Reading this document that I wrote about fifteen years ago, it strikes me as open to certain possible snares. There is a kind of tribalism that is abhorrent to the Gospel mandate of love for God and his people. In John’s letters he talks of those who refuse teachers from the wider Church. That can happen.

But when one catches a vision of the Church as a real historical institution, like Israel except transnational, one can also abuse the concept. One can claim loyalty to “The Church” while not actually loving the real local people in one’s own life.

The thing about “the visible Church” is that it is not actually visible. You can’t see transcontinental, inter-generational organizations any more than you can see God’s decrees or the secrets of a persons heart. The only part of the Church  you can see, hear and experience in other ways are the Christians you know in their capacities and offices.

And you are supposed to love them.

Of all the lessons that we could draw out of these truths, let me close with just one, and hope that you will make others to your own heart.

Since external conformity of unbelievers to God’s designs of justice and honesty does in one way delight the heart of God, it was right of William Wilberforce to devote 20 years of his life in Parliament to the abolition of English slave trading, even though the great majority of those merchants who gave up the trade did it under constraint and not for any holy reasons at all. It was the work of God’s grace that rid England of the barbarisms of the African slave trade. And therefore the Lord looked down with delight February 22, 1807, when the House of Commons passed the decisive bill.

He delighted most in the living power of holiness in the life of Wilberforce and Henry Thornton as they embraced one another and frolicked in the snow like schoolboys outside the chamber.

And, in a different and mysterious way, God also delighted in the shell of holiness that took shape in English society when it was purged of the slave trade once and for all. For he delights in the work of his hands.

John Wesley, the great evangelist, wrote to Wilberforce to strengthen his hand in God. He said,

Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils, but if God be for you who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? Oh, be not weary in well-doing.

There are battles to be fought today in America against manifold injustices and indecencies. May the Lord give us wisdom to know whether we are called to fight like Wesley or to fight like Wilberforce.

via The Pleasure of God in Public Justice – Desiring God.

“Those who hold to a traditional Protestant view of justification consistently should not find a redemptive transformationist position attractive. As some of the Reformers grasped, a two-kingdoms doctrine is a proper companion to a Protestant doctrine of justification.”

via Creed Code Cult: Sola Fide and “Kingdom Work”.

Get that? Charles Hodge and Benjamin Warfield did not hold to a “traditional Protestant view of justification consistently.”

And then this lovely insinuation: “setting aside the issue of whether those who espouse a transformationist position do so in order to deny sola fide specifically or whether they just espouse it by default without much thought to the ramifications”

There never really is a bottom in this “discussion” and no matter what happens I find I have never lowered my expectations enough.

By the way, pretending anyone cares about issues, the book refers to “the first Adam, who was to perform his cultural work during a period of probation.” Probation was to last the entire time required for taking dominion over all creation? Who has ever believed this? The probationary period was to be settled before they even had children. “Be fruitful and multiply” could not possibly be for the probationary period,” unless you think generations or sinless children could not fall by their own sin (which they would be free to commit or not), but would be struck with wrath and depravity and death the moment Adam sinned even when they hadn’t.

Or is the idea that they would all suddenly sin at once?

Bizarre.

Baptism is a sacrament of the new testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn recognition of the party baptized as already a member of the visible church; but also…

In sum, confessionalists are content with the Shorter Catechism’s description of the Christian life when it answers the question, “What does God require of us that we may escape his wrath and curse due to us for sin?”

A. To escape the wrath and curse of God due to us for sin, God requires of us faith in Jesus Christ, repentance unto life, with the diligent use of all the outward means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption.

That is not all that fancy or elaborate a way of putting the Christian life but it has enough work for even the best of Christians. To trust Jesus daily and believe God’s promise that Christ is for me and that God is not faking it in the gospel, to repent daily of sin, and to attend weekly to the means of grace and order my affairs so that my attention is focused on the day of rest – that is a pretty full plate. Why pietists want to pile on is a mystery. It seems down right glutinous.

via Old Life Theological Society » Blog Archive » Having His Confession and Feeling It Too.

[Note, I’ve noticed I swing from one definition of “regeneration” to another. This was a mistake in communication but I’ll leave it as is. If “regeneration” means the initial gift of true faith, I regard that as given normally to elect covenant children long before they are born. Baptism is “rebirth” into a new society–the visible church, the house and family of God. Those who aren’t elected to eternal life to never believe in a saving way and thus are never regenerated by the Spirit in that sense. If you search other things I’ve written you might find where I’ve explained this issue. I’ll do so again or repost some material, maybe.]

Being a PCA minister, I teach the system of doctrine contained in the Westminster Confession and Larger and Shorter Catechism and in the Book of Church Order.

So I teach that, ordinarily God confers the forgiveness of sins and all other blessing of the New Covenant in baptism, because in baptism Christ is applied to the believing recipient.

I’ve written elsewhere on why infants count as professing believers in the Church and why we have every reason to expect our children are regenerate and thus correct recipients of baptism. I’ll perhaps rehash that again in another post.

But again, God normally forgives sins and grants new life in baptism. Baptism is a sign. When Jesus spoke to the paralytic the sign he used was his own spoken word. But God doesn’t speak from heaven. Rather, the words of love and fatherhood God spoke at Jesus’ baptism are interpretive of the act so that its meaning is known. Each person baptized is performatively declared to be God’s son, reconciled to the Father, with the forgiveness of sins which that relationship requires. See Galatians 3.23-4.7 and many other passages such as the response to Peter’s first recorded sermon:

Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Of course there are cases in which the unbaptized are still forgiven! If a man has genuine faith, and providential death occurs before  his  baptism, he is still going to heaven. The thief on the cross would be one example. Elect infants dying in infancy would be another.

We don’t do theology by exceptions.  Normally, God forgives sins and grants new life in baptism. And in affirming this point am also affirming that the abnormal sometimes happens–that baptism is not always necessary for forgiveness.

Any literate person with a working knowledge of the Westminster Standards (which would be someone “ordinarily” outside the PCA, I am sometimes tempted to think) would immediately recognize the principle that I have articulated.

From the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 28, paragraph 5:

Although it be a great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be regenerated, or saved, without it; or, that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated.

Why is this statement put in the Westminster Standards? Obviously because ordinarily or normally one is saved and regenerated through baptism as God’s public act: As paragraph 6 affirms:

The efficacy of baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered; yet, notwithstanding, by the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited, and conferred, by the Holy Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth unto, according to the counsel of God’s own will, in his appointed time.

After all, Baptism is the sacrament of initiation. And what do sacraments do? According to Shorter Catechism question #92:

A sacrament is an holy ordinance instituted by Christ; wherein, by sensible signs, Christ, and the benefits of the new covenant, are represented, sealed, and applied to believers.

And of course, all of this fits into what the Westminster documents say about the institutional church. In chapter 25, paragraph 2 we read:

The visible church, which is also catholic or universal under the gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.

“Ordinary” here should remind you of the word, “Normally” I used above. For, according to Chapter 28, baptism is the means by which one formally enters the institutional Church. It is “for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible church.” And, if outside the church there is “no ordinary possibility of salvation,” then we can deduce that there is also “no ordinary possibility of the forgiveness of sins.” Within that institution, however:

Unto this catholic visible church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints, in this life, to the end of the world: and doth, by his own presence and Spirit, according to his promise, make them effectual thereunto.

I think it is interesting that there is no question in either Westminster Catechism on how effectual calling is to be improved by us. But we do have the following question and answer.

Q. 167. How is baptism to be improved by us?
A. The needful but much, neglected duty of improving our baptism, is to be performed by us all our life long, especially in the time of temptation, and when we are present at the administration of it to others; by serious and thankful consideration of the nature of it, and of the ends for which Christ instituted it, the privileges and benefits conferred and sealed thereby, and our solemn vow made therein; by being humbled for our sinful defilement, our falling short of, and walking contrary to, the grace of baptism, and our engagements; by growing up to assurance of pardon of sin, and of all other blessings sealed to us in that sacrament; by drawing strength from the death and resurrection of Christ, into whom we are baptized, for the mortifying of sin, and quickening of grace; and by endeavoring to live by faith, to have our conversation in holiness and righteousness, as those that have therein given up their names to Christ; and to walk in brotherly love, as being baptized by the same Spirit into one body.

I think Baptists and other non-Reformed Evangelicals might object that this “sounds” too Roman Catholic.” Well, so does my teaching on the Trinity. So do Lutheran theologians on baptism. Are they Roman Catholic? Believing in God is Roman Catholic and atheists still go to Hell for disagreeing with that dogma. The bottom line is that the Reformed Faith disagrees with Roman Catholicism where it is wrong and agrees with it where it is right. The fact that some statement “sounds” Roman Catholic to a non-Reformed Evangelical, or to any that falsely presume to call themselves Reformed, means nothing.

Imagine a child is looking at a wrapped gift sitting under a Christmas tree. It is from an uncle to whom the child is hostile. He looks at the gift suspiciously, and then announces he will not open it. It either holds nothing or else holds something worthless. It certainly couldn’t contain anything that would compensate for being in the uncle’s debt.

So what should a parent say to convince the child to open the present.

• “Oh, if only you will believe, you will receive wonderful grace!”?
• You’ve misjudged your uncle. He loves you. He is quite capable of giving you more than you can ask or think!”

The second option does not even mention words like “trust” or “faith” or “believe” and yet both options call for faith and the first one does so quite lamely.

If you want someone to trust God, then extoll God’s trustworthiness, not the alleged power of faith. “God is faithful,” Paul wrote the Corinthians (First 1.9).

The reason Paul had to speak of faith was because some were denying that all believers were equal in their status before God. Something more than being a believer is required, they said.

Outside of that sort of context, extolling faith can become utterly superstitious (c.f Trinity Broadcasting Network).

Giving the impression that one makes the sacraments efficacious by believing or imagining may be as superstitious than the errors such impressions are designed to prevent. Here’s a better way:

I know it is a common belief that forgiveness, which at our first regeneration we receive by baptism alone, is after baptism procured by means of penitence and the keys (see chap. 19 sec. 17). But those who entertain this fiction err from not considering that the power of the keys, of which they speak, so depends on baptism, that it ought not on any account to be separated from it. The sinner receives forgiveness by the ministry of the Church; in other words, not without the preaching of the gospel. And of what nature is this preaching? That we are washed from our sins by the blood of Christ. And what is the sign and evidence of that washing if it be not baptism? We see, then, that that forgiveness has reference to baptism. This error had its origin in the fictitious sacrament of penance, on which I have already touched. What remains will be said at the proper place. There is no wonder if men who, from the grossness of their minds, are excessively attached to external things, have here also betrayed the defect,óif not contented with the pure institution of God, they have introduced new helps devised by themselves, as if baptism were not itself a sacrament of penance. But if repentance is recommended during the whole of life, the power of baptism ought to have the same extent. Wherefore, there can be no doubt that all the godly may, during the whole course of their lives, whenever they are vexed by a consciousness of their sins, recall the remembrance of their baptism, that they may thereby assure themselves of that sole and perpetual ablution which we have in the blood of Christ (John Calvin, Institutes, IV, 15, 4).Nineteenth Question: The Efficacy of Baptism
Does baptism… take away past and present sins only and leave future sins to repentances? Or does it extend itself to sins committed not only before but also after baptism? The former we deny; the latter we affirm against the Romanists.…

II… [T]he Romansists teach… “The virtue of baptism does not reach to future sins, but the sacrament of penitence is necessary for their expiation.” Thus, the Council of Trent expresses it: “If anyone shall say that all the sins which are committed after baptism are either dismissed or made venial by the recollection of faith of the received baptism alone, let him be anathema (session 7, Canon 10, Schroeder, p. 54)….

XII. …However, we maintain that by baptism is sealed to us the remission not only of past and present, but also of future sins; still so that penitence (not a sacramental work and what they invent, but that which is commanded in the gospel) and especially saving faith is not excluded, but is coordinated with baptism as a divinely constituted means of our salvation (Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, vol. 3).