Strategic Ministry: Navigating Tradition and Theology

"Paul wanted to have him go on with him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in that region, for they all knew that his father was Greek. And as they went through the cities, they delivered to them the decrees to keep, which were determined by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem." [00:15:43]

"Paul is approaching these areas from the opposite direction that he had visited them on his first journey. But the point I want us to see is this brief episode here of the joining of a new member to the apostolic entourage of a young man, who becomes known later as Paul's beloved child in the faith and who figures prominently in the life and ministry of the apostle Paul." [00:41:24]

"Paul on other matters such as food offered to idols declared these things to be adiaphorous. We learned that new word a couple of weeks ago. That is, that these things were neutral ethically. You could take it or you could leave it. Some people had scruples about it, and they were considered the weaker brothers, and Paul's counsel to the stronger brothers was not to be insensitive to these scruples as unfounded as they were of these people with respect to meat offered to idols." [00:54:16]

"Now for him, circumcising a Jew at this point in redemptive history was not a matter of theological obligation. It was adiaphorous. You can do it or can not do it. As soon as somebody said it has to be done, as was the case with Titus, Paul says, no. But here he makes a decision based, not on theology, not on ethics, but on strategy." [01:06:38]

"Every time we have a new member class or an inquirers class at Saint Andrews, and we go through the philosophy of ministry that we have here in this church, and we open it up for questions, inevitably, one of the first questions is this. Why do you people at Saint Andrews baptize babies? Now why that question comes is easy, because there are lots of folks who worship with us on a regular basis and then who come to these inquirer classes whose background is from some sort of Baptist church, and they've been taught all their lives that it is inappropriate and improper to baptize infants." [01:30:56]

"When we come to the New Testament we see that nowhere is there an explicit command given that the children of believers, the infant children of believers, are to be baptized. It doesn't say that anywhere. Therein the New Testament differs from the Old Testament, because in the Old Testament, the command to include infants in the sign of the covenant, the sign of circumcision, is explicitly set forth." [01:42:12]

"Now, please don't misunderstand me. Baptism and circumcision are not the same thing, but they are closely related. They have certain things in common. One of the things they have in common is this, as I just said. They're both signs of the covenant. In the Old Testament clearly the sign of the old covenant was circumcision. In the new covenant the sign of the new covenant is baptism." [02:02:40]

"Now, what we have in the book of Acts is the record of the conversion of people who are baptized as adults. And every last one of them is a Gentile, coming is a first-generation convert to Christianity, which of course would require that they would make a profession of faith as adults, before they receive the sign of baptism." [02:21:50]

"Finally, we find in the New Testament, the statement that the apostle Paul makes with specific concern and reference the children of believers. Now, remember I said finally, but I have some limits there. I'm a preacher. I don't have to finish with this last point. There may be a couple more. But one other point, then there'll be a couple more of this, but... that Paul writes to the Colossians, you know, and he talks about the situation... or later on to the Corinthians where he talks about the situation of what if you have a mixed marriage, a believer married to an unbeliever." [02:27:07]

"Now, Paul gives the rationale for that. And what is it? Else would their children be unclean. But now, are they holy. Now here Paul is explicit. There's no inference here. This is an explicit statement, an apostolic statement, that the children of even one believer are considered clean and holy in the sight of God. And in the language of the Jew, to be clean means to be what? A full member of the covenant community that God has set apart for himself." [02:34:55]

"Finally, the historical point. Some have argued this, that there is not a single reference, not only in the New Testament explicitly to the baptism of an infant. That's true. But not only that, but they'll argue that there's not a single reference in church history until the middle of the second century. Not one time, not one thing in all the massive volumes of literature that have survived from the second century, and there's tons of literature that have survived from the second century -- not a single statement about a child being baptized until the middle of the second century." [02:46:02]

"I think the reason why history is silent about any controversy was because there wasn't any, and the reason there wasn't any was that you didn't have a church running around teaching that baptism saved people. And in order to correct that abuse in the 16th century, because the Roman Catholic Church was teaching that baptism works ex opera operato, by the working of the works automatically conveying regeneration and justification, and the Protestants found that abhorrent, and so to protect against it, the Anabaptists in Switzerland, said, we're going to stop with this business of baptizing babies because people just like Old Testament Jews began to think that because they were circumcised they were saved, and now we have people saying because they're baptized that they're saved, and we have here the classic case, throwing out the baby with the bathwater." [02:58:09]