Every age has a counter message that seeks to shroud, confuse or combat, the true Gospel. Our age is no different.

When in the city recently I came across a large mural on the glass of a leading Canadian bank. It read, “There’s no better feeling than being accepted for who you are.” Such a slogan is riddled with faults.

Firstly, expressive individualism rooted in subjective feelings (and not objective truth) is not a sure guide.

Secondly, total-acceptance (or the intolerance of ‘tolerance’) is as ridiculous. Sure, we respect people as being created in the image of God on the one hand, but we embrace others, not based upon who they put themselves forward as, but whether they, in truth and goodness, are nice and useful people.

Thirdly, the message is clearly ideological (cultural-marxism or woke), where if someone doesn’t agree with you on your terms, then they must be a bad oppressor and must be shamed and re-educated.

Beyond mere virtue signalling, much of our society seems to have bought into the anti-Gospel, lock, stock and barrel. No longer is it about LGBT, it has become the flag, or mantra of our day. It is the anti-Gospel. Embrace your sin, relish in it and demand others do too.

The true Gospel proclaims that we are sinners. That we are accepted by God only when we’ve been accepted by Christ through repentance and faith. That joy only begins when we receive grace and the Holy Spirit works to renew us into the people God wants us to be.
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I wouldn’t want to be accepted for who I am—what a hideous thought! Rather, my sole hope is being accepted before God by virtue of who Christ is—and has applied to me—through the imputed righteousness and imparted Sanctifier. It is only when I become a new creation and am transformed and await my glorification as a saved sinner that there can ever be a true feeling of joy, even jubilee.

​Christian, even yet-to-be-Christian, do not be fooled by the anti-Gospel of our age. It doesn’t satisfy or save. 

Externals
If we surveyed ‘Baptists’ merely externally it would be very difficult to answer this question. Some reach to tradition to create an common denominator acrostic of historic Baptist beliefs to answer this question (e.g. baptism, autonomy of local church, priesthood of all believers, etc). Those who claim the mantle differ so widely (and wildly) in their belief and practice (e.g. Arminian & Reformed, liberal and conservative, open and closed communion, conventional and societal, etc) that at minimum we might define Baptist as a loose movement of visible Christians who embrace baptism by immersion (‘believer’ cannot always be assumed because of liberalism). Such tradition or man centred approaches fail to strike at the heart of Baptist identity. For this we must turn to the plumb line of God’s truth and the Baptistic convictions that men and women have derived from it.
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Internals
There are three types of Baptists. Those who are born into Baptist families, those who attend a Baptist church out of expedience and those who are Baptists by conviction.[1] The latter is the only type to be for we don’t want to base our lives on the traditions of men but the doctrines of God (Mk 7:7). What does the Bible teach?

In 1812 three Congregationalist missionaries, Adoniram & Ann Judson and Luther Rice, set off for India. They knew they would meet William Carey and the other Baptist missionaries there. They had to defend infant baptism and so studied their Greek New Testaments. It is a great danger studying the Bible for they were all convinced of believer’s baptism by immersion! Upon disembarking they were all baptized.

The Christian denomination called Baptist arose during the English Reformation, a time of religious tumult when people were trying to search the Scriptures (sola scriptura) and rediscover NT Christianity. What was the faith and practice of the early Church? Baptists emerged as a reform movement. Baptist historian David Bebbington puts it this way: “They adopted the same principles of punctilious loyalty to God’s word, of passionate desire to worship the Almighty correctly, and of willingness to restructure the church in accordance with God’s precepts. Their biblical, liturgical, and ecclesiastical priorities drove them through Puritan loyalties into separatism and, eventually, to the further step of repudiating infant baptism. Baptists were the people who took Reformation principles to their ultimate conclusion.”[2]

Baptist belief and practice flow from the Bible and the Gospel (sola fide) to form their identity:


[1] M. Haykin et al, The Baptist Story (2015), 325‒26.

[2]D. Bebbington, Baptists Through the Centuries (2010), 23‒24. 

A BAPTIST: A believer in the biblical Gospel, who has been baptized by immersion as the New Covenant sign and has covenanted together with an autonomous local church under its officers and the Lordship of Christ to fulfil their place in the body; who participate in the Lord’s Supper; who seek to live a holy life for Christ’s sake/God’s glory in accordance with the Word and by the Spirit; and to make the name of Christ known.
 
Secondarily Baptists believe in religious liberty (no one can be forced to believe) and separation of church and state (the Kingdom of God is not the kingdom of this world) because of Scripture and their experience.

Summary 

One of the most famous Baptists, Charles H. Spurgeon, grew up in a godly Congregationalist family. He was converted in a Primitive Methodist Chapel. Soon after he became a Baptist. The following is his recollection of a conversation with his mother:

​Baptists do not hold a monopoly on salvation but are convicted as to the biblical nature of their central beliefs and practices. The name does not matter but rather standing for what one believes the Bible teaches. 

Who are you? This is one of the great questions of our existence. If we are a Christian it becomes, who am I in Christ. What wondrous identity has Christ given to us! This list would be long but Gal 3:26–29 narrows it to three dimensions: height, width and depth.

Height: In Christ we are “sons of God” (v. 26). As His children we now have a loving heavenly Father whom we did not have before as children of wrath. We have an upward identity in our relationship with God. We are part of something bigger than ourselves.

Width: In Christ we are “baptized into Christ [and his body]” (v. 27) we are “one in Christ Jesus.” (v.28). We are adopted into a diverse family yet united in Spirit, purpose, love and destiny. Whether you go to Tokyo, Cape Town, Helsinki or San Francisco you will find brothers and sisters in the Lord. Indeed, while Christianity may be a minority in the West it is the majority in many parts of the global south. We are part of something bigger than ourselves.

Depth: In Christ we are also “Abraham’s offspring” (v. 29), which means we have a heritage. We stand as part of God’s people throughout history, the people of faith. Before us is the great hall of fame of faith (Heb 11). Though it be our turn to run the race they cheer us on. We are part of something bigger than ourselves, which not only looks backward but even forward into eternity.

Sadly, the world does not have this height and width and depth in identity, certainly not in a comprehensive sense. God does not exist or they worship a false god. As a result they have no height in their identity. No real transcendence. Community, people, nation either no longer exist because of individualism or are twisted by sin or at the least merely physical vs. spiritual. They have no width in their identity, nothing they belong to. We are all descended from goo or so woke that history is irrelevant. What matters is today for tomorrow we die. As such there is no heritage and no hope for the future. They are part of something very small, themselves.

Christian, praise the Lord for the vast identity you have in Christ! May this be something the Lord might use as we share the Gospel to help the world desire something that they cannot have.