Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 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…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 09014. Baptismal regeneration is the teaching that the new birth is conveyed through the water of baptism, so that a person is regenerated in and by the act itself rather than by faith in Jesus prior to it. It is held in various forms by Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, many Lutherans and Anglicans, and…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 09000. Believer’s baptism is the immersion in water of a person who has already trusted Jesus, as their public identification with His death, burial and resurrection. That sentence contains the whole argument, and every phrase in it is doing work. I want to open it up properly, because baptism is one of those subjects…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 7094 Whether water baptism is necessary for salvation is a question that has divided sincere Christians for centuries, and it is not settled by quoting one verse loudly. There are passages which appear at first glance to make baptism part of the transaction, and any honest treatment has to deal with them rather than…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07057 The dying thief is the single clearest illustration in Scripture that salvation is by grace through faith and nothing else. He had no time to be baptised, no opportunity to join a church, no chance to make restitution to anyone he had robbed, and no prospect of a single good work. He had…
Reading Time: 10 minutesQuestion 07023. Is water baptism necessary for salvation? My answer is no, and I hold it firmly, but I want to reach it the long way round because there are passages that appear to say otherwise and they deserve to be taken seriously rather than waved past. Anyone who tells you this question is simple…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4111. Water baptism does not sit in the same fixed relationship to the Holy Spirit’s coming everywhere we look in Acts, and that surprises people the first time they notice it. Sometimes the Spirit falls before water baptism, sometimes after, and once, through the laying on of apostolic hands, considerably after. If you try…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4075. Spirit baptism and water baptism are related but distinct realities, and confusing the two has caused more pastoral trouble in Baptist churches than almost any other misunderstanding in this area of doctrine. One is an invisible act performed by the Spirit at the moment a person believes. The other is a visible, physical…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4191. Ask most people what the Holy Spirit has to do with believer’s baptism and they will picture the water and stop there, as though the Spirit were a spectator at the side of the pool. That gets it exactly backwards. The water is the picture; the Spirit is the reality the picture points…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 9004 Few questions have divided Christians more than the question of infant baptism. Some denominations practise it; others reject it entirely. Some see it as essential for salvation; others view it as a harmful distortion of the gospel. Where should we stand? As always, our authority must be Scripture, not tradition or sentiment. What…