Baptism: A Church’s Jersey

Sermon Transcript

Today we’re doing something I don’t particularly enjoy doing: A topical sermon. What that means is instead of letting the structure and emphasis of the biblical text shape the structure and emphasis of the sermon, we are going to our text with a question and asking what we can learn from it about the question. In that sense, it is still a biblical sermon, in that the answers I will present to the question are the answers the Bible gives. But it’s not the healthiest way to ingest scripture on a regular basis. The ideal way to eat a dinner of steak, asparagus, and potatoes is for the steak to be the centerpiece, with each item in its own place on your plate. But you could get the same nutrients into your body if you threw them all in a food processor and turned them into little balls of mush. Today’s more like the latter: same nutrients, sub-optimal ingestion. If you’re new with us today, I apologize. What you’re about to hear is not what you’ll normally hear here. We’ll do it one more time next week, and then we’ll get back to meat and potatoes by preaching sequentially through the Gospel according to Luke, in which each sermon’s goal will be to let the structure and emphasis of the text shape the structure and emphasis of the sermon.

 

But today we’re coming to our text with a question: “What does this text teach us about baptism and its relation to church membership?” I’m preaching on that question not because I assume it’s a burning one for many of you, nor because it is the most important question you could ask the Bible. We spend most weeks on more important questions, but this week we’re working on this question because although it is not of first importance, it is of some importance. It is important for our church at this time because our elders are proposing a new confession of faith to our members that defines baptism as only being for believers in Jesus Christ, but it is always of some importance because it was our Lord Jesus himself who told us to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and who then told us to teach those we baptize to observe all he commanded, a teaching we then see carried out in the context of local churches. And as people who love our Lord, we do want to obey him (John 14:21). So then, at some point, the love of Christ compels us to ask questions about baptism and church membership. And we must ask them because even among sincere Christians, there is not uniformity on how to answer them. So where do we turn for answers? We turn to God himself, as he’s spoken to us in his word, and we do the hard work (and as a disclaimer: parts of this sermon probably will feel like hard work), but we do the hard work because Jesus is worth it, and we want to do our best, in dependence on his Spirit, to obey him. So as we bring our question to this text, we will see in it that faith, baptism, and church membership belong together. And we can see that because in this passage all church members are treated as sons of God through faith, all church members are treated as baptized, all church members are treated as unified, and all church members are treated as children of Abraham.

 

All church members are treated as sons of God through faith

 

Before I get into this first point, let me explain the idea that these verses address church members. Thankfully we don’t have to guess who the audience of this book of the Bible was—we are told in verse 2 of the first chapter that the letter, and therefore the verses on which we are focusing today, were addressed to “the churches of Galatia.” We can infer from this that when Paul uses the word church he’s not thinking of a building—you don’t write letters to buildings, you write letters to people. So Paul is revealing in verse 2 that there are multiple groups of people in Galatia that are rightly called churches, and he is writing to the people who comprise those churches. That’s all I mean when I talk about “church members”: The people who comprise those churches, the audience of this letter.

 

Now look at what he says to them in verse 26: In Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith. So he’s saying there that all the people who comprise the churches of Galatia are sons of God, and that the way they became sons of God was the same: Through faith. Let’s start with sons of God; what does that mean? Well in chapter 4 Paul contrasts it with being a slave. Slaves in ancient society were sheltered and fed, but none of their master’s property was theirs. A son is different, though—a son is an heir. So when this text says you are all sons of God, it’s saying you are all heirs of what God has promised to his people, and the fact that you are now sons of God, as verse 26 says, means you have begun to receive that inheritance.

 

So look at verse 6 of chapter 4: And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!” When verse 26 of our passage says you are all sons of God, then, it’s saying you are all heirs of all the blessings God promised his people, and that has begun in you already by the Spirit of God’s son being sent into your hearts, which teaches you to cry out to God as your heavenly Father. And the burden of verse 26 is to say that you all are sons of God, all who comprise these churches are sons of God, all church members therefore are treated as those who have the Spirit of Jesus in their hearts. How can Paul say that, though? I mean, that can’t be true of just any group of humans. If you went down to the Eagles game tonight, you wouldn’t have any right to say to the whole crowd gathered there: You are all sons of God! You all have the Spirit of God’s son in your hearts!

 

So how then can Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, say that to the churches of Galatia? Well, first let’s look at how he tells us they became sons of God: Through faith. “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith.” And what is faith? In the book of Galatians, Paul doesn’t give us a definition. Instead, he gives us an illustration from the life of Abraham. Starting in Galatians 3:5, here’s what he says: “‘Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith—just as Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness?’ Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’” Notice in those verses the close association between hearing and faith: Faith is a response to hearing a message, as Paul says elsewhere that “faith comes from hearing” (Rom 10:17). And the example of faith is Abraham, who the scripture says believed God when he heard the message of the gospel. So what is faith, according to the example of Abraham that Paul cites? Faith is believing the gospel.

 

So how does someone become a son of God? Through faith. And what is faith? Faith is believing the gospel. How do you become a son of God? By believing the gospel. I’m going to get into a lot of finer points in this sermon than a typical sermon, but especially if you are here today and you are not yet a believer in Jesus, don’t miss the forest for the trees. You don’t become a son of God through baptism, or even through a correct doctrine of baptism. You don’t become a son of God through church membership, or even thinking rightly about church membership—you become a son of God by believing the gospel. The gospel is the good news that though according to the standard of God’s law, we all stand condemned as sinners, God the Father has sent God the Son to take on human flesh, perfectly obey God’s law, bear the curse of the law for our disobedience on the cross, and then receive the blessing of the law for his obedience by rising from the dead to eternal life, so that whoever believes in him would then receive all the blessings God promised to his people in him: Forgiveness of sins, adoption as sons, the indwelling Holy Spirit, eternal life. If you believe that message as you hear it today, God will adopt you as his son, and send the Spirit of his son into your heart, such that instead of simply knowing about God, you will come to know God as your heavenly Father.

 

Now we can answer the question of how Paul could say to all the people of all the churches of Galatia that they are all sons of God through faith: Because he assumed that the people who comprised the churches of Galatia were people who had personally believed the gospel. That’s why you can’t say that at an Eagles game: You don’t have to profess faith in Christ to be admitted to the Eagles game. You don’t even have to profess faith in Christ to be admitted to a church gathering. In 1 Cor 14:24 Paul speaks of an unbeliever or outsider attending a church gathering as though it was a normal thing. We also read in Acts 5:11-13 of a distinction between “the church” and “those who hear”—it explicitly says there were some who listened to the teaching of the apostles, but “did not join them.” We have historical data from the ancient church after the time of scripture that at the gatherings of the church there was “the church” and there were “the hearers” or the catechumens, those who were not yet recognized as members of the church, but who were present and listening to the teaching of the church. You may have noticed that when you came in today, our greeters didn’t ask you to profess faith to be admitted. There are the members of this church present, there may be members of other churches present who are just visiting for today, and then there are other “hearers” who may or may not yet believe the gospel, but who aren’t members of any church, and whichever of those you are, we are glad to have you with us.

 

But it is important to maintain a distinction between “the church” and “the hearers” or something like that if we are to speak the way the Bible speaks. If a church was just everyone who attended a service, Paul couldn’t say what he says in verse 26: You are all sons of God through faith, since clearly both in his day, throughout church history, and in ours, some attend services who do not believe. But he clearly did say it some group of people, and for us to be able to say it to some group of people, we also must be able to say, “These people are the church; these are not” and the word we use for those who comprise the church is church member. Church membership is not the gospel, but church membership helps preserve the gospel when we only admit those into membership who give a credible profession of faith in the gospel. Then and only then can we speak to “the church” and say “you are all sons of God, through faith,” as verse 26 does.

 

Here’s the catch, though: We don’t ultimately know who is truly a believer, and who is not. We don’t ultimately know who has the Spirit of Christ in their hearts, because we can’t see the heart. So again, the question comes: How could these members of the churches of Galatia become members of their churches, and how could Paul then treat them as sons of God through faith? Verse 27 helps us answer that question, because in it we see that all church members are treated as baptized.

 

All church members are treated as baptized

 

Verse 27 says, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” The verse begins with the word “for,” which means that it is grounding what came before it in verse 26. In other words, how can Paul say the members of the churches of Galatia are all sons of God through faith? Because, he says, as many of them as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Baptism is the visible act that he and they can see, and what he assumes agreement on in verse 27 is that as many as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Remember that verse 26 said in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith. The idea there is that when you believe the gospel, you receive Jesus Christ, and since he is the true and ultimate Son of God, you become a son of God through union with him. So we get this language here of “putting on Christ,” language that describes our union with Christ.

 

Now, verse 27 doesn’t say that you put on Christ through baptism; it just says everyone who was baptized has put on Christ. Remember what verse 26 clearly stated: We are sons of God through faith, and so also we technically put on Christ through faith, not through baptism. Baptism, though, is the visible sign, instituted by Jesus himself, of putting on Christ. The visible picture is of one going into the water clothed with their sins, which are then washed away by the water, and then rising from the water soaking wet, clothed with Jesus Christ. All those who are baptized are seen as having put on Christ, all those who have put on Christ are seen as being sons of God through faith, and all those who are seen as being sons of God through faith are said to have the Spirit of Christ sent into their hearts. The group of the church members, the sons of God through faith, the people who have the Spirit of the Son in their hearts, and the baptized, are all treated as one group. There is no sense that some in the churches believe, but haven’t been baptized, nor is there any sense that some in the churches have been baptized, but don’t yet believe.

 

I mentioned earlier that our elders are proposing a new confession of faith to our members that defines baptism as being only for believers in Jesus Christ, as opposed to also being for infants. So let’s compare that view, which we’ll just call the Baptist view, with two other views prominent in the history of Christianity: Baptismal regeneration, which is held by Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, the Church of Christ, and some Anglicans, and another view that I’ll just call the Presbyterian view, held obviously by Presbyterian, but also by Dutch Reformed, churches. What all these major traditions hold in common is viewing baptism as prerequisite to church membership, and viewing all those they baptize as members of their churches. So they all agree that the community of the church members and the community of the baptized are the same community, as we’ve seen in these verses. But they disagree over how baptism, faith, and church membership are related.

 

Baptismal regeneration, as the name implies, teaches that baptism itself regenerates. It explains, then, how Paul can treat all the members of the churches of Galatia as baptized, having put on Christ, and as being sons of God: You put on Christ through baptism, they say. You become a son of God through baptism, they say. But do you see the problem now? Verse 26 specifically says you become a son of God through faith, and we saw that the faith in view there is not a faith that is somehow produced in us through baptism or a faith that is reducible to baptism, but a faith that comes from hearing, a faith that believes the gospel, like Abraham, who believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. So much for baptismal regeneration.

 

What about the Presbyterian view, though? Presbyterians hold that baptism does not regenerate, but they still hold that it ought to be administered to the infant children of believers. So they affirm what verse 26 clearly says: You become a son of God through faith, and faith comes by hearing the word and believing it, something infants obviously can’t profess. But they still baptize their infants, and thus introduce a division into the church community that verses 26 and 27 of our passage prohibit: Where we’ve seen that this passage treats the community of the sons of God through faith and the community of the baptized as the same community, Presbyterianism reconceives of the church as being made up of those who are baptized, only some of which are sons of God through faith, because they baptize their infants, they don’t presume them to be regenerate, and therefore they still tell them that they must believe in order to become a son of God. So in their churches all are baptized, but only some of those so baptized are treated as sons of God through faith. Do we get any sense in this passage that some of those who comprise the churches of Galatia still needed to become sons of God through faith? No; verse 26 is clear: You are all sons of God through faith. So much for Presbyterianism.

 

And that leaves the Baptist position, that only those who profess faith are getting baptized, that they became sons of God through faith, and only those who profess faith and get baptized are viewed as members of the church. Paul can say that as many of you as were baptized have put on Christ in verse 27 not because baptism itself puts Christ on you, but because he assumes that faith is active in the one being baptized, and he can say you are all sons of God through faith in verse 26 because it is through faith in Christ that we are united to Christ, and so become the adopted sons of God in him. Of course Paul, Presbyterians, and Baptists are all aware that some who profess faith later prove to have never been truly converted. Paul even warns in chapter 5 that if any of the Galatians accept the false teaching that was infiltrating their churches, they will be severed from Christ (Gal 5:2-4). Remember that we cannot see the heart. So taking all that scripture says together, we cannot say that every individual church member is definitely a son of God through faith, definitely has the Spirit of Christ in their hearts, and definitely has put on Christ, but we can say that every church member is treated as a son of God through faith, as someone who has the Spirit of Christ in their heart, as someone who has been baptized, and as someone who has put on Christ. What warrant do we have, then, to treat an infant that way by baptizing them, when the infant is not professing faith in Christ?

 

How, then, should we think of an infant baptism? We should think of it as no baptism at all. What makes baptism baptism, after all? If you cross the street and say that counts as baptism because in your mind that’s what you meant, we’d probably all recognize that you don’t have the authority to decide that’s baptism. Jesus commissioned his church to baptize in Matthew 28, so Jesus gets to define what baptism is. The word itself meant to immerse something in water, so Christians have almost universally recognized that the use of water is essential to the ordinance of baptism. Every year I jump into an ocean or a creek—do I get baptized every time? No—Jesus specifically said that we baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. So the one performing the baptism must also be intending to use the water to administer baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and ordinarily would indicate that by saying so out loud. But then the key question in the debate between paedobaptists, those who hold infant baptism to be valid, and credobaptists, those who hold it is only administered to professing believers, is whether a professing believer is essential to baptism, and these verses, along with many others suggests that it is, because again, if faith were not active in baptism, how could Paul say that as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ? When administered to an infant, the water no longer signifies what the Bible says it does signify: That the person baptized has actually put on Christ. An infant baptism should sound to us as nonsensical to us as an infant wedding: An officiant can dress two infants up and pronounce them husband and wife, but no wedding has occurred in God’s sight, and if the infants grow up and choose to get married to different people, we would not tell them they are getting “re-married”; rather, they’d be getting married for the first time.

 

So if you are here today, you are a son of God through faith, and you came here thinking you were baptized as an infant, you should not get re-baptized. Instead, you should recognize that your infant baptism wasn’t actually the baptism Jesus instituted, and get baptized for the first time. And in order to do that, you don’t have to say anything dishonoring to your parents. My parents had me sprinkled as an infant and I trust that they had good motives for doing so; I thank God for my parents. Your parents may be the godliest people you know; remember that we are sons of God through faith, not through a correct doctrine of baptism, and there are plenty of sons of God through faith who think they should baptize their infants who are godlier, more mature Christians than I am. You can believe all that, and still obey God over men by getting baptized while professing faith in Jesus Christ.

 

Brothers and sisters in this church, when we are considering someone for membership, what should we look for? Certainly we should look for a credible profession of faith in Christ, but we should also clarify that they have been baptized. And if we hold that infant baptism isn’t baptism, then we shouldn’t receive someone into membership who thinks they were baptized as an infant unless they get baptized. If we were to bring into our membership those who have not been baptized, we’d be introducing a different inconsistency into this passage than Presbyterians: We’d be saying there are members of our church who aren’t baptized, where in verse 27 Paul clearly assumes that everyone to whom he’s writing, the members of the churches of Galatia, have been baptized. All church members are treated as sons of God through faith and all church members are treated as baptized. Therefore, if we want to be consistent with scripture, which I really believe we do all want to do, we should only accept into membership those who credibly profess faith and have been baptized upon that profession of faith.

 

I get that that could create some uncomfortable situations. It means we may have to say no to membership in the future for someone we love, and even someone we think is a son of God through faith, someone we’d love to have in our church, if they won’t get baptized. To level with you, I can honestly say that I really don’t like that thought either. But think of it like this: Imagine the Eagles wanted to sign a Cowboys player, like say when Micah Parsons was wanting out of Dallas this past offseason. He’s a great player, we really like him, he’s even from Pennsylvania, he’s friends with Saquon Barkley, and he’d really help the team. Micah says he wants to come, we’re all good on the contract, but he does ask for an exception. He really likes his Cowboys jersey, and so he’s wondering if he can join the Eagles and play for the Eagles, but keep wearing his Cowboys jersey on gameday. He even adds that in his mind, it really is an Eagles jersey, but his parents are huge Cowboys fans, this is how they raised him, and he’d feel like he was dishonoring them by wearing an Eagles jersey. Should the Eagles still bring Micah on to the team? No. They’d have to say, “Micah, we really want you, and this is nothing personal to you, but if you want to be on the team, you have to put on the jersey.” That’s all we’re saying as a church: We really want you, you are welcome here, but this is Jesus’ church, not ours, and if you want to be on his team, you have to put on the team jersey he instituted: Baptism, the visible sign of putting on Christ.

 

And as baptism is a sign of putting on Christ, so also baptism is a sign of belonging to his people. We’ll see this next as we see that all church members are treated as unified.

 

All church members are treated as unified

 

So verse 28 reads that there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. A parallel passage to this helps us understand it. In 1 Corinthians 12:13 we read, “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” Note there how baptism is into a body made up of Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, and, our passage adds, male and female. That body has an invisible aspect, what we call the invisible church, since the Bible identifies the church as Jesus’ body (Eph 1:22-23). It is made up of all those who, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, male or female, are sons of God through faith. Baptism, then, can’t be into that body; you enter that body through faith. So what body is it into? The church in its visible aspect, which only exists in visible churches, such as the churches of Galatia.

 

Though they were all one in Christ, they were not all called one church, but the churches of Galatia, because their invisible unity became visible in visible churches made up of Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female. Once again, we can see that faith, baptism, and church membership belong together, and that is why we would not ordinarily baptize someone in this church who we were not also receiving into the membership of this church. In fact, the way we ordinarily do it is we baptize people on the same Sunday we are publicly receiving new members, and they come up out of the water, not just as a new individual, but welcomed into a new family.

 

Christians in 2025 Philadelphia often wonder where formal church membership is in the Bible—after all, we don’t see membership classes, questionnaires, or interviews like we have in our church. But we can see the essence of church membership pretty clearly for reasons I’ve already outlined today: There had to be a distinction between who is “the church” and who are the hearers, the visitors, those who are welcome in the gatherings, but aren’t yet treated as sons of God through faith. Ok, fair enough, but then what marks someone’s transition from “hearer” to “member” in the Bible, when we don’t see the class, the questionnaire, and the interview? You might say faith, but faith is something you do with your heart (Rom 10:10), not something we can see, and so we can’t start treating you differently by your faith alone. In the Bible, then, what marks the visible transition from “hearer” to “church”? The visible sign of baptism, in which you visibly profess faith. In fact, the ancient church even had a separate section of church buildings called the narthex, in which the hearers would sit before being admitted to membership, and do you know what was in the narthex? A baptismal font. As Israel crossed the Red Sea and came out the other side a community, a people, separated from the Egyptians who drowned in that sea, so Christians come out of the waters of baptism a church, separated from the world. To paraphrase Bobby Jamieson, baptism binds the one to the many.

 

Now again, for us that could mean some uncomfortable conversations and decisions in the future. It could mean we say no to baptizing someone who we’d really like to baptize, who really seems to be a son of God through faith, but who for whatever reason, isn’t ready to join our church. This would be like the Cowboys player telling us that he doesn’t want to sign the contract or join the team, but he wants the Eagles to still give him a jersey. Maybe the Eagles would do that; you can go buy a customizable jersey online, stick your own name on it, and choose your number, but we all realize that the meaning of the jersey is very different in that case from what it means when the Eagles give that jersey to a player they’ve signed and added to the roster. The Eagles may be free to change the meaning of their jerseys, but brothers and sisters, we are not free to change the meaning of baptism. Jesus instituted it, he is our Lord, and he instituted it in such a way that it doesn’t just signify someone’s individual union to him, but someone’s incorporation into a body that is made up of Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female. If someone isn’t joining that body in its visible form, we should not give them the visible sign of baptism.

 

That baptism brings the one baptized into the membership of a church is, once again, a point on which all major branches of Christian tradition have historically agreed, but I understand that it may not be obvious to you. Ancient cultures tended to view identity as something formed in you by your community, whereas modern cultures, like Philadelphia’s majority culture, tend to view identity as something you impose on your community. So we could see infant baptism at its worst as a kind of hyper-ancient approach to Christian identity formation: We baptize the infant and we tell them they’re a Christian, regardless of their personal faith. We’ve already seen the Bible, though an ancient book, doesn’t do that. Biblical Christianity is a chosen religion. You become a son of God through faith, your faith, not someone else’s. Historian Larry Hurtado has pointed out how this was one of the revolutionary features of biblical Christianity in the first few centuries after Christ, not just of Baptist Christianity in the 17^th century: It was voluntary, rather than inherited.

 

But if infant baptism at its worst is a kind of hyper-ancient approach to Christian identity formation, we could also see believers baptism at its worst as a kind of hyper-modern approach to Christian identity formation: If you feel yourself to be a Christian, baptism is now the way you individually express that, regardless of any attachment to the Christian community that the Bible calls the church, and now in some sense you feel like it is the church’s duty to grant it to you, like a modern person who feels it is society’s duty to affirm their chosen individual identity. “Who are you to deny me the right to express myself?” the thinking goes. That’s not the biblical approach either. Though in the Bible your personal profession of faith is necessary for baptism, it is not sufficient. Part of the beauty of baptism is that it isn’t just you professing your faith; it’s also a church family affirming that profession of faith, welcoming you into its arms, and God, through that church family, assuring you that you are his. The individual’s profession and the church’s affirmation harmonize in a biblical administration of baptism. If you haven’t yet, won’t you join this family, through faith in Christ, and then through baptism? Talk with me after the service or check the baptism or membership box on your Connect Card if you’re interested in that. To those of you here today who are already members of this church, let us live as this family, whether of European or African or Asian or South American descent, whether rich or poor, whether male or female.

 

And finally, let us see that all church members are treated as the children of Abraham.

 

All church members are treated as the children of Abraham

 

This is what we see in verse 29: If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. Why is it such a big deal to be a son of God through faith, to put on Christ, to be one in Christ Jesus? Because if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, and an heir according to God’s promise. Remember the promise to Abraham that we referenced earlier, that in him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Well earlier in chapter 3 Paul points out that promise wasn’t just made to Abraham, but Abraham’s offspring, and he says that’s not offsprings, plural, referring to many, but offspring, one, who is Christ (3:16). Jesus Christ, descended from Abraham according to the flesh, is the true offspring of Abraham, and so all those blessings God promised to Abraham become ours as we are united to Christ by faith. It is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And if you don’t believe the gospel, it doesn’t matter who your parents are—you are not a son of Abraham.

 

But if you believe the gospel, you are Abraham’s offspring, and that means you are an heir of all God’s promised blessings: Forgiveness of sins, justification, adoption as sons, the Holy Spirit to live in you, eternal life, blessings all yours through faith in Christ. What do you ultimately need that isn’t promised to you in Christ? The false teachers in Galatia were telling the Galatians that they needed circumcision and law-keeping to inherit the blessings. False teachers today say you need baptism and membership in the right church and other sacraments to inherit the blessing. The world says you need money, the right diet, therapy, and vacations to inherit all kinds of other blessings than the ones God promised through Abraham’s offspring. Do you really need them? If “all you got” from God was the forgiveness of your sins, justification, adoption as his son, the Holy Spirit sent into your heart, and eternal life, would that be ok? Don’t miss the riches that are yours in Christ. That’s the good stuff: To know God as your Father, to have his Spirit living in you, to be clothed with Christ, and all this is yours through faith alone in Christ alone.

 

We talked a lot about baptism and church membership today, and ideally, by having these conversations now, we won’t have to talk about them as much going forward, at least not as much as we talk about the gospel. But we have to talk about them some, precisely because we treasure the gospel, and a biblical administration of baptism and church membership preserves the gospel. Theologian Jonathan Leeman has said that the gospel is the diamond of Christianity, while things like baptism and church membership are like the setting that holds up the diamond, making clear that the way you become a son of God, the way you receive the blessings God has promised, is through faith in the diamond, not through birth to parents who have faith in the diamond, nor through a sacrament apart from faith in the diamond. So let’s only baptize those who credibly profess faith in Christ, let’s only receive into membership those who publicly profess that faith through baptism, and let’s ordinarily only baptize those we are also welcoming into membership. Faith, baptism, and church membership belong together.