faith for faith

Lately I have been listening to the lectures of Dr. Kim Riddlebarger on Amillennialism, and I can say without qualification that I have thoroughly enjoyed his teachings on eschatology, the Kingdom of God, redemptive history, etc. However, Riddlebarger, being the good Reformed theologian that he is, is convinced from Reformed teaching and tradition that the ordinance of baptism (or sacrament in his understanding) is rightly administered to the infants of parents in the Reformed church. And while I take little issue with his stance on infant baptism (paedobaptism henceforth), other than the fact that I disagree with him, he has at points in his lectures made blanket statements concerning Baptists, expressly that all Baptists by necessity (because they do not practice paedobaptism) do not and cannot see continuity in the Covenants of God and therefore are all to some degree Dispensationalists.

While I must sympathize with Riddlebarger to an extent, because a great majority of Baptists are to some degree Dispensationalists (whether they are so by choice or by ignorance), his blanket statement that Baptists cannot hold to a Covenant view of Redemption is simply false. We who are Reformed Baptists do in fact hold fast to Covenant Theology, for we do believe, as do our Reformed paedobaptist brethren, that the covenantal understanding of Redemptive History is the proper way to understand the Scriptures and God’s plan to the bring the Nations to himself. And I will argue, contrary to Riddlebarger’s assertion, that Reformed Baptists are credobaptists and not paedobaptists precisely because of Covenant Theology.

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A brother asked this question of me, and I think it is an excellent question: “What did Christ mean when he cried out upon his death, ‘My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?’ (Mt. 27:46).” It is an excellent question biblically, and it is also an excellent question because of modern interpretations of it–some of them helpful and true, and others just plain strange. And the question boils down to two interpretive questions: Was Christ making some sort of commentary upon his crucifixion by crying out those words, or was he crying out a reality that was true of the time when he was crying it out, namely that God the Father had in reality forsaken him?

Before we seek to interpret what Christ was meaning when he spoke his famous last line before his death, it is important that we understand the words themselves and how a witness to the crucifixion (either at time of Christ’s crucifixion or through the lens of Scripture) who knew his Bible well would understand the cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

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From Blog and Mablog by Douglas Wilson:

Bethlehem was the opening gambit in the last campaign of a long war. Many centuries after our father Adam had first plunged our race into the insanity of sin, God finally made His opening move. Jesus Christ, born of a woman, born under law, was born to fulfill every one of the numerous promises that God had made during our long night.

At the beginning of our world, scarcely had our race fallen into sin and darkness but our Father God promised that the seed of the woman would have vengeance upon the serpent, promising us a glorious deliverance. And so, for long ages, the faithful looked ahead to that undefined day—figuring, studying, mentally groping, but fundamentally trusting. What form would the dragon slayer take? What form would the serpent worm have in the day when his head was finally to be crushed?

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When we think upon the declaration of Romans 8:28, namely that, “For those who love God, all things work together for good,” its implications are staggering. “All things work together for good, you say? Do you mean all things?”

Well, when we think upon the all things in Romans 8:28, we must understand it in its context. The apostle Paul is speaking there particularly of the suffering of the saints, manifesting itself in tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, danger, nakedness, and death (v. 35). These things seem to come to the saint from external sources, such as from those whom the apostle labels, “Life and death, angels and rulers, things present and things to come, powers, height and depth, and everything else in all of creation (vv. 38, 39). None of these things, the apostle says, “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v. 39).

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Being from North Carolina, it is difficult not to love the sight of snow. It is a sight that is seldom seen, and when it sticks it transforms everything on which it falls. Regardless of where the snow lands, be it on the lawns of the wealthy or on the trash heaps of the landfills, everything is made beautiful. It is, in some ways, a perfect picture of the Gospel. For the Gospel, like the snow on divers landscapes, is not a respecter of social class, race, nationality, or political position, and it falls upon God’s dispersed elect and covers them beautifully with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. God’s people, called forth from every tongue and every tribe, from paupers to kings, who are as muddy and filthy as the natural landscape, find themselves fully blanketed with the whiteness of Jesus Christ and, when the clouds give way to clear skies, reflect with blinding radiance the glory of their Father. They who were once dirty are now clean; they who were once dull are now radiant–not by any merit of their own, but because God came near and gave to them his cleanness and his radiance and thereby made them beautiful.

I have heard it said, “The one thing that we can learn from history is that no one learns from history.” It does not take much to validate this statement. We see it in politics where present governments repeat the mistakes of past governments, we see it in families where children repeat the mistakes of their parents, and we see it in religion where traditionalists misapply the truth behind practices of the past. We all return like dogs to the vomit of our predecessors, and we like them all reject the nourishment of those who by wisdom rejected the viscous cycle of willful obstinacy.

And in the case of religion whereas this traditionalism against truth reared its fleshly head in the Jews who were thus blinded to the Messiah for whom they were looking, and in the Catholic church whose papal decrees and councils blinded it to the Gospel of our Lord, so too now many Baptists have taken up with great zealotry the doctrines of believer’s baptism and baptism by immersion without regard for the foundation upon which it was built. These have perpetuated divisions in God’s church by holding onto the spoils of a battle long past, and these have cherished the spoils and yet have forgotten and even contradicted those who fought the battle that produced the spoils.

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Is it arrogant to claim that Pelagians (definition) misunderstand the Gospel? Yes, it is as arrogant as claiming that Catholics distort the Gospel, that the Jews missed their Messiah, and that Muslims do not serve the God of Abraham. It is arrogant in a day of post-modern tolerance, where truth is relative to the individual and where truth thereby is non-existent.

And how have Pelagians misunderstood the Gospel? They have done it by misunderstanding the bad news of humanity’s condition. For if good news is going to exist, bad news must go before it, and if extremely Good News is going to exist, extremely bad news must go before it.

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The following is an excerpt from J. C. Ryle’s book, Practical Religion:

“Zeal in Christianity is a burning desire to please God, to do His will, and to advance His glory in the world in every possible way. It is a desire, which is not natural to men or women. It is a desire which the Spirit puts in the heart of every believer when they are converted to Christ, however, a desire which some believers feel so much more strongly than others that they alone deserve to be called “zealous” men and women.

This desire is so strong, when it really reigns in a person, that it impels them to make any sacrifice-to go through any trouble-to deny themselves anything-to suffer, to work, to labor, to toil, to spend themselves and be spent, and even to die-if only they can please God and honor Christ.

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I am a blogger, and as such, when I write I do not write as one does when he writes a book–formally and systematically–but my posts are seemingly sporadic and generally reflect certain topics that are raised from day to day from diverse places. Also, when I write, sometimes I address particular audiences, e.g. teachers, leaders, Christians, etc, and attempt to make it clear which audience I am addressing in the post. However, it is most often the case that many different audiences read the posts that I write, and, despite my best efforts, certain audiences that were not intended to be addressed feel as though they were and make conclusions about the post based upon that feeling. And sometimes when I address certain audiences, I use particular terminology that would be familiar to one audience and unfamiliar to another, and oftentimes an audience which is unfamiliar with the jargon specific to another audience is engaged with it, and they react negatively toward it though it may be truth.

In this post I am going to explain some of the jargon that is used by those with theological training and attempt to bridge the gap and clarify some misunderstandings. This language is often used by those who are trained in seminaries, and, to be frank, I detest that it is this way. Personally, I am not in favor of the existence of seminaries, because they divide God’s church into priests and laypersons, and, because of this divide, there flows from it a sort of arrogance and superiority that is not healthy to the church. I believe wholeheartedly that the church, not seminaries, should be the instructor of doctrine, and it has come to the point where many who have come from seminaries do not believe doctrine is beneficial to the church and therefore do not teach it. This however is an entirely false notion, and in this post I am seeking to share the doctrines commonly labeled by theologians as “Calvinism” to all of God’s people for their understanding and edification. I have addressed certain frequently asked questions in this post, and I may add more as they come to mind or are asked of me. I pray that you will find this of benefit and will share it with others who may have similar questions. To God alone be the glory. Amen.

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It is a great pity the yoke that the legalists and self-righteous have often put upon those who are going through times of suffering and hardship. They are precisely like the religious “friends” of Job, who, when God had in his good pleasure smote Job, circled around him like vultures seeking to pick the depths of his heart for some sin so that they could explain his sufferings according to their works-based theology. However, after God was pleased to remove his hand from the head of the righteous Job, he rebuked those fools who sought to explain the ways of God by the philosophies of men, and he, after sufficiently humbling Job, raised up his righteous servant in renewed splendor.

The case with us who are in Christ is no different than that of Job. Because of what Christ has done upon the cross and because of his righteous life, we who are in him are likewise counted righteous. For this reason, when we suffer as God’s children, it is never because we are being judged for some sin that we may have committed or some duty that we may not have fulfilled, for all of our sins, all of our shortcomings, and all of our judgment has been cast upon Christ fully and finally. Therefore when we suffer, it always has a much grander purpose.

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