Release date: 2/26/2025
Chapter 28: Baptism
- Key sentence: By baptism a person is solemnly admitted into the visible church.
- Baptism is the doorway of entrance into the church family. It’s what separates those who are part of the church from those who are of the world.
- Look at all that baptism represents (second sentence of paragraph)
- Sproul 596 (second quote)
- Sproul 593 (a little biblical baptism history)
- No comment.
- Let’s do a word study for the Greek word translated as baptize/baptism in the New Testament. (Josh needs to have Logos opened for the Scripture readings.)
- Matthew 3:1, 6-7
- Matthew 28:19
- Matthew 26:23
- Mark 1:8
- Mark 7:4
- Mark 14:20
- Luke 11:38
- John 13:26
- Revelation 19:13
- Paragraph 4
- Sproul 569
- Sproul 571 (second quote)
- Sproul 596 (first quote)
- Sproul 599
- Sproul 601
- Sproul 602
- Resources we have about infant baptism:
- Baptism is not necessary for salvation nor is it a guarantee of one’s salvation.
- Sproul 603
- This is where things start to get a little funky for folks who’ve only thought of baptism as a symbol of our decision to follow Jesus — where it’s nothing more than a memorial rather than an actual means of grace.
- In the Reformed tradition, the sacraments are means by which God’s Spirit confers grace to us. The same is true for how the Spirit uses the Word. Reading God’s Word and hearing it preached are not just mental exercises. They are means by which we experience God’s grace. And the same is true for the sacraments: in them we see signs of God’s faithfulness to us which the Spirit uses to impart grace to us.
- A continual controversy in the church — regardless of infant baptism. The kid who got baptized at eight years old — whose parents thought he was ready — has a spiritual awakening in his twenties and wants to get baptized again. What do we do?
- Remember baptism’s Old Testament equivalent? Circumcision. Would that twenty year old want to be re-circumcised if we were still under the old covenant? I think not! So let’s not allow the pain free-ness of baptism turn it back into something about our faith in God rather than his faithfulness to us.