Results 1 - 3 of 3
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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | believeth and is baptized | Mark 16:16 | srbaegon | 222921 | ||
Hi lightedsteps, If I had considered the Mk 16:16 baptism as mere ritual, then I would indeed be trivializing Scripture. My intent is to demonstrate that in the historical accounts, baptism and belief happened together. The decision to believe was immediately borne out with the witness of baptism. There was no anxious bench or 30-minute altar call or Sinner's prayer or inviting Jesus into your heart or other such things evangelicals say today. Steve |
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2 | believeth and is baptized | Mark 16:16 | lightedsteps | 222937 | ||
Hi srbaegon As you can see I have finished with the discussion, but seeing that you were the first to respond, I felt it befitting that you be the last that I would address. I thank you for your information, and it was not my intent to offend you in any way. I read the article you put the link for, it was interesting. Let me see if I can clarify better to you my feelings as this should be the last post on the matter, you are entitled to at least that. My saying a trivializing was in reference to the statements made by Viola and Barna 1) In our day, the "sinner's prayer" has replaced the role of water baptism as the initial confession of faith. 2) Unbelievers are told, "Say this prayer after me, accept Jesus as your personal Savior, and you will be saved." 3) But nowhere in all the New Testament do we find any person being led to the Lord by a sinner's prayer. And there is not the faintest whisper in the Bible about a "personal" Savior. 4) Instead, unbelievers in the first century were led to Jesus Christ by being taken to the waters of baptism. 5) Put another way, water baptism was the sinner's prayer in century one! 6) Baptism accompanied the acceptance of the gospel. So what I was seeing were 6 times they put Baptism into a ritualistic catagory. I am sorry, but I take that whole statement of theirs, as a trivializing of Baptism itself, as well as scripture. Maybe I am being to critical, but that is the way I see it. They have, through there comparison with the sinners prayer, put them both into the same category of things that Christians do that have no meaning. I have to say there is meaning in Baptism. Rom 6:3-6 3) Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? 4) Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. 5) For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: 6) Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. That is my meaning of the trivialization, because baptism was a mandate from Jesus, unlike the sinners prayer. I did go on further in my first post to you, with my explanation by saying. "based on the grounds that this understanding does not explain the passage, it merely negates it, putting it into the realm of not meaning what it actually said." I regret the way I phrased my statement, it was not directed toward you. Hoping I have managed to be more succinct this time. Grace be unto you lightedsteps |
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3 | believeth and is baptized | Mark 16:16 | DocTrinsograce | 222939 | ||
Dear lightedsteps, It has been interesting reading your comments, and this last post particularly. I was thinking tonight about this phrase "trivializing of baptism." I think I am starting to understand your point. (Perhaps my own origins, as you suggested, do help in that respect after all. Thanks for your persistence in clarifying what you mean.) I keep thinking of the Waldensians and later the Anabaptists, in reaction to the sacerdotalism of the Roman Church, did everything they could to shift thinking in the opposite direction. Just as you see their thrust as a trivialization, they would regard your emphasis as ritualization or ceremonialism. I can see each antipodal position entrenching more deeply and uncompromisingly, while correspondingly growing in antipathy. (Of course, all of the difficulties are compounded because this sort of thing would apply to all of the ordinances (sacraments), making the entire discussion serious enough theological points for which men would live and die.) Not to denigrate anyone, I tend to think that both sides have missed the point. Walking an aisle, reciting a prayer, eating a wafer, being sprinkled from a font, being immersed in a river, etc. etc. are empty, even superstitious, activities without the underpinnings of the prior work of our Triune God in redemption. Frankly, the Anabaptist pastor's symbolism or the Pope's absolution are worse than irrelevant if a person's life is not radically and permanently changed. Tonight I was reading through some of my notes from Thomas Watson's book, "The Christian Soldier or Heaven Taken by Storm." What he says below, hits right to the point I'm trying to make: "To exclude all glorying in the creature. Faith is a humble grace. If salvation were by repentance or works, a man would say, 'It is my righteousness which has saved me!' But if it is of faith, where is boasting? Faith fetches all from Christ -- and gives all the glory to Christ! "God's believing people are a humble people. 'Be clothed with humility.' God's people shrink into nothing in their own thoughts. David cries out, 'I am a worm, and not a man!' Though a saint, though a king -- yet a worm! When Moses' face shined, he covered it with a veil. When God's people shine most in grace -- they are covered with the veil of humility. Abraham the father of the faithful, confesses, 'I am nothing but dust and ashes.' 'God resists the proud.' Surely, God will not take to be with Himself in glory, such as whom He resists. "God's believing people are a willing people. Though they cannot serve God perfectly -- they serve Him willingly. They do not grudge God a little time spent in His worship. They do not murmur at sufferings. They will go through a sea and a wilderness -- if God calls. 'Your people shall be a willing people.' This spontaneity and willingness is from the attractive power of God's Spirit. The Spirit does not force -- but sweetly draws the will. This willingness makes all our services acceptable. God sometimes accepts of willingness without the work -- but never the work without willingness. "God's believing people are a consecrated people. They have 'holiness to the Lord' written upon them. 'You are a holy people to the Lord your God.' God's people are separated from the world -- and sanctified by the Spirit. The priests under the law were not only to wash in the laver -- but were arrayed with glorious apparel. This was typical, to show that God's people are not only washed from gross sins -- but adorned with holiness of life. They bear not only God's name -- but His image! Holiness is God's stamp; if He does not see this stamp upon us, He will not own us for His believing people." In Him, Doc |
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