053. BAPTISM A TEACHING ORDINANCE

BAPTISM A TEACHING ORDINANCE

Here is suggested the reason why Baptists can never consent to any form of administering the ordinance but that which Christ enjoined. Baptism, like the Lord’s Supper, is a teaching ordinance. It is a pictorial proclamation and declaration of the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord. Equally with the preaching of Christ’s atoning death from the pulpit, it sets forth the great sacrifice of Christ for our salvation. The first and most important thing taught by baptism is, not the spiritual death and resurrection of the believer with Christ, but rather Christ’s ozvn death for our sins and resurrection for our justification. And this meaning of the ordinance is just as clearly taught in Scripture, as that baptism is simply and only immersion. Said Luther, the great Reformer, "Baptism is a sign both of death and resurrection. Being moved by this reason, I would have those that are baptized to be altogether dipped into the water, as the word means, and the mystery signifies." In the English Church during this last century there has been no greater scholar than Lightfoot, the late Bishop of Durham. .’These are his words:

Baptism is the grave of the old man and the birth of the new— nn image of the believer’s participation both in the death and in the resurrection of Christ . . As he sinks beneath the baptismal waters, the believer buries there all his corrupt affections and past sins; as he emerges thence, he rises regenerate, quickened to new hopes and a new life. With these testimonies before us, I think it must be conceded that, Pedobaptists themselves being the judges, Baptists have the advantage of a clear New Testament foundation.

Secondly: It is our Baptist advantage that we make the relation of the believer to the church depend on, follow, and express his previous relation to Christ. We hold that men are saved, not by union with the church, but by union with Christ. We make Christ, not the church, central. The church is only the outward expression of the common life of believers in Christ. The new life in Christ comes first, and only then comes membership in the church. Baptism does not make people Christians; it is rather their profession that they are already Christians. Instead of baptism being a means of salvation, a man must be saved before ’he has any right to be baptized. Not baptism therefore, but a regenerate church-membership, is the central and fundamental tenet of our Baptist Faith. And this is simply to say that we admit to church-membership only those who give credible evidence of having been already spiritually united to Christ. The church is an outgrowth of Christ. Hence we dare not say, with the Westminster Confession, that the church "consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, together with their children." We dare not baptize those who, like infants, give no sign that they are regenerate. The church is Christ’s body, and we can admit to its ordinances only those who show that they are one with Christ, that his Spirit is dwelling within them, and that they have with their Saviour died to sin and risen to newness of life. Only to such can baptism or the Lord’s Supper be anything but an empty form.