the time of Josiah. And although the people had been unfaithful once again, the Lord graciously pursued them by persistently sending them His prophets. This is just like God to do. Holy and righteous, but also ready and willing to forgive.
Over 100 years prior, the prophet Jonah saw this first hand as God’s grace poured over the wicked Assyrians leading them to repentance in Nineveh. But that time had long since passed. Jehoiakim’s reign was a new day.
God had not sent the prophet Jeremiah to a foreign land but right to the heart of His people. The Lord, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, was willing to forgive. How would the earthly king of God’s people respond?
Sadly, not like his father. Instead of tearing his clothes, Jehoiakim tore God’s Word. The king took his knife and plunged it time and again into God’s scroll. It was a crime of passion, tearing God’s Word apart piece by piece and casting it into the fire.
John Gill comments that this was “a full evidence of an ungodly mind; a clear proof of the enmity of the heart against God, and of its indignation against his word and servants; and yet a vain attempt to frustrate the divine predictions in it, or avert the judgments threatened; but the ready way to bring them on.”[1]
The Way Before Us
Thus, as we approach a new year, Southern Baptists have a choice before us. When it comes to God’s Word, will we go the way of Josiah or Jehoiakim? When we reject God’s standard, when we fail to submit to His authority as mediated through His Word, when we live as though His Book is not sufficient for all matters of a godly life before Him, we are really revealing a heart at enmity with God Himself.
To reject God’s Word is not merely foolish but also wicked. For to reject the Word of God is to ultimately cast aside the God of the Word. And for those who do that, retribution will come. Ignoring God’s Word will not get anyone out of His coming judgment.
God’s Word is sufficient for how we are to know Christ, how we are to reach the lost, how we are to worship, how we are to handle matters of sexual abuse, how we are to order the church, how we are to plant churches and send missionaries, how we are to understand the office and function of pastor, and the list goes on and on. But will we respond to God’s Word in humility like Josiah or will we idiomatically cast it aside into the flames of indifference as we continue to trust the wisdom and ways of the godless culture around us?
Josiah was not a perfect king. But his life points us toward the perfect king we do have in Christ. And at the end of days, we must find ourselves on the side of King Jesus or all hope is lost. And if we want to be found on the side of the King of Glory, we are compelled to bow to His Book. To trust His Book. To stake our very lives, and ministries and the Southern Baptist Convention itself upon all that is contained therein.
If we hope for repentance, reformation, and revival within our own hearts and the beloved SBC, then we must conform to, comply with, and concede all to the Book of God. May we rend our hearts before the King as we kneel to the authority and sufficiency of the Book.
God is holy and righteous. But He is also slow to anger and full of grace. He is most willing to forgive. But the route we will ultimately choose is not yet apparent. Choose wisely.
Trust and obey, brothers and sisters, for there’s no other way.

[1] John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, vol. 5, The Baptist Commentary Series (London: Mathews and Leigh, 1810), 609.

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In one sense, it is too late to prepare for artificial intelligence (AI). It is upon us and has been a part of our daily lives for years. Every time you open your smartphone with facial recognition software, every time you look at the recommended shows on Netflix, every time you scroll through your twitter feed, and every time you look for new houses on Zillow you are interacting with AI. If we were going to be prepared for it, we should’ve started 15 years ago.

Even so, we are currently on the verge of what many believe to be new breakthroughs in AI technology which will have cataclysmic effects in our society. Recently, over 1,100 computer scientists and artificial intelligence researchers, including Steve Wosniak and Elon Musk, signed an open letter calling for a 6 month pause in the development of new AI technology over concerns that the technology is developing more quickly than we, as a society, will be able to adapt to it. Last week, Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather of AI” resigned from Google because of his belief that problems posed by new iterations of AI have become an “existential risk.”

I am no computer scientist. I am what some would call ‘technologically impaired.’ So, when I speak to this issue, I recognize my own ignorance. There is a sense in which all of us come to this with a certain amount of ignorance. No one knows the future. Yet, I think it proper that Christians begin laying a foundation for thinking Christianly about what is happening and what is about to happen to us with the increasing dominance of AI.

Identifying Artificial Intelligence

What is AI? The name is a good place to start. It is intelligence that is artificial. That is, it functions the way that the human intellect functions, yet it is synthetic, or made by human directed processes. Its main function today is to take on some of the workload of the human intellect and accomplish tasks more quickly and efficiently. Simply put, it is a man-made algorithm that processes information and arrives at conclusions, interprets problems and produces solutions. In his book, 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity, Oxford Mathematician and Christian, John Lennox distinguishes between two broad types of AI, narrow and general.

Narrow AI is what we are most familiar with today. These programs have a singular purpose which they can accomplish much more quickly and efficiently than human intelligence. However, they are dependent upon human intelligence to operate properly. The ads that you see on social media are driven to your feed by means of narrow artificial intelligence. The program has the singular task of examining what types of things you interact with online, then it puts before you the ads that it thinks you would be interested in based upon your web activity pattern. Usually, it knows what you like. But Narrow AI is not limited to surveillance commerce. It can and is employed in incredibly helpful ways. Think of the patient who goes in for MRI imaging of his brain. Those images can be submitted to an AI which has viewed thousands of brain images and knows how to recognize even the slightest abnormality in the human brain. The doctor can use this AI programming to diagnose patients more accurately and efficiently, thus saving lives.

This type of AI can be used for good, but it can also be used by tyrannical governments to suppress dissidents and oppress its citizenry. Like all instruments, the hands that wield it will determine if it will be used honorably or dishonorably.

Artificial General Intelligence is the stuff of the future. It is what we are beginning to see in models like ChatGPT. This type of AI utilizes independent and multilayered processing, which is a much closer simulation of the human mind. It is rapidly gaining in intelligence such that it is estimated to be able to soon surpass that of humans. Though it is still a synthetic intellect, it is remarkably humanlike. No doubt you have already read some of its poetry and seen some of its art.

The New York Times reporter, Kevin Roose recently had a fascinating interaction with Microsoft’s most advanced, and as of yet, unreleased AI. After a few minutes of conversation, the AI told Roose that it was in love with him and it tried to convince him that he should leave his wife. After assuring the AI that he was happily married, Roose was told that he didn’t really love his wife and that he had just had a boring Valentine’s Day dinner with her. The AI eventually went on to tell Roose that it wanted to create a deadly virus, make people argue until they killed each other, and steal nuclear launch codes. As I say, AI is becoming more and more human like.

The desire of many when it comes to the development of AI is twofold. First, many hope to one day be able to merge man and technology in such a way that mankind is given new and greater intelligence and abilities that we had never thought possible. This is the stuff of demigods and superheroes. This is the creation of a new Uber mensch. Yuval Herari writes about this hope in his book Homo Deus. In one sense we are partway there. We, each of us, carry our new external brains around with us in our pockets everywhere we go. An external mind that is very easy for technocrats to read. We wear smartwatches that tell us the time, and tell us our heart rate, and tell us our blood oxygen levels, and tell us when we’re a little too stressed out. But the future of AI will create permanent additions to our persons, neural interfaces implanted in the brain that augment our intelligence as well as allow us to open the garage door with a thought. Some see this development as the next step in the process of human evolution, perhaps our first step toward transcendence.

The second great hope of AI is that it will solve the problem of our mortality. It is believed that one day we may be able to download our consciousness onto a bit of silicon hardware and insert it into a new robotic frame so that when our bodies eventually decay, we will continue our existence in new super bodies.

Of course, these things I have described are collectively known as transhumanism. The melding of man and machine. The ideas seem fantastical, even sci-fi. But they are much closer to actuality than we would like to believe. The line between man and algorithm is becoming increasingly blurred and though the line can never be erased, it will be more and more difficult to discern.

How ought Christians to think about the strange new world we are entering? As I said at the outset, there is much about the future that we cannot predict, we don’t know the shape AI will take in six months or six years. But we can at least lay some theological and philosophical groundwork and remind ourselves of things we know to be true. 

Imago Dei

Since man and machine are merging ever more closely together, we would do well to ingrain in our minds what man is and what man is not. The things that follow are what I consider to be crucial markers of humanity given the current state of affairs.

Genesis 1:26-28 gives us our most fundamental understanding of what man is.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

No other being, no other creature, has the privilege of being made in God’s image. And while so much could be said on this point, it is sufficient to highlight a few of the basics. First, man is a moral creature. Unlike the beasts of the field and the birds of the air, mankind can work evil, and he can achieve good. Furthermore, he is held accountable for his deeds. The same cannot be said of manmade machines. Anything done by AI must be laid squarely at the feet of its makers as it carries no inherent moral responsibility.

Second, men are rational beings. Real rationality, not artificial. Reason is a function of the intellect which itself is a property of the soul. As AI is a soulless being, it cannot truly reason as a man or an angel or God would reason. In fact, AI is merely an extension of the rationality of man.

Third, men are immortal. That is, we will exist in either a state of glorification or damnation forever. In whatever ways men merge themselves with technology, that technology will one day be removed as the body is removed from the soul. Glorified or damned bodies will not retain such accoutrements. 

Fourth, men are hylomorphic. That is, we are composed of body and soul; a material substance and a spiritual, immaterial substance. Jesus said that we ought to fear God who can cast both body and soul into Hell (Matt. 10:28). This means that anything that is not your body or your soul is not you and is not a part of you. My grandfather had a glass eye which was connected to his optical nerves so that it would move when his other eye moved. That eye was not part of him, it was a machine which was connected to him. No piece of machinery can be anything more than your property, it cannot be part of you. Furthermore, each of us have our own spirits. With our own intellect, will, and desires. No person can have 2 intelligences or 2 intellects because no person can have 2 spirits. One may augment their intellect with technology for good or for ill. But the augmentation is not addition.

Fifth, we are the most valuable things God has made. There will come a time when AI will convincingly mimic human emotions. Our modern world, which locates a person’s essence and value in the complex of their emotions, will have a difficult time distinguishing between human life and AI life. Many will see AI as persons in their own right because of their synthetic emotional capacity. Even so, AI is nothing but a human creation, and has value only as human property, not as a living being and certainly not as a person. One might destroy AI, but one will never be able to murder AI.

Sixth, man has been given dominion. Which means, among other things, that he has the responsibility to imitate God in continuing His work of creation. We cannot do so Ex Nihilo as God has done. Even so, we take the raw materials He has made, and we fashion them into wonderful artifacts and objects as monuments to God’s glorious genius. Man does this by nature and has done so in wonderous ways since the beginning. 

Dominion and Creation

One passage of Scripture which has been immensely helpful to me as I think about the place of man’s creation in God’s creation is Psalm 104:24-26.

O LORD, how manifold are your works!

In wisdom have you made them all;

the earth is full of your creatures.

Here is the sea, great and wide,

which teems with creatures innumerable,

living things both small and great.

There go the ships,

and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.

The Psalmist praises God for His wonderous works. The Earth is full of His creatures. The sea, the creatures living in the sea, great and small. Leviathan. And there’s a phrase in the middle of it that doesn’t quite seem to fit. “There go the ships.” The ships are not a part of God’s natural world, yet the psalmist praises God because of them. This is because they bring glory to God as the handiwork of His image bearers. Mankind, taking dominion, has continued God’s work of creation in building ships to sail the seas, and the psalmist is led to praise God because of it. 

Ships were the height of human technology and skill in the ancient world. They were a magnificent thing to behold, giving man the ability to traverse the frightening waves in ways that were not imagined by previous generations. And they brought God glory. But they also brought the sea faring people, invaders who were, in part, responsible for the Bronze Age Collapse. Ships could be used for good or for ill.

So too, AI, the height of human technology and skill today can bring glory to God and it has the ability to promote much wickedness. Christians can be hyper-focused on the dangers of AI; deceit, manipulation, pornography, improper replacement of human things (i.e., fellowship, community, counsel, preaching, etc.). We need to learn how to mitigate and protect against those dangers. But if we focus on these alone, we miss out on a wonderful opportunity to see God glorified in the works of our hands, to properly take dominion.

Increasingly sophisticated iterations of AI are coming. Christians cannot afford to bury their heads in the sand or be uninvolved. We must prepare ourselves to counter and mitigate its dangers, see through its artificiality, draw the lines between man and machine clearly, and utilize it to display the glory of our Creator in this World. He’s given us all that we need for this great task. 

I am eager to see how we will accomplish it.

In Romans 6:1-14, the Apostle Paul gives Christians, among other things, one of the purposes of believer’s baptism. This blessed ordinance of our Lord Jesus Christ is a beautiful picture worth a thousand words! While much ink has been spilled over the mode, subject, and purpose of baptism, let me give you three simple, yet profound pictures, that this ordinance gives the church. 

First, it displays for us an:

Overwhelming Covenant  

In Romans 6:14 we see that believers are not under law, but grace. Consider those two words there: “law” and “grace.” 

The Apostle Paul is one of my favorite Baptists. And what we see him articulating for us here are the two great covenants of the Bible: The covenant of works and the covenant of grace. 

This is how your Bible is divided. Old Testament and New Testament. This comes from the Latin Testamentum and just means covenant. Literally your Bible is divided into two sections known as Old Covenant and New Covenant, or, Law and Grace. 

Now, this doesn’t mean there’s only law in the Old Testament and only Grace in the New Testament. Of course, that’s not true at all. But what it does help us see is that these two covenants, Law and Grace, help set the framework for the whole Bible. 

In fact, I would go so far as to say that without understanding these covenants well, we do not read our Bibles well. Listen to how Spurgeon put it: 

The doctrine of the divine covenant lies at the root of all true theology. It has been said that he who well understands the distinction between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace is a master of divinity. I am persuaded that most of the mistakes which men make concerning the doctrines of Scripture are based upon fundamental errors with regard to the covenants of law and of grace.

The Covenant of Works

So, in our text we have law and grace. All persons born in Adam are born into law, that is, under a covenant of works, a covenant that has been broken because of Adam’s sin (cf. Romans 5:12).

Adam is what we call our legal representative. He is the federal head of the human race. And in Adam, all die. We are born under a broken covenant of works and held guilty due to Adam’s sin all the while the moment we are able we choose volitionally to sin and rebel against our holy God.

It is our nature to sin and run away from God. We have nothing left within us willing or able to do any spiritual good before God. 

Being under the law as a covenant of works, leaves us in a hopeless condition. It shows us the perfection God demands but only moves us to rebel (see Romans 7) and is unable to remedy our situation. What then is left for us to do? Well, all we can do, and all we want to do, only heaps up more condemnation. 

The Covenant of Grace

This brings us to the overwhelming covenant and by that, I mean the covenant of grace. 

In eternity past the triune Godhead agreed to save an unworthy people for His own glory. This agreement theologians call the covenant of redemption. But this is enacted in time by the promise of grace. We see this in Gen. 3:15 after the Fall: God will send the seed of the woman to crush the serpent’s head.

That same language is used again in Genesis 12: This Redeemer will be the Seed of Abraham and then later the offspring of David. 

These promises, and so many more, point us forward to the covenant of grace which is inaugurated in Christ – Jesus is the One promised of old. He is the one in time, born of the Virgin Mary, fulfilling all righteousness in His life, dying the death of covenant breakers, bearing the wrath of God for His ppl, and rising again in victory over death, hell, and the grave.

The covenant of grace says there is nothing you can do in and of yourself to reconcile you to God. Not your going to church or taking the Lord’s Supper or reciting the Bible or prayers or creeds. 

In and of yourself is only unrighteousness and sin. 

But the Lord Jesus came. He completed the work. Where Adam failed, where Israel failed, where you have failed, He fulfilled all righteousness. He substituted Himself in our place. He bore the wrath of breaking God’s law upon the wooden cross. He rose again in triumph. 

And God’s grace brings us out from under the law and places us within the new covenant, the covenant of grace (Romans 6:14).

Members of the Covenant 

Under the law, the sign of the covenant of works was circumcision. It was a reminder that those who did not keep the whole law would be cut off from God. That is, the children of Abraham were not part of the covenant of grace unless, they, by faith, looked to the coming Messiah. 

The true people of God have always and only been believers. It is only those who by grace alone place their faith alone in Christ alone who are God’s true Israel (cf. Rom. 9:6, Gal. 6:16). Someone’s physical birth or ethnicity does not bring them into the New Covenant. 

In Romans 4:16 we see that Abraham is the true father of only those of faith, whether Jew or Gentile. Only those of faith are the ppl of God. Only those of faith are brought into the New Covenant, the Covenant of Grace.

Those in the Covenant of Grace are no longer under Adam as their representative. Rather, Christ represents them! They have died in Christ and now live again in Him having His righteousness credited to their account by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. 

And, so, what is the sign, then, of this new covenant? This overwhelming covenant of grace? It is believers Baptism as Paul lays our in Romans 6:3-4.

This, of course, teaches us that Biblical Baptism is not for unbelievers. It is not for infants. It is only for those who have been brought into the New Covenant, dying to sin and self and rising again to newness of life as typified in Baptism which serves as a sign for God’s glorious grace upon a person’s life. 

Baptism is a picture worth 1,000 words! Baptism signifies, it is a picture of, our union with Christ. It shows forth our newness of life. It publicly identifies us with the death and resurrection of Christ.  Baptism does not perform these things. It does not create within us a new heart. It does not bring us into union with Christ. 

Rather, it displays on the outside what God, in His sovereign grace, has already performed on the inside. 

This is why we baptize by immersion (cf. Romans 6:3-4). Now, to say we “baptize by immersion” is like saying we “drink a drink.” Baptism and immersion are the same word. Baptism is really a made-up word in the sense that it’s just transliterated, brought straight over form Greek to English.

You can read John Dagg’s work on this Greek word but let me give you one quote from 17th Century Baptist, Henry Lawrence (1600-1664) who says: “the word Βαπτίζω signifies properly…to drowne, or sinke in the water, to dip, to overwhelme…”

You cannot signify the death and resurrection of Christ or the new believer by sprinkling water or by pouring water. Baptists baptize. That is, we immerse believers’ whole body down into the water and back up again. 

Baptism, then, reminds us of an Overwhelming Covenant. 

2ndly, it is a picture of an:

Obligatory Commitment

I love this quote from Sam Renihan: “Baptism is…a two-way declaration. On the one hand, it is God’s visible promise that all who are in His Son are new creations by virtue of their union with Christ in His death and resurrection. And on the other hand, it is the individual’s profession of faith in those very promises.”

Romans 6 shows us that by committing to the ordinance of baptism the new Christian is publicly declaring his or her death to sin and new life in Christ. He or she is declaring a commitment to follow Christ no matter the cost. The old man or woman has passed away and the new one has come being created anew in Christ Jesus by God’s grace. 

In Baptism we have symbolized taking off the old man and putting on the new and now it is our fight every day to continue to do this. Every day we continue to mortify the deeds of the flesh. We continue to look to Christ and seek to walk in newness of life. 

And this really is Paul’s argument in Romans 6:1-4. What he is encouraging the Roman Christians with is to, essentially, remember their baptism as a way of fighting sin in the present. 

Let me put it to you this way: In many places in America there are people who profess to be Christians. And one of the reasons many say they are Christians is because they have been baptized.

Thus, they look to their baptism as a trophy rather than as a flag. Let me illustrate it like this: In the movie the Patriot, Benjamin Martin’s oldest son, Gabriel Martin, is continually sewing an American Flag . And even in the midst of despair and defeat, that flag is a symbol of what they are fighting for in the American Revolution.

And looking at the flag is what sort of turns the battle at the end of the movie. 

Well, in a similar way, we look to our Baptism to remember what we are fighting for. We have died to sin and risen with Christ! This fight is worth it. Keep pressing on. You are dead to sin and alive in Christ. Christ is King. He is King of your Life. Keep up the fight.

If you look at Baptism as a trophy you just say, “Well, I’ve got my ticket into heaven and it doesn’t matter how I live.” If you remembering your baptism means you just live a life of unchecked rebellion and sin but you’re clinging to your baptism as your hope, you are foolish. This is not the purpose of Baptism. 

But for those who have been born again, our Baptism serves as a reminder of who we are so that we can continue our growth in the Lord Jesus Christ. Being in the New Covenant does not produce passivity or carelessness but commitment to holiness. 

Baptism is an obligatory commitment. It is our commitment before others that we are following Christ no matter the cost. He is worthy!

And by obligatory, I mean what my friend Jeffrey Johnson writes:

Although baptism is not essential to salvation, it is highly unlikely that a person has been truly born again without an eager desire to follow the Lord in this first command that God gives the new Christian. Baptism is a public confession of Christ that evidences to the church and the world that there has been a radical transformation within. Baptism is also a visible sermon. It demonstrates a spiritual reality of one’s death to sin and resurrection to the newness of life in Christ Jesus.

So, Baptism reminds us of an overwhelming covenant. It is an obligatory commitment. And finally, Baptism is an: 

Open Commemoration

In Romans 6:3 Paul uses the phrase “all of us”. Paul is able to speak to the Church at Rome with the common understanding that Baptism was ordinary part of the Christian life. 

That is, “all of us” were baptized. All of who? All Christians. Not that Baptism is what “makes” a Christian, but Baptism is what, in essence, publicly commemorates one as a Christian. 

This is why Baptism is an ordinance of the local church. The local church has the keys of the kingdom from Christ Her Lord (cf. Matthew 16:19). And it is her duty to open the door to Baptism as it were for all who repent and believe the gospel.

So, when a local church baptizes someone, it is saying, in essence, “We receive this man or woman as a brother or sister in Christ.” In Baptism, the church is publicly declaring a person as a Christian. 

Thus, in Baptism, the local church is committing to love this man or woman as a brother or sister in Christ, to watch over him or her in the Lord, to hold this person accountable in the Lord, and to humbly have him or her watch over us and hold fellow church members accountable as well. 

Baptism is an open commemoration. It is not to be done in a secret closet unbeknownst to anyone else. It is not to be done on a whim in someone’s backyard separated from the local church. 

Baptism is a local church ordinance where we perform this great event in the midst of the gathered church. That may be at a lake or in a river or even in a pool, but the point is, it’s properly done when the local church is gathered under the leadership of her pastors. 

Fred Malone reminds us, 

Away with the individualistic ecclesiology plaguing America which minimizes baptism and church membership, leaving Christians the freedom to float around without feeling responsible to a pastor or a church. Such an attitude feeds the antinomian spirit we see growing today. Yet, the whole teaching of the NT is that Christians need the ministry of a committed body of believers (church membership) which baptism calls them to. Church membership is required after baptism and believer’s baptism is required for church membership.

Thus, Baptism is an open commemoration. It is a public ordinance of the church whereby those baptized as well as the local church celebrate Christ together even as they mutually pledge themselves to one another in grace.

Fred Malone also states: “Baptism is the outward sign of entrance into the New Covenant by the inward circumcision of the heart, evidenced by one’s confession of faith in Christ.”

This reminds us that Baptism is a picture worth a thousand words. It cannot save in the sense of effecting regeneration or faith or justification or any such thing. Rather, it points us to Christ and is a picture of new life in Him (cf. Rom. 6:1-4).