Posted on 09/13/2018 9:41:55 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It's not a matter of if your church and pastor will face these kinds of questions. It's a matter of when.
Here's a scenario: a same-sex couple or someone openly living in a same-sex relationship starts to attend your church. Maybe they've got a child from another relationship or a child conceived through IVF. Because your church practices infant baptism, they ask to have their child baptized. What do you do?
I recently heard of a church that faced this exact situation. A lesbian couple who'd been attending asked to have their child baptized. The church had theological convictions about sex and marriage, as well as about how, in their theological tradition, infant baptism was offered based on the faith and obedience of parents. The pastor, however, chose to go through with the baptism, in order to "show love to the child and her parents." Was this pastor right?
Now let me be clear. This commentary isn't about the correct theology of baptism. Many of you attend churches that practice what's called believer's baptism, unlike this particular church.
My concern here is the argument the pastor made, especially given how quickly situations like this are becoming common. According to this pastor, love not only meant including those who are in unrepentant sin as members of the church, but also allowing them to partake in the sacraments. These sorts of situations are coming to a church near you.
Baptist brothers and sisters, here's one that you might face: If a gay couple wanted to join your church and take communion, would it be a loving thing to tell them yes?
The answer is no. Let me explain.
It's not because a gay couple or their child are somehow too sinful or tainted to be forgiven. After all, baptism is a visual picture of Christ washing away our sins. Christ welcomes sinners to His table. If He only welcomed the righteous, none of us could participate, "no, not one."
But as Tim Keller often points out, the world is not divided into sinners and saints, but repentant and unrepentant sinners. The prerequisite for joining the family of God isn't to clean yourself up, but to allow Jesus to clean you up. That means turning from sins, not clinging to them.
Jesus Himself told the Pharisees He'd come to call sinners, not the righteous, to repentance. He wasn't saying the Pharisees were righteous, but that only those who knew they were sinners could receive the gift of repentance and forgiveness.
Those who won't repent, refuse the gift. As C. S. Lewis explains in "Mere Christianity," repentance is not something God requires of us before He takes us back. "It is simply a description of what going back to Him is like."
Thus telling those who hold on to sin that they have the gift from God isn't loving, because it isn't true. The Apostle Paul warned the Corinthians that those who eat and drink the Lord's Supper in an "unworthy manner" eat and drink judgment on themselves. "But what about lying, gossip, or any of the other sins," you might ask. Exactly. Unrepentant sin of any kind is a problem.
But, of course, this requires a correct understanding of sin, of the church, and of Christ's sacraments. To simply try to love people into the Kingdom without truth isn't love at all, it's sentimentality. The truth remains that homosexual acts are sinful. They twist God's created design. All who come to Christ for cleansing must be willing to repent. And all who repent are embraced by Christ, and then ought to be embraced by the church, including at His table and in His sacraments. But only after repentance, not before.
It may feel more loving to do what the pastor that I mentioned earlier did. We want the church to be a welcoming place where people can encounter Jesus. Every church should welcome sinners. (My church does it every time I walk through the door.) But truly loving people means telling the truth.
Every single church today needs to be ready for these difficult situations. Again, it's not a matter of if they'll happen, but when.
Acts 16:32 Then Paul and Silas spoke the word of the Lord to him and to everyone in his house. 33At that hour of the night, the jailer took them and washed their wounds. And without delay, he and all his household were baptized.I am neither defending nor rejecting infant baptism; I am merely posting some of the scriptures cited by those who uphold it.Acts 16:15 And when she [Lydia] and her household were baptized, she begged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.”
1 Corinthians 1:13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? 14 I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 lest anyone should say that I had baptized in my own name. 16 Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas.
Nor let the unrepentant parents use the baby's soul as a wedge to divide the church or vacate its teachings.
“is for the benefit of the child, without regard for the state of the souls of the “parents”. ”
No wet infants in Scripture and no benefit to them from water.
No wet infants appear in those passages - neither in Greek, nor English.
Just noting the facts of the text.
Let them come. I will share the truth.
“One could just as well argue that these verses give way to family pets being baptized.
Or pots and pans.
Agreed.
It didn’t say they weren’t in those households, either. Like I said, I’m not arguing for or against. Just sayin.’
Not really. That's ludicrous. Jews upheld human life all throughout their scriptures, and routinely made animal sacrifices.
Nor am I defending or denouncing the belief in infant baptism, as I stated; I'm just showing how it came to be in some precincts.
The act of placing Holy Water on the child is not the issue. The actual issue is the Church’s instructions for the GODPARENTS of the child. They are clearly instructed to assist the family in the religious raising of the child. If the homosexual or lesbian couple are not even attempting to live by the Word it is up to the Godparent/s to instruct the child in the Word. I’m fairly certain that there would be a WHOLE LOT OF ANGST from the homosexual or lesbians who are raising this child if the Godparent does indeed try to implement the Lord’s Instructions. If the Godparent does not attempt to raise the child correctly or even point out the issues to the homosexual or lesbian couple, then the Baptism itself is a fraud. Better to say, “No,” with love up front than to lie because you want to appear nice to everyone who walks in the Church’s doors.
My lib parish in in Hollywood. Every year they had a GAY MASS during fag , er gay week.
Every homo fag showed up at Sunday mass for this one mass and made a mockery of the mass.
The parish STOPPED the fag mass unofficially. Even semi lib people had it with their faggery...
How infant baptism came to be? In my understanding of church history, it started when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. A former pagan empire, now to be made Christian. Christianity now a state church, was faced with a huge influx of pagans to be made Christian by baptism.
The state church saw the pragmatic, and much faster, answer to the problem, was to just sprinkle water on them. Once the former, and Biblical, mode of baptism was compromised, it was just a matter of time before they rationalized again, and began to sprinkle infants as their baptism.
“It didn’t say they weren’t in those households, either.“
I don’t find arguments from silence convincing.
Nor the basis of theology.
I agree.
Welcome to Free Republic!
Sadly, you are right. In today's litigious society - especially the Left, the LGBTXYZ people are actively seeking out churches to sue and make examples of thereby hoping to bend Christians to their will or put them out of business.
The early Christians, I don't think, even had to consider actions like this because it was common understanding that extra-marital sex was unholy behavior and sin. Having a clearly spelled out statement of faith and expected behaviors of members give guidelines and standards to point to so there should not be grounds for lawsuits.
Homosexuals are not coming to your church in order to find God. They are coming to bend the Church into accepting THEIR viewpoints. They will make their presence conditional upon the Church saying nothing disparaging of homosexuality. That is their objective.
The reality is they are there to be proselytizers for the homosexual agenda, and the Church needs to see them that way.
Pastor at the church I attend is on record saying he’ll go to jail if it comes to it.
If churches started to preach about sinners in the hands of an angry God, there wouldn’t be this problem.
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