I’ve struggled with religious legalism all of my life, especially those times when the practice of faith feels like a checklist of things “to do”. For the longest time, baptism was one of those things on a checklist – you’re not really going to heaven, i.e. be saved, unless you’re baptized. Now maybe I picked that up from the Church of Christ church environment I grew up in – I don’t know.

I still sometimes struggle with whether my decision to be baptized at age 22 was checking off “my list” or an emotional response to my mom’s death earlier that year. Or both. Or the Spirit using those events to create an opportunity for my faith to take stronger root and continue the transformation process. I do know that I cried out to God several years earlier in college on a very dark and cold winter night and asked him to take over because I was lost. Should I have been baptized then? Maybe, but I wasn’t in unity with a church community at the time to do that with.

Romans says that if we profess Christ as Lord and have faith in our hearts that he is the first fruits of our eternal resurrection then we will have salvation. I see baptism as a public symbol of that statement of belief and faith, but not the act of salvation itself.

I have always held that a proper declaration of faith can only done by someone aware of their sin, a so-called age of accountability. I believe that children who die before they are able to make this decision are saved nonetheless by God’s love and grace. My wife and I had our two sons baptized (sprinkling) as infants, but more in the sense of dedicating them to God and the church (my wife’s parents, as Lutheran and Catholic, would say otherwise). There is no mystery or magic in baptism – it is act of corporate unity with the universal Church.

I expect that, when they reach the appropriate age, my sons will face their own decisions of publicly professing their belief and faith – if we stay at the Baptist church we’re currently attending, they will be baptized by immersion again as part of that profession.

Ironically, to be members of the church, both my wife and I will need to be baptized again, since they do not recognize sprinkling as a valid form of baptism, infant or adult. That’s a bit of legalism to me, but I understand their position (and yours) and am comfortable with a “redo” to be in unity with the church, much as my parents were baptized again to be in unity with our church in Alaska.

Anyway, I was curious about your comments about baptism. If you don’t mind saying, what’s your current position on it? Or do you have a link to where you and Jim Swindle talked about it before? Personally, I do believe that baptism is something we’ve been told to do for our salvation. I don’t think it’s the only thing, but I do think it’s part of the process. And I also believe that the Bible teaches that immersion is baptism’s correct form.

Look forward to your reply! (and sorry I’m so late to the discussion…)

If you want to know about the true church and about scriptural salvation then read……trulysaved.blogspot.com.

Read this and find out the truth you have been looking for all of your life. Blessings to you and all.

“Community church, non-denominational” is still a good description for HCC too.

Thanks for the link to Standard Publishing, as well as the Milligan book. My curiosity may just get the better of me…

I know you and I have talked baptism before, but I’ll be sure to stop by your site again and look your thoughts up. Also on that topic, my dad also said that there were some in the church who had relationships with a church in Anchorage that practiced triune baptism, but I don’t recall the church or organization they were affiliated with.

Group 2 tends to use publications from Standard Publishing Company, http://www.standardpub.com
Group 2 people tend to be conservative but not separatist.

Group 3 is a mainline denomination. Their schools include Texas Christian University and Drake University. Lyndon Johnson was a member of this group, as was Jim Jones of The People’s Temple infamy.

I grew up in churches of group 3, but on the edge of the group that was more similar to group 2.

I’m not sure whether any of this clarifies anything for you.

There’s a systematic theology from the Restoration movement, written back in the 1800′s. It’s “The Scheme of Redemption” by Robert Milligan, and is still in print.

As for preterism and the restorationists, I’m not sure what to say. I’m more futurist than preterist in eschatology. The restoration movement sprang up at a time when few people were futurists.

As for water baptism, you may or may not have read my odd view on my web site. My view falls somewhere between the restortionists and the Lutherans and the Baptists. I think each of them would think my view is too much like the view of one of the other groups.

Sorry to write such a long essay. It’s wonderful how the Lord works through a variety of people and through a variety of churches, imperfect as we are.