this is the third video on ecclesiology or the doctrine of the church in this video we will explore church ordinances particularly baptism and the lord's supper but before we can address those issues specifically we have some other matters to discuss we begin by asking the question are baptism and the lord's supper sacraments as they are often called in christian theology and in the history of the church or are they better understood as ordinances this has been a debate between baptist and many other faith traditions for years the term sacrament comes from the latin word sacramentum the term originally described the oath of allegiance taken by those who were inducted into roman military service tertullian equated the word with the greek word mysterion that's seen in ephesians 5 32 and was the first to relate sacramentum to baptism roman catholics traditionally have argued that sacraments are both signs and vehicles of grace meaning that they are simultaneously symbolic and actually efficacious when we take the lord's supper wine it is symbolic of jesus's blood but it is also jesus's blood more to be said about that momentarily but according to roman catholics we actually receive god's grace and god's forgiveness through the sacraments that he has instituted in the roman catholic church catholics assign the name sacrament to seven different rites baptism which happens usually when a child is small confirmation when they come to a recognition of the faith and they affirm the creeds and before they have their first lord's supper they must be confirmed the eucharist or the lord's supper acts of penance extreme unction which is something that you have at your deathbed the anointing of oil holy orders which something given only to priests and matrimony or marriage catholics have traditionally stressed that sacraments function both ex operate operato from the work done and ex-operate operantese through the effort of the recipient although more the former than the latter ex opera operato means the work done it means that because jesus has according to roman catholics anyway instituted the roman catholic church and because he's given us the sacraments of baptism and the sacraments of the lord's supper and all the other sacraments that we just went through that the work itself the right and the ritual itself imparts grace now they will also say that there is effort on the part of the recipient that the recipient who receives baptism that that recipient who receives the lord's supper must do some sort of work or effort in order to receive this but the stress is on the work done the sacrament itself lutherans and other magisterial protestants have tended to understand sacraments as being effective when accompanied by and performed in faith they are not effective in and of themselves so for the lord's supper to be effective you have to take it and receive it in faith for baptism to be effective you have to be baptized in faith or the faith of your parents calvin and other reformers kept the term sacrament but not in the sense of roman catholicism for most within the reformed tradition the word sacrament serves as a sign and a seal to deeper realities not that there is anything that actually dispenses grace in baptism or the lord's supper baptists by contrast have typically stressed the term ordinance to describe the rights specifically ordained or given to us by jesus and for baptist most baptist there's only two ordinances there is the lord's supper and baptism though general baptist or those in the free will baptist tradition will often assign foot washing as a third ordinance we will not be covering that in detail in this session augustus h strong a 19th century baptist theologian wrote this no ordinance is a sacrament in the romanest sense of dispensing grace the romanest regards these ordinances as actually conferring grace and producing holiness baptists reject this position we believe that whether we call it an ordinance or whether we call it a sacrament that god has given us grace in the gospel message that baptism is an outward sign of the inward reality but god is not saving us or actually dispensing grace through baptism or the lord's supper so let's talk about baptism virtually all christian traditions throughout history have practiced baptism with the exceptions of groups like the quakers or the friends and different traditions have understood baptism to accomplish different things and i will say that when we're talking about the doctrinal triage about what is essential for a christian to believe in dogma what is essential to be part of a denomination or a tradition in doctrine and things that we can simply agree to disagree about in belief that baptism very likely fits in most paradigms as a matter of doctrine okay it's one of those things where we have a particular view about baptism that makes us who we are as baptists or makes presbyterians who they are or so on and so forth but it is not particularly a belief that you have to have in order to be a christian we're not saying that one has to share our view on baptism in order to be saved but they do have to share our view on baptism in order to be a baptist now we're going to get into some of those issues number one who is the proper recipient of baptism is baptism for small children for newborns is baptism for adults or is baptism for anyone who verbally professes faith in jesus according to roman catholics baptism can be any one of these categories a small child who is an infant can be baptized and baptism actually or washes away the original sin that we have received from adam so what it essentially does is it gives us the grace to believe and later for roman catholics to go through confirmation and there is one baptism for all some roman catholics believe that baptism by immersion is the best means of baptism for adults but normally catholic churches don't have a way to do this when i was pastoring a church in the new orleans area i would frequently get phone calls from roman catholics who wanted to be baptized in our baptistry they wanted me to perform their baptism because they had trouble finding a place where they could be baptized they were convinced that that immersion was the best way to be baptized but they were also insistent that they weren't going to become part of our local church that they were planning to stay catholic and the catholic church will take baptism from any denomination including a baptist denomination i was kind of surprised to discover this i also found that for a lot of young couples who were wanting to get married in a catholic church they had to have a certificate of baptism as a necessary prerequisite for being married in a catholic church so i had a couple of couples who tried to pull the wool over my eyes on a couple of occasions and they came in wanting to do what they call baptism counseling and i tried to take every opportunity i could to walk them through the gospel and to present it to them and hopefully make the case that they would trust christ that they would be baptized and come into membership into the life of a local church particularly our church if they were going to be baptized in our church to be baptized to become part of the church but they again were trying to use this as a way to sort of cross their t's and dots their eyes with the roman catholic church and so we obviously weren't going to baptize them for that reason but roman catholics do believe that baptism has a sacramental effect whereby it actually removes original sin according to lutherans sins can be remitted by baptism and baptism involves faith whether it is conscious or not so uh i forgive me for putting this picture of lutherans up this is not representative of all lutherans obviously but baptism for lutherans can actually give a kind of grace sins are remitted by baptism but usually it's because the faith of the parents are operative or that there is some sort of implicit faith that is being advocated for in the life of the child presbyterian and reformed churches again the proper recipient of baptism is normally a small child or an infant and they understand baptism to be the sign of the covenant in the old testament put simply in the old testament when you were when you were baptized uh the sign of the or not when you were baptized but when you entered into the covenant with israel the sign of the covenant was circumcision in the new testament the sign of the covenant is baptism and they build this case from just a handful of text in scripture including colossians 2 11-12 in him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of christ having been buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of god who raised him from the dead and those in the presbyterian and reformed tradition will often appeal to passages like acts 10 which talk about cornelius and his whole household being baptized the whole household and those sort of household formulas in the book of acts they say include small children small children who had not yet professed conscious faith in christ they see a whole family as entering into the covenant membership of the church instead of individual believers and that is the case that they're going to make even though that's not explicit in the text there is an internal coherence to their thinking a logic that they draw from the text in baptist and baptist-like traditions we advocate something called believer's baptism in other words we say that the proper recipient of baptism is the believer someone who can vocally profess faith in jesus and baptists disagree amongst each other amongst one another about when someone is ready for that in some cases mars i'm sorry capitol hill baptist church in washington dc uh mark devers church people are only baptized at the age of 18 and above they believe that one should have to wait until they are a legal adult to make that decision for themselves there's been other instances in baptist history where people would be baptized at the age of 16 and there certainly baptists do believe that a lot of baptist churches baptize too young that small children don't need to be baptized until they have a fuller and more complete understanding of what it means to be a genuine believer in jesus of course a significant number of baptisms in the southern baptist convention are very likely re-baptism people who were baptized as a small child they felt like they didn't have a full or complete understanding of salvation when they were initially baptized and then later on they were re-baptized so that's why this issue of the proper candidate is often debated is when is the proper age and when is the proper stage for someone to be baptized and there is some room for disagreement on this particular issue as each child or each disciple varies in their maturity and understanding of the gospel what is the proper mode of baptism that is how best do we get wet in baptism there's a couple of different options aspersion or sprinkling that's the common way that you see baptism in some of those traditions that baptize infants it's a sprinkling on the heads of small children there's also a fusion which is a pouring of water we see this in some anabaptist traditions we see this in some traditions like the nazarenes where there's a pouring of water on one's head and then there's immersion and as i formally tile it here duncan the word baptizo in the new testament literally means to immerse and when the king james was translated into english they didn't opt to translate it as a merch for whatever reason so they just made up an english word baptize though baptize literally means to immerse and we have a couple of instances in the scripture jesus actually comes up out of the water when he is baptized um of course the picture of being immersed corresponds very well with being buried with christ and being raised to new life the sort of picture of baptism that we see throughout the new testament but the mode of baptism for baptist is going to be immersion and there might be special exceptions made at some times for people who are on their death bed and are not able to be immersed in water but yet nevertheless want to be baptized in some instances a pastor or church might allow for an effusion or a pouring baptism but that is extremely rare in baptist life another key issue is does baptism save does baptism save and there are sects that argue that like those who are in the restoration or stone campbell tradition typically churches of christ disciples of christ and christian churches as well as oneness pentecostals understand that baptism is a requirement for the forgiveness of sins we are required to be baptized in order to be saved and usually they build that case around a handful of texts acts 2 3 38 being one of the big ones but let me read it to you in its context when the people heard this they were cut to their heart and said to peter and the other apostles brothers what shall we do peter replied 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 so what's peter saying here is he saying that we have to be baptized in order to have the forgiveness of sins do we have to be baptized in order to have forgiveness and to have the reception of the holy spirit the phrase for the remission of sins may mean either on account of the remission of sins or in order for sins to be forgiven there's no linguistic way or no way really to translate this to determine simply what these terms meant but it is helpful i think to compare acts 2 38 with peter's proclamation of the gospel in acts 3 19-20 where peter says repent then and turn to god that your sins may be wiped out that times of refreshing may come from the lord and that he may send the christ who has been appointed for you even jesus so you'll notice there is no explicit mention of baptism in his presentation of the gospel in the very next chapter of acts there are certain similarities between the two passages both emphasize repentance both emphasize the forgiveness of sins or sins being blotted out both instruct them to receive the gift of the holy spirit to experience times of refreshing that come from the lord but acts 3 19 says nothing of baptism a couple of different options that are given to us perhaps the plan of salvation changed between acts 2 38 and 3 19. not likely perhaps peter forgot to include baptism in acts 3. not likely perhaps peter mistakenly added baptism as a requirement for salvation in acts 2 also not likely the best explanation is that baptism is a visible sign to the world that an actual change is taking place in the life of the believer not that baptism actually forgives sins but that we are baptized because we have been forgiven it is an outward sign of the inward reality right now i'm holding in my hand my wedding ring you can't see it but it's there i've got one of those those rubber wedding rings and i like the rubber wedding rings because they don't hurt my finger when i type and i'm not as afraid of losing this one as i am of my gold wedding ring that my wife bought for me when we first got married but here's the deal when i put this wedding ring on my uh wedding ring finger on my ring finger it is an outward sign to everyone who sees it that i am in fact married ladies i am not on the market i have committed my life to my wife and we could go on and talk about all the things that the ring symbolizes it's an endless circle and again usually when i when i give the speech during wedding it's an endless white gold circle or a gold circle which is pure and all and all that jazz marriage is pure i don't know that that's all true of my rubber ring but again when i'm wearing my ring i am proclaiming to the world that i'm married but if i take off my ring i'm still no less married than i was than when i was wearing it and a person who's not married can wear a ring and still not be married baptism does not actually save a person baptism does however declare to the world that a person has trusted in jesus as their lord and savior when i do pre-baptismal counseling with people i sometimes scare them to death because i'll tell them you know you're about to preach your first sermon this sunday and they look at me like say what i don't know anything about the exposition of biblical text well that's not what they say they just look at me like their face goes white it looks cold they look they look unclear as to what's going to happen and and then i say really what you're going to do is you are going to profess your faith by baptism and bring them into the baptistery ask them you know a set of questions you know like have you committed your life to jesus have you trusted him as your lord and savior and do you believe you know that jesus has died for your sins that he's been raised a new life i mean i could go on through a litany of different questions that i could ask them but the bottom line is they say yes the church recognizes it and then i dunk them and when i dunk them and they're raised up i say you preached your first sermon you've declared jesus is lord by your faithfulness and obedience to believer's baptism so again i don't think that baptism saves anybody but i do think baptism is a way of announcing that jesus has saved us it's worth noting that neither the apostle paul nor jesus seemed to place a big deep inordinate amount of importance upon personally baptizing others they didn't seem to make a huge deal about it but there does seem however to be some biblical warrant for understanding baptism as the biblical mode of professing christ as lord and that's why some passages seem to indicate that baptism is required for salvation because faith is required as baptism because faith is required as baptism was the way to profess one's faith so you have to be saved by your faith and the new testament way of professing your faith is through baptism i think it's important to guard against twin extremes we must not on the one hand make baptism into a work that we perform in order to be saved but on the other hand we must not minimize the importance of baptism all right now let's talk about the lord's supper and i just want to say that the lord's supper is something that is so precious and so special to me as a believer in no small part because it was after a lord's supper service that the lord convicted me of my need to follow jesus and i felt like there was something i was missing out on by not being part of the faith community and i wanted to trust jesus i wanted jesus to be my lord i wanted jesus to be my master i wanted jesus to be my savior and and the lord's supper played a vital role in that my early church ministry when i was a young pastor in my early 20s i i spoke in a or pastored a church where um the pastor before me had died pretty pretty rough circumstances but in the five years that he was there he only did the lord's supper one time which is uh terrible actually and um and i remember i was going to do the lord's supper for several people who'd been part of that church who that whole time they had been there they'd never once participated in the lord's supper and there were children there who had never seen the lord's supper and i spent a bit of time prepping them and talking to them about the lord's supper and immediately after we had the lord's supper within weeks of the lord's supper we baptized nine people nine people when they hadn't had a baptism in five years nine people who um professed christ after seeing the lord's supper so the reason i'm saying all this is i just want you to have an indication of how important the lord's supper is in the life of the church it is an important way that we proclaim the gospel visually that we're faithful to jesus in announcing what jesus has done so here's what the bfm 2000 says about the lord's supper being a church ordinance baptism is prerequisite to the privileges of church membership and the lord's supper in other words they're saying that you have to be baptized in order to be a church member you have to be baptized in order to participate in the lord's supper the lord's supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members of the church through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine memorialize the death of the redeemer and anticipate his second coming two other words have been used in church history to talk about the lord's supper communion and the eucharist communion of course talks about the way that we come together as a body of believers and we celebrate communion with god and communion with one another in the supper eucharist comes from the greek verb eucharisto which means i give thanks so it is an expression in many ways of unity in communion and also giving thanks thanking god for what he has done for us in christ and unlike baptism which is an initiatory right that you only do once really you're only supposed to do once a lot of people have done it multiple times the lord's supper is an ongoing rite of the church the roman catholic view is something called transubstantiation and in transubstantiation the wine and the bread of the lord's supper literally become the body and the blood of christ now i have to pause here for a second and say that roman catholic theologians do not mean that the wine turns into the blood of christ at the molecular level they do not mean that the blood of christ um or that the wine begins to taste like the blood of christ or that if someone had taken the supper and you were to lay them down and you were to cut open their esophagus that you would pull out bread that was really just chunks of jesus's flesh the outward appearances of the bread do not change the outward appearances of the wine does do not change but the essence of the thing changes and this comes from thomas aquinas contribution to catholic theology here that there's a kind of outward accident or appearance the taste of the wine the texture of the bread those things don't change but the actual essence of the bread and we're talking in a metaphysical sense the essence of the bread turns into the body or the flesh of jesus and the essence of the wine turns into the blood of christ typically in a roman catholic eucharist service which they hold in every mass every mass there is bread offered and not always wine not always from the cup because in roman catholic thinking the the bread contains the blood the bread contains uh the flesh of jesus contains the the blood of jesus and there is concern particularly among the the laity that the laity would spill the cup and that the blood of jesus would be wasted and also the mass is frequently referred to as the sacrifice that jesus is continually being sacrificed every week during the mass every saturday mass every sunday mass jesus is continuing to be sacrificed for sins course we respond to that particular notion with hebrews 9 28 so christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people once and he will appear a second time not to bear sin but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him so we don't say or advocate that christ has been sacrificed multiple times and also we have significant difficulty with the central claim of transubstantiation that the essence of or the substance of the supper is transformed into christ's body and to christ's flesh and this comes from an overly literal reading that roman catholics have of jesus saying this is my body which is broken for you this is my blood which is poured out for you we find that that's an overly literal reading of those texts then lutherans teach something called consubstantiation and consubstantiation bears certain family resemblances to transubstantiation but lutherans would deny all day long that we are actually eating and drinking the body and blood of christ what they're going to say is that jesus is presence presence is in with and under the host jesus is bodily literally present in the elements but we're not eating jesus so to speak all right and uh lutherans teach following luther a doctrine called the ubiquity of christ's human nature the ubiquity of christ human nature that might be something to remember for a test um but the ubiquity of christ's human nature means that jesus is bodily present everywhere not just spiritually present not just in his divinity but that jesus's body is present in everything and that means that jesus's body is present in the elements of the supper and he's present in the elements of the supper the same way that heat or fire is said to be in a poker or a branding iron when it turns red jesus is literally present in the elements reformed traditions like like calvinist presbyterian traditions and a lot of baptist believe that christ is spiritually present in the lord's supper he's not literally present in the elements but he is present in the ceremony in a special way when we come together as a body of believers we get to experience christ's presence we get to to feel christ's presence we get to remember what christ has done for us and he is in our midst spiritually speaking not in a literal sense in the elements and the lord's supper is a means of grace but not apart from faith we are actually proclaiming the lord's death until he comes that's what paul says in first corinthians 11 we are proclaiming jesus's death in what we do in the lord's supper and then there is zingley's view ulrich wingley's view that the lord's supper is a memorial there is a sense in which the lord is present in in the lord's supper because he never leaves us but the idea is that we memorialize what jesus has done it's primarily a memory of what jesus did and i talked about this in the opening introduction of when doctrine divides the people of god but there was a significant debate between luther and sphingley that was over the issue of the lord's supper and they went back and forth in print a lot i mean luther was advocating for the spiritual or the physical presence of jesus in the elements consubstantiation and sphingley was saying no no no no jesus is is not actually present in the elements we don't we don't read the text where jesus says this is my body literally that's a metaphor we don't read that that i am the way we don't literally understand that to be jesus talking about himself being a road um so so zangli and luther really got into this sort of hermeneutical spat and uh they were called to this meeting of the minds at marburg in 1529 and they just debated and discussed things for three long days and you can read the transcript of of their debates it's actually quite entertaining at least is for me and they were going to try to forge some sort of union they had 15 points of discussion and they agreed on 14 out of those 15 points but on the 15th point the lord's supper they adamantly disagreed with one another and they parted ways so for luther the lord's supper the way you view the lord's supper is essential to faith first finally it was yes important it is something we do out of obedience to jesus but it's not something that actually dispenses grace either so there have been other debates over the lord's supper namely who should be the recipient of the lord's supper should it be given only to believers should it be given to baptize believers or is anyone free to receive it i've already mentioned the baptist faith and message says that it should be only to baptize believers but there was a lifeway survey uh some time ago i think it was in the early 2010s or late 2000s whereby they they they had this study that basically showed that most southern baptist pastors weren't preaching it that way that they were giving the lord's supper to those who weren't baptized or they would at least be okay with giving the lord's supper to those who weren't baptized another point of controversy is how broadly the lord's supper the lord's supper should be administered among christians is it for members only of a local congregation is it for all like-minded christians or is it for all professing christians and in in the state of arkansas where i presently live there is a denomination it was really founded on a position called landmarkism and uh landmarkism was a group of baptists who believe that we could trace our baptist roots all the way back to john the baptist and one of the key doctrinal practices that they have is that they practice what's called closed communion and what they mean by closed communion is that that only members of the same local church can participate in baptism if you are not a member of that church they will ask you to either leave or they will ask you to watch and not participate in the lord's supper and and then there are those who insist that baptism must be among those who are of like faith like a a baptist could take baptism at another baptist church but um but you wouldn't take baptism at a a roman catholic i'm sorry you wouldn't take the lord's supper rather at at a catholic mass or at a lutheran church that has a fundamentally different view of the lord's supper and sometimes this is not called closed communion but it's called close communion and then there are others like the presbyterian theologian kevin van hooser that i spent a lot of time in my uh career sort of uh studying and learning from and van hooser says that we should open the table up to all christians and c.s lewis said something similar that the the supper should be opened for all christians of every tradition and that's a very open form of communion another point of controversy is the question of who should administer the lord's supper should it be administered by any individual believer or by a denomination or by a local church and this bears also bears upon what settings it should be offered in so should para church organizations offer the lord's supper should youth ministers be offering the lord suffer supper when they take their kids off to camp wow not trying to step on any toes here but i've i've experienced all those things and and i personally um of the opinion that the lord's supper should be saved for the whole church and uh i don't know that i have a solid exegetical argument for that position but it is nevertheless one that is that baptists have traditionally practiced i am definitely opposed to the lord's supper being used as a prop in a in a wedding ceremony i do believe that that that i'm sorry i keep on saying baptism i definitely think the lord's supper should not be should not be practiced in a wedding ceremony the lord's supper is something that should be offered by the whole church to the whole church and as part of a function of the church not something like a wedding and then another point of controversy is what elements should be used in the lord's supper must it be wine or may one substitute grape juice the fruit of the vine or some other drink and and by the way uh there's an interesting history there with baptist and methodist and grape juice grape juice welch's grape juice was founded and created as a way of providing a different kind of communion wine for the lord's supper and and so that's one of those issues that that sometimes become a sticking point for some baptist must the bread be unleavened or may any bread product be used and different denominations and even different individual members within differing congregations will arrive at some different conclusions regarding these matters but i want to insist that the essentials should remain the essentials thank you for bearing with me in this discussion even though i mixed up baptism and the lord's supper a couple of times in my discussion i hope that it was meaningful to you and um and i hope that this is a valuable conversation uh for you to have going into your future ministry i i am very convinced that the elements of the lord's supper are so very important in ministry baptism is so very important in ministry and that you're going to need to have counseling opportunities um when you when you have someone profess faith in jesus i personally never do immediate baptisms though i i know why there's probably there's biblical precedent for doing so i just like to ensure that whoever i'm talking to has a clear and sufficient understanding of the gospel and do that before we baptize anyone and when i offer the lord's supper during a service the typical thing that i will say is that this is for baptized believers only and my reason for saying that is number one it fits with the bfm but number two in a predominantly roman catholic culture or in a land like the bible belt you want to ensure that people are taking the lord's supper and they understand what it means and you can't guarantee that simply by insisting that you know the lord's supper is only for believers but at least in baptist settings the hope is that everyone who has been baptized in a baptist church has had an opportunity to be counseled through and had the gospel explained to them there's there is a sense in which they have made their election and their calling sure through through evangelistic counseling anyway uh there's a lot more that i could say about baptism and the lord's supper i'm going to end it here and leave you with your readings i'll also give some additional optional reading text on these subjects if you are interested in them thanks