What are the ordinances?

Question 09057.

The two ordinances given to the church are baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Jesus instituted both, commanded both, and gave the church no others. Everything else that congregations do, however valuable, is either an application of Scripture’s general instructions or a matter of Christian liberty.

That claim needs defending, since Rome counts seven and other traditions add or subtract. It also needs explaining, because the word ordinance itself carries a deliberate theological point that most Baptists use without knowing why.

Why We Say Ordinance Rather Than Sacrament

A sacrament, in its developed Roman and to some extent Lutheran sense, is a means of grace: something that conveys grace to the recipient by the performance of the act itself. An ordinance is something ordained, commanded by Jesus, to be observed in obedience and as a sign of what He has done.

The difference is not a quibble about vocabulary. It is a question about direction. Does the act convey grace to me, or does it declare a grace already given? Baptists say the second, and the two ordinances therefore function as signs and confessions rather than as channels.

I should say fairly that many Reformed believers use the word sacrament without holding a mechanical view of it, meaning something closer to a covenant sign accompanied by the Spirit’s blessing. Language differs between traditions and I would not make an argument out of a word. But because sacrament carries so much freight in ordinary English use, I keep to ordinance.

What Makes Something One of the Two Ordinances

Three tests identify them. Was it instituted by Jesus Himself, in person, during His earthly ministry? Was it commanded for the church to continue? And does it symbolise the central content of the gospel, His death and resurrection?

Baptism passes all three. Jesus commanded it in Matthew 28:19, it was practised from Pentecost onwards, and Romans 6 explains it as a picture of union with Him in death, burial and resurrection. The Lord’s Supper passes all three. Jesus instituted it in the upper room, said do this in remembrance of me, and Paul says that as often as we eat and drink we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.

Nothing else passes. Marriage is a creation ordinance for all humanity, not a church ordinance. Foot washing, which Jesus did command, illustrates humility rather than the gospel itself, and the church never practised it as a standing rite. Anointing the sick in James 5 is a real instruction but is not tied to the death and resurrection.

Why Not Seven

Rome adds confirmation, penance, marriage, ordination and anointing of the sick to make seven, a number not settled until the twelfth century and made dogma at Trent. Each of the five additions has something behind it in Scripture, which is why the claim is plausible rather than absurd.

But none of them meets the three tests. Confirmation grew out of a division of the baptismal rite in the Western church. Penance developed as a system of satisfaction that the New Testament nowhere describes. Ordination is a real and important act, and I take it seriously, yet it applies to some believers rather than to all and does not picture the gospel.

Keeping the number at two protects something. Where every significant moment of life becomes a channel of grace administered by clergy, the church stands between the believer and God at every turn. The two ordinances leave the believer’s access to God resting on the finished work of Jesus alone.

What Baptism Does

Baptism is the ordinance of initiation. It marks a person’s public identification with Jesus in His death and resurrection and their entry into the visible fellowship of His people. The Greek baptizo means to immerse or plunge, which is why immersion is our normal mode and why Romans 6 speaks of burial.

It follows faith rather than producing it. Every baptism recorded in Acts is the baptism of somebody who has already believed, and the order is never reversed. It is a command to be obeyed rather than a suggestion to be weighed, and my expectation is that believers are baptised before coming into church membership, though I hold those conversations pastorally rather than as a rigid barrier.

Where immersion is genuinely impossible through disability, illness or age, I do not think God honours inflexibility more than He honours the heart of the person seeking to obey. The ordinance is not invalidated by a change of mode where real need requires it.

What the Lord’s Supper Does

The Supper is the ordinance of continuing fellowship, repeated rather than once for all. It looks back to the cross, proclaims the Lord’s death until He comes, and calls each participant to self-examination before God.

It is memorial. There is no transubstantiation, no consubstantiation, and no physical or mystical presence in the elements. The bread and cup are signs that represent the body and blood of Jesus; they do not become or contain them. I hold an open table, so any believer in a right relationship with God and, as far as possible, with others is welcome, without requirement of baptism, membership or denomination. What Scripture requires is self-examination.

If the first of the two ordinances says you have entered, the second says you are still here, still dependent, still looking back to the same cross and forward to the same return.

Why the Ordinances Are Not Optional

Some congregations have quietly minimised these, treating baptism as a personal preference and communion as a quarterly add-on. That is a mistake for a reason worth stating: the two ordinances preach.

They preach visibly, to people who learn by seeing rather than hearing. A watching child understands burial and rising when someone goes under the water in a way that no sermon on Romans 6 will achieve alone. A congregation taking bread and cup together says something about a body that our individualism cannot easily say in words.

They also preach to us. Doctrines we affirm in the abstract are enacted in the ordinances with our own hands and bodies, and that does something to a person over years that abstract affirmation does not.

Where Churches Get This Wrong

Two failures, in opposite directions. The first treats the ordinances as automatically effective, so that having been baptised or having taken communion becomes a ground of assurance in itself. That is where a person ends up trusting a ceremony rather than a Saviour, and my article on baptismal regeneration works through the consequences.

The second empties them of weight altogether, so that baptism becomes a nice testimony service and the Supper a brief formality tacked onto the end of a meeting. That is not a lower view of the elements; it is a lower view of what Jesus commanded.

The right place is between the two. These acts do not save, and they are not trivial. They were given by our Lord on the night He was betrayed and in the last words He spoke on earth, which is not the kind of provenance that invites casualness.

What the Two Ordinances Assume About the Church

Something is implied by the pair that is easy to miss. Both of the two ordinances require a congregation. Nobody baptises himself, and the Lord’s Supper is described by Paul as what happens when you come together. Neither can be performed alone, which tells you something about the kind of religion the New Testament describes.

They also assume a boundary. Baptism marks a person’s entry into the visible fellowship, and the Supper is for those who have entered. Take the two ordinances seriously and you find yourself committed to a church with edges, which is why congregations that have abandoned any notion of membership tend also to become vague about who baptises whom and who may come to the table.

And they assume a gospel with content. Both signs point to a death and a resurrection that actually happened. A church that has lost confidence in those events can still perform the ceremonies, but it will find itself explaining them as symbols of renewal or community, which is what has happened in a good many congregations across Britain. The NET Bible notes on 1 Corinthians 11 are helpful on how tightly Paul ties the table to the historical events it proclaims.

Frequency, Order and Common Sense

Scripture prescribes surprisingly little about how often the two ordinances are administered, and where it is silent I would rather churches used wisdom than invented rules. Baptism in Acts follows conversion almost immediately, sometimes within the hour, which is a rebuke to the practice of making candidates wait months for a convenient date.

The Supper is described in Acts 20:7 as part of the first day gathering, and Acts 2:42 lists the breaking of bread among the four devotions of the earliest church. That suggests something more frequent than the quarterly pattern many congregations settled into, though I would not make a law of it. What I would say is that if the two ordinances preach, then a church that rarely performs them has silenced two of its clearest sermons. My article on how often the New Testament churches took communion works through the evidence.

So, now what?

If you have believed and have never been baptised, that is worth settling rather than postponing. There is usually a reason underneath the delay, and it is rarely the reason given aloud. Speak to your minister and find out what yours is.

And when you next come to the table, come deliberately. Read 1 Corinthians 11 beforehand. Examine yourself, put right what can be put right with anyone you have wronged, and then take the bread as what it is: a sign of a body given for you, by a Saviour who told you to keep doing this until He comes. What would change in your walk if the two ordinances meant to you what they meant to Him?

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

1 Corinthians 11:26 (ESV)