Was Jesus A Baptist?

Baptism is not essential to salvation...but it is essential to obedience, since Christ has commanded it. — Edward T. Hiscox, 
The Standard Manual for Baptist Churches

"…having been made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him" (Heb 5:9).

Who would’ve thought? There’s a book written by a supposed follower of Christ, teaching one may be saved without obeying…Christ.

Well, take another look at Hebrews 5: Christ is “the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.”

I wish Mr. Hiscox had seen this verse sooner. It would’ve saved him the embarrassment of claiming baptism is “essential to obedience” while, in the same breath, declaring it’s “not essential to salvation.”

In other words, you have to be baptized to obey Jesus—but apparently you don’t have to obey Jesus to be saved. Make sense?

At any rate, he goes on in his manual:

[Baptism] is also essential to a public confession of Christ before the world, and to membership in the church which is His body. And no true lover of his Lord will refuse these acts of obedience and tokens of affection. — Edward T. Hiscox, 
The Standard Manual for Baptist Churches

Did you catch that? “…essential to membership in the church which is His body.”

Amen.

“Christ is the Head of the church, His body, of which He is the Savior” (Eph. 5:23).

The trouble for Hiscox is that salvation is in Christ. By his logic baptism is essential to enter the body of the saved, but not essential to being saved. If that sounds like nonsense, it should. You aren’t crazy (Gal. 3:27; Acts 2:38, 41, 47).

You can’t call the doorway essential to entering the house and then insist it has nothing to do with getting inside.

So far as I can tell, the New Testament never made a category for baptism called “very important but entirely unnecessary.”

Baptists supplied one for us.

Hear Peter: “Baptism now saves you, not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience” (1 Pet. 3:21).

Jesus said: “The one having believed and having been baptized will be saved, but the one having disbelieved will be condemned” (Mk. 16:16).

Why draw a line where Jesus and the apostles did not?

He put belief and baptism on one side of the sentence and salvation on the other.

It takes a remarkable presumption to read the Lord's exact words and decide we can improve the order. But it has not always been this way.

Here, my friends, is where Baptist history becomes inconvenient. Because, Thomas Helwys, the man who helped launch the Baptist movement had no difficulty taking such passages at face value:

…to show you that you are not joined to Christ, you being of the world before you constituted or set up your church by your own confessions, the Word of the Lord does evidently declare that there is no way for them that are of the world, who are not in Christ, but enemies to Christ, as all that are of the world are, there is no way to join and come to Christ, but only to "amend their lives and be baptized" Acts 2:38. — Thomas Helwys, A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity

How about that? A baptist preacher preaching the Truth about baptism, citing Acts 2:38 no less!

This is awkward. The man who helped launch the Baptist church, did not read Acts 2:38 the way most Baptists do today.

Helwys was not some wild-eyed “Church of Christer” who wandered haplessly into the Baptist movement.

He was partnered up with John Smyth (founder of the Baptist church) who, in a shocking turn of events, decided the Mennonites in the Netherlands were the “true church,” and abandoned the Baptist movement he began.

An undeterred Helwys, left his partner, returned to England in 1612 to establish the first Baptist congregation in London.

My point is he stands at the fountainhead of Baptist history, declaring:

“There is no way to join and come to Christ, but only to ‘amend their lives and be baptized.’”

Nowadays, his spiritual descendants say baptism comes after you have come to Christ.

It would seem modern Baptists have managed to improve not only Peter’s sermon, but their own history.

The Bible didn't receive a revision. Baptist doctrine did.

What if I told you that even Hiscox in his own manual admits that, in the first century, there were “no differing denominations”?

What if I told you that the same manual admits that when a man was baptized, “by that very act” he became a member of the church?

And what if I told you that after describing the New Testament church, he simply says:

“Now, it is different.”

Don’t take my word for it. See for yourself:

It is most likely that in the Apostolic age when there was but “one Lord, one faith, and one baptism,” and no differing denominations existed, the baptism of a convert by that very act constituted him a member of the church... 
In that sense, “baptism was the door into the church.” Now, it is different... —Edward T. Hiscox, The Standard Manual for Baptist Churches

I’m sorry, but did “one Lord, one faith, and one baptism” exist only in the “apostolic age”?

Hiscox said it, not me.

I see nothing in Ephesians 4:4-7 that puts an expiration date on that reality. I mean, someone can say, “now it is different,” but that don’t make it so.

There is a real sense in which “now it is different.” No kidding. That's the problem.

The question is: Who authorized different?

Apparently somewhere between Acts 2 and the publication of the Standard Manual for Baptist Churches, somebody updated the admission requirements.

The apostles baptized those who believed: “Those who embraced his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to the believers that day” (Acts 2:41).

God added the saved.

Hiscox says that “by that very act” the baptized person became a member.

How does Hiscox say things are different?

The churches therefore have candidates come before them, make their statement, give their “experience,” and then their reception is decided by a vote of the members. And while they cannot become members without baptism, yet it is the vote of the body which admits them to its fellowship on receiving baptism. — Edward T. Hiscox, The Standard Manual for Baptist Churches

Read Acts 2:41 again.

Where’s the vote? Where is the candidate standing before the congregation giving his experience? Where are Peter's instructions for the membership committee?

Luke says: “praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to them day by day those that were saved” (Acts 2:47)

Notice the subject of the verb.

The Lord added them.

Hiscox's system says the candidate is received by “the vote of the body.”

For folks who insist that Scripture is their final authority, this should be easy.

When the Baptist confession says one thing and Jesus says another, Jesus wins.

When the Baptist manual says one thing and Peter says another, Peter wins.

That's what “Bible authority” means. Not “the Bible is the final authority unless it contradicts Baptist doctrine.”

Jesus had already met that system.

"You have disregarded the commandment of God to keep the tradition of men. You neatly set aside the command of God to maintain your own tradition" (Mk. 7:8-9).

Pharisees did not think of themselves as people who rejected Scripture (Jn. 8:39; 9:29). They were very religious, knew Scripture, defended their practices, and had traditions.

And when God's command got in the way, they somehow managed to explain why their tradition should remain untouched.

Sound familiar?

Nothing has changed.

Call it a creed or confession or constitution…

Call it “what Baptists have always believed.”

It makes no difference.

A church is not a legislative, but an executive body. It cannot make laws, but only obey and administer those which Christ has given in the New Testament. He is the only Lawmaker in Zion. — Edward T. Hiscox, The Standard Manual for Baptist Churches

Amen!

Then let Christ make the law. Do not tell Him which commands count. Do not call obedience “essential” and then assure sinners they can be saved without it.

If baptism is essential to obedience, and Christ is the source of eternal salvation to those who obey Him, who gave anyone the authority to declare baptism unnecessary for salvation?

The Bible did not change. Acts 2:38 reads the same as it did two thousand years ago.

Jesus did not change (Heb. 13:8).

So before asking whether you were raised Baptist, whether your parents were Baptist, whether your preacher is Baptist, or whether you have been Baptist all your life, there is a much more important question:

Was Jesus a Baptist?