Three misconceptions

Luke 23: 38 – 43

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 09 Sep, 2007

ONE OF my school teachers had a term for wierd Christian sects: he called them, “Bush Baptists.” In Australia in those days, Baptists were considered to be a very odd-ball group.

That was why I used to draw those cartoons in The Australian Baptist under the Bush Baptists title.

We should joke about ourselves. Show the world that we know what we are like, and that we are relaxed about ourselves because Jesus loves us just as we are! That goes for you and me as individual Christians, and it goes for us as Baptists.

But if we want the world to know us better, we need to know ourselves well, too. And I find that even long–standing Baptists often know very little about Baptist views.

This month, we will look at a few misconceptions about Baptists, and maybe even clear up a few things you didn’t get quite sorted out when you became one of us.

There are three very common misconceptions about Baptists — that we are an American sect, that we are all fundamentalists, and that we believe that Baptism is essential for salvation.

ARE BAPTISTS FROM AMERICA?

There are more Baptists in the US than anywhere else in the world, so it would make sense if Baptists came from the US.

Once there was a plague of slaters, the little bug kind of creatures which curl up into a grey ball when you frighten them. We had them in the house in large numbers, and had to keep sweeping them out. But just because there were many of them in the house didn’t mean they originated in there. The first lot had immigrated from the garden and got into the backs of the cupboards. I suppose others bred in there.

It’s similar with Baptists.

The first Baptists came from Holland.

In 1525, a group similar to Baptists began in Switzerland, and spread across Europe. They were called Anabaptists, which means “Rebaptisers.” Many Anabaptists were found in Holland. where they were tolerated by the Government.

Seventy five years later, things got really tough in England. If you didn’t want bishops to control the church, or said that the queen shouldn’t have the final word about who got to be a leader in the church, you were out. You could be thrown into gaol. maybe even executed. Many Christians died in harsh prison conditions.

Some radical Christians fled to Holland. The radical Christians had thrived in Holland, and one group of English Puritans adopted the Anabaptist idea of baptising only those who professed faith in Christ, though they were different in many other ways. Their pastor was an Anglican minister named John Smyth; the assistant pastor was Thomas Helwys.

After about four years, Thomas Helwys brought some of these new Baptists back to England with him. In 1612, he wrote a tract calling for total religious toleration, was imprisoned, and probably died within 18 months.

But the Baptists survived. They thrived. Everywhere the Baptists went, they evangelised and they planted churches. When the Civil War broke out, Baptist soldiers worshipped wherever they camped, and when they moved on, they left a church behind.

When the Pilgrims went to America, Baptists soon followed. They were persecuted, but they kept preaching the gospel. Baptist churches were planted and soon people began to favour the democratic style and the less formal worship in Baptist Churches. They moved out of the Anglican Churches in droves.

That is how you find so many Baptists still in the US. Of course, the War of Independence and dislike for English officialdom played a major role. But without people keen to share their faith in good times and bad, Baptists would have remained a small church confined to the English villages.

Before the break up of the Soviet Union, there were almost as many Baptists there as in the US, once again, a tribute to the way that Baptists hung on despite intense persecution until the atheistic Communist Government finally gave Baptists a degree of recognition.

Are Baptists an American sect? We are citizens of the world, but our origins are in those persecuted English Christians who settled in Holland and formed a church around 1608.

ARE BAPTISTS FUNADAMENTALISTS?

The Bible itself says

^{2 TIM 3:16} All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

We Baptists have always had a high doctrine of scriptural authority. My pastors when I was a teenager often talked about sola scriptura — scripture alone. It was an old slogan from the Reformation, as Christian leaders looked for strongly Bible–based ways to change the church.

We Baptists have a lot in common with fundamentalism, and many Baptists are fundamentalists — particularly Baptists who have come from Brethren backgrounds.

The thing is that fundamentalism came a long time after Baptists. Fundamentalism began around 1912 in the US. It was a reaction against German Biblical criticism.

We can be fundamentalists, but we don’t have to be. We can also hold basic Christian doctrines but not have to think the fundamentalist way about them.

The first fundamentalists had some good ideas. They went to the core of Christianity.

They taught the inspiration, authority and inerrancy of the Bible. Inerrancy is a hot topic, but not too many Baptists quibble about the other points.

They proclaimed that Jesus is God come in human flesh. They taught the virgin birth of Christ, his substitutionary atoning sacrifice, his bodily resurrection, his imminent return as judge and Saviour.

It wasn’t perfect. They didn’t have room for the ministry of women. They weren’t very concerned about racism.

Here, Fundamentalism didn’t catch on strongly until the late 1960s. We were evangelicals, more than fundamentalists.

Fundamentalism easily falls into a trap. It is so focused on believing the right things, that it almost comes to think that you can’t really be saved unless you think like a fundamentalist.

We Baptists have never believed that. We know that you are saved through faith alone, by grace alone. The moment you repent and trust in Jesus you have salvation.

We believe in good doctrine. People with bad doctrine have defective faith.

Think of this for example. A Jehovahs Witness realises that Jesus died for her and she trusts in that death. Immediately, she has salvation, even though she still generally believes what Jehovahs WItnesses believe.

As good Baptists, we want to rescue her from the mire of Witness teaching. But that does not mean she is not a saved believer, headed for heaven on the basis of the amazing grace of Jesus.

We know that she will lack Christian hope, because they will teach her that she has missed out on the full heavenly blessing, because she is not one of the 144000 who get to heaven. She believes she will only ever know Jesus at a distance, as she enters a new paradise on earth.

Because the Witnesses have a doctrine of works, she will worry about her salvation, because she may not be selling enough copies of Watchtower.

She will not be quite able to work out how faith in Jesus links her to God her heavenly father, when her Witness beliefs set such a great gulf between the man, Jesus, and God the Father.

But she will still be saved, because it is by grace through faith, and that is it. She will be a troubled and ineffective believer, but if she knows that Jesus died for her and that somehow that puts her right with God if she accepts it for herself, then she has eternal salvation and a lifelong theological headache unless she gets out of the Witnesses.

True fundamentalism would have problems with what I just said, because that woman would deny many of the most basic views of orthodox Christianity.

If you don’t know that Jesus died for you and trust in that death, you will never find salvation, because you will constantly seek some other way of achieving God’s blessing for yourself, and our salvation is clearly, as the Bible says,

...not through works, so that no one can boast.

But once you have that basic, bottom–line trust in Jesus, you have salvation, and nothing you can do is a substitute for that faith, and nothing you can add to faith will make you any more acceptable to God, except to follow Jesus day by day.

Many Baptists are fundamentalists, but you don’t have to be a fundamentalist to be a Baptist. What we are goes back well before anyone ever thought of fundamentalism.

DO BAPTISTS TEACH THAT BAPTISM IS NECESSARY FOR SALVATION?

That’s a good introduction to the topic of Baptism, because I have had many thoughtful people say to me, “Don’t you Baptists add something to Jesus’ atoning death on the cross, if you say that only baptised believers can be saved?”

I generally surprise them. I agree that adding baptism would take away from the finished work of Christ.

But then I hit them with the old one–two punch, and say, “But we Baptists don’t believe that baptism is essential to salvation. We believe that Jesus has done everything we need to be saved, and all anyone has to do is repent and believe in his atoning death.”

When I was about 22 or 23, my father got a shock. Every year, I went to Beach Mission at Eden. Our team leader was Peter Kilkeary who had been a member of Fairfield Baptist Church. His wife, Joy, was the cook, Gwen Betts from Fairfield Baptist was on the team, and so was my brother, Stephen.

My father assumed that Beach Missions were a Baptist thing. He got quite a shock to discover that David and Margaret Camroux, the son and daughter of the then minister at Cronulla Anglican Church were on the team.

“I thought you Baptists are the ones who are into the water sports,” he said.

We are, but we don’t usually mix baptism and evangelism.

We worked happily with Anglicans, Methodists, Salvationists and other Baptists in the common cause of bringing people to saving faith in Jesus.

You could think of baptism as being like a baby blanket.

Many children are born without any blanket to wrap them in, and they survive into good old age.

But that blanket is very helpful for keeping the baby warm, safe and healthy.

And many people are born again into the Kingdom of God without baptism, even though baptism is one of the very best first steps of faith, helping you to confirm your desire to follow Jesus and your obedience to his commands.

After all, Jesus said

As you go, make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.

So Jesus put baptism very high on his list of things to do when people are brought into discipleship.

But it is the Churches of Christ who teach that baptism is essential to salvation, not the Baptists.

We would not add anything, not even Baptism, to the essentials of the gospel, that repentant faith is the key to salvation and acceptance by God.

We read that account earlier of the dying thief.

The other gospels tell us that condemned criminals were crucified with Jesus. Only Luke tells us that God did a mighty saving work through Jesus in the life of one of those men.

These men are spoken of as thieves, but we are not talking about someone who lifted a loaf of bread from the Jerusalem Bakery. That would probably have gained them a beating and a warning. These are robbers who habitually used violent beatings to take the belongings from travellers. There were many who preyed on travellers going to Jericho. They have probably crippled or murdered someone, and now they are getting the typical punishment of their crimes.

At first they mock Jesus. What kind of miracle worker can’t get himself down from a cross and take them with him?

But somehow it gets through to one of them. Jesus has never done anything deserving crucifixion. He is an innocent man, who only ever did good. His crimes were that he upset the establishment by demanding that they do good.

He turns to Jesus:

Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

All he wants is not to be forgotten.

Does Jesus say, “Alright, well, you can learn the Shorter Westminster Catechism over this week and, if you pass a test, I’ll baptise you and you will be saved.”?

Of course not! There is no time, there is no opportunity.

”I tell you the truth,”
says Jesus,
“This very day you shall be with me in paradise.

His repentant faith is all that robber needed.

I know there is more that needs to be said about the entire New Testament teaching on baptism, but this account of the dying thief is there for one very vital reason, and that is, to show you and me that there is nothing in all of creation which can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ — not the most evil criminal deeds, not blaspheming Jesus, not having once taken sides with those who crucify him, not crucifixion, not even lack of baptism.

By grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is God’s gift; not through works, lest anyone should boast.

Jesus died on the cross. He paid the full price for your salvation and mine. We can add nothing to his saving work. and Satan himself can’t take away from it. You can bring nothing, except yourself.

Still stands the ancient sacrifice
An humble and a contrite heart.

Come to Jesus — he will save you right now!

© Peter R. Green 2007. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)