What Is a Baptist?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Well, some of the best questions in our inbox
00:00:06.160 | are the ones that I least expect to read.
00:00:09.660 | I'm a Baptist, so are you Pastor John, you're a Baptist.
00:00:13.060 | We kind of take that for granted.
00:00:15.240 | It's in the background, rarely foregrounded
00:00:17.320 | here on the podcast.
00:00:19.520 | So what is a Baptist?
00:00:22.000 | That's our question today.
00:00:22.960 | And here's the email.
00:00:23.780 | Hello, Pastor John, my name is Dennis
00:00:25.560 | and I live in the Philippines.
00:00:27.000 | I would like to know what is a Baptist?
00:00:29.140 | I know you are one, but I really don't know what that means.
00:00:32.400 | Can you explain to me what distinguishes you?
00:00:34.840 | Pastor John, how would you approach this one?
00:00:37.120 | - The approach I want to take
00:00:39.200 | in trying to answer Dennis's question
00:00:42.880 | is to describe the kind of Baptist I am
00:00:47.200 | in the hope that I'm not at all quirky,
00:00:51.040 | but in fact would consider all the defining traits
00:00:57.400 | of a Baptist that I'm going to mention
00:00:59.960 | as typical of most Baptist churches
00:01:04.360 | in the 17th and 18th centuries.
00:01:07.720 | And the reason I say 17th and 18th centuries
00:01:12.680 | is because Baptists, as I understand them,
00:01:17.100 | got their start in the early 17th century,
00:01:20.880 | that is the early 1600s.
00:01:23.980 | And because in the 19th and 20th centuries,
00:01:27.160 | the splintering effect of most churches,
00:01:29.640 | not just Baptists, has resulted in so many varieties
00:01:34.120 | of denominations that I couldn't claim in the modern day.
00:01:38.260 | I don't think that I represent the majority,
00:01:41.500 | but I think I can claim that I do represent
00:01:46.080 | the majority of the Baptist churches
00:01:47.680 | in the early centuries of Baptist life.
00:01:50.380 | So I understand my roots and the roots of all Baptists
00:01:56.440 | in their earliest centuries to go back
00:02:00.060 | to the Reformation itself, namely the renewal
00:02:04.560 | and the reform of the church,
00:02:06.600 | the Roman Catholic church at the time,
00:02:08.400 | the reform, the renewal of the church
00:02:11.740 | under Martin Luther and John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli
00:02:15.460 | in the 1500s in Europe.
00:02:17.660 | So Baptists would hold in common
00:02:22.140 | the five great emphases of the Reformation,
00:02:26.940 | justification on the basis of the work of Christ alone,
00:02:31.940 | provided and imparted to human beings by God's grace alone,
00:02:37.060 | appropriated in a personal and effective way
00:02:41.040 | in each individual life through faith alone
00:02:45.020 | so that God's glory alone, not man's, is exalted,
00:02:50.100 | and all of that based on not tradition
00:02:54.420 | or ecclesiastical authority, but Scripture alone.
00:02:58.860 | So those are the five great pillars of the Reformation
00:03:02.740 | that Baptists share in common
00:03:05.700 | with virtually all Reformation churches,
00:03:10.220 | originally Protestant churches,
00:03:12.260 | Christ alone, grace alone, faith alone,
00:03:15.100 | the glory of God alone, Scripture alone.
00:03:17.940 | That's the starting point for Baptist life
00:03:21.900 | as well as other Protestant branches of the church.
00:03:26.260 | I love these Christ-exalting truths,
00:03:30.740 | and I feel knit together with other denominations
00:03:34.780 | besides Baptists who cherish these great pillars
00:03:39.140 | of the Reformation and biblical pillars.
00:03:42.780 | What distinguishes Baptists is that
00:03:47.260 | as we pondered the implications of Scripture alone
00:03:52.260 | as our authority rather than fallible human church authority,
00:03:57.780 | and as we pondered the implications of faith alone
00:04:02.940 | as what brings a person into a right relationship with God
00:04:07.180 | and makes them part of God's redeemed people,
00:04:10.640 | what we Baptists saw, and I'm speaking of people
00:04:15.640 | now in the early 1600s, what we saw was that in the Bible,
00:04:20.640 | the reform of the church hadn't gone far enough.
00:04:27.220 | It seemed to those early Baptists, and it seems to me,
00:04:31.200 | that the doctrine of justification by faith alone
00:04:34.860 | and thus entrance into the new people of God,
00:04:37.780 | the church, by faith alone,
00:04:40.420 | implied that we should not think
00:04:44.380 | of entering into salvation and into the people of God
00:04:49.340 | through physical family connections.
00:04:52.620 | In other words, we couldn't,
00:04:55.420 | we Baptists could not find in the New Testament,
00:04:59.260 | nor did it seem to be implied
00:05:01.140 | in the doctrine of justification by faith alone,
00:05:04.260 | that children of believers should be considered
00:05:08.620 | part of the justified people of God
00:05:13.260 | just because there was a physical connection
00:05:16.580 | between them and their believing parents.
00:05:19.220 | Therefore, since baptism was the outward sign
00:05:24.220 | of such acceptance with God
00:05:27.940 | and participation in the redeemed people of God,
00:05:32.340 | baptism should not be given to persons
00:05:36.500 | just because they had a physical connection
00:05:39.900 | with saved people, namely their believing parents.
00:05:43.340 | This is why Baptists do not baptize babies.
00:05:48.300 | And this is the main reason why we're called Baptists.
00:05:51.840 | We believe that there should be a credible profession
00:05:56.460 | of saving faith before a person receives the outward sign
00:06:01.460 | of that credible profession and that union with Christ.
00:06:08.500 | And that sign is baptism,
00:06:11.180 | a symbol of passing from death to life
00:06:14.420 | through faith in Jesus.
00:06:16.660 | Historically, Baptists have understood baptism
00:06:20.940 | to be by immersion.
00:06:22.980 | That is, you take the whole person in a pool or in a river
00:06:27.460 | and you put the whole person under the water
00:06:31.420 | rather than sprinkling water on the head.
00:06:35.760 | And we believe that because one,
00:06:38.320 | that's what the word baptizo in Greek meant,
00:06:42.420 | dip or immerse, it didn't mean sprinkle.
00:06:45.780 | And second, because immersion fits the symbolism
00:06:49.780 | in Romans 6 of being buried with Christ in baptism
00:06:54.420 | and being raised up out of the water,
00:06:56.400 | signifying resurrection life.
00:06:59.340 | And third, because it appears that in the early church,
00:07:03.820 | that's the way they did it.
00:07:05.740 | I mean, Philip, they went down into the water
00:07:09.640 | along the road and John the Baptist baptized
00:07:12.180 | in the Jordan River.
00:07:13.940 | He needed a river, not a font,
00:07:16.720 | to put a hand in and sprinkle some water.
00:07:19.060 | So we baptize by immersion.
00:07:23.540 | So those are two baptism distinctives,
00:07:26.360 | only baptize believers and baptize them by immersion.
00:07:30.060 | Now, several other marks of a Baptist church
00:07:34.000 | follow from this position as an ongoing reformation
00:07:39.000 | of the Roman Catholic Church.
00:07:40.960 | One is that the church is seen as an assembly of believers.
00:07:45.600 | That's implied in what we've already seen.
00:07:47.840 | We know that some of those believers may be hypocrites.
00:07:51.920 | We can't be perfect,
00:07:53.760 | but the aim is to have a church whose members
00:07:58.760 | are truly trusting Christ, a believer's church,
00:08:03.820 | not a church that you're part of
00:08:05.280 | just because your parents were part of it
00:08:07.820 | or you were born into it.
00:08:09.900 | Another implication of the ongoing reformation among Baptists
00:08:14.620 | was that we have tried to take seriously
00:08:18.920 | the priesthood of all believers,
00:08:22.600 | that each of us has a direct, personal relationship
00:08:27.120 | with God through Christ.
00:08:29.280 | And it seemed to us that this church-wide priesthood
00:08:34.280 | is why in the New Testament, congregations themselves,
00:08:39.960 | the congregation, not just a group of elders
00:08:42.900 | or a group of bishops, were the last court of appeal
00:08:47.900 | in the way the church governed itself.
00:08:50.540 | For example, when there was a matter of discipline,
00:08:53.880 | Jesus said in Matthew 18, as a final step
00:08:57.140 | before you have to put an unrepentant person
00:09:00.480 | out of your midst, he said, "Tell it to the church."
00:09:04.600 | And then the church makes that rendering, that judgment.
00:09:09.600 | So that's why Baptists are usually called congregationalists.
00:09:14.740 | Another implication of the ongoing reformation among Baptists
00:09:19.740 | was a recovered belief in the freedom
00:09:24.100 | that Christians have from coercive dictates,
00:09:28.540 | not only from centralized ecclesiastical authorities,
00:09:33.940 | but also from civil authorities.
00:09:36.660 | Most of the non-Baptist Reformation churches
00:09:40.900 | in their early decades, and longer for some,
00:09:44.220 | failed to disentangle themselves from civil governments
00:09:50.220 | so that the people like Baptists were oppressed
00:09:54.220 | and persecuted even by their Protestant brothers
00:09:58.340 | and sisters who thought that state authority
00:10:01.760 | should be used by churches to coerce theological
00:10:04.740 | and ecclesiastical unity.
00:10:07.660 | So perhaps I can sum up the distinctives like this.
00:10:11.100 | First, Baptists are Protestants
00:10:14.220 | who share the great pillars of the Reformation,
00:10:18.000 | justification on the basis of Christ alone,
00:10:20.820 | by grace alone, through faith alone,
00:10:23.460 | to the glory of God alone,
00:10:25.080 | on the basis of the authority of Scripture alone.
00:10:28.660 | Second, believers' baptism, so that the only people
00:10:32.740 | who receive the sign of new life in Christ
00:10:35.380 | are those who by faith have received new life in Christ.
00:10:38.720 | Third, a believers' church in which the members consist
00:10:45.480 | only of those who give a credible profession
00:10:48.420 | of faith in Jesus.
00:10:50.420 | And then congregational governance,
00:10:54.600 | finally by the congregation and administered practically
00:10:59.600 | through elders and deacons.
00:11:01.720 | Most of the confessions, the early confessions,
00:11:04.700 | always referred to elders and deacons among Baptists.
00:11:09.300 | And then finally, a commitment to freedom
00:11:12.400 | of religious expression without any external ecclesiastical
00:11:17.060 | or governmental control over the local congregation.
00:11:21.660 | For myself, Dennis, there are glorious things
00:11:26.420 | that I share in common with those of other denominations
00:11:31.200 | that enable me to have very sweet fellowship
00:11:36.020 | and camaraderie and mission with others.
00:11:38.940 | And I don't think that the distinctives we Baptists believe
00:11:43.320 | in keep us from such fellowship or common mission,
00:11:48.320 | especially if we share those great Reformation commitments.
00:11:53.680 | - Amen, very helpful overview, Pastor John, thank you.
00:11:56.680 | And thank you for joining us today.
00:11:57.960 | You can ask a question of your own,
00:11:59.320 | even the simple and unexpected ones like Dennis did today.
00:12:03.120 | You can do that and search our growing archive
00:12:05.360 | or subscribe to the podcast, all at desiringgod.org.
00:12:08.680 | Forward slash, ask Pastor John.
00:12:11.100 | Well, the book of Ecclesiastes is enigmatic.
00:12:15.180 | It's puzzling.
00:12:16.560 | It's puzzling because it tells us that much of life
00:12:19.640 | is vanity, a chasing after wind.
00:12:23.280 | It says this from the second verse in the book.
00:12:26.120 | Meaningless, meaningless, says the teacher,
00:12:28.800 | utterly meaningless, everything is meaningless.
00:12:32.880 | But God's providence tells us a different story.
00:12:35.280 | Everything in life is meaningful.
00:12:38.280 | So what gives?
00:12:39.400 | Is life mostly meaningless or mostly meaningful?
00:12:44.400 | It's a great audience question.
00:12:45.960 | Up next, I'm you all sending in some really,
00:12:48.240 | really hard questions that I'm grateful
00:12:50.560 | to be on this side of the table,
00:12:52.160 | simply asking them to John Piper.
00:12:55.280 | I am nothing but your host, Tony Reinke,
00:12:58.960 | and we will see you back here on Monday.
00:13:00.420 | Have a great weekend.
00:13:01.420 | (upbeat music)
00:13:04.000 | (upbeat music)
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