http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15454401/what-is-saving-faith

I’m a baptist — a very happy baptist — but you don’t need to capitalize the b for me. First and foremost, I’m a Christian, identifying primarily with Christ, and only secondarily with my dear baptist brothers and sisters.

We baptists sometimes encounter a tension created by our baptistic convictions: How do we, as baptists, orient to those whose baptismal belief and practice differ from ours? In particular, how do we relate to paedobaptist individuals and churches?

Paedobaptism (from the Greek root paedo for “child”) is the practice of baptizing the children of believers in infancy, in anticipation of their profession of faith in Christ. Rather than baptizing after someone professes faith, as credobaptists do (credo for “faith”), paedobaptists regard baptism as the New Testament counterpart to Old Testament circumcision. Therefore, they administer the visible, public sign of the covenant to children of Christians.

Now, we baptists believe that paedobaptists err in their baptismal theology and practice. We think they’ve got it wrong. At the same time, we don’t believe that rightly understanding and applying baptism is essential for someone to be a true Christian. We regard sincere, Christ-loving paedobaptists as our brothers and sisters, and we want to celebrate our common confession of faith in the triune God and our salvation in Jesus Christ.

Two Impulses

This creates a tension between two impulses. First, there’s the baptist impulse — we want to teach and practice according to our credobaptistic convictions. We believe that baptism is a visible sign of invisible realities. Baptism is public and objective, like a wedding ceremony. And like a wedding ceremony, in baptism God makes promises to us, we receive those promises by faith, and we also make promises to him. God promises to forgive our sins and transform our lives, and we promise to trust Jesus and follow him as Lord, Savior, and Treasure. In baptism, we publicly identify with Christ, and he publicly identifies with us. We say, “You are our God,” and God says, “You are my people.” And as credobaptists, we believe that only those who have made a credible profession of faith should be baptized.

“Christians ought to have a holy instinct to recognize and welcome all genuine Christians as visible saints in the Lord.”

On the other hand, there’s what we might call the catholicity impulse. The word catholic here doesn’t refer to the Roman Catholic Church, but instead means universal. This is the recognition that the people of God, Christ’s church, is bigger than our local church, bigger than our denomination, bigger than our theological tribe. As the Apostles’ Creed says, “We believe in the communion of saints.” As professing saints, we seek to maintain holy fellowship and communion in the worship of God with other Christians. Such communion ought to be extended to all those who, in every place, call upon the name of the Lord Jesus. Thus, Christians ought to have a holy instinct to recognize and welcome all genuine Christians as visible saints in the Lord, despite the various disagreements we may have with them on matters of secondary or tertiary importance.

These two impulses create a tension in how we regard the baptisms of paedobaptistic traditions. Are such paedobaptisms valid baptisms? Or are they not baptisms at all? Can we welcome those baptized as infants into church membership? Can we welcome them to the Lord’s Table?

Different Aspects of the Church

Let’s begin with the church and its government. Theologians often consider the church under different aspects.

The church as universal and invisible is composed of all those, in every time and place, who are chosen in Christ and united to him through faith by the Spirit in one body. The church as universal and visible is composed of all those who are baptized in the triune name and do not undermine that profession by foundational errors or unholy living. The church as visible and local is composed of all those in a given area who agree to gather together to hear the word of God proclaimed, engage in corporate worship, practice the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, build each other’s faith through the manifold ministries of love, hold each other accountable in the obedience of faith through biblical discipline, and engage in local and world evangelization.

Many aspects of local-church government are matters of biblically informed prudence. Such matters are to be ordered by the light of nature as informed by the general principles of God’s word. Prudence enables us to take these general principles, derived from general and special revelation, and wisely apply them in concrete settings.

Two areas of church government that are to be ordered by biblically informed prudence are, first, the requirements and expectations for membership in the local church, and second, the requirements and expectation for leadership in the local church. Membership in the local church is an inference from biblical passages that assume an identifiable body of believers (such that individuals may exercise and be subject to church discipline) as well as the pastor-elders’ responsibility to oversee a particular people.

The Scriptures teach, both by precept and example, that the requirements for leadership in the church are higher than the requirements for membership in the church. In keeping with that expectation, it is prudent to expect a greater degree of theological knowledge and clarity from leaders than members.

Thus, it seems prudent for membership in the local church to be extended to all those who profess faith in Christ and apprehend the foundational truths of the gospel. Likewise, it seems prudent for leadership in the local church to be restricted to those who are able to teach the whole counsel of God. For example, in my own church, while members are not required to be Reformed in their soteriology or complementarian in their anthropology in order to join, leaders are required to hold these convictions in order to teach and govern.

Baptism and Church Membership

How then does baptism factor in? As the Desiring God Affirmation of Faith puts it,

Baptism is an ordinance of the Lord by which those who have repented and come to faith (Acts 2:38; Colossians 2:12) express their union with Christ (1 Corinthians 12:3) in his death and resurrection (Romans 6:3–4), by being immersed (Acts 8:36–39; Romans 6:4) in water in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). It is a sign of belonging to the new people of God (Mark 1:4–5; Romans 2:28–29; Galatians 3:7), the true Israel, and an emblem of burial and cleansing (Hebrews 10:22), signifying death to the old life of unbelief, and purification from the pollution of sin. (12.3)

Baptism marks entrance into the universal and visible church and is a prerequisite for membership in the visible, local church. Expressing it this way accounts for the fact that Christians are not re-baptized every time they join a new local congregation. Instead, like a passport, their one baptism is recognized by all subsequent congregations as meeting this requirement for membership.

This definition of baptism includes four elements:

water
in the triune name
by immersion
after repentance and faith in Christ

Essentially all Christians regard the first two elements as essential for a baptism to be valid. Many baptists regard the third element as important, but not essential. In other words, many baptist churches accept sprinkling and pouring baptisms of professing believers as “valid but improper” or “true but irregular” baptisms. The question concerns the fourth element. Is the administration of baptism after repentance and faith an essential element of a baptism?

Some baptists say yes. These baptists (so far as I’m aware, the majority of current baptists in America) deny that paedobaptisms are baptisms at all. Because they believe that baptism should be applied only to professing believers, those who have had water sprinkled on them as infants have not been baptized. At the same time, nearly all of them also believe that there are genuine Christians who have wrong baptismal theology and wrong practice.

However, this position creates a number of confusions and inconsistencies. For example, this position sends conflicting messages to non-baptists. It says, “We regard you as a believer, but we cannot receive you into membership in our church, nor welcome you to the Lord’s Table without your being (re)baptized as a believer. Your baptismal error is so significant that it bars you from membership, even though it doesn’t prevent us from being ‘together for the gospel.’”

Moreover, since a right administration of the ordinances is a necessary mark of a true church, such a position seems to deny that paedobaptist churches are churches at all, since they fail to baptize their members. And because they fail to baptize their members, it would seem that they are likewise unable to eat the Lord’s Supper, since the family meal requires the presence of a proper family.

In contrast, I would argue that while water and the triune name are essential to baptism, the other two elements are important for the proper administration of baptism, but not essential for the validity of baptism. In other words, the proper mode of baptism is immersion, and the proper timing of baptism is after one has believed. Nevertheless, one can err on these elements and still administer and receive a valid baptism.

Valid but Improper

Paedobaptisms, then, may be regarded as valid but improper baptisms. The use of water in the triune name (or the name of Jesus, Acts 2:38; 10:48; 19:5) to mark entrance into the visible church establishes the baptism as valid. Sprinkling or pouring the water (rather than immersion), as well as the application of water to infants, renders the baptisms as improper.

“Paedobaptisms may be regarded as valid but improper baptisms.”

The result is that we are able to duly honor both the baptist impulse and the catholicity impulse. As baptists, the leaders of the church teach the biblical meaning of baptism and practice the proper administration of baptism. At the same time, we are able to regard paedobaptist churches that embrace the foundational truths of the gospel as genuine churches, despite their error on baptism. Indeed, recognizing their baptisms as valid is one of the fundamental ways we acknowledge them as true churches.

Guided by biblically informed prudence, then, we might regard all valid baptisms — including those that are improper with respect to mode and timing — as sufficient prerequisites for church membership, provided there is a credible profession of faith. What’s more, we might consider such valid baptisms sufficient as prerequisites for participation in the Lord’s Supper, provided the Table is guarded as being only for those who trust in Jesus alone for the forgiveness of sins.

Audio Transcript

Good Monday morning, everyone. We have a big week on the podcast. First up, our inbox is full of emails asking whether or not it’s a good idea to dramatize Christ’s life for television. A listener named Jim asks it this way: “Dear Pastor John, hello, and thank you for this podcast. I’m wondering of the dangers and benefits of watching biblical historical fiction, particularly of television shows and movies about the life of Christ, of him acting and saying dramatized things beyond what we read in Scripture.”

One anonymous man writes to say, “Dear Pastor John, thank you for the podcast. It has been used by God to help me and my family here in Kazakhstan. I would like to know your thoughts on television shows and movies about the life of Christ. Are they helpful or unhelpful? What are your concerns?”

Sam, a church leader, wants to know the place of visuals, particularly screen dramatizations about the life of Christ. One recent show is “beloved by many” in his church, and he says, “I feel that it has enlivened my own walk with God and helped me imagine what Jesus’s world could have been like. This has the effect of making the world of the Bible more accessible to me. But imagination can only take you so far. Can we enjoy shows like this personally, even include them in a teaching context, without violating the second commandment?”

Another listener, Lisa, is less optimistic. She says television dramatizations of Christ’s life “don’t sit well with me.” As she considers Proverbs 30:6 and Revelation 22:18, she wonders if these dramas are “adding to or altering Scripture,” amounting to heresy. Pastor John, for these listeners, do you have any thoughts?

There is no way that I can avoid this question, because it touches on my life. For 25 years — and I still do it one way or the other — when I was a pastor at Bethlehem, every Christmas season, I created and read to the people in worship what we called “Advent poems,” one for each Sunday during advent. The poems took about ten minutes to read. They created a story built around a biblical character or biblical situation in which I invented persons, dialogue, and circumstances that were not in the Bible but were intended to clarify and confirm and intensify realities that are in the Bible, that the Bible itself teaches.

So, the question is not abstract for me. The question is, Was I doing something sinful? Was it wrong to create those poetic, imaginative expressions?

Safeguards Against Distortion

Let me mention the safeguards that I put in place to avoid the dangers of distorting Scripture or replacing Scripture or diminishing the authority of Scripture, and then I’ll give some positive reasons for why I think imaginative explanations and illustrations and representations of biblical truth are not only legitimate, but are even encouraged by the Bible.

Not Adding to Scripture

First, was I guilty of disobeying Proverbs 30:6 or Revelation 22:18, which says that we should not add to the words of God or to the prophecy of Scripture? No, I was not guilty of disobeying those Scriptures because those Scriptures forbid the presumption that one could add scripture to Scripture or prophecy to prophecy. Those texts are not condemning explanation and elucidation and illustration and representation of Scripture that make no claim in themselves to have any Scripture-level authority.

Those texts are condemning every attempt to use words or images or representations that claim to be on a par with Scripture. And in fact, I would say that the Roman Catholic Church is guilty of this error when it elevates the papal pronouncements ex cathedra to the level of infallible biblical authority. That’s my first safeguard.

Clearly Imaginative

Second, I made clear that the poems I was reading were not Scripture. I made it clear. They were not divinely inspired. They were not infallible. They were imaginative illustration, explanation, and representation of truth that I saw in the biblical text.

I made this distinction not only when reading poetry but when preaching. My preaching is not Scripture; it is based on Scripture. It uses language that is not in Scripture — all preaching does, all teaching does. It derives any authority that it has from the degree that it faithfully represents the reality put forth in the Bible. So it is with imaginative poetry — or drama, for that matter.

Consistent with Scripture

Third, I promised never to create any dialogue or any character or any circumstance that could not have happened in view of what the Bible actually teaches. In other words, even though I created things that were not in the Bible, nothing I created contradicted what was in the Bible. Everything had to be possible and plausible in view of what was in the Bible. Nothing was allowed to call Scripture into question.

Focused on Scripture

Fourth, I made every effort to draw attention and affection to the same reality in my poems that I saw in the Scripture itself. And fifth, I never replaced expository preaching with imaginative poetry.

In other words, I tried to make plain that God had ordained the expository preaching of his infallible word as central to congregational life and as the main corporate means by which God protects his word from distortion. Through every other form of representation, preaching stood. Preaching remained dominant and essential. And in my case, the sermon was never, not once in 33 years, intermingled with any kind of visual media. I think that’s a bad practice in preaching and is usually owing to a loss of confidence in the preached word to do its amazing work.

Biblical Warrant

Now, those are the safeguards that I put in place to keep from diminishing Scripture or distorting Scripture or replacing Scripture, but I think even more important is the fact that imaginative representations of biblical reality are warranted by Scripture itself.

“Imaginative representations of biblical reality are warranted by Scripture itself.”

Of course, in biblical times, nobody had ever heard of movies or videos, and so nothing directly is said in the Bible about them. But short of that, pointers to imaginative representations and drama are everywhere in the Bible.

Imaginative Language

First, the Bible itself uses imaginative language that creates pictures in our minds that are not the same as the reality being discussed, but that shed light on the reality by not being the reality itself. We call these metaphors or similes or word pictures or parables. For example, just listen to Jude 12–13 describing the false teachers and the troublemakers in the church:

These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in autumn, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.

That’s amazing! He’s talking about human beings, bad people who are ruining the church. What does he do? He creates pictures in our brains with words like “hidden reefs,” “selfish shepherds,” “waterless clouds,” “fruitless trees,” “wild waves,” “wandering stars.” In other words, he tries to make plain one objective reality by comparing it to a very different reality.

Jesus did this with parables, didn’t he? “The kingdom of heaven is like . . .” — like a mustard seed, like leaven, like a treasure, like a merchant, like a net, like a master of a house, and on and on. Or consider the prophets like Zechariah. He sees a reality; he wants us to know the reality. How should he help us see and savor this reality? He says, “I see a measuring line” (Zechariah 2:1–5). “I see a lampstand” (Zechariah 4:1–3). “I see a flying scroll” (Zechariah 5:1–4). “I see a woman in a basket” (Zechariah 5:5–11).

“The job of the preacher or the poet or the teacher or the parent is to help others see and savor reality.”

The Bible does this kind of thing hundreds and hundreds of times. It’s the very nature of language to be different from the reality it points to. The word love is not the same as the reality of love. The word God is not the same as the reality of God. The word salvation is not the same as the reality of salvation. And once you realize that all language is pointing to reality, that the job of the preacher or the poet or the teacher or the parent is to help others see and savor reality, then you realize all the amazing and various potentials that language has.

Imaginative Action

Then there’s not just imaginative language, but there is imaginative action in the Bible — acted-out dramas of biblical reality. Jeremiah was told to make yoke bars and walk around with this heavy yoke on his shoulders to dramatize the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar on the people (Jeremiah 27:1–22). And Ezekiel was told by God to lie on his left side for 390 days to illustrate Israel’s years of punishment (Ezekiel 4:4–8). And then there’s poor Isaiah. God said, “My servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and a portent against Egypt and Cush” (Isaiah 20:3).

Pursuing Reality

So, my conclusion is that if we pause and ponder why the Bible itself employs so many imaginative means of explaining and illustrating and representing reality, we will see that the Bible itself:

offers us examples of truth-clarifying, truth-intensifying drama, poetry, language
encourages us to use language this way
protects us against distorting or replacing or diminishing Scripture