A Fellowship of Faith Part 3: Baptists and Congregationalists

Introduction

If you have your Bibles turn to Jeremiah 31:33-34. If you do not have your Bible there are red ones sitting on the window sills on the outside ends of each row. Please have the Scriptures open in front of you as we work through this topic this morning. You will be better for it.

If you are a visitor and this is your first time here, welcome to our church gathering and we are grateful you are here. If you have any questions please come find me after the service or ask one of our members who is sitting near you. This series of sermons, titled “A Fellowship of Faith”, is a topical series where we explore specific topics and how God speaks about and informs our interactions with them. We typically do expository preaching where we work through a book of the Bible verse by verse and seek to understand what each passage means and how it is applicable to how we live our lives. This current series is a small interruption to our study through the book of Judges.

This is the third part in our series that is seeking to bring us to mutual understandings of the workings of the church and the reasons why we hold the convictions we hold. Each of these teachings build off the previous ones, so if you miss any of the teachings, please find and watch them on YouTube so we can all be unified.

A few weeks ago we laid the foundation by studying the Gospel and what it means to those who are Christians and if we were to start anywhere else the whole structure would fail. The following week we started studying the biblical definitions of what the church is so that we don’t look to cheaper alternatives that seem to be more attractive. This week we are studying what baptists and congregationalists are.

Why would I teach a topical sermon over Baptists and Congregationalists? First, because it is our heritage and I think it’s been a few generations since we considered the importance of that. Second, because it is hopefully our future as we step toward voting on the new bylaws in a few weeks.

Now let’s read Jeremiah 31:33-34

Jeremiah 31:33–34 (ESV)

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Let’s pray and then dig in.

Pray

Wisdom from the Father

Speak through me

Illumination of truth and Conviction of sin from the Spirit

Deaf ears where I speak out of turn, not in line with the Scriptures

Discernment for those gathered to seek the truth where they are offended by what is said

Recognition and conviction of unrealized sin in our lives

Faith and Redemption through the work of the Son

May everyone gathered here be awakened anew with a love for Your Word, LORD

Amen

Think back to year 1998, ‘99. I was 4 or 5 and in kindergarten, (how many of y’all are feeling old?).

I was going to a small baptist school in Ohio and a classmate of mine came into class one Monday and told our teacher, Mrs. Armstrong, that he had decided to ask Jesus into his heart over the weekend. Well, Mrs. Armstrong wanted all of us to celebrate such wonderful news so she encouraged us all to clap and cheer for the boy and so we did. However, my sinful little heart wanted that celebration for myself, so that night I went home and asked Jesus into my heart… for the first of many times.

The next day I went into class and told Mrs. Armstrong the good news that I too was now a bona fide Christian. I was basking in the anticipated glory of my peers that I was part of this elite club. Mrs. Armstrong, to her credit and my embarrassment, saw through my sinful intentions and didn’t feed my prideful heart. She knew I wasn’t a Christian even though I said I was. There was no applause for my professed conversion. That was the first day for a period of about 15 years of seeking praise for pretending to be a Christian.

As the years went on I was in more than my fair share of church plays, singing solos, youth events, and even regional student leadership. I debated evolution in my biology classes, was actively pushing back on my teachers for their inability to see the truth of God’s Word, was the Chaplain’s Aide for my Boy Scout troop, and was visibly reading C. S. Lewis’ non-fiction books during the school day. I even wore a purity ring. I was by all visible standards a perfect Christian kid and all the while blind to sin’s hold on my life.

I went to church camps every summer and at each one I “rededicated my life to the Lord” the last night of the week, the one where they really push for it, but by the next week nothing had changed in my life.

In high school, I began to quietly become an agnostic and started to engage more and more physically in romantic relationships, ignoring God’s standards for sexual purity, all the while wearing that purity ring. I was a jerk to people, gossiping and using people to suit my own desires, using my “good-kid” status to skip school and avoid consequences, all the while helping to lead regional youth retreats. My parents moved to Alaska shortly after I graduated from high school and I went to work at a church camp for the summer before moving into college. In the 6 months after my graduation, I learned just how much the good laws of my Christian parents (that I secretly hated while pretending to follow them) kept my sin from consuming me. Because in those 6 months without those laws, I was consumed by my sin.

Praise the Lord for His goodness in saving me from myself after those 6 months and only allowing me to see where my depravity would take me for that short period, but here is my great concern and why I am sharing this: in most Southern Baptist churches, in our church as it stands, I would have been considered a church member in good standing. Even with our age restrictions of having to be 18 to vote, I would have been able to vote in the vital matters of this church for over a year while also being lost in my sin.

So what does this have to do with Baptists and Congregationalists? Wouldn’t it be better to go into an argument about why we think immersion is the most faithfully biblical method of baptizing and that our Presbyterian brothers and sisters are practicing a holdover from the Catholic Church when they sprinkle their babies? Wouldn’t it make more sense for us to talk about what we stand for in the Southern Baptist Convention? While I find both of those things important, if we are going to understand why we hold Baptist and Congregationalist convictions as a church we need to get to the core.

At the core of both Baptist and Congregationalist convictions lies the necessity of having regenerate church membership.

Before we dig too deeply into that, I want to define terms because I’m using a lot of jargon right now.

Defining our Terms:

Baptists - Those who believe that biblical baptism is an act that is only supposed to be done through immersion and only for believers with a credible repentance and profession of faith.

Congregationalists - Those who believe the entire church body has the final authority under God’s Word in matters of doctrine (and by implication, choosing leaders) and discipline (and by implication, choosing members).

Regenerate Church Membership - Only those who have credible evidence of having a new heart (Ez 36:26) by trusting in Christ alone for salvation and repenting of their rebellion against God are to be considered members of the church.

We are going to talk more about these terms in a minute, but first, let’s go through a little church history.

I know, it’s an exhilarating topic for a Sunday morning. I can see you’re all on the edge of your seats. Calm down a little bit so I can get through my sermon.

Baptist History 101

1517 - Martin Luther posted his “95 Theses”, unintentionally sparking the Protestant Reformation

5 Solas of the Reformation

1. Sola Christus - Christ Alone

1. We are justified on the basis of the work of Christ alone, not Christ plus the works of the Church;

2. Sola Gratia - Grace Alone

2. This justification is provided and imparted to human beings by God’s grace alone; not through our own earned merit

3. Sola Fide - Faith Alone

3. It is then appropriated in a personal and effective way in each individual life through faith alone; not through our works

4. Sola Deo Gloria - The Glory of God Alone

4. so that God’s glory alone, not any person or saint’s, is exalted;

5. Sola Sciptura - Scripture Alone

5. and all our authoritative word is based not on tradition or ecclesiastical authority but on Scripture alone.

If you have never taken some time to study the Reformation, please do. It truly is incredible and encouraging to see how God unearthed these truths after the Church of Rome buried them for centuries.

1534 - The Church of England (Anglican Church) was created because the Pope refused to grant a marriage annulment to King Henry VIII

Early 1600s - The first protestant Baptist movement starts because they thought the reformers (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, etc.) stopped the Reformation too soon, because they still were practicing infant baptism

Those who left the Church of England were called Separatists

Those who stayed and tried to reform it from the inside were called Puritans

1609 - Separatists fled to Leiden, Holland because of persecution from the Anglican Church

1620 - Some Separatists had returned to England and then set sail for the New World aboard the Mayflower

1630 - The Puritans join the Separatists in America

What makes us Baptist?

Baptists - Those who believe that biblical baptism is an act that is only supposed to be done through immersion and only for believers with a credible repentance and profession of faith.

1. Believer’s Baptism

Look back over the 5 solas of the reformation while I read this quote from John Piper, “ as we Baptists pondered the implications of Scripture alone as our authority, rather than fallible human church authority, and as we pondered the implications of faith alone as what brings a person into a right relationship with God and makes him part of God’s redeemed people… that the doctrine of justification by faith alone — and thus entrance into the new people of God, the church, by faith alone — implied that we should not think of entering into salvation and into the people of God through physical, family connections. In other words, we Baptists could not find in the New Testament, nor did it seem to be implied in the doctrine of justification by faith alone, that children of believers should be considered part of the justified people of God just because there was a physical connection between them and their believing parents.

Therefore, since baptism was the outward sign of such acceptance with God and participation in the redeemed people of God, baptism should not be given to persons just because they had a physical connection with saved people — namely, their believing parents. This is why Baptists do not baptize babies, and this is the main reason why we’re called Baptists. We believe that there should be a credible profession of saving faith before a person receives the outward sign of that credible profession and that union with Christ. And that sign is baptism — a symbol of passing from death to life through faith in Jesus.”

So this argument ultimately boils down to this: we regularly see examples of only believers being baptized throughout the book of Acts and the rest of the New Testament and so we believe that only believers are to be baptized.

2. Baptism by Immersion

The Greek word baptizō, which is where we get the word baptize, means: “dip” or “immerse”; it didn’t mean “sprinkle.”

Immersion fits the symbolism in Romans 6:1–4 of being buried with Christ in baptism, and being raised up out of the water, signifying resurrection life.

It appears that the early church baptized by immersion. Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch “went down into the water” along the road (Acts 8:38), and John the Baptist baptized in the Jordan River: he needed a river, not a font to put a hand in and sprinkle some water.

3. Religious Freedom

This might seem counterintuitive to many who have an understanding that Baptists are some of the primary motivators for some of the major boycotts of recent American history, but we really do stand on a foundation that no one can be forced to be a Christian. It cannot be a requirement of the government for everyone to be a part of the church if the only way to become a Christian is through the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. So the historical practice throughout centuries of using baptisms as the primary form of birth record, thereby requiring everyone to be baptized, is not biblically defensible in our understanding.

4. Church Autonomy

Baptists were the quite likely the first movement in many centuries to say that individual churches need to have the ability to follow God based on what they as a local church thought best glorified God in their own contexts. We see biblical basis for this in the life of Paul. He, an apostle and great teacher and leader in the first generation of the Church, reported back to the churches who would support him in his journeys. He did not have multiple churches under his “headship”. Contrary to a growing teaching in the church today, Paul submitted himself to godly elders and did not assert that those elders and churches were subject to him. Peter echoes this sentiment when calls himself a “fellow elder” in 1 Peter 5. This is why the Southern Baptist Convention has consistently maintained that we are a cooperation of churches, not a denomination. What united the early churches was their common faith, not a common human leader. In the same way, we Baptists look to have a similar unity in autonomy.

Why do we want to be Congregationalist?

Congregationalists - Those who believe the entire church body has the final authority under God’s Word in matters of doctrine (and by implication, choosing leaders) and discipline (and by implication, choosing members).

1. Congregational Participation

This is one of the primary benefits of congregationalism: the members of the church are able to have participation and a say in the direction of the church. This is also one reason why it is vital to intentionally work to know as well as we are able that our members are truly regenerate, that they are truly Christians. And not only that they are Christians, but that they are not biblically illiterate. If the members of the church get the final word, that word must be informed and shaped by the Word of God.

One major reason we desire congregationalism in this church is that we believe in the priesthood of all believers, that every Christian has the ability to be in communion with God. So if the congregation has searched the will of God through study, prayer, and fasting and the vast majority think God wants us to move a certain direction because of it, we can trust that the Lord is intending us to go that way.

If for some reason you’re zoned out right now, if you have lost your attention, please draw it back for this statement I’m about to make. Congregationalism places a lot of responsibility on you as the church members to be studying the word of God on your own, as well as corporately and to be seeking God’s direction through prayer. If you have the final say, make sure it’s not your own words.

2. Church Autonomy

We already spoke about this so we are going to keep going.

3. Leadership Accountability

Historically, while by no means perfect, congregation-ruled churches have had less theological drift. When we have biblical church membership in congregation-ruled churches, we have the benefit of many holding the leadership accountable. This means that the many members of the church who study God’s Word can veto the theologically or practically poor decisions of imperfect leaders (which includes all leaders except Christ).

The fact that the Southern Baptist Convention practices this in our cooperation between churches helped correct the theological drift of the leaders of the convention 40 years ago. The many corrected the few even though the few had some power and authority.

4. It’s Baptist

Congregationalism and Baptist theology go hand in hand. To separate them is to destroy them. Baptists have always been congregationalists.

5. It’s Biblical

(1) In the New Testament there is no higher organization to which churches were responsible. All the New Testament letters to churches appealed to the churches to follow Truth, not a human or a group of humans. No clear New Testament evidence exists to suggest that local churches were governed by an outside body.

(2) The authority to exercise church discipline is assigned to the local church body rather than to regional elders or bishops (Matt. 18:15–17; 2 Cor. 2:6). Jesus and Paul both teach that we are to bring an unrepentant person before the church and for the church to disqualify them from membership until they repent.

(3) The New Testament local church chose qualified men to meet practical needs (Acts 6:1–6), commissioned Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13:1–3), and was involved in the discussions and decision of the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:4, 12, 22).

A strong word of caution...

Congregationalism without regenerate church membership is church suicide.

abusive leaders

Theological Drift

Baptist Distinctives

1. Baptists are Protestants

Baptists are Protestants who share the great pillars of the Reformation: justification on the basis of Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, to the glory of God alone, on the basis of the authority of Scripture alone.

2. Baptists hold to believers’ baptism

We hold to believers’ baptism, so that the only people who receive the sign of new life in Christ are those who by faith have received new life in Christ.

3. Baptists hold to a believers’ church

Baptists hold to a believers’ church, in which the members consist only of those who give a credible profession of faith in Jesus.

4. Baptists hold to congregational governance

We hold to congregational governance, governance finally by the congregation and administered practically through elders and deacons.

5. Baptists are committed to freedom of religious expression

We are committed to freedom of religious expression without any external ecclesiastical or governmental control over the local congregation.

“We believe that the Baptists are the original Christians. We did not commence our existence at the reformation, we were reformers before Luther and Calvin were born; we never came from the Church of Rome, for we were never in it, but we have an unbroken line up to the apostles themselves. We have always existed from the days of Christ, and our principles, sometimes veiled and forgotten, like a river which may travel under ground for a little season, have always had honest and holy adherents. Persecuted alike by Romanists and Protestants of almost every sect, yet there has never existed a Government holding Baptist principles which persecuted others; nor, I believe, any body of Baptists ever held it to be right to put the consciences of others under the control of man. We have ever been ready to suffer, as our martyrologies will prove, but we are not ready to accept any help from the State, to prostitute the purity of the Bride of Christ to any alliance with Government, and we will never make the Church, although the Queen, the despot over the consciences of men.” —Charles H. Spurgeon