Sermon Notes: When is baptism, not baptism?
Matthew 16:13-20 (Matthew 18:15-20) will be our go-to reference texts today.
Let’s read Matthew 16:13-20.
As we have spoken about already in our first two sermons on baptism, Jesus is building his church, and he has given authority to his church for discipling the nations.
He intends the church to be about the Great Commission in discipling the nations through preaching the good news of the kingdom, baptizing those who repent and believe, and then teaching all those who repent and believe to obey everything the Lord Jesus has taught. Genesis to Revelation.
In Matthew 16:13-20 and Matthew 18:15-20, Jesus gives the “keys of the kingdom” to his church, which is established on Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Now, Jesus uses the singular “you” in verse 19. There is much debate on whether Jesus gave the keys to Peter, to the church of which Peter is the head, or to the church as a whole made up of saved members and is the church because they together confess Jesus to be who he says he is in the gospel like Peter did.
Protestants are firmly behind option number three. The local church has been given the authority to conduct the work of the kingdom.
We have that authority together on mission because we have confessed Jesus as Lord as Peter did. So, with Peter, the other apostles, the extended group of disciples, and all those who believed at Pentecost, the scattered church from Acts 8, and the gathered church throughout church history, we wield the authority of the kingdom of God through the local church.
The two examples of the keys of authority given in Matthew 16 and 18 are the unleashing of the good news of who Jesus is and bringing the superintending presence of the Lord to bear on restraining the cancerous nature of sin.
Part of our work in the local church is to wield the authority of the kingdom of God to bind and loose. That is to prohibit and to unleash.
NOTE: The verb tense of prohibiting and unleashing indicates our authority is not innate in us but granted to us by God. The text reads, “Whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven…” (The ESV footnotes this literal translation), indicating that our binding and loosing are the result of God binding and loosing and us seizing that work through obedience to be about his work.
Because we have been given the Great Commission to proclaim the gospel, baptize believers, and disciple those believers in everything Jesus has taught, we understand this work is putting the keys of the kingdom to work in unleashing the good news and binding up sin.
Therefore, baptism is a biblical issue that can prohibit some things and unleash some things,
and it matters what we prohibit and what we unleash.
Baptism is not an insignificant issue. If it was, Jesus would not have been baptized, he would not have given rituals in the Old Testament as gospel primers to lead us to baptism as a dramatic presentation of the gospel, and he would not have instructed us to baptize people after they repent and believe.
If we handle gospel preaching, baptizing, and disciple-making God’s way, we bind up confusing practices, beliefs, and experiences, and we unleash clear confidence in the gospel that can shape a church and its kingdom legacy for generations to come.
A personal story.
We were very careful to make sure the boys were at church with us, in RL group, serving alongside us, in Radical Kids, and student ministry.
I took the boys to school every day, and we listened to just about every audible good thing for boys that helped them develop a Christian worldview. Whit’s End. Adventures in Odyssey. Sermons. Music. We had conversations about doctrine and practice.
On every family trip, we continued to listen to this good stuff to shape their minds and ours.
Supper time at the Jolly House has always been a place of discussion and debate on just about every topic while we wrestle with how to apply a Christian worldview. Sometimes, it is intense.
We practice making arguments using logic and reason, hopefully, rooted in God’s word. Sometimes, our arguments are exposed as rooted in the flesh. We’ve not always been perfect in it because flesh can make some sound arguments. It is sanctifying.
We read the Jesus Story Book Bible at night together when they were little. We put them to bed with Scripture and prayer. We did it all, and we did it well.
One day, when Gabe was just six years old, and John Mark was four (Daniel had not come to be with us at that point). we were out in the yard doing yard work. I watched as Gabe got down on his knees and bowed his head. I didn’t know what he was doing but was watching curiously. Not the position to be in for defending oneself from the attacks of evil hordes of invaders. Of course, John Mark took that moment as the appropriate time to attack the vulnerable with his stick sword. As he attacked, Gabe responded with, “Stop it, John Mark, I’m asking Jesus to take my sins away.”
That was an awesome experience. I can still see it in my memory today. Crisp. Clear.
However, me and Jennifer were careful not to jump on that as a finished deal and declare him a believer and put him in baptism class.
We took the next six-plus years to unpack further what it means to ask Jesus to take away sins. Being a Christian is not just about God seeing us as sin-free so we don’t go down to the bad place.
Being a follower of Jesus is a wholesale transformation brought by God the Spirit through repentance and faith because we have believed the good news of the kingdom, and that demands from us a different life in allegiance to Jesus above all things.
Gabe knew the words to say. Of course, he did. He was raised to know them. But knowing the right words to say from hearing them repeatedly is not necessarily an indicator of a transformed heart.
We needed to monitor the work of the Lord in his life. A child’s concrete understanding of true things is not necessarily real faith that results in Spirit-wrought fruit from a genuine understanding of the gospel. The fact is that this kind of evidence usually comes online as a kid grows from concrete to abstract capacity. That’s when a transformed heart begins to display itself.
You might be concerned. What would have happened if we had experienced the worst-case scenario and he passed as a child, and we didn’t acknowledge his actions or let him declare himself forgiven and get him baptized?
We believe God is good to save the children of those who belong to Jesus. Let me explain because this is what I preach at the funerals of our children or counsel with families who lose children when asked.
This is not an infant baptism argument from a full-blown covenant theology. We believe we can make that declaration to ourselves and others who have lost children in the life of our church because it is a summary of the Bible’s teaching for those who belong to Jesus regarding their children.
We don’t need to apply the waters of baptism to children to have confidence they are secure in Christ. We can glean from the Bible that the Lord is merciful and gracious to children in general (huge for our pro-life ethic) and specifically gracious and good to those children who belong to his people.
We believe God is like this because he is just, good in his elective purposes, and kind. This posture of God toward children is not rooted in the child’s innocence or a child’s deserving position. Because of original sin, they are not innocent, nor are they deserving.
Our confidence is rooted in the good and kind grace of God purchased at the cross for those the Lord chooses according to his gracious and elective grace.
Listen to this statement from the Canons of Dort: “Because we must judge the will of God from his word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy (1 Corinthians 7:14), not indeed by nature but by the blessing of the covenant of grace in which they are embraced with their parents, pious parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom God calls from this life in infancy”. (Canons of Dort, 1619, chapter 1, article 17)
Where did these folks come up with such a statement about the children of Christian parents knowing that all people must willingly repent of sin and exercise faith to be saved at some point in their lives?
Listen to what the LORD tells Israel in Ezekiel 16:20-21 as they mistreated their children in the worship of Canaanite gods:
Ezekiel 16:20-21 (ESV) 20 And you took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured… you slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering by fire to them…
God calls the children of his people “his children,” even in their sinful following after the “gods” of the land. Those children, despite their parent’s failings, are called God’s children until they arrive at some point where they must believe for themselves.
Listen to Jesus in Matthew 19:13-15.
Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people, 14 but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” 15 And he laid his hands on them and went away.
The disciples could not imagine children being important to God and coming to Jesus in a rich and robust trust. Yet, Jesus corrects his disciples and calls the children to himself because the kingdom of God belongs to those who come to him in simple child-like faith. Jesus calls us to imitate that kind of faith.
This great hope provides strong affirmation for us about God’s good care for and salvation of our children who pass from this life before they can understand the good news and that he will bring them to himself to be with him to await their resurrection to eternal life. We don’t have to wrongly apply water to children to have this confidence.
At what point a person crosses that line of being accountable to God for deciding to follow Jesus, only God knows. We dare not assign that for our comfort.
So, we must take care to lead them to repent and believe the gospel as soon as they can correctly understand and decide in full knowledge to follow Jesus regardless of what it may cost.
This requires vigilance, watchfulness, discernment, fellowship with others in the church to assist us in making sense of what the Lord is doing, and the readiness to affirm what the Lord has done.
Therefore, we were not afraid to make sure Gabe understood the gospel’s call before we allowed him to profess publicly that he has believed and go through baptism class, be baptized, and be accountable to the local church.
It got to the place where Gabe looked at me while we were talking about the cost of following Jesus when he was 12 and said to me, “Dad, why won’t you let me follow Jesus?”
We said at that point, “He gets it!” So, he went through baptism class, publicly professed Jesus, and was baptized. Same with each of the boys.
That is how we sought to avoid a baptism that was not a baptism. That is how we sought to avoid a baptism that would need to be re-done due to poor discipleship. We didn’t want our sons to participate in the phenomena of serial rebaptism.
How we practice baptism can restrain (bind) some confusion, and how we practice baptism can unleash (loose) some goodness.
Whatever we bind on earth is because it has been bound in heaven, and we have been given this authority as the local church, which is the outpost of the kingdom of God to bind up some things that need to be bound up.
Whatever we loose on earth is because it has been loosed in heaven, and we have been given this authority as the local church, which is the outpost of the kingdom of God to unleash some goodness on creation.
So, what we believe and practice about baptism matters.
When is baptism, not baptism?
Let’s consider three situations.
If a person was baptized as a believer when they were not a believer. – UB, p. 54.
The scenario of churches holding on to revivalist tactics from the Great Awakenings we talked about in our second sermon in the baptism series led to untold numbers of folks who were baptized when they did not truly believe the gospel.
Fear for our children because we have not gleaned confidence from God’s word for our children can lead to too quickly pronouncing something for our kids they don’t believe for themselves. This can lead to a later understanding as they mature, which leaves them confused about when they experienced saving faith.
A brief sketch of church history will show us that there have been periods where the church was able to baptize people quickly, like Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch.
That same history will show us times when the church took years to disciple pagan practices out of new believers before administering baptism, like during the time of Perpetua of Carthage (182 – 203 AD).
The point is that we have the freedom to make sure a person has believed the gospel before administering baptism so that we follow Jesus’ instructions for discipleship.
If we don’t exercise that flexibility, we can do a disservice to folks in their discipleship.
If a person was baptized without connection to a local church, they should be baptized. – UB, p. 58.
As we have made the case that baptism is the church’s work. Baptism is not the work of an individual not connected to the local church. It’s not the summer camp’s work.
Since the work of making disciples belongs to the local church, and disciple-making involves baptizing new believers, then no baptism should take place without the work and discipleship of the local church.
There is no hurry. It is better to get it in Jesus’ order of operations than to just get r’ done.
It’s no gross sin if we are baptized outside the oversight of the local church, but it is operating outside of the process the Lord defined for us, and it sets a pattern of not paying attention to his word and our seeking to make application of his word.
That pattern may lead to us getting off track in other areas of our discipleship.
If a person was baptized by a church that has denied the gospel or baptized by a cult, they should be baptized. – UB, p. 57.
One of the great tragedies of our time has been the discovery of churches that are devoid of the gospel or have embraced theologies that are doctrines of demons.
Some churches teach the gospel as good works in the form of a “cup of cold water given to someone in need.”
Some churches teach Jesus was a good man, but he was not God.
Some churches deny Jesus existed as the real and historical God/Man and that the Jesus of faith was created by the church to justify their existence. Many liberal denominations hold this position.
There are cults, such as Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witness, that deny the Trinity and believe a host of heretical teachings. Some people were baptized into these cults and came out of them later.
If you were baptized by a church that did not teach sound doctrine, you might consider being baptized and becoming a member of a Bible-believing church. TRC is a good one to learn from and commit to.
If you come from a cult like the Jehovah’s Witness or the Mormons, you need to speak to one of our members or an elder and make sure you understand the gospel and follow Jesus, and that you follow Jesus in believer’s baptism thus joining a Bible-believing orthodox Christian church.
Application
We will be baptizing on October 20 after worship. So…
- If you have been baptized as an infant and your conscience is clear, as we have said, there is no further requirement. Rest easy.
- If you have been baptized as an infant and you are confident in your salvation, yet your conscience is not clear about your baptism, you should listen to your conscience. Please know we would love to baptize you.
- If you have believed the good news and have not been baptized, you need to be baptized and become a member of TRC. These two go together.
- Worship the Lord for his work to save sinners and give us such a dramatic portrayal of that saving work in baptism.