BFM: Why Confessions?

Introduction

There are 16 million Southern Baptists in the world.

Our convention is the largest Protestant division of believers in the United States.

There are 43,000 Southern Baptist churches.

Some large, mostly normatively sized (300 or under)

Some are urban, some are rural, some are suburban

Some meeting in arenas, some meeting in chapels

Some are older than the country itself, some are brand new

But there are two things true about all of them:

1) They give to the Cooperative Program—the missions pot that we throw money in so that we can fund international missions

2) They subscribe to the beliefs of the Baptist Faith and Message

We are one of those churches.

The Baptist Faith and Message is our confession of faith.

It has been this way since 1925.

Before that, the churches in the convention all held to other Baptist confessions like the 1689 London Baptist Confession or the Philadelphia Confession or the New Hampshire confession.

Dating back all the way to our roots in the 17th century, Baptists have been a confessing people.

We are still a confessing people.

And that is one of the big reasons why we are going to be learning about the doctrine we confess in the Baptist Faith and Message this Fall and this Spring:

We should confess what we believe and know what we confess.

Outline

But that being said, you may wonder, “Why do have a Confession of Faith?”

We might ask, “Is this really important?”

So that is where we will start tonight.

I want to give you some definitions and leave here with a better understanding of confessionalism.

So we will answer three questions tonight:

1. What are confessions of faith?

2. Why are confessions of faith necessary?

3. Where did our confession of faith come from?

WHAT are confessions of faith?

A confession of faith is a statement of belief.

It outlines core doctrines and indispensable beliefs, gathered from the totality of the Bible’s teaching.

A confession of faith is in the same family as a creeds like the Apostle’s Creed.

The difference is that a creed is typically more concise and easily memorized.

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

The Apostle’s Creed

Christians all over the world recite this in worship weekly or commit it to memory or frame it and put it up in their homes.

While a confession of faith tends to be longer than a creed, it also tends to be more comprehensive.

Here is what I mean by that:

Christians tend to have levels of doctrine.

Level 1 would be the doctrine that defines what a Christian believes.

The basic doctrines you cannot deny if you are saying you are a believer in Christ.

This is what we see in the Apostle’s Creed.

Level 2 would be the doctrine that defines how we worship and where we go to church.

This typically includes things like:

Where authority comes from and how the church is governed

How we view the Lord’s Supper

How we view baptism

What is essential for a Christian worship service

Level 3 would be the doctrines we may believe, but we could go to a church where the pastors and other members don’t fully agree with us.

This typically includes things like:

Our view of spiritual gifts

Our view of the end times

Our view of predestination

Whether or not animals go to heaven—for those of you still upset about what I said in that sermon a couple years ago...if you know you know.

A creed is typically going to be aimed at giving a concise summary of those Level 1 doctrines.

However, a confession of faith will go beyond that and articulate Level 2 doctrines and sometimes Level 3 doctrines.

For example, the 1689 London Baptist Confession doesn’t just tell us of the doctrine of salvation and the doctrine of believer’s baptism—it even dives into whether or not infants who die go to heaven.

That might seem strange to find in a Confession of Faith, but in the late 17th century, everyone was burying babies. It was common.

In light of that, the writers of the confession found it important to include doctrine regarding “elect infants.”

Confessions of Faith may seem foreign to you because they haven’t played as large of a role in the American evangelical church in the last 50 years.

But the reality is that ignoring confessions of faith is a novel concept.

For the overwhelming history of the church—particularly the Protestant church, confessions have been a part of the Christian life.

Most Protestant Christians in church history have been confessional Christians.

The most famous Confessions of Faith include:

The Augsburg Confession (1530)

Written in 1530 by Martin Luther’s protege, Philip Melancthon

The Second Helvetica Confession (1566)

Authored by Henrich Bullinger, the man who succeeded John Calvin as the leader of the church in Switzerland.

It is a very general document for any believers who held to Calvin’s teaching

The Canons of Dort (1619)

Written in the Netherlands in response to the teachings of Jacob Arminius

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646)

Written by the Westminster Assembly in England—151 Presbyterian pastors, laymen and commissioners

The Second London Baptist Confession (1689)

The cornerstone confession of faith for the Baptist denomination

You can see how important confessions of faith have been to the church throughout the generations.

Just like creeds, they have helped the church to articulate what they believe and what is taught in the Scriptures.

It helped the church say to its members and to the world:

“This is what we believe and this is how we behave.”

WHY are Confessions of Faith Necessary?

Now with all of this stated, why are confessions of faith necessary?

Why should the American evangelical church seek to recover its confessional roots?

How can confessions help us today?

I am going to give you seven reasons.

1. Confessions offer a framework for understanding the Bible.

When we consider creeds and confessions, they are not authoritative for us.

As we will talk about next week, our authority comes solely from the Scriptures.

However, confessions that are born from the authoritative Scriptures can help us to understand what the Bible says as a whole.

Confessions of faith give us an outline of what the Bible has to say doctrinally.

“A creed, or confession of faith, is simply a statement of what the Church, or an individual, believes the Bible teaches... It is not intended to take the place of Scripture, but to be a help to its right understanding.”

Charles Hodge

In the same way that a resume can provide a grid through which an employer can see a potential employee, confessions provide grid through which we can see the Scriptures.

It provides guidelines for properly reading and interpreting Scripture for the whole church.

For example, if I were reading Hebrews 6, and I was wrongly interpreting it as a text about how someone can lose their salvation, the Baptist Faith and Message would be helpful to me because it says:

Believers may fall into sin through neglect and temptation, whereby they grieve the Spirit, impair their graces and comforts, and bring reproach on the cause of Christ and temporal judgments on themselves; yet they shall be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.

The Baptist Faith and Message 2000, Article V

And then it provides Scripture references, which all good confessions do:

For example, it cites John 10:27-29

John 10:27–29 ESV

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.

Therefore, when I read Hebrews 6, I can recall the confession of faith and say, “Our confession of faith outlines what the Scripture clearly teaches—those who are truly saved by grace will be preserved by grace to the end. That means Hebrews 6 can’t mean that you can lose your salvation.

This is just one example of how good confessions give us a systematized framework through which we can understand the Scriptures.

We should always read through confessions and check the Scripture references before we adhere to them to make sure they line up with the authoritative Word.

But if they do properly represent the Word’s teaching, they suddenly become an incredibly effective tool to help us read and interpret the Bible.

Ultimately, we don’t use confessions to say more than the Bible says or to add to what the Bible says.

We use confessions to make sure we are understanding the Bible rightly and that we are not saying less than what the Bible says.

Confessions help us hit the interpretative target.

2. Confessions connect us to the great cloud of witnesses.

If you have a child or a grandchild or a niece or nephew, they all just started school back up.

And pretty much every education curriculum includes “History.”

We look at the next generation and we hold a conviction that they must know their history.

And yet, in the church, we often neglect history.

Martin Lloyd-Jones said that next to theology, church history is the most important thing a Christian could learn about.

And yet, so many Christians are ignorant of what came before them.

And many of us Baptists are generally unaware of how we even got here.

I don’t say that to shame—it is just the reality.

Church history is not just for seminaries and history nerds.

It is a subject for Christians to know.

Confessions won’t tell you everything about church history, but they do give us a continuity with the saints of the past.

It is encouraging to read the 1689 London Baptist Confession and see that the things we believe have been believed by Baptist brothers and sisters for centuries.

It is edifying to read the confession of faith called the “Abstract of Principles” that was used at The Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville when the school started and see that young men today are being taught the same thing that young men were taught then.

It is helpful when doctrines become forgotten or altered, to go back and read what brothers and sisters said before us, so that we can recover biblical beliefs and practices.

Seeing that there were others who came before, who confessed faith and lived by it, we are compelled to crucify our sin, lay aside unbiblical practices and run our race with endurance.

Hebrews 12:1 ESV

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,

3. Confessions help maintain doctrinal unity.

I don’t know if you all know this—but Christians divide sometimes.

And so often, division comes from believers getting twisted up about doctrine.

A confession of faith helps the local church be unified and cohesive around what the Bible says.

It helps us to say, “This is what we believe together.”

In Ephesians 4, after calling on the church to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, listen to what Paul says:

Ephesians 4:4–6 ESV

There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

This is a bit of a creed or confession that Paul is listing out.

He does it to remind the church of what binds them together—it is the Gospel faith.

It is the profession of baptism.

It is the Lord revealed by the Word.

Confessions of Faith are doctrinal rally points for members of local churches.

4. Confessions protect against doctrinal error.

On the other hand, confessions also help put up guardrails for when we begin to stray from the pathway of right belief.

In just a couple of weeks, we will start our study of Jude on Sunday mornings.

When you read Jude, the letter begins like this:

Jude 3–4 ESV

Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

There were people in the church who seemed to be teaching that you could live however you wanted as a member of the church.

Obedience and holiness didn’t really matter if you are under grace.

Jude writes to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

He writes about the confession of faith that the church stands on, in order to mark out the error of those who have crept in.

You can see how the “faith once for all delivered,” is being used to protect the congregation from error and falsehood.

We tend to think of creeds and confessions as simply positive affirmations of Christian doctrine; but there are various uses… (they) not only unite the people of God around central biblical doctrine, they also exclude teachings and their adherents which are contrary to scriptural teaching.

James White

A good confession of faith doesn’t just keep the church together.

It keeps the church together and safe from error.

5. Confessions give a theological foundation for missions.

This year at the Southern Baptist Convention, our Convention’s President, Clint Pressley said this:

“The Southern Baptist Convention is a train that runs on two rails. The Cooperative Program and the Baptist Faith and Message.”

Clint Pressley

After all, this is what makes a church Southern Baptist.

Being Southern Baptist means “Cooperation by Confession.”

Southern Baptists all give to a centralized missions fund called the Cooperative Program.

It funds international missions.

It funds North American missions.

It funds theological education for pastors.

It funds entities like Lifeway.

But the question is this: Who gets to throw money in that missions pot? Who is cooperating together in the Cooperative Program?

The answer is: Those who hold to the confession of faith known as The Baptist Faith and Message.

Why not the Presbyterians?

Because as much as we may love them, they would want the missionaries to baptize babies.

Why not the Anglicans?

Because as much as some of them are our brothers and sisters, they would want new churches to answer to a centralized ecclesiastical authority.

In other words, they would not agree that each of those new churches are autonomous.

Why not the Methodists?

Because they would not agree with our doctrine regarding not losing your salvation, which we would want to teach in the churches.

Some people think that confessions of faith are prohibitive to mission work and that it somehow keeps more work from being done.

To the contrary, the confession is the foundation of mission work, enabling us to partner with brothers and sisters in agreement and work more quickly in a more meaningful way.

6. Confessions deepen theological commitments.

The 19th century Baptist giant, Charles Spurgeon, is called the “Prince of Baptist Preachers.”

Spurgeon’s church held to the 1689 2nd London Baptist Confession as their confession of faith.

Listen to he said:

A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.

Charles Spurgeon

Christians should be convicted people.

We should not be known for vacillating between opinions.

Confessions of faith help us to nail our colors to the mast and say with Luther, “Here I stand, I can do no other.”

When I was 20 years old, I had started working at Old Powhatan Baptist Church as the “Student Ministry Intern.”

It was my first journey in pastoral ministry.

My pastor, Tom Keehan, asked me, “Michael, are you Baptist on accident or on purpose?”

I had never thought of that before.

I was saved in a Southern Baptist Church.

I believed in Believer’s Baptism.

But was I really Baptist on purpose?

Tom made it clear—He was Baptist on purpose.

What Tom was asking his young intern was this— “Do you have deepened convictions?”

Confessions help us to understand what we say we believe and it deepens those convictions.

Things that were previously written in pencil become written in ink and eventually in blood.

Hebrews 10:23–24 ESV

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,

In that passage, the author of Hebrews is talking about the confession of the Gospel—Christ crucified and resurrection.

He isn’t talking about the Baptist Faith and Message 2000!

And yet, there is a principle in play that is worthy of our attention.

Unwavering conviction is good and should be pursued.

Unwavering conviction helps us to stand firm in a world of shifting sand.

Brothers and sisters—are you Baptist on purpose?

I don’t ask that because I want you all to be lean, mean Baptist machines ready to throw down in theological rumbles.

Instead, I ask the question because unwavering conviction gives you a stable ground for faith.

For holy living.

For missions.

For worship.

For serving the church.

And example would be how this summer I had a group of men going through some books together to grow as leaders.

One of the books taught us about the meaning of the Lord’s Supper.

One of the brothers told me that when we took communion the Sunday after we talked, it meant more than it had in some time.

Deepened conviction led to meaningful worship.

7. Confessions help foster personal assurance.

Confessions of faith are helpful for the church and its members to be sure that what they confess and believe is true, biblical Christianity.

Satan works to plague Christians with doubts.

One of those doubts that he will sometimes seek to drum up in us is, “Am I actually believing what is right? Does the Bible really teach what my pastor and my church teaches?”

A confession of faith helps us to see that what we believe is indeed what the Bible collectively teaches.

If we study a confession and it is filled with man-made traditions and doctrines that cannot be found in the Scriptures, we would be right to doubt it.

But if we study a confession and see that it is sound, we can ascribe to it with a single-mindedness and have peace that we are living out the teachings of Jesus.

One of my favorite songs ever written is Creed by Rich Mullins.

It begins with a recitation of the Apostle’s Creed:

I believe in God the Father Almighty Maker of Heaven and Maker of Earth And in Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, our Lord He was conceived by the Holy Spirit Born of the virgin Mary Suffered under Pontius Pilate He was crucified and dead and buried

Creed, Rich Mullins

But my favorite part is what he sings right after that in the chorus:

And I believe what I believe is what makes me what I am I did not make it, no it is making me It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man

Creed, Rich Mullins

This is what personal assurance sounds like!

And this is one of the main reasons we are doing this study this church year.

3. Where did our confession of faith come from?

So with all of that said, we get to our final question tonight:

Where did our confession of faith come from?

How did we get the Baptist Faith and Message? Why do we believe in the edition of it that was produced in the year 2000?

Well first of all, the Baptist Faith and Message did not appear out of thin air.

Baptists have been confessional people from the beginning.

We have to look to the early 1600’s to first see Protestant congregations carrying the Reformation to its logical conclusion and identifying themselves as “Baptists.”

The first Baptist Confession we see is the First London Baptist Confession in 1644.

The main reason for this Confession was to say, “We are not Anabaptists. We are much more like Presbyterians in our doctrine than Anabaptists.”

The Second London Baptist Confession came about in 1689.

This confession almost identical to the Westminster Confession put together by the Presbyterians.

The big differences have to do with the way the covenants of the Bible are viewed, the ordinance of Baptism and church government.

Outside of that there is almost total agreement.

Then there was the Philadelphia Confession in 1742.

This was based on the 2nd London Confession and was provided for Baptists in the colonies.

The New Hampshire Confession of 1833 came after that.

It took less of a hard stance on some issues surrounding predestination and was adopted by many mid-century Baptists.

The early Southern Baptists pretty much all held to some version of the Philadelphia or the New Hampshire.

And then in 1858 there was the Reformed Abstract of Principles, the document used by the Southern Baptist Seminary as a confession for faculty and students.

But in truth, Southern Baptists did not have a standardized, official Confession of Faith until 1925.

There was a committee led by a man named EY Mullins and he and the committee presented “The Baptist Faith and Message,” to the Convention in Memphis, TN.

There were 5600 messengers in attendance.

The 1925 Faith and Message was basically a revised version of the 1833 New Hampshire Confession.

The reason Southern Baptists adopted a confession of faith in 1925 is because the evangelical church in America was in the midst of what is called the “fundamentalist/modernist” controversy.

There was a movement in many churches and place of education to adopt a version of Christianity that was not supernatural.

A version that said Jesus was not God in the flesh.

A version that said He was just a Teacher.

A version that denied the resurrection.

A version that questioned the biblical Creation account.

The Convention felt it must respond by articulating their doctrine in a Confession like so many Baptists before them.

So The first version of the Baptist Faith and Message came about in 1925.

The second version of the Baptist Faith and Message came about in 1963.

This time the document was revised to respond to a controversy over whether or not that Bible is inerrant (without error), infallible (won’t fail you or lead you astray) and inspired (breathed out by God).

There were many questioning the authority of Scripture, even in Southern Baptist life.

So in Kansas City, MO, the Convention of over 12,000 messengers adopted a revised version of the Baptist Faith and Message.

There were a number of changes to increase doctrinal clarity, but the main changes came in strengthening the language about the authority of the Bible and they added an article on “Religious Liberty.”

The third version of the Baptist Faith and Message came about in 1998.

As morality regarding the family, marriage and sexuality began to breakdown in American society, 8600 Southern Baptist convened in Salt Lake City, Utah and added an article to the Confession on “The Family.”

Here is a sample of it:

God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society. It is composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood, or adoption.

Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race.

Baptist Faith and Message, 1998

And finally, the fourth version of the Baptist Faith and Message came about in 2000.

This is largely what we have available tonight and what we will study in the coming months.

An effort led by Dr. Adrian Rogers, saw a committee come together to bring forth the 2000 version.

It was adopted by 12,000 messengers in Orlando, FL.

The current Confession:

Strengthens the language on biblical authority and inerrancy even more

Strengthened the Trinitarian doctrine

Restricted the office of pastor to called and qualified men

This language was strengthened even more in New Orleans in 2023

Clarified what we mean when we talk about a church being autonomous—not answering to councils and cardinals and popes

Strengthened language on the Baptist’s role in making the will of Christ supreme in society and speaking out on cultural issues

As the new millennium dawned, Southern Baptists felt they needed to reiterate who they were, what they believed and what they practiced.

The London Confessions of the 1600’s gave birth to the Philadelphia Confession in the 1700’s.

The Philadelphia Confession gave birth to the New Hampshire Confession in 1833.

The New Hampshire gave birth to the Baptist Faith in Message in 1925.

That confession has been strengthened for the cultural moments in the religious life of America in 1963, 1998 and 2000.

And that is the Confession we hold to as Seaford Baptist Church in 2025.

The 2000 Committee said:

Our prayer is that God will lead this generation of Southern Baptists into a bold new era of missions, evangelism, ministry, and vision and that God will bless our witness to His truth through The Baptist Faith and Message.

The SBC 2000 Committee

The work that continues with our hands is the ongoing answer to their prayer.

And indeed, the prayer of many great Baptists who came before us.

Let us hold fast to our confession and continue to cooperate together for the sake of the Great Commission.

We will jump into Article I on the Scriptures next week.