Baptist Distinctives: Believer’s Baptism

Marc Minter

FBC Diana

Baptist Distinctives • Sermon • Submitted 3 months ago • Presented 3 months ago

0 ratings

· 13 views

Main Idea: Baptism is the initial sign of the New Covenant in Christ; it symbolizes the spiritual reality of conversion, it directly connects to church membership, and it is only for persons with a credible profession of faith.

Notes

Transcript

Introduction

If you read old Baptists (from the 1600s and 1700s and the early 1800s), you’ll discover some wonderful brothers and sisters in Christ. You’ll enjoy the benefits of learning that the faith and practice we have today has been handed down from a long line of faithful and sincere and thoughtful and courageous Christians who have lived before us.

You’ll also learn that no Christian or church is perfect, and there are lots of warts and blemishes to go around. Christians have only one Savior-King, and we don’t look back to any “golden age” of Christianity. Rather, our golden age is yet to come, when King Jesus returns to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found.

But one of the wonderful benefits of reading old Baptists is that you’ll learn about the way they began to realize just how important and meaningful was the ordinance of baptism to the life and definition of a local church. All Christians believe that baptism is important, and all Christians believe that its meaningful, but Baptists believe that baptism marks off or distinguishes believers from non-believers.

Today we are continuing our series on Baptist Distinctives, and we are going to consider some of the main aspects of what we call believer’s baptism. This subject is far more meaningful and practical than we can cover in just a single Sunday, but my aim is to explain and argue for the historic Baptist (and I believe biblical) perspective of baptism. This will be a summary of some of the main distinctive features of Baptist conviction on this topic.

That said, this will be another topical message, where I have chosen a text of Scripture for us to focus on, but I have brought the topic to the text… I’m not drawing the topic out of the text per se. I believe I’m being faithful to the main passage we will read, and also to those passages I will cite throughout. But this is not an expositional sermon. This is a topical sermon, more in line with systematic theology than biblical exposition.

I intend to argue that baptism is the initial sign of the New Covenant in Christ; that it symbolizes the spiritual reality of conversion, that it directly connects to church membership, and that it is only for persons with a credible profession of faith.

Let’s read from Romans 6 together, and then let’s see how this passage and others contribute to our understanding of baptism.

Please stand with me, as I read from Romans 6:1-14.

Scripture Reading

Romans 6:1–14 (ESV)

1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin.

8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.

11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

Main Idea:

Baptism is the initial sign of the New Covenant in Christ; it symbolizes the spiritual reality of conversion, it directly connects to church membership, and it is only for persons with a credible profession of faith.

Sermon

1. Baptism Symbolizes

Water baptism symbolizes spiritual baptism.

Many Bible readers have come to Romans 6, and they’ve asked the question, “Is Paul talking here about water baptism or spiritual baptism?” or “Is Paul saying that the Holy Spirit ‘baptizes’ believers ‘into Christ,’ or that local churches ‘baptize’ believers ‘into Christ’?”

The answer is, “Yes!”

If you were to ask some NT Christians (let’s say some of those living in Rome when they received this letter from the Apostle Paul)… if you were to ask them when it was that they became Christians, they would likely tell you the date they were baptized… that time when they went public as believers in Christ and when they became members of the church that gathered in Rome.

And (thinking in good theological categories) you might follow up by asking, “Ok, so that’s when you were baptized and when you joined the church… but when did you first believe… when were you born again?” But at that point your first-century Christian brothers and sisters would probably be quite confused. They did not think about Christian conversion in terms of the precise theological categories many of us do today.

This is notto say that our theology has changed. As a matter of fact, it is central to biblical Christianity that we always strive to make sure that what we believe now is exactly the same as what the Scripture teaches Christians to believe from the very beginning. But it is nevertheless true that we make theological distinctions today (and I think rightfully so) where the common Christian experience does not really notice much of a distinction.

Let me explain what I mean. Many of us are probably familiar with the idea of distinguishing “head” belief in Christ with “heart” belief. It is one thing to say you believe the facts about Jesus, but it is something quite different to believe that Jesus is my Savior and Lord.

But in reality (i.e., in our lived experience), such a distinction does not exist. If you dobelieve that Jesus was/is the long-awaited Messiah, and if you dobelieve that Jesus was/is the resurrected Savior of sinners, and if you dobelieve that Jesus was/is the ascended Lord of all creation who will one day return to judge the living and the dead, then this changes everything! You either believe the gospel and live accordingly (imperfectly, for sure, but consistently and faithfully); or you reject the gospel and live as though Christ is a fiction or a lie.

So, while we might distinguish between knowledge about Christ and trustor faith or belief in Christ, there really is no such thing as mere “head” belief or “almost” belief or “sometimes” beliefor “nominal” belief. You either believe or you don’t; and your life will always line up with what you truly believe.

At least since the time of the Protestant Reformation (1500s), Christians have begun parsing out the distinctions between regeneration (or being born again) and belief and repentance and baptism and church membership. But in the lived experience of the earliest Christians, all of these theological categories were collected together within a broader term – conversion. When a new believer responded to the gospel by repenting and believing (enabled by the Holy Spirit), he or she was water baptized as a symbol of that spiritual reality, and baptism always symbolized union with Christ and union with other Christians in the world.

We will get into the idea that baptism unites in point number 2, but right now we want to consider the passage before us in order to recognize that waterbaptism and spiritual baptism are basically synonymous here.

Paul was writing this letter to “all those in Rome who are loved by God and calledto be saints” (Rom. 1:7). Paul repeatedly called them his “brothers” in Christ (Rom. 1:13, 7:1, 7:4, 8:12), and he spoke to them as though they were all Christians (i.e., not as those who are “fleshly” [Rom. 8:6-8], but as those who are “alive” by the Spirit of God [Rom. 8:9-11]).

But Paul also warned them not to presume… not to think that just because they calledthemselves Christians that they were actually born again and destined for glory. He implied that there might be at least some among them that were not indwelt by God’s Spirit. He said, in Rom. 8:9, “You… are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you” (Rom. 8:9).

The point is that he was writing to people who were visibly Christian (i.e., they had been baptized as disciples), but Paul did not know (nor could he possibly have known) what was truly in their hearts. In fact, a good portion of this whole letter is devoted to teaching and urging those visibleChristians to believe and to act like people who were actually spiritually alive.

And this is exactly the sort of teaching and urging we see in Romans 6.

Paul wrote, in v1, “What shall we say then?” (v1). If the grace of God is really given as freely as Paul had been saying, then “Are we to continue in sin [so] that grace may abound?” (v1). “By no means!” Paul says (v2). “How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (v2). In other words, if we all really are believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, then we really aredead to sin (i.e., sin has no power or claim on us anymore), so we oughtto repent or turn away from sin (i.e., not “live in it” or be comfortable in it anymore).

And then comes Paul’s reasoning, beginning in v3, “3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptizedinto his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptisminto death, in order that, just as Christ was raised form the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (v3-4).

Here, Paul is talking about a spiritual reality – all those who have been “baptized into” or plunged into or united with Christ have been “united with him in a death like his” (v5). It is as though Christians have already been “crucified with” Christ “in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing” (v6).

This is the glorious reality of the gospel! When Christ died, it is as though all those who believe or trust in Him died along with Him under the condemnation of God’s justice… so that the legal demands of God’s law would be fulfilled!

God’s law demands that if I sin, I must die. And in the person and work of Jesus Christ, I did die! My sin, not in part but the whole, was nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more! Praise the Lord, now it is well with my soul!

Friend, if you’re here this morning, and you’d like to know what is the burning heart of Christianity, then here it is! The good news of Jesus Christ is that He is the substitute, and in Him my sins were completely paid for at the cross. So that God Himself has forgiven me completely, and there is now no condemnation for all those who turn from their sin and trust in Christ (Rom. 8:1-4).

If you want to talk more about what that means, about how you can know that your sin is forgiven, or about what it looks like to turn from sin and trust in Christ, then let’s talk after the service today.

But (back to our topic) how could Paul write about that spiritual reality to those specific people living in Rome at that time? How did Paul know that those people were repenting from sin and believing the gospel, as I’ve just described it? Well, he knew they had believed (at least as far as he could tell) because they had been water baptized. The whole lot of them (i.e., all of them) had been “baptized” into Christ visibly when they were “baptized” publicly in/by water (v3).

Water baptism is not explicitly mentioned here (i.e., “baptism” is here, but not the specific word “water”), but it is assumed because of all the teaching and examples we find elsewhere in the Bible. Baptism is what it looks like when a new believer “goes public” with his or her faith in Jesus Christ! When a sinner repents and believes the gospel, he or she is baptized as the public symbolof that spiritual reality. This was the command of Christ before He ascended to the right hand of the Father… this is the pattern on display throughout the book of Acts… and this is the assumed or implied or stated practice any time baptism is mentioned in the rest of the NT.

Baptism is the initial sign that one has become a partaker of the New Covenant in Christ… it is the public indicator that someone has become spiritually alive in Christ… and, therefore, it symbolizes the spiritual reality of conversion.

Brothers and sisters, think back on your own water baptism. Weren’t you standing in front of a gathering of Christians? Weren’t you publicly declaring your own faith and trust in Christ? And wasn’t the whole experience designed to give testimony that you were now spiritually alive by the power of God’s Spirit?

That’s what water baptism is! It’s a visible and public symbol of an invisible and spiritual reality.

2. Baptism Unites

Water baptism symbolizes spiritual baptism… and it also publicly unitesthe one being baptized with Christ and (by necessity) withChrist’s people. In other words, baptism is directly connected to church membership.

Now, I confess that “church membership” is not explicit in Romans 6. In fact, you won’t find that specific phrase (“church membership”) anywhere in the NT. However, the concept is described and prescribed and assumedthroughout.

This letter (Romans) was written to “all those in Rome who are loved by God and calledto be saints” (Rom. 1:7). Since a “saint” is someone who is set apart or holy or devoted to God, there must be some way in which Paul and others were able to identify which people in Rome were set apart as Christians from the rest of the world. And the Bible teaches us that this universal identifying mark or sign for Christians is water baptism.

Not only was this letter written to visible Christians, but it was also written with a purpose… namely, to urge those Christians to remember the gospel, to remainfaithful to Christ, and to bear witness to that good news so that others (especially Gentiles) might hear and believe. And after several chapters where Paul explains the gospel and its implications, and after he explains God’s wise and glorious plan to save sinners from all tribes and tongues and nations, Paul makes an “appeal” for the Christians in Rome to understand their need to live as “holy” ones (or “saints”) who are united to one another as various parts of one body.

In Romans 12, Paul says, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holyand acceptable to God” (Rom. 12:1). And “Everyone among you [should] not think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another” (Rom. 12:3-5).

In other words, Christians are to live as “holy” ones (as witnesses of the Holy God in the world), and though they are different from one another in skill and experience, they are to live out their distinctor holy or set-apart lives in relationship with one another, with a collective witness (as members of one body).

Friends, the Christian witness in the world is not just a lone preacher standing on a street corner or an extroverted evangelist striking up gospel conversations with strangers at the coffee shop. The comprehensive (and highly effective) Christian witness in the world is the everyday lives and words of a whole body of Christians who live faithfully and speak clearly of the warnings and promises of the gospel. Our individual witness is important, but it is our collective witness that makes our individual one consistent and believable and compelling.

And how is it that a body of Christians first bears witness to the watching world? Well, Christians first (or initially) do this by drawing a stark line between those who are Christians and those who are not. These people over here are repenting and believing ones (i.e., disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ) and those people over thereare not… either they have not heard the gospel or (if they have heard it) they are presently neglecting or rejecting it.

And that delineating mark (that universal sign) is water baptism. The reason I can know that (from our text this morning) is because Paul says in v3 that “all” of the Christians in Rome had been “baptized into Christ” (v3). And it was in that public display of baptism that they had all been “united with [Christ]” (v5).

That shared experience of baptism, then, is the universal mark which all publicly recognized Christians bear. It is in baptismthat Christians take on the “name” of Christ (Matt. 28:18-20), and this is the name and sign which unitesall those who are baptized.

Historically and presently, Baptists believe that water baptism unites new believers with existing ones. And the way this looks practically is that the one being baptized becomes a new member of the local church doing the baptizing… he or she “joins this church by baptism.”

We’ve talked a lot about baptism and church membership over the last several years, so I won’t spend a lot of time on this point today. But it is vital that we understandthe importance of this feature of water baptism. And it is also vital that we emphasizethis feature of baptism in our culture, which is shot through with an individualistic perspective of Christianity, of church, of religion, and of a relationship with Jesus.

You and I cannot become Christians by ourselves, we cannot grow in Christ by ourselves, and we cannot persevere in faith by ourselves. Christianity is a communal reality, and the first step of Christian discipleship demands that we accept it as such. We cannot baptize ourselves! We need at least one other Christian to join us in this public display of our individual faith in the Lord Jesus Christ! And this experience of water baptism should set our expectations about what it will look like to follow Christ throughout our lives… if we don’t begin to follow Christ all by ourselves, then we ought never think that following Christ will be a private or individual venture.

Brothers and sisters, because baptism is the initial sign of the New Covenant in Christ it directly connects to church membership because local churches are the regular gatherings of all those who are partakers of the promises of the New Covenant. Local churches are the assemblies of those who have heard the warnings and promises of the gospel, they have believed that such things are true, and they are considering themselves and one another as dead to sin… as alive to God in Christ… and they are presenting their whole lives as instruments for righteousness (imperfectly, but consistently)… so that they might glorify God and bear witness to the glory of the gospel of Christ… for all the world to see.

But this means that baptism is more than just the personal act of an individualbeliever. It means that in baptism there are multiple speakers or proclaimers or affirmers… and it means that we all ought to take seriously what part we have to play in saying something in baptism.

3. Baptism Affirms

We’ve covered a bit of ground this morning, so let me quickly recap… Water baptism symbolizesspiritual baptism… and it also unites the one being baptized with Christ and (by necessity) with Christ’s people.

With this third point of my sermon this morning, I want to argue that baptism is onlyfor persons with a credible (or believable) profession of faith… which necessarily requires that someone (usually many someones) is evaluatingand making a decision about a person’s profession of faith.

In our passage today, the Apostle Paul is calling visible Christians to act like authentic Christians. He talks of being “buried” with Christ (v4), and he says that Christians have “old selves” that were “crucified” with Christ (v6). He says that Christians are those who are “free from sin” (v7) and those who “walk in newness of life” (v4). And he urges Christians to “present” themselves to God as “instruments of righteousness” (v13)… not so that they may become free from the bondage of sin… not so that they may earn right standing under God’s legal demands… but precisely because “sin” no longer has “dominion” over them and because they are “not under law but under grace” (v14)… That’s why they ought to present themselves as instruments of righteousness.

It is clear from our passage that Christians are expected to be noticeablydifferent because God has set them free to be so. There is an “old” way of living and a “new” way. There is an “old” life and a “new” one. There is an “old” self and a “new” one. And this difference is not moralism or legalism(“Be new, or you will die!”). Instead, this is the gospel of grace (“You already died, so be new!”).

It is essential that we neither separate nor confuse two biblical realities: one, the sinner’s justification before God is by grace alone; and two, those sinners who do repent and believe will live with a general trajectory toward righteousness or obedience or good works. Martin Luther (the German reformer in the 1500s) said, “It is faith alone that saves, but the kind of faith that savesis never alone.”

If we are spiritually alive, if we have been born again, if we believe the good news that Jesus Christ has lived and died and conquered death for us… then we will live lives that are generally aimed at loving and knowing and obeyingthe Savior who loves us so. No Christian this side of glory is perfect, but every Christian is set free from the power of sin and is happy to present himself or herself as instruments or tools or weapons in God’s hands for righteousness.

Ephesians 2 says it like this, “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, nota result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:9-10). Did you hear it? Salvation comes to those who believe (not to those who do better than others or do better than they used to). And salvation is a gift of God, which God grants to sinners on the basis of sheer grace (we can’t earn it, and we don’t deserve it). And those God saves (by grace through faith) are saved into a life or “for good works,” which God intends for His people to live out in their lives.

Friends, those who are saved will show signs of spiritual life, and the Bible tells us the sorts of things to look for. Galatians 5 lists some of the “fruit” of the Spirit; these are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23).

We also learn in Galatians 5 that those who are indwelt by God’s Spirit “will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16). Instead, according to 1 Corinthians 2, those who have received the Spirit of God “understand” the wisdom of God in the Scriptures and they are “taught” or instructedby it (1 Cor. 2:12-16).

The short letter of 1 John is full of descriptives about what it looks like for someone to be spiritually alive and “in” Christ. John says, “Whoever says ‘I know [Christ]’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 Jn. 2:4). And “whoever loves his brother [i.e., fellow Christians] abides in the light… but whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness” (1 Jn. 2:10-11). And “you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of [God]” (1 Jn. 2:29).

I could go on, but you get the point. The signs or evidence of spiritual life are visible on the outside. Christianity is not about doing good in order to earn God’s love or blessing, it is about looking to the One who has fulfilled God’s law on our behalf and trusting His work for us. And (here’s the important part for us today) those who do trust in the person and work of Christ will live in such a way so as to give evidence that they are spiritually alive… they will do good, they will strive for real holiness, they will love the word of God, they will want to please God, they will hate their sin, they will love the Lord Jesus Christ, and they will love others who love the same Lord as they do.

Therefore, the ordinance of baptism ought only to be experienced by those who bring a credible profession of faith.

One of my favorite theologians and preachers (R.C. Sproul) used to say, “No one has ever been saved by a profession of faith. But people are saved by the possession of it.” What he was getting at was the reality that mere words are not sufficient to affirm that someone is a Christian. Anyone can say, “I believe in Jesus” with their mouths. But true Christians will live lives that make that statement believable… that profession of faith credible.

I’ve preached a few times before about why Baptists believe that baptism is not only a public profession of faith but also a public affirmation of faith, and if you want to study this more, then ask me after the service to send you some material… But suffice it to say here that this is the command we hear from Jesus at the conclusion of Matthew’s gospel, and this is the pattern we see throughout the book of Acts, when new Christians are baptized. Existing Christians are the ones responsible for publicly affirming new Christians in their profession of faith.

This is what I meant when I said earlier that there are multiple speakers or affirmers in the act of baptism. The one being baptized is speaking – he or she is saying “I believe, and I mean to follow Christ with you all.” The congregation witnessing the baptism is saying “We believe that this profession of faith is credible, and we mean to follow Christ with you.” And Christ Himself is also speaking, through the words and deeds of the saints gathered in His name, and Jesus is saying, “This one is mine.”

Now, let me be quick to say that no church can see the heart of anyone. Sometimes churches will baptize people who appear to be Christians but later turn out to reject Christ or give up on following Him. And when that happens, a church must withdraw that affirmation they once gave. But that’s why it’s so important that Christians and churches take seriously their responsibility to affirm only credible professions of faith by baptism.

Ok… Let’s get practical.

4. Baptism Practiced

We’ve covered a lot of ground, and I’ve made some big claims. I’ve argued that water baptism symbolizes spiritual baptism. I’ve argued that baptism is the door into church membership. And I’ve argued that baptism is only for those who appear to demonstrate a credible profession of faith (they talk and act like Christians, not glorified saints, but spiritually alive saints).

I want to close our time this morning by thinking through just a few implications of understanding baptism in this way.

First, we should be baptized.

Friend, if you are calling yourself a Christian, but you’ve never been baptized by an assembly of Christians who have affirmed that profession of faith, then you are making a claim that you are not authorized to make. Jesus did not give any individual the right or authority to call themselves a Christian. Jesus gave that authority to Apostles and to assembled Christians, who are believing and following Jesus together.

Again, if you want to study this more, I’d be all to happy to get coffee or a meal with you (or several coffees or meals) in order to discuss it. But the clear teaching of the Bible is that Christians are those who have taken on the name of Christ, and the only way to do that (biblically speaking) is by/through baptism.

Friend, if you’ve never been baptized, then you ought to be.

Second, we should celebrate baptism.

Brothers and sisters (and now I’m talking especially to members of FBC Diana), if baptism is what I’ve argued it is this morning, then baptism is something to celebrate! When we baptize a new believer into fellowship with our church, or when another gospel-believing church baptizes a new believer into their fellowship, we/they are standing as witness to God’s glorious work of conversion.

No one can believe in Jesus without hearing and understanding the gospel, and no one can believe in Jesus without God granting them the gift of spiritual life. If we are bearing witness to someone being baptized, then we are observing (so far as we can tell) a miracle. God has granted the gift of life to this person! And we ought to celebrate that reality… and praise and thank God for all He’s done in converting this one who was once lost but now found.

What a joy it might be for us all this afternoon to ask a family member or friend to tell us how they came to know Christ. We might ask, “When were you baptized and how did you come to that moment?” We can praise and thank God for godly parents who discipled their children. We can praise and thank God for loving neighbors who witnessed to lost ones around them and brought them to church. We can praise and thank God for all the ways that He brought someone near to the ordinary means of grace and did extraordinary things in the lives of those we love.

Third, we should be slow to baptize.

This one might seem odd, especially after the first two implications I’ve just mentioned, but think with me for just a moment about it. If baptism is all that I’ve argued it is today, then baptism is one of the most important things we will ever do as a church together. And, therefore, we ought to be very careful in the doing of it.

We ought not baptize someone we’ve only just met. Rather, we ought to take our time getting to know this person, even if he or she claims to be a Christian already. We ought to look for signs of spiritual life, we ought to encourage and celebrate those signs when we see them, and we ought to remember that time will always tell the real truth.

So too, we ought not baptize young and impressionable children. In God’s kindness, He is designed it so that a child’s development follows a general trajectory. The nature of children is to imitate; the nature of adolescents is to individuate.[i] Children learn much, if not most, of the important things in life by watching and imitating their parents.

This is why parenting is effective. Parenting is hard, but can you imagine what it would be like if children were developmentally hard-wired to resist their parents, rather than to desire their approval during those early years?

In adolescence, those same children begin to orient away from their parents, toward those outside the family. It’s called individuation. They’re figuring out what they’re going to keep, and what they’re going to reject from their parents as they become independent adults.

This means that it’s generally more difficult to discern Christian conversion in a child raised in a Christian home than it is in an older teen or young adult. It takes time for the heart to reveal itself. How do we know if we’re looking at a good kid or a regenerate kid? The one thing we know for sure is (once again) time will tell.

Friends, I’ve argued today that baptism is the initial sign of the New Covenant in Christ. I’ve argued that it symbolizes the spiritual reality of conversion, that it directly connects to church membership, and that it is only for persons with a credible profession of faith.

Because baptism is so very important in the life of a believer and in the life of a local church, I pray that God will help us all to treat this subject with the care and sober action it deserves.

May God help us.

Endnotes

[i] I’ve taken this section on children almost directly from a talk by Michael Lawrence.

Related Media

Related Sermons