Baptist History, Heritage & Distinctives – B.H. Carroll – Distinctive Baptist Principles – PART TEN – Salvation is Essential to Baptism & Church Membership #1

Thomas E Kresal – Admin · July 2 at 9:11 AM – July 2, 2020

Baptist History, Heritage & Distinctives – B.H. Carroll – Distinctive Baptist Principles – PART TEN – Salvation is Essential to Baptism & Church Membership #1

Here, if nowhere else, Baptists stand absolutely alone. The foot of no other denomination in Christendom rests on this plank. Blood before water—the altar before the laver.

This principle eliminates not only all infant baptism and membership, but locates the adult’s remission of sins m the fountain of blood instead of the fountain of water. When the author of the letter to the Hebrews declares: “It is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins,” he bases the impossibility on the lack of intrinsic merit. Following the precise idea Baptists declare: “It is not possible that the water of baptism should take away sins.” There is no intrinsic merit in the water. The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, alone can cleanse us from sin.

True, the water of baptism and the wine of the Lord’s Supper may symbolically take away sins, but not in fact. “Arise and be baptized and wash away thy sins.” “This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many, for the remission of sins.” Both declarations are beautiful and impressive figures of antecedent fact.

A brother of another denomination once objected: “You Baptists have no method of induction into Christ. My people baptize a man into Christ.” The reply was two-fold:

(1) It so not enough to get a man into Christ; you must also get Christ into him, as he says, “I in you and you in me.” If you insist that baptism really, and not figuratively, puts a man into Christ, how will you meet the Romanist on the other half of it, “Eating the wafer of the Supper really puts Christ into the man. He eats the flesh of the real presence”? You must admit that the words are stronger for his induction than yours.

(2) Baptists nave a method of double induction: “We have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand.” Faith puts us into Christ. “It pleased God to reveal his Son in me.” “Christ in you the hope of glory.” “Ye are manifestly declared to be an epistle of Christ, …written with the Spirit of the living God…in fleshly tables of the heart.” “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined into our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Thus the Holy Spirit puts Christ in us. We get into him by faith. He gets into us by the Holy Spirit, thus fulfilling his words: “I in you and you in me.”

– To be continued

Presented by Thomas E. Kresal from: BAPTISTS And Their Doctrines Sermons on Distinctive Baptist Principles BY B. H. CARROLL, D.D. PRESIDENT, SOUTHWESTERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, 1913 pg. 6-7