Welcome Alexander Jonathan Foreacre! Jon and Stacy went into the hospital at 6:30 this morning and by 10:30 he was here! It’s so cool to be able to welcome a new image of God into the world! Hopefully his site will be updated soon with new pics.

Update: New pic added in our gallery.

I just finished reading A New Kind of Church by Aubrey Malphurs. Before I go any further, let me preface this by saying that he is my favorite author on issues of pastoral theology and leadership. His passion for the church combined with academic pursuit of excellence make him both an enjoyable read and a challenge to me as a leader. In fact, he is at least partly responsible my desire to pursue a PhD in Organizational Leadership.

Now, with that disclaimer noted, he said something in this book that really bothered me…

Does the gospel in new-model churches fail to move people out of the world and into God’s kingdom? It depends on your definition of the gospel. Some believe that the gospel includes a commitment before salvation to let Jesus control one’s life after salvation. This is the lordship salvation view. Others correctly point out that this view mixes salvation with sanctification and adds works to the gospel, which is a false gospel (Gal. 1:6-10). They argue that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ alone (Eph. 2:8-9), and for a person to be saved, he or she doesn’t have to agree to behave a certain way after salvation… I believe there are some churches out there that fail to challenge their converts to make Christ Lord of their lives after they are saved (lordship isn’t necessary for salvation but is vital to one’s sanctification). –p147-8

Here is the problem. Jesus can not be your Savior if he is not also your Lord. We often tell people that they need to “accept Jesus as their personal Savior” to become a Christian. While not necessarily untrue, it misses the very heart of the gospel. Consider these verses…

“That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,” and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 8:9).

“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 8:13).

“Therefore God exalted him [Jesus] to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9-11).

I could continue. The number one name for God in all the Bible, both the OT and the NT is “Lord.” In fact, it was the name that was so sacred, that Israelites would not pronounce it. And that name gets applied to Jesus as well. When Peter was walking on the water and began to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me” (Matt. 14:30). When Jesus passed by two blind men, they cried out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us” (Matt. 20:30).

Again, Jesus can not be Savior if he is not also Lord. In fact, Jesus’ work to be our Savior was for the purpose of vindicating his claim to be our Lord. Lordship is the fundamental means by which God relates to us as his creatures and his children. Yes, the Lordship of Christ gets worked out in our lives not all at once, but progressively in sanctification as we learn to walk in holiness before God. But he doesn’t become Lord sometime down the road. It is as Lord that He saves us. He is the Sovereign Lord, we are his servants.

We are working on a new pictures page.  If you click on pictures, you will see the different layout.  Be patient while we get it up and running…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liDJHss1bHM 425 350]

Over the course of my seminary experience, but especially the last 6-8 months, I have spent extensive time thinking about the nature of baptism. I don’t like to be one who “majors on the minors,” but I think, relatively speaking, that Christ only instituted two Sacraments for His Church and therefore they are not really that minor and should strive to get them right.

I have particularly been engaged by the question of baptism for two reason. First, pragmatically, I grew up in a credobaptistic (believer’s baptism) church environment and am at a paedobaptistic (infant baptism) seminary, so the differences there have been cause for reflection. But second, and much more importantly, as Leonard Vander Zee suggests in his book Christ, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper: Recovering the Sacraments for Evangelical Worship, baptism is the day of a giving of a new identity. Most people don’t look at it that way, but at its essence, baptism is a setting aside of a person as belonging to the Lord – that baptizee, in being washed in water in the name of the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit, takes on the name into whom he/she is washed. A new identity is given at baptism. That is so cool, that I want to understand fully the incredible nature of what is happening at baptism.

But as I have considered the nature of baptism, three questions linger in my mind…

1. Question 92 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism defines a sacrament as a “holy regulation established by Christ, in which Christ and the benefits of the new covenant are represented, sealed and applied to believers by physical signs. So the question is, how does the “applied to believers” correlate with the idea that “the infant children of church members should be baptized” (Question 95). For someone of the infant baptism persuasion, how do those two work together?
2. Question 94 (“What is baptism”) highlights something interesting as it ends with the phrase, “and that we are engaged to be the Lord’s.” Certainly, their is a future salvation that still awaits. Salvation may be assured at the point of justification, but Paul often speaks of salvation as a past thing, a present thing and a future thing. At the wedding supper of the Lamb, the Church will be presented as his bride. Right now, we are just “engaged to be the Lord’s.” As such, any baptism is anticipatory of that final salvation, whether the baptism of an infant or that following a profession of faith. From that respect, does the timing of the baptism (before or after profession of faith) really matter? It is not the conclusion of something, but the great anticipation of future salvation when we are presented as the Lord’s bride and take his name forever.
3. Why don’t I ever read about the John 3 concept of being “born again” in relation to the question of baptism. Paedobaptists (rightly so) discuss the relationship between circumcision and baptism. Why do credobaptists never argue the “born again” angle and say that just as circumcision was done at the first birth to identify someone as among the covenant people of Israel, baptism is to be done at the second birth (“born again”) to identify someone as a member of the covenant people of God?

Baptism is an incredible gift God has given to his church, not just as a nice word picture, but that in it he is actually at work giving the person a new identity. That is so cool that I pray that God would give me wisdom to honor and esteem baptism as the sign and seal of God’s grace which it is.