Shayla: Should believer’s baptism (post-faith
baptism) be a requirement for church membership?
Meforshim:
As our church council has been reviewing
the Church’s Constitution, Bylaws and Handbook in order to present them for the
church’s consideration this fall, the question has been raised as to whether or
not baptism should be seen as a "door" into the church, a requirement
for consideration as a member in good standing with the ability to vote. Before
I give you the answer the elders have determined, allow me to clarify a couple
issues.
There is a difference between
salvation and local church membership.
Baptism
is not required for salvation. The thief on the cross was not baptized
and yet was assured of his place in
However, baptism
not being required for salvation does not preclude its requirement for church
membership. For instance, a person is saved instantly, as soon as
they make the commitment to repent of their sins and trust the Messiah as their
Savior. Yet we are told to be slow to approve people and to allow them to
demonstrate the truth of their conversion.
“Turning over a
new leaf” is not necessary to prepare oneself for salvation. Jesus is
willing to save us while we are still struggling with our yetzer hara (sin
nature).
Yet membership
hinges on living in obedience to the Word. A person who claims to be a
believer and yet lives in sin is to be taught, corrected, rebuked privately,
and even shunned by the congregation if they will not repent.
One
must differentiate carefully between two meanings of "church," two
meanings of "baptism," and two meanings of "membership."
If one is speaking of membership in the
universal church, the spiritual body of Christ composed of all true believers,
spiritual baptism by the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ is the
"door." The moment a person is united with Christ spiritually, he or
she enters the church in this sense, whether or not there has been any previous
exposure to a local church. Membership in the universal church is fully granted
by God upon true conversion.
Membership
in the universal church can only be granted by God. Salvation and membership in the universal
church can never be renounced through church discipline.
The man in this case, though under
church discipline, was still considered to be saved. In the rare case that a
genuine Christian is expelled from a local church because of a temporary but
intolerable pattern of sin, such a person has not been expelled from the
universal church.
However
most who are expelled are false converts. And false converts, whether they
are recognized and expelled from the membership of a local church or not, were never
members of the universal church.
Local
church membership must be granted by other Christians.
Local
church membership is not automatically bestowed on the new believer by the Holy
Spirit at conversion. It can even be refused by a local congregation when they
are not convinced that genuine conversion has occurred.
Unlike
membership in the universal church, local church membership can be
renounced through the authoritative disciplinary action of the same local
church that granted it.
So there are great differences between
membership in the universal church (which entails salvation) and membership in
a local church. It should be no surprise, then, to find that there are
significant differences in the entrance requirements as well.
The sovereign work of the Holy Spirit
(i.e., regeneration—spiritual baptism) is the only entrance requirement
into the universal church. But according to the clear commands and consistent
precedent of the New Testament, a credible verbal profession of faith in Christ
immediately followed by immersion in water is the entrance requirement for
those who wish to become members of a local church.
Just to be clear, believer’s baptism is a "door" that it is only
necessary to enter once. After that, if the first immersion was biblically
valid, when a Christian moves to a different local church, the credible
testimony of his immersion is sufficient. That doesn’t mean a believer who want
to confirm their vows to the Groom CAN’T get baptized again (like a couple
renewing their vows). It simply means it’s not REQUIRED.
Thus what must be determined is not whether or not baptism is required for
salvation. Salvation and church membership are two separate issues.
II. Believer’s baptism is required to be considered
obedient.
What must be determined is whether or not baptism is required of an
obedient child of God.
Baptism
is explicitly said to be a requirement for every Christian.
Baptism
is the principle way we confess our faith in Christ publicly. In our view, any
Christian who is unwilling to obey Christ in this initial sense gives little
evidence that he or she will be willing to obey Christ in other ways. Should we
acknowledge a person as a follower of Christ if he or she will not follow
Christ? Certainly not. Christ Himself does not.
Christ’s disciples are commanded to
baptize every new disciple. Baptism is an act of obedience,
not only on the part of the new Christian, but on the part of those who are
commanded to baptize new disciples.
Therefore disciples who will not submit
to the ordinance of baptism are not only disobeying personally, but are also
hindering other Christians from doing their Christian duty.
The
church cannot allow a situation in which partial obedience to Christ’s commands
are permitted – either for those in need of baptism or for those who should be
baptizing. We cannot excuse ourselves from Christ’s mandate to convert, baptize
and disciple because some are recalcitrant. True disciples will understand that
obedience cannot be optional.
To
allow such sin in the case of baptism would be little different than
doing so in the case of church discipline—excluding unrepentant offenders when
they are willing to be excluded, but when they resist, patiently waiting
for them to agree before taking church action. Certainly everyone would
recognize that a person's willingness or unwillingness to be disciplined has no
bearing whatsoever on the church's obligation to obey Christ. The same is true
of baptism. According to Christ's command, we are obligated to baptize every
disciple.
We do not fulfill our obligation by dunking them against their will, of
course. We simply refrain from receiving them as members until they understand
correctly and submit voluntarily to Christ's command.
Our unwillingness to receive unbaptized disciples into membership is not
our way of saying they are not Christians. It is simply our way of saying that
we, as a church, have no obligation to publicly acknowledge them as Christians
by receiving them into membership until they have been baptized.
Baptism was the very first instruction given to new
disciples, and the very first step of obedience taken by new disciples
following conversion. The early church apparently included baptism as a
necessity for being “added” to the congregation.
Baptism was the very first step of obedience these new Christians took
upon being converted. And this leads us to recognize that the very first
instruction the new converts received from other Christians was on the meaning
and necessity of baptism.
Furthermore, this was not merely the way
new believers happened to be instructed on the Day of Pentecost. Peter's
command in Acts 2:38, as well as the immediate baptism of those who believed,
followed perfectly from what Christ commanded His apostles in Matthew 28:
". . . make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them . .
. teaching them to observe all that I
commanded you". Jesus actually prioritized baptism above teaching new
disciples to observe all His other commands. Given these instructions, what
else would one think to do immediately following conversion?
And consider the other examples:
The
Samaritans
The Ethiopian eunuch
Cornelius and others
The Philippian jailer
In each of these cases the very first
priority following conversion was baptism. They were baptized without delay.
Each of these converts were never asked if they wanted to be baptized. Baptism
was simply expected and even commanded.
From the evidence, it is impossible to
conclude that a person who said he believed, but declined to submit to baptism,
would have been received into the number of the initiated. His reluctance to
proclaim Christ publicly through baptism would certainly have made his
profession of faith suspect. Remember, these early believers were faced with
terrible persecution for identifying themselves with Christ so publicly. How
could we, who enjoy freedoms they could only dream of, do less?
After Pentecost, every believer in the
New Testament was a baptized believer. Baptism and belief in Christ are so
commonly spoken of in the same breath in the New Testament that it seems
impossible and unjustified to separate them. In the book of Acts, for example,
whenever believers were gathered together, the unstated but obvious reality is
that they were baptized believers.
As we said before, the same pattern
characterized the conversions throughout the book of Acts. When people became
believers, they immediately became baptized believers. No other category
of "believer" ever presents itself after the Day of Pentecost. The
fact is, any person who could rightly say that he or she was in Christ
spiritually could also say (after a very short time) that he or she had been
under the water physically.
Ignorance
is not an adequate excuse. Some will point toward their baptism as infants and
explain that that is how they were taught. However, just as ignorance or
misinformation does not excuse a person from obeying state and local
ordinances, it does not excuse anyone from obeying Christ in baptism.
(cp King 13:1-24) Obviously, biblically
speaking, ignorance is not bliss!
This
matter is not shikul ha da’at but devar mishnah. A matter that is
shikul ha da’at is a matter that should be determined in the individual's
conscience because it is not directly commanded or forbidden (cp Romans 14).
Its opposite is devar mishnah, clear settled law.
Many well-meaning Christian leaders have
tried to receive unbaptized people into membership while they work out their
personal convictions regarding baptism. They have tried to relegate believer’s
baptism to the status of “shikul ha da’at" without the slightest
exegetical justification for doing so. In this case, the presence of one error
has persuaded many well-meaning Christians to commit another error.
However, the elders of this church believe
and teach that baptism is directly commanded, and therefore cannot
be shikul ha da’at. Once a person has been shown the clearly Scriptural
teaching - they are duty bound to submit.
Error Indulged Leads to Error Entrenched.
Indulging the error of misguided Christians out of patience and love does
not tend to make their error go away and in fact directly contradicts the
Scriptural teaching on the nature of true love.
The fact is errors that are allowed to
be perpetuated within a church out of "love" only tend to become more
deeply rooted. In many cases, the error eventually comes to be seen as the
standard.
If an unbiblical approach to baptism
prevails in this case, results will certainly follow that will actually
increase the problem. Consider the following likely scenarios:
If baptism is not seen as essential for initial
reception into membership, when will it become essential? After a week?
How about a month? Perhaps a year would be more reasonable. But then, why not
two years, or five, or ten? And if you are willing to go that far, you are
willing to say (actually, you have already said) that baptism is not a
requirement at all.
2. Leaders are chosen from among the people.
Therefore such a church will end up making unbaptized elders. After all,
what legitimate reason could such a church give for refusing an otherwise
qualified person's request to be an elder? He was received as a
"member-in-good-standing" in his unbaptized condition. He was told
that he would not be a second-class member in any sense because he was
unbaptized. And Paul says nothing explicitly to either Timothy or Titus about
baptism being a requirement for eldership.
3. Unbaptized elders will reinforce the belief
that baptism is optional. An unbaptized man in a teaching and leadership
position would presumably be permitted to teach the Bible according to his own
convictions, including those related to baptism. After all, his soundness in
doctrine and capability as a teacher were required for him to be made an elder
in the first place. Even if a local church found a legitimate way to prevent
him from openly advocating infant baptism, his status as a respected teacher,
combined with everyone's knowledge of his "baptism" as an infant,
would give tacit affirmation to that practice. We would actually have a
situation in which infant baptism was being affirmed as valid by either open
teaching or by implication!
4. At some point, churches who accept
unbaptized Christians as members will likely begin compromising in other areas
of Christian doctrine and practice.
Partial
obedience is not obedience but convenience. (Illustration of Saul and the
Amalekite order – 1 Samuel 15:13-23)
Conclusion
So in response to the question “is
believer’s baptism required for church membership”, after carefully considering
the matter the elders unanimously believe the answer is “yes”. In this sense
baptism is the "door" into the local church.
It seems plain to us that baptism was a
prerequisite for being accepted into the first gatherings of professing
believers. And if it was for them, it must be for us. As Paul said to the
Thessalonians,