Note: This is adapted from a paper written as part of my studies at the Antioch School. The objective of the assignment was to demonstrate that I had "developed an advanced biblical understanding of the philosophy that is to drive the ministry of the church and the instructions (i.e. “house order”) by which each local church is to abide."

In my last post, I argued that submission to roles within the body, and allowing those roles to be defined by Christ rather than purely pragmatic or social demands, was a crucial element of aligning our churches with the design found in scripture. That our practices needed to be primarily defined in light of the community of faith Christ is building rather than personal interests or cultural norms. Here, we turn our attention to what that looks like in practice. This primarily arises in two categories; first, the specified roles that exist within the church, and second, how those roles interact in key circumstances as part of the life of the church.

The actual roles within the house order in scripture fall into a series of nested dualities that ultimately reflect the relationship between God the Father and God the Son to varying degrees. The Father is the supreme and perfect authority; all things are in subjection to Him, and He carries out His authority in pure love. The Son is the perfect agent of the Father’s will, doing all He does in submission to the Father and joyfully glorifying the Father through His every word and deed. In all of this, the Holy Spirit unites and glorifies, participating in and highlighting the love that exists within the Trinity and pointing to both the Father and the Son in all things.

The relationship that exists within the Trinity is fundamentally one of love, in which the Father loves the Son and the Spirit, the Son loves the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit loves the Father and the Son, and there is no partiality or brokenness in these loving bonds. The three are one, truly one, such that we worship but one God in three persons. No person of the Trinity is lacking in anything, not even honor or power. The Father is not more God than the Spirit or the Son; every person of the Trinity is fully God and, therefore, fully empowered and worthy of all praise. The roles within the Trinity define the interpersonal relationships within divinity, but do not elevate or denigrate any person to any position other than True God.

This is the defining nature of the roles of the church. Every role within the church is engaged in presenting an image of this Trinity relationship, and every interaction among the body of the church is to display the pure love and true bond found among the persons of the Trinity. We must have this understanding in place if we are to carry out these roles correctly; we cannot emulate that which we do not know. We must also recognize the limits of our understanding and of our roles. We cannot perfectly understand God, or at least, if we shall ever perfectly understand Him it will not be on this side of eternity. We cannot perfectly practice the love of the Trinity within our own bodies, as we are not perfect agents of love while yet in these bodies. No roles within the church are perfect images of the divine nature, for a multitude of reasons, but a key one that warrants mention before we continue is that there is no role in the church that has absolute authority the way the Father does. Every leader in the church is also a servant, as Christ noted when He said,

Yet, we are to strive to have our image of the Father and the Son, empowered by the Spirit, grow ever more perfect. The way we live out our roles should be growing in a manner that always looks a little more like the Divine Household than it did before, always makes the love of the Trinity more clear to each other and the watching world. So let us bear this perfect love that we strive to emulate in mind as we consider the images we have been given.

I mentioned that this will be a study of nested dualities, so allow me to explain that before we examine the content of those dualities. First, note that our images are not trinities; there is no agent in our study here that emulates the Holy Spirit, but rather, the dualities discussed are empowered by that same Holy Spirit Himself. He is in all and through all that we do as believers in Christ, He is the One that binds us to Christ and each other, and He is the one who ultimately takes our dualities and uses them to point higher to the Father and the Son. As such, He will not be directly discussed through much of this article, as the rest of it will focus on the roles themselves, but it is vital to understand that nothing that follows this paragraph can exist in any true, holy, and workable form without His hand upon it. He is the vital role that makes all other roles exist, and it is His pleasure to avoid direct praise in favor of pointing beyond Himself to the Father and the Son in all things; so shall it be in this article.

Second, a note about terminology. I do not mean to describe a duality as a pagan may use the term; these are not sets of equal but opposite forces that find their purest expression in appropriate balance. Rather, they are two pictures that, taken together, present a larger picture. There are ways they are equal and ways they are not, but in a healthy church environment, they are never at odds. Fulfilling our roles well means that we are separate only so that we can be seen as united. A unity without parts is not a unity at all, but a single thing; for our images to work in a way that displays unity, then, there must be parts1. In God’s design, these parts are arranged in pairs that nest within and relate to one another.

While not every duality here will get equal weight of discussion in this paper, these are the essential ones for consideration as we move forward. The relationship between God the Father and God the Son is the template, and each will be listed in that order (that is, the member imaging the Father will be listed before the member imaging the Son). The primary dualities are the Son and the Church, the Church and the Home, and the Church and the World. Within the church is the duality of Leaders and Congregation, and within the leadership are the Elders and the Deacons. Within the home are the Family and the Servants, within the family are the Parents and the Children, and within the parents are the Husband and the Wife. Lacking some element here is not utterly devastating; a household without servants, for instance (which is most of them now), simply lacks that role. We are concerned here with how those roles work together to image God, not any debate about whether or not every role needs to exist in every place where it can exist2.

Christ is the head of the church, as the Father is the head of the Trinity. Christ’s relationship to the church images the Father’s relationship to the Son, in that Christ has supreme authority over the church, and carries out this authority in loving relationship. As the Trinity never operates in a manner in which the Father is not in authority, so the church is not designed to ever operate outside of the authority of Christ.

Likewise, the church is designed to operate with leadership in place that has the power to direct its operations and carry out church discipline. This leadership does not have ultimate authority; leaders of the church submit to Christ as Christ submits to the Father, and serves the body as Christ has served the church in His laying down His life for it. This was discussed in more detail elsewhere, but essentially, a church cannot be a church until it has leadership, specifically because it cannot perform its essential duties or maintain its adherence to Christ without trained leaders who point to Christ in their own deeds and in the relationship they have to the rest of the church body. Similarly, the church cannot be a church without a body that submits to the authority of the leadership as the church submits to Christ, since it is the body that carries out the work of the church in the world as the church carries out the work of Christ in the world and Christ carries out the work of the Father in the world.

Within the leadership are elders and deacons, the two offices defined in scripture for the governance of the church. Together, they are the leadership addressed in the paragraph above. But they have distinction between themselves, and within that distinction, the elders set direction as the Father sets direction for the Son (and as the Son sets direction for the church), and the deacons carry out the will of church leadership through service to the body as Christ carries out the will of the Father through His service rendered to the church (and as the church carries out the will of Christ).

Part of the work of church leaders is to direct the regular life of the church. This means that it is church leadership that ultimately calls and leads meetings of the assembled church body. The leadership keeps order at the assembled meetings, points all that happens to Christ, and carries out the essential functions of equipping and establishing the body. The congregation, then, follows the order as established by the leaders and submits to biblical teaching and direction as it is delivered during their times of assembly. Elders are described by Paul as having an ability to teach, because it is part of the fundamental nature of church leadership to pass on the knowledge and will of Christ to the body.

Relationships within the body are intended to showcase the patient love of Christ, as well as the importance of the church’s mission, at all times. As such, Christ gives us direction in Matthew to approach one another about sin and disputes in a manner that gives the offender multiple opportunities to repent and make things right, with increasing support from the church. When this process is not fruitful, however, Paul operates on the understanding that it is the leadership of the church that holds the authority to discipline the wayward member. Gilliland argues that this responsibility is a natural expression of the patient love expressed in the Matthew process when he says, “The Christian who lapses into unchristian behavior requires patience, much teaching, and genuine caring and love. The discipline of the Christian church must be the work of those who have a truly pastoral heart.”3 That is, the heart that qualifies one for church leadership is the same heart needed to practice discipline within the church in a manner that respects the offender and emphasizes the proper mindset of the church toward the offense.

Disruption of these relationships, then, not only alters the practices of the church, but corrupts the image the church is meant to be displaying. If the deacons operate as elders, or the body operates without leadership, or the elders fail to submit to Christ or serve the body, then the essential function of the church—as the manifested glory of God in the world tasked with carrying out the redemptive mission of Christ—falls apart.

The affairs of the Christian home are subject to the affairs of the Christian church. As God the Father sets the course of divine work and God the Son carries that work out in the world, so the church delivers its mission to the home, which then carries out that work. The home displays the same relationship within its neighborhood and direct connections that the church displays within its community. Thus, the structure of one informs the other; as Banks notes that “those who belong to [local church communities] should see one another primarily as members of a common family,” highlighting that the church operates in the same manner as a home, and the home operates in the same manner as the church.4

The home, similarly, has offices, and there are specific elements of church life that happen within the home. The finances of the church, for instance, come from the finances donated through the homes; if the homes within the church do not understand their responsibility to support the work of the church with their resources, and do not graciously and joyfully give of their resources to the God who provides for them, the church will find itself lacking and struggling to afford its basic tasks. This then cycles back into the homes, as the church is called to provide for any among them who are lacking. This is seen in the creation of the office of Deacons, whose first task was to oversee the support of widows, and James 1:27 reminds readers that concern for widows and orphans is a crucial element in the life of the church and the believer. As those homes with resources give those resources to the church, the church has the means to provide those resources to the homes that lack. In this way, the relationship between the church and the home is not only reflective of each other, but cyclical in practice, much like the love that flows eternally between the Father and the Son.

In Ephesians 6, Paul describes various relationships within the home and shows the image of the Father/Son relationship in them. Servants (or slaves in some renderings) submit to the authority of their masters as Christ submits to the Father, not merely in grudging action but in sincerity, while the masters are commanded to treat their servants with a sincere and respectful heart that mirrors the way the Father directs the Son. Children are called to honor their parents, while the parents (namely the fathers) are called to a mindfulness in how they raise up their children without unnecessary provocation.

But these are presented in light of the longer text (Ephesians 5:22-33) before it, which details the relationship of the husband to the wife. Paul explicitly states the image-bearing nature of the marriage relationship repeatedly throughout this section, pointing husbands to the part of Christ and wives to the role of the church. He points to the self-sacrificing love of Christ for the church as a normative expectation for the love of a husband for his wife, framing the submission of the wife as a healthy response of a woman enjoying the grace and support her husband shows her rather than the fearful response of a woman under the command of an abusive or demanding husband. In this way, also, the marriage images the church, where the husband encourages the growth of the wife toward her full potential in faith in the same manner as Christ builds up the church and calls it to growth toward its full potential in faith.

Incidentally, it is the image-bearing nature of the marriage relationship that sorts out a number of questions the church receives about other gender-related issues. By lacking the interplay between a man and a woman, a same-sex marriage is incapable of displaying the same image as a man married to a woman, and therefore the marriage displays a false (or at least incomplete) picture of the relationships it is meant to display. The role of elders within the church in their relationship to deacons, serving the same functional role in its image duality as husbands to wives, is sensibly limited to men, while the role of deacons is not.

Note, however, that this overall structure does dictate when and where the church has authority in the home. The relationship of the church and home is essentially big-picture; the church gives direction to the home, but the relationships within the home dictate how that direction is actually carried out. The elders do not have authority to replace the role of parents in the lives of children, but do have a requirement to hold the parents accountable to whether or not their parenting actually serves the greater mission of the church. The church cannot tell the wife whether or not she’s allowed to work out of the home, as this is a matter that falls within the means of the home governing itself; but must ask stern questions of the husband if the wife isn’t growing in her walk with Christ, as this would suggest a breakdown in his role to support her growth as Christ supports the growth of the church. Ultimately, each relationship being described falls under the broad direction of the relationship in which it is nested, but retains some autonomy in its actual practice. Which sets us up to discuss the final category of relationship relevant to our topic.

If Christ has conquered the forces of this world and begun to establish His rule, and the church is His agent in the world the way Christ is the Father’s agent, then that implies a relationship between the church and the world that grants the church a certain amount of authority. However, since the world is not yet fully under the rule of Christ, it cannot be expected to operate as though it is. Note that the world does not have instructions in scripture regarding the church that mirror the instructions wives have regarding husbands or that the church body has regarding its leadership. This is at least a little bit practical; a world in rebellion against God is not going to submit to the commands of scripture simply because those commands come from God. So what does that mean for how we approach the relationship between the church and the world?

First, note that the church is called to be above reproach from the world; 1 Peter 3 and Romans 13, for instance, urge that the behavior of the church toward the world be pure and unblemished by evil, with the intention that the world sees the goodness of God and responds in faith. Compare this with the call of elders to be above reproach in 1 Timothy and the role of husbands as faithfully and lovingly guiding their wives to greater knowledge of and faith in Christ. In this way, the church leads the world toward God, even if only by example.

Second, our showing loving guidance toward the world is self-sacrificial, as Christ’s love for the church is. We are called repeatedly to lay down our rights or lives, if needed, in service to pointing the world around us to Christ. We are to rejoice in trials, accept any trouble brought to us for doing good (while striving to have no trouble brought to us for doing evil, that is, avoiding such trouble by avoiding doing evil), and recognize the authority of the world so far as it exists.

This last part is essential; there are areas where earthly authorities really do have authority, and we as the church show our submission to God through our submission in these areas. Where the laws of man call for taxes, or honor, or participation in civil engagement, to the degree that those things do not compromise the mission of the church, we are to render what is being demanded. Homes, essentially, have dual citizenship. They are subject to the church, and they are subject to earthly authority. Where these things clash, a Christian home must submit primarily to the church; where they do not, a Christian home must be faithful to both.

Every relationship within the church, then, is always engaging with the world. And in its engagements with the world, each must seek to point to Christ in all things, to glorify Him in their dealings with each other and the world, and to practice their relationships as images of the patient love that exists between the Father and the Son. By recognizing how each relationship in the life of a Christian reflects the other relationships, and looking at each as images of the divine love within the Trinity, we can more readily understand the nature of our roles and how to faithfully live them out.

1 Not that God has parts, but He does have persons. These are not separate in the way that we as individuals are separate, but they are distinct in a way that allows them to have unity in relationship. We are, in all respects, imperfect images; this is merely one way in which our lacking points to His fullness.

2 Some roles are more necessary than others, but this is not a matter for this paper.

3 Gilliland, Dean S. “Growth & Care of the Community: Discipline and Finance.” From Pauline Theology & Mission Practice, 237–246. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1983. 243.

4 Banks, Robert. “The Community as a Family.” From Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Historical Setting, 52–61. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980. 54.

We cannot adequately define a biblical understanding of the philosophy that is to drive the ministry of the church without first untangling ourselves from the model we have inherited. We often take for granted that the elements of our church gatherings as we've always known them are innate to the nature of church--that these elements exist by virtue of it being a 'church,' and not as a conscious choice on our part or the part of our predecessors. We see this in practice across many spheres of Christian experience; it is the foundational assumption that drives missionaries to establish churches that look just like their home churches even when that model doesn't connect with the local culture, that caused so many in the United States to declare that the government was forbidding church when it was explicitly only forbidding a specific manner of gathering in crowds, that causes people to push back and ultimately malign pastors who attempt to update mundane practices or habits of their church with an eye toward greater gospel faithfulness and public witness. Church-as-we-know-it easily becomes enshrined in our minds as church-as-Christ-intended it, even if the thing we're fighting to maintain was only added to the life of the local church one generation earlier.

It is important to think critically about the things we've come to see as defining elements of the church, asking whether these elements actually arise from a Biblical model of the church structure and, if not, asking where they originate. Being extrabiblical does not mean that an element is wrong, simply that it is cultural; cultural elements have their place in the life of the church, it simply isn't a foundational place. As such, we have to identify the major areas in which we have allowed extrabiblical sources to define the ministry of the church, how those sources have drawn us away from a biblical understanding, how to correct that shift, and where possible, how to use those sources in service to the biblical philosophy rather than allowing them to serve as an alternative to it. In our class time, we identified three major extrabiblical philosophies that have replaced that philosophy described by Paul and the other apostles in whole or in part. These were individualism, egalitarianism, and theocratic systems.

A theocracy is, by definition, a term describing a government structure, and therefore not an intuitive element to discuss in a paper like this. However, I am convinced that the theocratic model has done widespread damage to the structure of the modern church, and that we cannot realign with the biblical model of ministry without addressing that damage.

Theocratic systems are those where the seat of government is tied to, and presumably defined by, a religious order. I say ‘presumably’ because I believe an honest review of history would show that the civil system has, in every instance, done some degree of redefining the religious system as part of the act of integrating it. It is this alteration and integration that has crept into our churches as a model of ministry alien to the teachings of scripture. For Christianity, this process began with Constantine and has carried on through the political weight of the Vatican, state churches such as Russian Orthodoxy and the Church of England, and attempted sanctification of secular bodies such as the workings of the Religious Right.

In every instance, the church has adapted itself to the workings of the civil structures it is attempting to command. These structures rely on bureaucratic systems, so the church adopts bureaucratic systems. These structures exist to justify the will of the government as a civil ordinance, so the church begins aligning itself to justify the will of the government as a divine ordinance. With these and other similar changes, the church structure shifts, and over time, we have come to expect that this is the normative, traditional structure for a church to have. To the point where, when I was at a previous Baptist college, I was taught a six-page list of church committees as though they were, every one, a necessary element to any true Christian church!

As we discussed in class, it may not be necessary to actually dismantle every element of the church that has arisen through this process. Some have proven helpful in certain places and times, and some have become so ingrained into our culture that we would sacrifice ability to connect with the culture around us if we abandoned it altogether. But aligning with the biblical model of ministry does require that we are willing to dismantle every theocratic element that has taken root in our church structures. That is, every element of our church structure, even (perhaps especially) those we have taken for granted as inherent to the nature of the church itself, must be open to examination and subject to removal if it is found lacking.

The standard by which these structures are to be examined is that which has arisen through the process of this paper. Every element of our church structure, every line in the liturgy, every node on the organizational chart, every title, every piece of lingo, every expectation and requirement, every single aspect of our idea of the church must be held to a standard that looks to God. We must be willing to ask if this piece is ordained by God, whether it serves or detracts from His mission, whether it helps or hinders our growth in Him, whether it glorifies Him or ourselves, whether it is inherent to the roles God has ordained or attempts to redefine the roles to serve our ends, whether it maintains the unity of the church community and the family structures, and whether it is something that is actually necessary or something to which we have grown accustomed. The biblical model of ministry, then, is one in which we operate in service to God, for His glory, aimed at His mission, serving in the roles He has defined as He has defined them, without corruption from alternative goals.

Ultimately, all of these questions come down to one core: is this element of our ministry being done in service to God by His ordinance, or in service to anything else and/or by any other standard? In order to operate within the biblical model of ministry, we must be willing to take anything—no matter how important to us—that falls into the latter category, redeem what can be redeemed, and throw out whatever cannot.

The reason my blog is called "The Worst Baptist" is because of the reception I have had in many Baptist spaces to some of my views, mostly on matters of application. I disagree broadly with Evangelical trends concerning political matters, I'm still a bit more Charismatic than many Baptists who don't have a background in Pentecostalism (and some that do), and I have an anti-authority streak you could land a plane on. These, and other (often related) matters, put me at odds with my Baptist brethren, and have raised suspicions about my true affiliations more than once. So the name of the blog is kind of a joking acknowledgement of that. I don't actually believe I'm the worst Baptist, I am simply comfortable knowing that there are those who would view me as certainly among the worst of the Baptists.

But the fact remains that, regardless of how good or bad I am at being a Baptist, I am a Baptist. And part of the reason I ended up among the Baptists in the first place is that I affirm the Baptist view of baptism. Which doesn't take very long to say, certainly not long enough for its own blog post. But I was asked a little while back by a Lutheran friend to explain the Baptist view of baptism, so I'm going to take this opportunity to do so.

The English word baptize is just a transliteration of the Greek word βαπτιζω (baptizo), which means to immerse and wash. It is only used in the New Testament to signify a ritual immersion, so it may have taken on a certain connotation in the culture of first century Palestine, but even under these conditions the actual meaning of the word always found its root in immersion. The early church took an existing practice of ceremonial immersion and saw in it a picture of redemption and applied it as such. As far as we are concerned, the Baptist practice of baptism by immersion is little more than a return to this practice.

That is not to say there isn't some degree of wiggle room here. Technically speaking, one of the possible meanings for βαπτιζω is washing, and washing doesn't technically always include immersion. Nor does every form of Jewish ceremonial washing include immersion, at least not of the whole person; it is possible that the practice being described in scripture was more like non-immersive methods of ceremonial washing. However, given that it was not the only word used for washing, and that it is primarily used for immersion and has clear ties to βαπτω (bapto), which means to dip, I maintain the historical Baptist position that the scriptures which use the term are most easily read as involving immersion.

As will be discussed later, the Didache (the earliest known non-Bible writing of Christian teaching) also discusses baptism. In this instance, it demands immersion (in running water), and allows for the pouring of water over the head of the baptized only in the instance where absolutely no better method can be performed (1). It is not only the wording of scripture then, but also the practice of the early church, that baptism done properly relied on immersion or the closest one could come to immersion.

The result of this is that I, as a Baptist, not only insist on practicing baptism by immersion, but cannot accept a baptism delivered by another means. Baptist churches generally have a requirement that a person be baptized in order to be accepted as a member of the church; if someone is joining a Baptist church and points to their being sprinkled as a baby, I and the bulk of Baptists hold that they have not met that requirement and must be baptized. This isn't strictly because of mode, however. It also comes back to whether or not what was administered to them was even theirs to receive.

Baptists believe that baptism should be reserved only for those who have made a confession of faith. As I've discussed before, this is related to our belief that the covenant community only includes those who have been redeemed, that is, those who have saving faith in Christ.

​Ultimately, what this comes down to is the nature of the new covenant in Christ. You see, it is generally agreed upon by the various denominations within Christianity that baptism is a sign of entry into the covenant community of Christ (some hold it as more than a sign, but none hold it as not at least a sign; that is, they may hold it as a sign and as something greater, but it is always a sign, and as a sign it is always a sign of entry into the community). Therefore, the question of who gets baptized and who doesn't, and when baptism should be applied, ultimately comes down to the question of who is in the covenant community and when they enter it. Baptism should be applied to a person who is entering the covenant community at the time when they enter; defining one category will inherently define the other. The Baptist (and Baptist-adjacent) view is that the covenant community is composed only of those who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ; there are other views which hold a different view of who belongs to the covenant community, and therefore who receives baptism.

Now, in my last post I argued for a definition for the church that is incompatible with a view that anyone not yet saved is part of the covenant community, but I want to lean a bit more into how that plays out here. Paul did baptize people into bodies that were not yet churches, see for instance the story of Philippi in Acts 16. Here, Lydia and her household are baptized on their reception of the gospel, and the jailer and his household are baptized on conversion, but the body was still not yet a church when Paul left the city. Which would suggest that the local church and the covenant community are not perfect synonyms, and usually the language used is that baptism is part of entry into the church. But I have used the phrasing 'covenant community' on purpose in the paragraph above; that is, we baptize into the body of Christ, of which the local church is an expression. Essentially, you can have a covenant community where there are believers gathered for the advance of the gospel in service to Christ, but it is not a church until it reaches a certain level of establishment. The definition of 'church' is a refinement of the definition of a 'covenant community,' in which all churches are covenant communities but not all covenant communities are churches. But the fact remains that the covenant community must be composed of those who are actually within the covenant.

Astute readers will note that I cited a passage often used to argue for the baptism of infants. The argument essentially goes that, since whole households were baptized, we can reasonably assume children were included, and therefore Paul baptized children. But assumptions cannot guide us here. The fact is that households are not ever guaranteed to have children in them, even in our modern day, and especially then. At the time of writing the Acts accounts, the concept of a household included everyone who participated in the life of the home, which included extended family and servants. Note also that the description of baptizing whole households happens in the context of people who were in certain stations of society. These are people like a rich woman, a jailer who was tasked with significant responsibility, a centurion (encountered by Peter) with a body of servants actively discussed in the text. Their households absolutely did include more than merely themselves and a possible spouse, but there is no reason to believe that this must have included children. There were, in all cases, enough people in the home to use a broad term such as 'household' without the addition of infants. We cannot, therefore, safely assume there were children being baptized in those instances, and the rest of the New Testament offers no support for the baptism of children. Even the statement that "the promise is for you and your children," as is sometimes cited by pedobaptists, is a statement of scope and perpetuity rather than a statement of infants as members of the body, as evidenced by the rest of the statement, "Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself." (Acts 2:38-39, NASB). That is, the promise being tied to baptism here is for those who are brought to Christ, regardless of generation or location.

Where the Bible offers no direct support for the baptism of infants, it does consistently address churches as places where the members are assumed to be in Christ. In every letter of the New Testament, the recipients are held to the standard that they have already accepted the gospel of Christ, and at no point is there discussion of people being part of the church but not saved by Christ, unless it is an urging to remove them from the church. Further, the teachings of the early church did not align with the idea of infant baptism. Consider the way baptism is described in the Didache, where baptism happens "after first explaining all these points," that is, the preceding body of the Didache, and the command to "require the candidate to fast one or two days previously"(2). Both elements cited here operate only within an environment where the one being baptized has some ability to receive and respond to instruction.

All told, then, the Bible contains no stated baptism of infants and has no knowledge of a definition of the church which includes those not yet saved, and the known practices of the early church required a candidate for baptism to be capable of receiving instruction and following that instruction. "But," one may argue, "what about Jesus' command not to forbid the children from coming to Him?" And to this I would state simply that we don't. We point our children to Christ, we encourage them to rely on Him for salvation and rejoice in Him for His goodness, and we baptize children as soon as they make a confession of faith. The only way to read this behavior as keeping children from Christ is to operate on the understanding that baptism itself carries the power to bring people to Christ.

In every instance of baptism in scripture, it occurs after the person has repented. This should, itself, be sufficient evidence that baptism affirms salvation but does not confer it, except for one statement in the Bible that requires a moment of discussion. This is the statement in 1 Peter 3:21 that "baptism now saves you." Let us begin by looking at the statement in context.

This is part of a lengthier section, which continues both before and after the quoted section, in which Peter is urging his readers to proper conduct in service to Christ, and the quoted verses immediately follow the example of Christ suffering for righteousness rather than for doing evil. This statement, then, exists within the argument for Christian living, and was written to support that call. The point here is the example of Christ and how that relates to our lives. So why does Peter state the saving power of baptism?

In short, he doesn't. Note the 'corresponding to that" bit in verse 21; he is making a direct connection with the thing he has just said, which was the aside about Noah. That is, he is saying that baptism saves you in the same way Noah was saved in the days of the flood. But Noah was not saved by the waters, nor by the passing through the waters, but by that which brought him safely through the water. The baptism itself, as Peter describes it, is an appeal to God, and it is the work of Christ bringing us safely through the waters of judgment that saves us. The claim that this supports baptism as itself saving is tenuous; it is, I would argue, more natural to the context to read this statement as a reminder of our salvation which was bought by Christ and displayed in baptism as we consider the call to Christian conduct.

Taken all together, then, I can find no argument for a baptism that does not align with Baptist teaching. Baptism is by immersion, administered to those who have already been saved, as a declaration of that grace rather than a delivery of said grace.