Exodus: Desultory Notes and Musings

Moses and the Ten
Commandments
Rembrandt, 1659

Exodus. Some desultory notes and musings.

“The book of Moses” per Mk. 12.26, inter alia. May it be noted the continuous and oft-repeated reference to such in subsequent OT books.

Exodus = Greek ἔξοδος = "going out". The Hebrew scriptures = שמות, Sh'mot, "Names."

Date: 1450-1440 B.C. Written before Moses’ death, c. 1406. Technical discussions are noted, but not addressed here.

Desultory notes:

• Carries forward the Self-Revelation of God Himself--God's pro-active and energetic revealing of Himself in deeds and words--sovereignly and faithfully, in accordance with earlier promises, blessing Abraham and establishing, from Abraham’s seed, a great nation (Gen.12.2).  This cannot be separated from the "mother-promise" of the promises, the Protevangelium, God's Omni-competence promise to crush the serpentine disaster in the Garden.  To reverse the serpentine curse. 

• Ex. 1.1-7 refers to the Church’s descent into Egypt. Jacob’s family encounters the abuses and repressions of the Semitic Hysos’ dynasty (1700-1550 B.C.)

• Ex. 1.8: this most likely refers to the expulsion of the Hysos’ hegemony and the foundation of a new hegemony, the foundation of the Eighteenth (18th) Dynasty by its founder, Mr. (Pharoah) Ahmosis 1 (1570-1546 B.C.). Research on ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian history and archaeology is on-going.

• Mr. (Pharoah) Tutmose 1 (1526-1512 B.C.) is the likely Pharoah of the persecution

• Either of two Pharoahs are the likely ones of the Exodus: Mr. Tutmose III (1504-1450 B.C.) or Mr. Amenhotep II (1450-1425 B.C.)

• The “written preservation of the words of God’s covenant has central importance for the theology of the Book of Exodus”

• God speaks--directly, Personally, majestically--at Sinai. Then, put to “tablets of stone” (Ex. 31.18; 32.15, 16; 34. 1, 28)

• The “Book of the Covenant” with further written specifications (20.22-23.19)

• Written by the “Mediator” of the covenant (Ex. 24. 4, 7; 34. 27)

Second Millenium Treaty Forms:

• “Form and content” akin to Hittite Treaty forms. Further research is ordered up.

• Preamble (20.2), Stipulations (20.3-17), Ratification (24.1-11), Blessing and Cursings

• A copy of the treaty was “preserved” in the sanctuaries. The value of a permanent, unchanged, and standing record--in writing--was recognized by these acts in the ancient world.

• A comparison of the Mosaic case laws is needed in relation to Ancient Near Eastern codes, e.g. Hammurabi’s Code of 1750 B.C.

Characteristics

• Liberation—to fulfill covenant promises. This goes to the Self-revealed attributes of God's integrity, faithfulness, and transcendent competence to keep that which He promised.

• God’s Self-revelation—the Sovereign and Mighty God of Abraham, the thunderous Self-revelation of divine majesty and divine holiness, alongside the gracious, merciful, forgiving, and kind condescension to dwell with the chosen and elect descendants of Abraham.

• Covenant revelation of God’s prescriptive will and schoolmaster

• Utter triumph of grace!

• Crucial to the narrative—Moses as the Mediator, the Mediator of confrontation with Pharoah, the Mediator of deliverance from Egypt, the Mediator of revelation at Sinai, the Mediator of written records, the Mediator as Governor and Shepherd in the wilderness, and the Mediator as an Intercessor (variously)

• Tabernacle—place, rituals, priesthood, sacrifices, ceremony, liturgy, etc. (Ex. 25-31; 35-40. Moses the Mediator leads them to Sinai (Ex. 19-20). Numbers picks up the wanderings.

• The Self-Revelation of God is His utterly holy nature and the lawful demand for holiness, separation and distinctiveness of the nation amongst whom He dwells. This needs amplification.

 

Ryle: The Eternal Covenant of Redemption

The closest relation on earth—the marriage bond—has an end. Marriage is only “until death us do part.” But the relation between Christ and the sinner who trusts in him, never ends. It lives when the body dies. It lives when flesh and heart fail. Once begun, it never withers. It is only made brighter and stronger by the grave. “I am persuaded,” says Paul, “that neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature—shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord!” (Romans 8:38, 39).

~ J.C. Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool, Church of England, and Committed Prayer Book Churchman (1662 BCP)

John MacArthur on Covenant/Infant Baptism

Glad John raises the point.

http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/80-369/is-infant-baptism-biblical#.TqfTFpySOVJ

Is Infant Baptism Biblical?

Selected Scriptures September 18, 201180-369

Quality: High | Low

One of the strange paradoxes in the church is that the world is full of baptized non-Christians, millions of them all over the planet, baptized non-Christians. While at the same time, the church is full of non-baptized Christians, like some of you. What a strange paradox that is. And it raises the issue of baptism and what it is and why people are so confused about it. We here at Grace Community Church understand baptism biblically. We understand its method, we understand its meaning. We have even through the years put baptisms on the radio, which no other ministry that I know of has ever done. We have, through the years, in the early days of our Shepherds Conference has taken one of the nights of Shepherds Conference to do baptisms. We had a baptism last week at the conclusion of the Truth Matters Conference. And essentially, just about every single Sunday night through the year right here we have testimonies of people being baptized. We understand what believer’s baptism is from Scripture.

But there’s a world of people who don’t get it, who don’t understand it. And there are people who don’t know that it is important and who don’t think the methodology is important, or even the time when a person is baptized. There are folks who are just plain confused about baptism, what is its method, and what is its meaning, and in particular, what about the baptizing of infants, which is how you get a world full of non-Christians who have been baptized as infants.

The church in recent years has become kind of media oriented. Many people come to Christ by listening to Christian radio, Christian television, going to some kind of big event, some kind of meeting, some kind of what is called a crusade or something like that. In situations like that they would hear nothing about nor have any opportunity for baptism, true believer’s baptism. These people typically float around and maybe go a little bit here and a little there from church to church and baptism never becomes an issue for them. Many churches are so designed to be pragmatic and baptism isn’t really a very pragmatic thing to introduce into people’s lives. And so it just gets left behind. Pragmatism has been the death of the sacraments, we might say. But what concerns me is that we need to understand baptism because it is in Scripture a command…a command. The Great Commission is very clear at the end of the gospel of Matthew in chapter 28, you know these words. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” All nations need to hear the gospel and those that believe need to be baptized.

Peter in the first sermon on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2 says, “Repent and be baptized.” On that day there were thousands of people, three thousand baptized, thousands more day after day after day in the early days of the church as it began to grow. It is clear in Scripture that Baptism is a requirement, it is a command, both to the individual believer and to the church. Still its confusion is widespread, hence millions of baptized non-Christians and perhaps millions of unbaptized Christians.

So I want to talk about baptism from the biblical viewpoint. I don’t want you to be ignorant of this issue and you won’t be after we have covered what we’re going to cover tonight and perhaps a little bit next week. You’re going to have to face the reality that this is a command and you are called to be obedient. You cannot be indifferent to it because it is a command. You could be defiant, unwilling, and it is very possible that you could be completely disinterested because you’re not willing at all to confess Christ openly and publicly.

But for those who are genuinely believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we need to understand what the Bible says about baptism. Much confusion over baptism has come from this phenomena called paedo-baptism, or baby baptism.

Where did this come from? And to get a proper separation from all that is untrue about baptism, to place yourself in the category of knowing what it really is so that you can be obedient to it, we need to talk a little bit about infant baptism. For those of you who are former Roman Catholics, you were probably baptized as a baby. For those of you who were raised by Presbyterian parents, or Lutheran parents, or Episcopalian parents, or Anglican parents, or Methodist parents and we can go pretty much down the line until we get to the Baptists, you were probably baptized as a baby, or there’s a good possibility that your parents believed in that.

What I’m saying is, this is widespread. It is part and parcel of the Roman Catholic system as well as the orthodox system, which was the Eastern Catholic Church. It is part and parcel of Reformed Protestant theology with the exception of those who have a view of baptism and identify themselves as such by calling themselves Baptists or those who identify with that view of baptism that we call believers, baptism. But for the most part, historically, Christianity has been marked by infant baptism. In fact, from about the fourth century on, infant baptism has been the norm in the Christian church. The Reformation in the 1500’s didn’t change that. So in that sense, it was an incomplete Reformation.
It was a few years ago that I was asked to speak on this subject, which I gladly did because there needed to be clarity in the minds of Reformed people over this issue.

Well, I was clear about it, and made a biblical case for it. And yet the tradition is so steep and deep that little change comes from that community. They continue to defend infant baptism.

You say, “Well, is it a big issue?”

It’s a huge issue, and I’m going to show you why. I’m going to give you five reasons why we must reject infant baptism, five reasons. Here’s the first one and this would be enough, infant baptism is not in the Scripture. Infant baptism is not in the Scripture. Scripture nowhere advocates or records any such thing as the baptism of an infant. It is therefore impossible to support infant baptism from the Bible. It is not in the Bible. There’s not an incident of it, there’s not a mandate, there’s not a call for it, there’s not a description of it. It doesn’t appear. In fact, if you go back in history, and I’m going to do that a little bit with you, you will find that historians have affirmed this fact. Theological leaders in generations past have affirmed this truth.

For example, Friedrich Schleiermacher, the German theologian wrote, “All traces of infant baptism which are asserted to be found in the New Testament must first be inserted there.” And he would come from a Lutheran tradition, but affirm…you would have to put it into the Bible because it isn’t there.

The host of German and front-rank theologians and scholars of the Church of England have united to affirm not only the absence of infant baptism from the New Testament, but the absence from apostolic and post-apostolic writers. This is the Anglican Church, the Church of England that does infant baptism. This is the Lutheran Church that affirms and does infant baptism saying it’s not in the Bible.
It arose, first of all, started appearing in the second and third century, became normalized in the fourth century. B. B. Warfield who was a noted Presbyterian, Presbyterians do infant baptism, affirmed that infant baptism does not appear in the Scripture. We might think that if this is true that the Calvinistic regulative principle might be applied, the regulative principle of the Reformation said if Scripture doesn’t command it, it is forbidden. If Scripture doesn’t command it, it is forbidden, that was called the regulative principle.

How in the world did it stay when people recognized that it wasn’t in the Bible? Well it did. And it was no small issue. In point of fact, not only for twelve hundred years until the Reformation was it in place, the norm in the organized church, the Catholic Church, but even through the whole of the middle Ages it continued through the Reformation and out the other side, even until today. And during the middle Ages, severe ecclesiastical laws were created as part of the civil code. In Europe, nations were divided. There were Catholic nations, or countries, and Protestant countries. And there was no separation of church and state, the church and the state were one great sort of monolithic power. There were Catholic states and there were Protestant states. And everybody in a Catholic state was a Catholic by virtue of infant baptism. And everybody in a Protestant state was a Protestant by virtue of Protestant infant baptism.

And so, if you were in the country, you were not only under the civil code from a social standpoint but you were under the civil code from a religious standpoint. And rebaptism, rebaptizers were called Anabaptists. That’s what ana means, again, rebaptizers. And if you were a rebaptizer of somebody who was baptized as an infant, that was a capital offense…that’s right, a capital offense. It was an act against the state, against the state church and you could pay with your life.

It was considered a heresy worthy of death. Anybody who violated baptism as ordained in their country, whether a Catholic or a Protestant country, came under the punishment of this civil code. This was around for a long time. If you go back to the year 391 you read the following order from the emperors. “Whoever forsakes the holy faith and desecrates the holy baptism through heretical superstition shall be excluded from human society.”

In other words, if you go against infant baptism, you’re excluded from human society, may give no judicial evidence, can as has been before prescribed, make no will…you couldn’t leave a will, take possession of no inheritance or be appointed heir by no one. So if you came along and said believers need to come to the place of faith in Christ and then be baptized, which is what the New Testament teaches, you were persona non-grata in your society. The document also, this translated into English, says, “We would also banish such person to far distant places if we did not deem it a more severe punishment to make him dwell among men without having the pleasure of fellowship with them. But he shall never regain his former legal capacity, nor can he at any time make amends for his crime by repentance, nor hide the same under invented evasions and excuses because those who profaned the faith which they placed in God and as traitors to divine mysteries associate with the unbelieving, cannot be justified by tissues of lies. For one comes indeed to the help of the fallen and erring but to the infamous who profane the holy baptism, no amelioration can procure mitigation as in the case of other offenses.” You’re done if you affirm any other than an infant baptism. You are finished in the society.

A law of the Emperors Honorius and Theodosius II in the year 413 says, “If any person is convicted of having undertaken the rebaptism of a member of the Catholic Church, the one who has committed this shameful crime together with the one provided he is of accountable age who has allowed himself to be baptized shall be punished with death without mercy.” They executed the person who did the baptizing and the person who was baptized. As a result of the execution, something else would follow, the confiscation of all possessions. Further quoting from the writer Wormes, “Originally indeed these severe laws of the civil code were not issued for the defense of infant baptism, but were to secure the existence of the state church against rebaptism in any Christian circles. And the property of such persons was confiscated. They were branded violators of the civil law, punished by death and the loss of all property.”

Consequently, infant baptism reigned supreme because people didn’t want to lose their lives. The Catholic Church hated the Anabaptists even through the Middle Ages, the Reformers, the Reformed Church who got their soteriology right, hated the Anabaptists, the rebaptizers, because they bought into the Roman Catholic view of infant baptism. And one of the sad realities of the Reformation is that Reformers who believed in sola Scriptura, sola gratia, sola fide, sola Christus, all the solas, drowned people who baptized believers. You want to be baptized, we’ll put you down and won’t bring you up until you’re dead.

There were always those who believed in baptism, as the New Testament teaches it, Bohemian Brethren, Waldencians, pre-Waldencians, the broad name of Anabaptists which was a nickname meaning rebaptizers. And as I said, the Reformation didn’t provide any respite for this. We read. “But of these ideals, the Reformation period had little understanding and even in the newly formed Protestant Churches, freedom of conscience remained an unknown thing. Not only was it again laid down exactly what and how one must believe, but all other opinions and convictions in matters of faith were suppressed with iron energy. Luther’s original defense of the freedom of a Christian remained an unfulfilled demand. The right of free Christian individuality was an ideal that remained at that time unrealized.” This writer says, “The Reformation did not bring to an end the zeal for bloody persecution. On the contrary, it began a new era of tribulation, tears and blood and not less indeed in the regions of the churches that it separated from Rome than where the Roman Church continued to assert its way.”

In other words, the animosity and the persecution of these people who wanted to do baptism the way the Scripture says were persecuted both in Catholic and Protestant places. This persecuting zeal was directed very specially against the rebaptizers who rejected infant baptism and demanded a return to the original Christian mode of baptism taught in the New Testament.

So sometimes you hear people say, “Well, we need to agree on a lot of things, but baptism is a minor detail.” It’s not a minor detail if you’re about to be drowned for believing it. The city law for Hanover, Germany, and other German cities with the specific approval of Luther and Melanchthon, called for all rebaptizers to be beheaded. The Zwinglians and Baptists were to be flogged and banished from the city forever. They saw believers baptism as disrupting the national church, posing a threat to national solidarity and being a blasphemous heresy that would corrupt others and break the power of the nationalized church. All over Germany, rebaptizers were called devilish vermin and executed.
You know, it saddens the heart of a Protestant, let alone a Baptist like me, by conviction to read such judgments from the pen of a Catholic historian. But truth must be honored. So the sixteenth century church as we know it, the Reformed Church that we love for its soteriology, knew no tolerance for rebaptizers. Infant baptism was required as the only baptism and defended by fire, water and the sword.

You would have thought that if one of the great hallmarks of the Reformation was sola scriptura, that if they really believed that everything had to come from the Scripture, they would have set aside infant baptism since it wasn’t anywhere in the Bible. But in spite of its absence in Scripture, they defended it and practiced it as if it was biblical and the pressure was that the Catholics had these unified states that were unified both by political and military power, but also unified by religious power and everybody was a Catholic because you were baptized a Catholic. And so you were under the tyranny of the church and that way they controlled their populations which made them powerful forces. And the Protestant states that they didn’t do that would be weakened by disparity and diversion and they had to make sure that all their people were also part of everything and there was absolute solidarity so they could defend themselves against the Catholic nations. So they held on to something that I am convinced that even Martin Luther knew wasn’t in the Bible and wasn’t really right.

We expect the Roman Catholic Church to engage in such practices because the Roman Catholic Church is full of things that aren’t in the Bible, right? Of course, we know that. and they also believe in a whole source of revelation outside the Bible which they call Tradition, or the Magisterium, church councils, the Pope speaking ex cathedra. And it all carries equal weight with Scripture. And, of course, they are the only true interpreter of Scripture so they can twist and pervert the Scripture to make it say things that it obviously doesn’t say. We expect that from the Roman Catholic Church. We expect the Roman Catholic Church to come up with things that aren’t biblical.

But what is sad is that the Reformed Church never really filled up the Reformation. And when you debate this sometimes with them, they say, “Well, history tells us that the Reformers accepted that.” And when I hear that, I always say, “History is not a hermeneutic. History is not a principle of interpretation. It doesn’t matter what happened in history. A lot of things happen in history that can’t be viewed as the Revelation of God. Only honest hermeneutics, honest exegesis in the Scripture can yield the true meaning of Scripture. You can’t read habits into Scripture, you can’t read traditions into Scripture. History is no hermeneutic. History does not contribute to the true interpretation of Scripture. They will come back with this, “Well the Scripture doesn’t forbid infant baptism. The Scripture doesn’t forbid it.” That is really a very, very fragile argument. Are we supposed to affirm the reality of all kinds of things Scripture doesn’t forbid to justify that sprinkling babies as an act of Christian baptism is done because it’s not forbidden in Scripture and to standardize it, and imprint it with divine authority, though it’s a ceremony invented by men for the worst of political reasons is then to open the way to any ritual, any behavior, any ceremonial, any teaching or anything else that isn’t strictly forbidden by Scripture.

I go back to the regulative principle. If it’s not in the scripture, you can’t do it. Luther started out with his revolt against the Roman Catholic Church, drawing a line in the sand, he said this, “The Church needs to rid itself of all false glories that torture Scripture by inserting personal conceits into the Scripture. No…he said…Scripture, Scripture, Scripture for me constrain, press, compel me with God’s Word.” That’s a quote from Luther. But there are no scriptures.

Well, they say, “What about Matthew 18 where it says, ‘Except you become a little child, you can’t enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’” I don’t read anything about baptism there. All that’s saying is childlike faith is necessary to come into the Kingdom.

Well what about Matthew 19:14, Mark 10:14, Luke 18:16, “Let the little children come to Me for such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” I don’t see any baptism there. Our Lord is simply saying that God has a special care for children, not the children of believing parents and not baptized children. Jesus never baptized any children, nobody in the Bible ever baptized any children. Nobody was ever told to baptize children. All children were precious. The children that He held in His hand and blessed were not necessarily the children of believing parents and there is no baptism in any way…in any case anyway.

Well, searching for another Scripture, they come to Acts and 1 Corinthians. Wait a minute, five times in Acts and 1 Corinthians it talks about households being baptized, households being baptized. Some of them say that this is the act of solidarity in which a whole household is baptized…the father serves as a surrogate for the faith of the children, and so the father is baptized and then the mother and the others in the household, and the little ones are brought in and they’re baptized too under the Rubric or the protective umbrella of the faith of the father who is the surrogate for them and thus they’re baptized.

Well in those five places where it talks about households being baptized, it never mentions children ever. The first one is in the house of Cornelius and it says this, “All in his house heard the Word. The Spirit fell on all and all were baptized.” So the ones who were baptized were the ones who received the Holy Spirit because they heard the Word and believed. And the next time you have a household is in the sixteenth chapter of Acts in the jailor’s house, all heard the gospel and all were baptized. The ones who were baptized were the ones who heard the gospel and believed.

The next one, the eighteenth chapter, in the house of Crispus, all heard, all believed, all were baptized. Those who were baptized were those who believed because they heard. In the account of Lydia and Stephanas, the same thing would be true as in those very explicit texts. All hear the gospel, all believe the gospel, all receive the Holy Spirit, all are baptized. That’s what’s going on in the book of Acts. And there’s never a mention of a child.

In the Stephanas household of 1 Corinthians, all who were baptized, it says, 1 Corinthians 1, all who were baptized were devoted to the ministry of the saints. Compare that in the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians. They were all helping in the spiritual work of the church, 1 Corinthians 1:16. They were baptized. They were devoted to the ministry of the saints. They were helping in the spiritual work of the church. Therefore they weren’t infants.

In the case of Lydia in Acts 16, her heart was opened in response to hearing the gospel and she believed and those who heard with her in her house believed. There are no children mentioned. In fact, there’s no husband mentioned, and if there’s no husband mentioned, very possible she didn’t have any children.

You have another reference to this in John 4:53, he himself believed and his whole household, referring to the noble man whose son Jesus healed. He himself believed and his whole household. It doesn’t say anything about being baptized, it says about believing, the household believed. That’s the model…you hear, you believe, you’re baptized.

Acts 2:38 says, “Repent, be baptized for the remission of sins.” And then people point out that in the next verse which is verse 39, they might be talking about infant baptism, for the promises of you and your children. Oh come on. “Your children” is referring to the next generation of Jews because it also says, “For your children and for all who are afar off.” Who are those that are afar off? Gentiles. The reference is to…the promise is for you and your children, that is generation after generation of Jews and to the Gentiles, the ones who are far off. This isn’t about Baptism…not about baptism at all, it’s about the promise of salvation to future generations of Jews and Gentiles.

So those would be the touchstone texts that people would use to defend infant baptism. You can’t find an infant in any of them and you certainly can’t find a baptism of any infant. One other one is 1 Corinthians chapter 7 and I’m just touching these because this is how people try to defend what isn’t in the Bible as if it were. “If a brother has a wife who is an unbeliever,” 1 Corinthians 7:12, “she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her.” Don’t just divorce your unbelieving wife because she’s not a believer. Verse 13 turns it the other way, “A woman has an unbelieving husband and he consents to live with her, she shouldn’t send her husband away.” That was the question in the early church. People coming to Christ, do I dump my unbelieving spouse? No…no. Verse 14, “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife. The unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband, otherwise your children are unclean and now they are holy, or separated.”
What is that saying? That is simply saying not that your husband should be baptized and your children should be baptized, though unconverted, but rather that if you as a believer are living with a husband and children that are non-believers, the blessings that flow to you will spill over to them. There is no mention of baptism whatsoever.

So the bottom line is those would be the passages people would go to to try to defend the infant baptism biblically, and they just don’t work...just don’t work at all. The full counsel of God is either expressly set forth in Scripture, explicitly set forth in Scripture, or the full counsel of God can be necessarily compellingly and validly deduced by good and logical consequence. But it has to be necessary, compelling, inescapable, good, and logical consequence like the fact that though the Bible doesn’t mention the Trinity, that is clearly what the Bible teaches that God is a Trinity. There are no arguments for infant baptism explicitly and there are no arguments that are necessary, inescapable, clear and compelling from Scripture…none whatsoever.

So the first point to make is that infant baptism is not in the Bible. It’s not in the Bible. Infant baptism is not biblical.

Point two, infant baptism is not baptism…it’s not New Testament baptism. This may surprise you, it’s nothing, it’s totally meaningless. Well you might have got emotional when you took your little child in there ‘cause you love your little child and you hope the best for him, or her. But as far as the spiritual condition of that child, it had absolutely no effect whatsoever. Infant baptism is not in the Bible, it is not New Testament baptism. And this is an uncontestable fact because when you do go in to the Bible in the New Testament and you talk about baptism and you study baptism, it is absolutely crystal clear what baptism is. The only people who are ever baptized in the New Testament are people who have come to faith in Christ. And baptism is always immersing them in water, it is never sprinkling water on their heads from a tiny little fountain.

Two verbs express this reality, bapto and baptidzo. Those two verbs are used when baptism is referred to. They mean to immerse, to dip down. The noun, baptisma is always used in Acts to refer to a believer being immersed in the water. Sprinkling is a completely different word, rhantismos, completely different word, never used to describe a believer’s baptism in the New Testament, never. Even Calvin who baptized babies wrote, “The word baptize means to immerse. It is certain that immersion was the practice of the early church,” end quote.

This ordinance was so designed by God and conveyed by the correct, inspired words to fit the symbolism of the ordinance. Immersion is commanded of every believer as a picture, as an object lesson, as a symbol, as a visual analogy of a spiritual reality. It is the way that God designed to publicly declare the truth of personal salvation. What does it symbolize when a person is immersed, submerged? Clearly unmistakably throughout the New Testament, Christian baptism is a picture of the union of a believer in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. That is clear from Romans 6, Galatians 2, Galatians 3, Colossians 2.

When you come to faith in Christ, you are placed into union with Christ. You are immersed into Him and therefore you are in Him in His death, His burial and His resurrection. Romans 6 makes that clear. “We were crucified with Him, buried with Him and we’ve risen with Him to walk in newness of life.” This is spiritually symbolized in water baptism. Immersion into water was and is the inseparable outward sign of a believer’s union with Jesus Christ. That’s why you go into all the world to preach the gospel to everybody, baptizing them…that’s the public confession of their union with Christ in a beautiful dramatic way. The only other ordinance ever given to the church is the Lord’s table. We can love the Lord, we can go to the cross, we can celebrate His death, we can rejoice in His death, we can seek forgiveness of sins, repent, confess without the Lord’s table but He’s told us to do that as a public declaration, a public proclamation, a visual remembrance of the cross. When we take that bread it’s His body, we drink that cup as a symbol of His blood, we understand that symbolism. That is true with baptism. You can make a confession of Christ, you can be a true believer and not be baptized. But you are being disobedient at that point, just as you are if you absent yourself from the Lord’s table because that is a way that the Lord has ordained for you to openly declare the union between yourself and Him in the great reality of His death, burial and resurrection.

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are the two solemn acts which the Lord has appointed for His church and the church has the sacred duty to persevere and administer these precious institutions throughout its life. How horrible is it to imagine that people who believe in the true gospel would execute people for being baptized in the way they’re commanded to be baptized in Scripture. Horrible.

The significance of Baptism is unmistakably clear. In our day, an open solemn confession of the crucified risen Lord is necessary. All who experience the reality of the power of the risen Savior should give this public testimony to His glory as an act of obedience. In biblical Baptism in the New Testament manner, believers not only give testimony to their union with Christ…listen to this…they give testimony to their thoughtful, careful, submissive obedience to the holy Scripture in which nothing could be treated as unimportant.

Furthermore, in biblical Baptism, believers testify to a redeemed church. I’ll say more about that. We testify to a redeemed church, a church being made up only of those who have made that open and public confession because they are truly in union with Christ. By biblical Baptism, believers give fundamental rejection of all human regulations through which clear biblical teaching has been obscured or curtailed or supplanted. By biblical Baptism, the church signifies a public renunciation of the nominal and mass Christianity of these massive institutions. By biblical Baptism, the church calls for the reintroduction and practice of biblical New Testament church order and discipline.

This is very, very important. Every expression in the New Testament concerning Baptism assumes that the convert receives Christ, renounces former life, embraces Him as Lord and is willing and eager to make that public confession. That’s the true believer, and that leads to an understanding of the true church.

In every case of New Testament Baptism, true saving faith, personal salvation is presupposed. It can’t function in the case of infants. It is nothing more than a bizarre fabrication.

Thirdly, infant Baptism is not in the Scripture, it’s not New Testament Baptism, and it is not, please, a replacement sign for the Abrahamic mark of circumcision. One of the other things that Reformed people say is that infant Baptism takes the place of circumcision. I’ve heard that argument for years. So my response is, what verse says that? Where is it? Show me the verse. Where in the Bible does it say, by the way, Baptism is a replacement of circumcision? Where does it say that? It doesn’t say that anywhere. That is a fairly large assumption. There are no cases of infant Baptism. There is no description of infant Baptism. There is no call for infant Baptism. And now you’re telling me we have to do it, it is mandated and this is what it means. And you’re telling me that it means something the Bible doesn’t say it means. How could the Bible say it means anything when the Bible doesn’t say anything about it?

These baby baptizers or paedo-Baptists as they’re often called, nonetheless, without scriptural support are left to some kind of inferential evidence based on supposed covenantal considerations. They say, “Well it replaces circumcision in the Old Testament. You know, it’s almost hard to argue against that because it’s just so totally off the wall. Since there’s nothing in the Bible that says that, why would they even conclude that?

Let me help you with circumcision for just…in a brief way. We don’t have time to talk a lot about it. Every Jewish baby boy was circumcised, every one of them. It was a sign that they belonged to the people called the Jews. It was a sign that they belonged to the nation Israel. It was not a sign of salvation. Right? Not a sign of salvation. What did Paul say in Romans 9? “Not all Israel is Israel.” He even said in Romans 9, “Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated.” Most Jews are under divine judgment. They were in the past, they were a rebellious, apostate, idolatrous, unfaithful, disloyal nation. And among that entire nation of circumcised people, there was a small remnant that believed. Now follow me.

If you make infant Baptism the substitute sign for circumcision, does that mean then that we now have a church that is a false church, or a rebellious church, or an unbelieving church, or an apostate church but it’s still a church and somewhere in the middle there’s a remnant of true believers? You see, circumcision was only a sign that people belonged to an ethnic group, a group called Jews, a nation called Israel. It said nothing about their spiritual condition. Baptism is always tied to salvation. There’s no parallel. There’s no connection.

Circumcision didn’t apply to girls. Circumcision was really a gift from God to protect Jewish women from forms of infection, to protect and preserve the nation. Say at all about their spiritual condition. If Baptism was a substitute for that, why didn’t Paul make his life so much easier by saying to all the Judaizers who were running all over everywhere demanding people to be circumcised, “Wait a minute. You guys don’t get it. Baptism replaces that.” That would have ended the argument. Then the Judaizers would have been satisfied. It never says that.

But that is exactly what people believe who baptize babies. That in the same way every Jewish boy, and this doesn’t answer the question of what about the girls, was circumcised, every baby should be baptized as circumcised boys were then in the covenant community of Israel, circumcised boys are in the covenant of Israel, baptized babies enter into the covenant community of the church. And when I ask them, “What do you mean by that?” It gets really strange.

They don’t want to say, “Well, it just means you get external membership and rights and privileges, it’s like being in Israel ‘cause there is no such national identity, there’s no ethnic identity.” The only Baptism that the New Testament knows anything about is the Baptism of people who put their faith in Christ. And since infants haven’t done that, what does this mean?

Well, there are people who believe that it saves them. It saves them. And so they serve their babies paedo-communion. They put the bread in a cup in a blender and feed it to their infant. It’s called presumptive regeneration. That’s the viewpoint that if your baby has been baptized, your baby must be presumed to be regenerate. I’m regenerate. My wife, Patricia, is regenerate and I will promise you with our four children, it was easy to presume that they were not regenerate, from the very beginning. It would have been a well-nigh impossible to make the presumption that our children were regenerate and shirk the responsibility to bring them to the true knowledge of Christ.

There is no connection in the New Testament whatsoever in any way, shape or form between circumcision as a physical mark identifying an ethnic people, a kind act on God’s part to protect them for the sake of pro-generation. And also to demonstrate their depravity and their sinfulness. That is one thing and it ceased.

Paul even went so far as to say, “If you’re circumcised, grace is no more grace. You’ve abandoned Christ.” Circumcision never transfers itself into Baptism at all…at all. And if we say that all these baptized babies form a covenant community, then we’ve got a strange kind of hybrid in the church…follow this…we’ve got some kind of a church made up of baptized people who aren’t really converted. And that’s what I said at the very beginning. The world is full of millions of these baptized people. Where do they belong?

Let me tell you something. This gets really difficult for people in the Anglican Church, people in the Episcopalian Church, people in these denominations, even Protestant denominations do this…what state are these people in? Are they all going to go to heaven?

I was locked up in a room for seven hours as one of the most well-known Reformed theologians on the face of the earth. At the end of seven hours, they said okay. What do you have to believe to be a Christian? You say, “If you’re in the church, you’re in the community of faith and you’re okay. What do you have to believe to be a true Christian, to which he replied, “That’s a good question,” and wouldn’t give me an answer. That comes right out of that kind of concept. There’s this idea that they’re sort of federally included. It gets to the point where salvation is a collected thing and you get into the collected saved group by infant Baptism.

How this could survive in a Reformed community where people hold on to the doctrine of justification by faith and all the solas is hard to understand. But eventually what it will do, it will eat away at the doctrine of justification and the people who are now coming out bold and strong for this kind of collective salvation, N.T. Wright and others, all the way down to many others in many forms. There’s sort of this collective community of believing people brought in by Baptism will eventually jettison the true doctrine of justification by faith and individual personal salvation.

It does matter what you believe about this. It matters a lot because it confounds, and this is the fourth thing I want to say, it confounds the nature of the church. Infant Baptism is not in the Scripture, it is not New Testament baptism, it is not the New Testament equivalent to circumcision. And infant Baptism is not consistent with the nature of the church. Infant Baptism confuses hopelessly the church. You can’t distinguish between believer and non-believer. The local church becomes the true church. The baptized become the church. Paedo-Baptism, to say it another way, destroys the reality of a regenerate church.

You’d be amazed how many people who are clear-minded on the doctrine of justification have an ecclesiology that’s completely confused. Who’s a Christian? A baptized person? Is that a true child of God? Is that a true church? Is that a true church but a weak true church? And are we who are true believers sort of the pure in the midst of the impure, but all a part of the church. Again, the world is full of baptized people who are indifferent, blasphemous, haters of Christianity, not in the church at all, no interest in it.

What are we to think of them? What are they? To be in the church, you must put your trust in Christ. At the beginning, when Luther sort of led the Reformation, he had a lofty idealism, some writers say. He was contending for Christianity that would embrace freedom and renounce force and live only by the Word of God and by the Spirit of God. To him, in the early days, as to us, the Scripture was the only standard for all issues of personal life, including the issue of Baptism. Let me quote Luther.
“I say that God wants no compulsory service. I say it a hundred-thousand times. God wants no compulsory service, no one can or ought to be compelled to believe for the soul of a man is an eternal thing, above all that is temporal. Therefore only by an eternal word must it be governed and grasped for it is simply insulting to govern in God’s presence with human law and custom, neither the Pope nor a Bishop nor any other man has the right to decree a single syllable concerning a Christian, apart from his consent. All that comes to pass otherwise comes to pass in the spirit of tyranny,” end quote.
You can’t force anything on any one, superimpose on them some required religious duty, not in Scripture. That’s how Luther started. However, by 1527 he turned back to the state church because he was afraid he needed to maintain oneness of doctrine in order to maintain solidarity and power, political military power. So as it had through the Dark Ages from the fourth century on, the church became buried in the state church and essentially the state church extinguished the true church.
It didn’t take long for the true church in Europe to just disappear altogether. Infant Baptism served the state power and eventually obliterated the true church. The only way you know what the true church is, is by personal faith in Christ. The testimony to that is given in Baptism.

Oh I could say more about that, but our time is gone. So I think I have one more here and I’ll just make this brief. Infant Baptism is not consistent with Reformation soteriology…not consistent with Reformation soteriology. What do I mean by that?

The Reformers rediscovered the doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone…the doctrine of justification. The doctrine of imputation, that our sins are placed on Christ in His death, and His righteousness is given to us. This is imputation. This is the great doctrine. Faith alone is the condition by which salvation is received, faith alone…faith alone.

Here is the Reformed Heidelberg Catechism, seventy-fourth question, “Shall one baptize young children also? Yes, for they, as well as the old people, appertain to the covenant of God in His church and in the blood of Christ the redemption from sins and the Holy Spirit who works faith has promised not less than to the older.” Baptize them because they’re promised salvation in the Holy Spirit.

“Therefore shall they also through Baptism as the sign of the Covenant be incorporated in the Christian church and be distinguished from the children of unbelievers as in the Old Testament took place by circumcision.” See, they’ve got this confounding connection to circumcision. “And now they’re placing them in the Christian church, bringing them under the blood of Christ, the redemption from sin, the work of the Spirit who produces faith and it’s promised to them in the same way that it’s promised to older people.”

That’s Lutheran. That’s out of the heritage of Luther. Luther finally wound up having to defend the fact that infants have faith. He said, “The Anabaptists are right, the Baptism without faith profits nothing, and that thus in fact children ought not to be baptized if they have no faith.” We agree with that. Luther said, “The Lord says most decidedly, ‘He who believes not shall be damned. But the assertion of the Anabaptists is false, the children cannot believe. If children are to be baptized, they must be able to believe, they must have faith,” end quote.

How could a child have faith? With Luther, it was the vicarious faith of the parents or the godparents. That’s where godparents came from, surrogate parents whose faith would intercede on behalf of the child. With Luther, vicarious faith of the parents or the godparents wasn’t enough. He even went further and said, “The children themselves must believe. If one asks how is that possible? One receives the answer, the Holy Spirit helps them to believe. The Holy Spirit comes to the children in the holy Baptism by this bath of regeneration He has richly poured out on them.”

Martin Luther? Who discovered salvation by grace alone, through faith alone and Christ alone? Some even called it unconscious faith. So there were those who were holding to surrogate faith on the part of parents and godparents…that wasn’t enough for Luther.

The great mark of the Reformation was justification…justification not by sacrament, not by ceremony, not by symbol. Justification by faith through grace, how could they understand that and then come up with something like infant Baptism which by a rite on a baby confers to that baby salvation? Infant Baptism is nothing, has no saving efficacy, delivers no grace, confers no faith, is a symbol of nothing. It is absolutely and totally pointless.

It leads to ritualism, confusion and false security. You know, the Reformers cry wasn’t tradition, tradition, tradition. It wasn’t the fathers, the fathers, the fathers. What was it? We read it earlier? Scripture, Scripture, Scripture. We believe what we believe because that’s what Scripture teaches. Well, that’s enough for the night. Let’s pray.

Father, we thank You for Your Word again. We don’t try to pick a fight with people for the sake of antagonism, but of necessity we need to speak the truth and make the truth clear, unmistakable as it’s revealed in Your Word. This devilish conduct of infant Baptism has survived through two thousand years of church life from very early on, the third century, embedded in the fourth and still here. We could only ask, Lord, that the Reformation would be a complete Reformation. There would be no confusion about the true church. This is so important that we know who the true church is…that people not be confused. People not think they’re saved because they received some rite as an infant, parents not think they’re children are saved because of that. Help us to be faithful to the truth, proclaim the gospel. And those who believe, may we be faithful to be obedient and be baptized and make that profession of faith, confessing You before men that we might be confessed by You before Your Father who is in heaven. Thank You for a wonderful day and this wonderful church, great fellowship. Now as we spend some time together, enrich that time and bless every person who is here with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ, we pray in His name. Everybody said…Amen…Amen.

IR-Rev. John Wesley an Anti-Calvinist Says Rev. Toplady

IR-Rev. John Wesley an Anti-Calvinists Says Rev. Toplady in a letter dated 26 Mar 1770. Mr. Toplady says of the Arminian,

"You complain, I am told, that the evangelical clergy are leaviug no stone unturned `to raise John Calvin's ghost, in all quarters of the land." If you think the doctrines of that eminent and blessed reformer to be formidable as a ghost, you are welcome to do all you can towards laying them. Begin your incantations as soon as you please. The press is open, and you never had a fairer opportunity of trying your strength upon John Calvin than at present. Only take care that you do not, with all your skill in theological magic, get yourself into a circle, out of which you may find it difficult to retreat. And, a little to mitigate your wrath against the raisers of Calvin's ghost, remember that you yourself have heen a great ghost-raiser in your time. Who raised the ghosts of John Goodwin, the Arminian regicide; and Thomas Grantham, the Arminian baptist? Who raised the ghost of Monsieur n DeRenty, the French Papist; and of many other Romish enthusiasts; by translating their lives into English, for the edification of Protestant readers?

Should you take any notice of this letter, I have three requests to make; or rather, there are three particulars on which I have a right to insist:

1. Do not quote unfairly.

2. Do not answer evasively.

3. Do not print clandestinely."

Bud Powel: Infant Baptism

http://basketoffigs.org/Facebook%20Notes/zipporah.htm

Hey! This Must Be Pretty Important, You Think?

Published on Facebook, September 9, 2010
By Bud Powell

Ex 4:25 "Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me."

The Promise Is to You and Your Children!

Poor Zipporah. What do you expect from this poor woman? Her husband Moses had been out in the desert talking to a bush and now was determined to go back to Egypt where he had been wanted for murder. It was hard to make any sense of it. She was the daughter of a priest of Jehovah in Midian and had led a simple life until then.

She had married Moses when this 40 year old Egyptian had appeared out of nowhere and defended her against the brutal shepherds at the well, and he had come to live with them. We don't know much more about her, but the implication is that she had resisted the circumcision of their oldest son. It was not that she was completely ignorant, perhaps, of the rite of circumcision for she was a Midianite, also descended from Abraham through his second wife Keturah. [1Chron. 1:32 etc].

But somehow she was at the center of the quarrel between God and Moses over the circumcision of Gershom. Moses had been given his instructions at the Burning Bush, and now had put Zipporah and his two sons on an ass and they were headed back to Egypt. Moses was going to deliver the message to Pharaoh from God, "Let my firstborn go, or I will slay thy firstborn."

But that's the rub. Here is Moses going back to deliver the Firstborn of God and he has not given the sign of God's promise to his firstborn. He had yielded to his wife --a common infirmity of meek men, and Moses was the meekest of men--and Gershom was unclean before the Lord, not bearing the sign of the promise that God had given Abraham.

So on the way to the inn the Lord confronted Moses and sought to kill him. The details in the holy account are meager, but the facts that are there show that God did not take Gershom's uncircumcision lightly. Nothing is said about whether Moses had a good heart, or that Zipporah was well meaning, or that Gershom was too young to understand. The children must have been rather small, what with Zipporah and the two boys all riding on the ass. [See Genesis 4:21-26]

"Well, all righty then," was Zipporah's response. "If you are going to get all hot and bothered about it. I think it is stupid, but here we go." She gets a sharp rock, bares Gershom's tiny member and whacks off the foreskin. Not exactly the accepted procedure. She throws the tiny piece of flesh at the feet of Moses and says, "You are surely a bloody husband to me."

But God let Moses go. Nothing is said about poor Gershom and his long ride on the ass after that. No child protective agencies in those days.

What is the meaning of this? It goes to the heart of the meaning of circumcision, which carried at least two meanings, both of which are relevant today. The first is that God can only be served with purity and all that issues from man is unclean because of the pollution of the human race by Adam's sin. Sin must be cut off and atonement made. God had told Abraham: "14 And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant." --Genesis 17:14 It is inconceivable that God would overlook the sin of Gershom and Moses when the sign of the promise of blessing to Abraham and his seed was lacking in Gershom's flesh. Judgment must begin in the house of the Lord. "Moses, if you believe the promise, circumcise your son. Otherwise you are a hypocrite. Listening to your wife is good to a point, but you have overstepped the boundary and God doesn't tolerate slackness in obedience."

The second meaning of circumcision is that the Promised One would come through Israel, and even then lived in the bodies of the tribe of Judah, from whom He would come. It must be that God's promise to Abraham that in his seed all the families of the world would be blessed. That is the only thing that made Israel special, the Promise concerning the redemption of the world, the cutting off of sins. Messiah would accomplish this for he would be "cut off" for the sins of the people according to Isaiah 53:8ff.

2Co 5:21 "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

How could Moses even pretend to be faithful to the promise given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob if Gershom did not bear the sign of the Promise. Circumcision was the sign and seal of the way that God provided to Israel to escape the wrath of God and obtain eternal redemption. It was the way designed by God to show their faith in the Promise. Hence, all the males must be circumcised or they implicitly denied the very reason for Israel's existence.

John the Baptist, the last of the Law and the Prophets, pointed to Jesus of Nazareth as the Promised One who would build His church on the work of the Holy Spirit, rather than on the deeds of the flesh--with the emphasis on redemption accomplished and sealed by the Holy Spirit. He would baptize with the Spirit, hence He would be greater than the prophets and greater than John the Baptist and greater than Moses. Greater, too, than Aaron, for Jesus would be a priest after the order of Melchizedek to whom Levi paid tithes while he was still in the loins of Abraham..

The sign and seal of this new order would be baptism. Those who were unclean under the old order--uncircumcised--would not need to be circumcised, for their uncircumcision would be cleansed by baptism, as Paul declares in Colossians 2:11-15.

Every objection raised against infant baptism can be raised against the circumcision of Gershom. Eve was named the Mother of all Living because she believed the Promise and was clothed by God who hid her nakedness. What a wonderful name given by her to Adam, who saw that her seed would give life to the world, doing away with the death that she had wrought by her sin. Grace would overcome the curse. Gen. 3:20, 21. Our Baptist friends are more the daughters of Zipporah rather than Eve or Sarah, who did not deny circumcision to her son Isaac, believing that the Promise would come through him. Zipporah was a woman of faith, but it was over-ruled by sentimentality and emotion here, I suspect.

If you believe that the church is based upon your experience, then baptize only adults, and establish an essential humanism and independency in the church. You will have a division every five or six years as people exert their individuality. But if you believe that the church is established by grace through the Promise of the Spirit through the Lord Jesus, then have your children baptized and affirm the Promise. For the love of heaven don't leave them both uncircumcised and unbaptized!!! And hurry up about it.

"The Baptism of Infants" by Revd Bromiley

http://www.churchsociety.org/issues_new/doctrine/heads/Bromiley/iss_doctrine_heads_Bromiley_ScopeofBaptism.asp

The Baptism of Infants
By the Revd G. W. Bromiley, M. A., D. Litt.
Vine Books Ltd (Publishers to Church Society) , 1955, 1976 & 1977

Chapter 7: The Scope of Baptism

Baptism declares the inward operation of the Holy Spirit which is to make us conformable to Jesus Christ. This work may include an endowment with special gifts and graces for the service of God, but basically it consists in the movement of identification with Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection. As applied to us, the death and resurrection of Christ mean the remission of sins and regeneration, with both of which baptism is connected in the New Testament. But the remission of sins is the cancelling of the old life, and regeneration the beginning of the new. In the power of the Holy Spirit, therefore, we are initiated or inserted into the dying and rising again of Jesus Christ so that we personally—together with other believers—may enjoy the benefits of His substitutionary work.

Now when we turn to the New Testament we find that this initiation or insertion is not the act of a moment. It is a single act, but an act in three successive stages. Dying and rising again with Jesus Christ cannot be identified wholly and exclusively with an isolated experience of conversion. It is a whole process of redemption, a process which at every point is the work of the Holy Spirit identifying us with Jesus Christ. There is a common pattern running through the process which shows us that it is in effect a unified work. This is the pattern of dying and renewal which is so clearly declared in baptism. In its witness to the substitutionary work of Jesus Christ and the regenerative work of the Spirit, baptism is not only the sign and seal of God's redemptive activity but a summons to us to enter into that activity. It tells us what has been done for us. God has reconciled us to Himself. It also tells us what we have to do in the power of His Spirit. ‘Be ye therefore reconciled to God.’

The first stage in this identification with Jesus Christ is, of course, conversion, in which we turn away from sin in repentance and turn to Jesus Christ in faith. Conversion has all the importance of a first step, and in this case it has a special importance, for in a sense it includes the whole. We are entering into a finished work, and therefore the end is given to us with the beginning. Once we are in Jesus Christ by faith we can say with confidence that we are justified (Romans 5, 1), we are risen (Colossians 3, 3), we are a new creation (II Corinthians 5, 17), we have eternal life (John 3, 36). For as we read in Hebrews 11, l: ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’

Because conversion is the first step, and has this special importance, there is plainly a very strong connection between conversion and baptism. But we must be careful not to state it in the wrong way. Baptism is not the witness and seal of my consciousness and confession of repentance and faith. It is the sign and seal of what Jesus Christ has done for me and of what the Holy Spirit is doing in me. If I am an adult convert from heathenism, I will be baptized on conversion. Previously I could not be baptized. I was outside the sphere of the word and the Spirit. I knew nothing of the saving work of Christ, or the testifying work of the Spirit. I had no desire for baptism and it could mean nothing to me. But now baptism confirms the Gospel promises and attests that work of the Spirit which has brought me to repentance and faith. It shows me that my repentance and faith have a deeper significance than just a human decision or a change of religious belief or practice. They are a dying and rising again with Christ which are not my work but the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit within me.

If, on the other hand, I am the child of a Christian, I am in the sphere of the word and the Spirit from the very first. I am not necessarily converted, but the Gospel promises are before me and the Holy Spirit is at work within me. I receive baptism as a seal of the divine election, substitution, and regeneration. When I grow to age, I may grow up in a personal repentance and faith or I may wander away for a time. But baptism is always there, attesting the work of Christ and the working of the Spirit. It shows me what I have to do, that I too must die and rise again with Christ in individual repentance and faith.

In its personal application, conversion is now the first objective. It has an evangelistic office as an adjunct of the word. It tells me that it will have true relevance to me and meaning for me only when the first work of the Spirit is done, only when I repent and believe. When I do repent and believe, it is a reminder and assurance that this is not merely my human decision but the deep work of God. But until I repent and believe it is a continual pointer to what I myself have to do as one who is within the sphere of the word and the Spirit. As an act which has been performed on me, it is something which like the Gospel message I may ignore or forget, resisting the work of the Spirit. But it is something which I can never escape. If I do ignore or forget it, it will witness against me in the day of judgment, that God made covenant with me and Jesus Christ died for me and the Holy Spirit willed to do His work in me, but like Esau I despised my birthright.

Conversion is the first step and it has this special importance, but it is not by any means the end or the whole of the work of the Holy Spirit conforming us to the death and resurrection of Christ. It is, in fact, only the beginning, and it is succeeded at once by the life-long process of mortification and renewal which is the special meaning of the Christian life. Here again we have to do with an identification with Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection. It is a dying to sin and a rising again to righteousness on the basis of the substitutionary act of Christ and in the power of His Spirit. The Epistles especially are full of this theme. We read, for example, that ‘if we through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, we shall live’ (Romans 8, 13). Or again, we are not to be ‘conformed to this world’ but ‘transformed by the renewing of our mind’ (Romans 12, 2). We are told to ‘put off concerning the former conversation the old man’, to be ‘renewed in the spirit of our mind’, and to ‘put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness’ (Ephesians 4, 22-24). The goal of the Christian life is to know Christ, ‘and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death’ (Philippians 3, 10). We must work out the putting off of our old man and the putting on of the new in the mortification of our ‘members which are upon the earth (Colossians 3, 5f.). This will take place in our sufferings as well as in self-discipline, but we can rejoice that ‘though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day’ (II Corinthians 4, 16). This message can be understood in its full range and depth only in the light of the death and resurrection of Christ on our behalf, but it is securely rooted in Christ’s own teaching: ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself’ (Matt. 16, 24); or again: ‘Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple’ (Luke 14, 33); or even perhaps: ‘If thy hand offend thee, cut it off, etc.’ (Mark 9, 43f.)

What is the relationship of all this to baptism? There is, of course, an implicit
similarity of theme. Baptism attests the death and resurrection of Christ into which we are to enter not only by repentance and faith but also by daily mortification and renewal. But the connection is made explicit in Romans 6, where the thought of the baptismal death and resurrection is introduced as a summons to its outworking in Christian conduct. The thought of the chapter is this. Baptism into Jesus Christ is baptism into His death and burial for us. In Him we are dead already. Accepting this fact in repentance and faith, we know that our old life is crucified with Him that the body of sin might be destroyed. Knowing this fact, we are challenged to reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin and alive unto God, not yielding our members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yielding ourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and our members as instruments of righteousness unto God. In other words, baptism as the attestation of our death and resurrection in and with Jesus Christ has a reference to the whole life of the Christian. It is not merely an evangelistic summons, but a spur to mortification and renewal.

Again, however, baptism is not the sign of a human work, for the mortification and renewal of the Christian are not a venture in human ethics but the continuance of the regenerative work of the Spirit. Christians themselves are of course engaged in it. We cannot escape or minimize the personal reference. But we are engaged in it only because Christ Himself has done it for us and the Holy Spirit is doing it in us. As Paul puts it, it is because we are already dead in Christ that we are to mortify our members. And in Romans 8 especially, but also in Galatians 10 and Philippians he makes it plain that this working out of salvation is through the Spirit: ‘If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live’ (Romans 8, 13). ‘It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure’ (Philippians 2, 13). For our part, we learn from the sacrament what is the continuing work of the Spirit and what identification with Christ means for us in terms of daily life and service. Whether we are baptized as adults or as infants, the meaning and message of baptism in this respect is much the same. We can none of us claim that this continued work of the Spirit has already found full expression in our lives prior to our baptism. Baptism is to all of us an assurance that our sanctification is an accomplished fact in Jesus Christ and a present reality in the operation of the Spirit. But it is also a summons to all of us to enter into the fulness of it which in terms of its personal expression is always future.

Nor is this the closing stage, for beyond conversion and sanctification there is the final consummation of the Christian life when we enter into the actuality of the new life in Christ which is now our calling. Again, and this time finally and literally, we are in the sphere of identification with Christ in His death and resurrection. On the basis of the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ and in the regenerative power of the Spirit, we will ultimately be put to death in the body in order that we may be resurrected to the fulness of our new creation in Christ. The New Testament is full of forward-looking references to this consummation. In Romans 8, for example, Paul moves on from a consideration of the present work of the Spirit to the hoped for redemption: ‘Ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body’ (Romans 8, 23). Or again, in 1 Corinthians 15 he speaks at large of our final destiny when this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal immortality (I Corinthians 15, 53-54). Or again, in Ephesians he looks forward to the redemption of the purchased possession (Ephesians 1, 13). Again, Hebrews 11 speaks of the special function of faith in looking forward to a better resurrection (Hebrews 11, 35). Peter, too, reminds us of ‘an inheritance incorruptible, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time’ (I Peter 1, 4-5). The witness undoubtedly goes back to the teaching of Christ Himself when He spoke so clearly both of our redemption at His coming again and also of the resurrection of the dead (John 6, 39-40).

The implicit relationship with baptism hardly needs to be emphasized, for again the theme is that of death and resurrection, the basis is the substitutionary dying and rising again of Jesus Christ, and the operation is that of the life-giving Spirit. But here, too, there are one or two explicit references. One of them is the obscure verse 1 Corinthians 15, 29. The exact interpretation of this saying will always be something of a mystery, but there can be no doubt that baptism is introduced in this context because of a definite connection with physical dissolution and resurrection. We are baptized into death with a view to our final raising again. The verse Ephesians 1, 13 is also a little obscure, for not every exegete would accept a reference to baptism. But it seems difficult to see how sealing with the Holy Spirit of promise can be anything else. If the reference is to baptism, or to the work of the Spirit signified in baptism, the thought is similar to that of Romans 8, 23. God will complete the work which He has begun in us. The outward sign and seal of that work declares, therefore, not only the first instalment but the final redemption of which it is the pledge.

The linking of baptism with the resurrection is significant, for it means that like the Lord’s Supper baptism is a sign for the period between the accomplishment of our salvation in the death and resurrection of Christ and its consummation in His coming again and the new creation. It has a backward look to the substitutionary work of Christ and a forward look to His triumphant coming with His brethren. Between these, it has a present reference to our identification with Christ in faith and sanctification which is the particular purpose of the intervening day of grace. This forward-looking aspect of baptism means, of course, that there is no genuine fulfilment of the personal application, no completion of the work of the Spirit, until the faith of conversion gives way to the sight of the resurrection. Baptism is a sign which cannot be exhausted in this life. It speaks to us of faith as an initial entry into Christ. It stirs us up to self-sacrificial love as a daily dying and rising with Christ. It encourages us to hope, a patient expectation that the natural body will one day give way to the spiritual.

The fact that baptism points us to the resurrection as our final identification with Christ helps to emphasize even more strongly two important truths. First, we cannot treat baptism as a witness primarily to our own activity. Apart from hastening our dissolution, there is no contribution that we can make to our resurrection from the dead. It is the miraculous work of the Creator Spirit for which we can only wait. In relation to conversion and sanctification there is always a temptation to allow what we can do to occupy the centre of the stage, as though after all it was simply a human work accomplished with a little divine help. But in relation to the resurrection from the dead this is quite impossible. It is my resurrection, certainly, just as it must be my conversion and my sanctification, worked out in terms of my life. But it is my resurrection only on the basis of that of Christ and in the power of the regenerative and therefore the life-giving Spirit.

Second, there is not one of us who can say: ‘I have a right to baptism because the ultimate truth which it attests has already been fulfilled in me and I am declaring the fact that I have identified myself in this way with Jesus Christ’. Whether we are baptized as infants or as adults, there is no time when we can say that baptism refers only to a past experience in our life and that it has value only as a witness to that experience. For as a sign of the regenerative and therefore the life-giving work of the Spirit it has always a wider time as well as a narrower. It begins with the first coming of Christ and it ends with His coming again. Its message is that our beginning, too, is with the first coming of Christ, and our end with His return. We begin with His death and resurrection for us. We end with our death and resurrection with Him at the last day. The attainment of that end is the miraculous work of the Spirit attested in baptism and expressed already in conversion and sanctification. Only when we have attained that end can we say that by this work of the Spirit we have fully entered into the baptism of Christ. But then the attestation of the sacrament will no longer be necessary.

Against Dispensationalism.com by Dr. Ken Gentry

AgainstDispensationalism.com

Shepherd, Justification, Covenant, Baptism

http://www.misterrichardson.com/fergusonbr.html

Sinclair Ferguson's Critique of Norman Shepherd's The Covenant Context for Evangelism
by Sinclair Ferguson
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Reproduced with permission from the Banner of Truth Magazine, July-August, 1977.

This was originally part of a book review of The New Testament Student and Theology. After commenting on other articles contained in the book, this review follows.
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Of the hitherto unpublished articles, the one most likely to attract attention and provoke comment comes from the pen of Norman Shepherd, Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster Seminary and John Murray's successor as the chairman of the department. He gives us a twenty-five page paper on "The Covenant Context for Evangelism", and his thesis merits more prolonged description and discussion. He has in view the much-discussed notion that reformed evangelism appears to be so much less successful than its Arminian counterpart.

Professor Shepherd proposes, as the solvent of this shameful situation, that "The Covenant affords the perspective from which the evangelistic task of the church ought to be approached"(p 53). There follow from this three basic theses which ought to provide some kind of truly biblical solution to this problem.

1. The Great Commission arises out of and is patterned after the Covenant with Abraham.
2. Reformed evangelistic methodology must be consciously oriented to the covenant of grace rather than to the doctrine of election.
3. Baptism, rather than regeneration is the point of transition from lostness in death to salvation in life.

In the exposition of these three theses, Shepherd offers a great deal to challenge and stimulate thought and reaction, and this must be regarded as one of the primary functions of the paper in view of the original context at which it was given, in a conference of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. But there are a number of criticisms of his position which must be mentioned.

Dr. Shepherd makes no attempt to define his concept of covenant, and yet it is imperative, in view of its centrality to scripture, theology , and history, that this term should be defined, and used with the utmost precision.

Furthermore, it will be readily recognized that the reformed constituency is very conscious, indeed self-conscious, of the criticisms which are leveled at its apparent lack of evangelistic thrust and success. We need to examine ourselves, but there is a very important difference between self-examination and self-consciousness and introversion. We need to remember, when comparisons are drawn between reformed evangelism and that of other Christians, that the statistics of evangelical religion indicate that the reformed constituency is numerically swamped by the multitudes of other persuasions. It is inevitable that the evangelism of Arminianism appears to be more frequent and more successful. Any comparison is faulty, because it is between things that differ to considerably statistically to be properly correlated.

Turning more closely to the thesis which Professor Shepherd enunciates, some further comment is necessary. He assumes that passages like Ephesians 1:1-14 are "suffused with covenantal language". The present reviewer agrees with this contention, and regards it as important. But Shepherd does not sustain his case by demonstration. He gives no indication as to what covenantal language is, and this is a great deficiency. It might be thought that this would belong to the essence of his task in view of the all-pervasiveness of covenant for which he is arguing.

This brings us to one of his major points. He writes that "The prophets and apostles viewed election from the perspective of the covenant of grace, whereas Reformed theologians of a later day have tended to view the covenant of grace from the perspective of election"(p 60). The result of this, it is argued, is that the reformed preacher no longer says "Christ died for you" - but, when these words are construed, not from the point of view of election, but of the covenant, then "The Reformed evangelist can and must say on the basis of John 3:16, Christ died for you."

This demands comment. First, Shepherd appears to adopt the view of the prevailing academic critique of the covenant theology of the seventeenth century (forcefully presented decades ago by Perry Miller), which suggests that the doctrine of covenant somehow makes God's secret counsels less harsh. We ought therefore to look at covenant, and not at election. This analysis, both historically and biblically we reject. It is clear that, in fact, covenant theology arose in a variety of circumstances - sacramental, in the case of Zwingli, biblical and theological, in the case of Calvin, expository and pastoral, in the case of the Puritans. Doubtless, in the case of some writers, Shepherd may be right. But it is an extreme view to charge all reformed writers with this confusion of thought, and to suggest that they have turned the order of scripture on its head. To use Shepherd's own citation - the fact is that some passages, e.g. Ephesians 1:1-14, do employ the mode of looking at covenant from the viewpoint of election. Indeed, in that passage it is necessary for the reader to look for covenant in the context of election. From a more practical point of view - was it because Whitefield and Edwards, Spurgeon and M'Cheyne managed to escape the old reformed straitjacket and discover election it its covenant perspective that they were such great evangelists? It seems highly doubtful. And therefore we are justified in wondering whether this is really the true solution at all.

Shepherd has had the courage to state to the reformed reader that a question mark hangs over the commonly accepted notion that the preacher cannot say: "Christ died for you." In fact Shepherd goes so far as to say that, from this covenantal perspective, the reformed preacher is under obligation to say "Christ died to save you." But that cannot possibly be a proper assessment, for no evangelist in the New Testament shows himself to have been under an inescapable burden to say that. In fact Shepherd is surely confusing two things in John 3:16, to which he refers - the truth that it was the loved world to which God gave his Son (which is affirmed), and the statement, "Christ died to save you" (which is not confirmed). Not only does the reformed evangelist not say this, the apostle John does not say it either.

But most eyebrows will be raised by Professor Shepherd's comment that "Baptism rather than regeneration is the point of transition from lostness in death to salvation in life" (p 66) - to which, it must be added, he provides a note to the effect that "The position here advocated should not be confused with the sacramentalist doctrine of baptismal regeneration" (ibid). His point is that when evangelism is election-oriented, it is also regeneration-oriented, so that the whole thing is viewed from the standpoint of the secret work of God. The problem with this approach is that, "Judgments have to be made which belong properly and exclusively in the hands of God." Just because such judgment belongs to God, the evangelist should not attempt even an approximation" (p 67). This whole view, according to the author, leads to the tension in reformed evangelism of works of preparation for grace, to which he objects: "Even the exhortation to ask for a new heart does not square with insistence on total inability. There is nothing the unregenerate man can do or will do in the direction of his conversion" (p 69). "In contrast to this regeneration - evangelism a methodology oriented to the covenant structure of Scripture and to the Great Commission presents baptism as the point of transition from death to life" (p 71). This, he argues, is demonstrated by the emphasis in the New Testament, not on people being converted, but on their being baptized, and he cites Acts 2:41 and Acts 16:33 as illustrative of this very principle.

There are a number of strands here, and each must be criticised separately. First of all, Professor Shepherd does not seem to give due allowance to the fact that regeneration is not the only work of God. It may have precursors. Jesus said that men, unregenerate as they were, should strive to enter in by the narrow gate that leads to life. Then, in the second place, Shepherd is somewhat guilty of mishandling the tests he quotes in favour of the priority of baptism over conversion. On the one hand the verses do say what he states; but he fails to remind us of other things they state. Thus, for example, that the 3000 who were baptized were those who "gladly received the word", and that Paul and Silas baptized the jailer because he believed in God. They must have borne the distinguishing marks of a work of the Spirit of God. The apostles must have judged these men to be truly regenerate. Rather than draw attention away from conversion, these instances simply highlight that, for the adult, a profession of faith in Christ, and of conversation was a prerequisite for baptism.

Thirdly, Shepherd is guilty at least of confusion of expression, if not more. It is true that baptism is what "should mark the passage from death to life"(p 72), but it is another thing to suggest that it actually constitutes "the point of transition from lostness in death to salvation in life"(p 66). This is to confuse the sign and the thing signified, and to be guilty of an offence against reformed teaching. Surely Professor Shepherd means something different from what he says? It is perhaps not surprising that, while critical of the current expressions that a man is "truly converted" or "really born again", and emphatic that in the New Testament the phraseology was that he was "baptised", and that these other expressions were redundant, he does not himself manage to escape an addition to baptism as the expression of fruitful evangelism, when he says that "All who have been baptized and are seeking to do the will of God are to be regarded as Christian brothers"(p 74, emphasis mine).

These expressions of Professor Shepherd may be seen by Baptist brethren as playing into their hands. The current baptist polemic has made much capital out of the differences and disagreements among paedobaptists over the meaning and place of baptism. The fact that the baptist position is equally out of sorts with itself and that its apologetes present diverse views of the nature of baptism and its relationship, or otherwise, to both covenant and church, is beside the point! Shepherd's position does not clarify matters. Perhaps, in view of the originality which the author is obviously seeking to inject into an important area of discussion, it is inevitable that he has not, apparently, thought through some of the implications of his teaching. For this reason it would be a pity if baptist brethren were to employ his case as typical of the position which aped Baptists are now adopting! In any event, the article leaves us somewhere in the air, and does not convey to this reviewer that the answer to a pressing predicament has been made clear, and that the gospel may now be carried by reformed men to a lost world with a freedom and power that is sadly lacking.

It would be our hope that, for the welfare of the reformed churches, Professor Shepherd would return to the drawing board, and come again, so that we may hear him further on these matters.