Regenerate Church Membership

Concerning Baptists

This conference is about Baptist renewal, and I just want to say a few things at the outset here to clarify what I mean, and what I believe we mean, by the word Baptist. "Baptist" is a two-fold title: on the one hand, it describes a particular set of convictions or beliefs, and on the other hand, it also describes the historical movement of people who hold to those convictions.

That second sense—describing the people who hold to these beliefs—is important. We began this conference last night with Dr. Haykin's historical introduction on purpose. History matters. These convictions we hold to didn't fall out of the sky. Baptists are a people with a history and we care about that history.

But we don't care about history because that history sets the agenda for us. We care about history because it was in that history that our convictions and beliefs were forged and clarified. And those convictions and beliefs are what really matter, because we believe these convictions and beliefs arise from the pages of Scripture. And Scripture is what sets the agenda for us.

And that's why it's important we recognize that "Baptist" is not a prescriptive word. It's not like someone says, "I'm a Baptist now, which means I have to believe everything these guys back in the 1600s believed or I'll get kicked out of the club." Instead, being a Baptist means saying, "I see these truths in Scripture, and when I look back in history I see other people who also saw these same truths in Scripture, and they did a really great job of clarifying and defending these shared convictions."

The word "Baptist" describes us, and "Baptist distinctive" refers to these particular convictions that we share.

Now, praise God, not everything we see in Scripture is a Baptist distinctive. Most of our beliefs are shared with all Christians everywhere from all times. That's the beauty of the 1689 confession, which deliberately shared as much content as possibly with the Westminster Confession, which had done so much to unify the people of God in Britain at the time.

Baptists have always been keen on showing their connection to global, historic Christianity and the beliefs they share with all of God's people. Because Baptists are simply a renewal movement within historic Christianity.

But there are a set of beliefs that are distinctive to Baptists, and holding these convictions is what defines us as Baptists. We don't believe these things just to be distinct. Our goal is not distinctness itself, but being faithful to the voice of our Lord in Scripture.

And a part of what we're doing in this conference is pointing out these Baptist distinctives, showing where we see them in Scripture, and calling one another to a fresh recommitment to them. Because we believe with all of our hearts that these Baptist distinctives are, in the end, simple truths that clearly arise from the pages of Scripture and thus represent the will of the Lord for His church.

Regenerate Church Membership

So, in this talk we're considering the Baptist distinctive of regenerate church membership. All of the Baptist distinctives are important, but this distinctive in particular is upstream of so much of what it means to be a Baptist.

Baptists believe that a church is to be composed of a regenerate membership. In other words, that the people who make up a church must be born-again believers.

And this belief is distinct. It sets Baptists apart from many older denominations who, on account of their doctrine of covenant, their practice of infant baptism, or their use of the parish system, necessarily embraced that their church membership would be a mixed company of regenerate and unregenerate. We heard last night how if you went back back in time to England or Scotland in the 1600s, you'd find parish churches where basically everybody who lived in the surrounding area was a baptized member of that church.

And the original baptists parted ways with their Anglican and Presbyterian brothers by insisting that the church was a voluntary society to be composed only of the regenerate—which means those who had been born again.

This Baptist distinctive, when embraced fully, also puts Baptists at odds with many modern denominations and churches, some of which might even have the word "Baptist" on their church sign, but many of whom do not practice meaningful membership at all—and thus end up in the same spot as those parishes: a church that is a mixed company of believers and unbelievers.

And in contrast to either mixed membership or no meaningful membership, historic Baptists pursue meaningful regenerate church membership.

The questions before for us today are, why? Why do we believe this? Where do we see it this Scripture? Why is it important for us to believe this, and what happens when we don't? And what are some meaningful ways for Christians—for Baptists—to put this distinctive conviction into practice today?

Old Covenant Background

The place we turn in Scripture to see these issues in the sharpest relief is not, as some may assume, in the New Testament. Rather, we first want to turn to the Old Testament, because the question of who composes a church is bound to our understanding of covenant and the history of God's dealings with His people.

God is a covenant-making God, and from the beginning, from creation—or, if you are unwilling for that, at least from the time of Noah—God has drawn near to His people in relationship, and has structured that relationship through a series of covenants.

Let's pick up the story today at the foot of Mount Sinai, where, after rescuing them from Egypt, the Lord gathered the people to Himself and said these words to them: “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel’” (Exodus 19:5–6).

And down in verse 8 we read, “All the people answered together and said, ‘All that the Lord has spoken we will do.’ And Moses reported the words of the people to the Lord” (Exodus 19:8).

What's important for us to see here is that these were words spoken to a nation, to the assembled people. Individuals from Israel were not invited to stay after the service and talk to one of the ushers about a relationship with God. No, the whole nation was brought into this covenant with God.

And we know how things went. How long did it take that nation to break their covenant with the Lord and do the exact opposite of obey His voice? Less than six weeks.

“And when Moses saw that the people had broken loose (for Aaron had let them break loose, to the derision of their enemies), then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, ‘Who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me" (Exodus 32:25–26).

"Who is on the Lord's side?" What a question to ask in the midst of a people who had just weeks before committed themselves to the Lord.

But that was the nature of that covenant. The people, as a people, entered into covenant with the Lord, but within that people, there were those who were on the Lord's side, and those who were not. There were those who had personal faith in the promises of Yahweh, and those who did not. There were those who knew the Lord, and those who did not.

“Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord” (1 Samuel 2:12). “And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind” (1 Chronicles 28:9).

This is what it was like to live in the days of the Covenant with Israel. Some knew the Lord, and many did not. This is why things got so messy so quickly after Joshua and his generation died. “And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel” (Judges 2:10).

And as we read in Judges, the people repeatedly wandered away from the Lord and suffered for it. But their suffering was not a sign that God had rejected them—their suffering at the hands of the nations was precisely the curses of the covenant God had made with them. Though they did not know the Lord, they were still in a covenant relationship with Him.

And this spin cycle of blessing and curse lasted for centuries until finally the severest covenant curse fell upon His people—exile. The tent of David was knocked to the ground, and like Adam and Eve before them, the people were sent away eastward from the good place God had prepared for them.

Jeremiah 31

If you were able to be there as the Babylonian battering rams rocked the walls and the temple mount poured smoke and the blood of women and children ran in the streets you might have spied a solitary figure walking through the rubble, dirty face streaked with tears, bending over now and again to retch on the ground (Lam 2:11)—the prophet Jeremiah. For years he had warned this was coming and yet as you read Lamentations you get the sense he can hardly process the destruction that he was witnessing.

Jeremiah was there for it all.

So imagine what it would have been like for Jeremiah, after years of prophesying about these destructions, to receive these words from God:

“The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you. For behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will restore the fortunes of my people, Israel and Judah, says the Lord, and I will bring them back to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall take possession of it’” (Jeremiah 30:1–3).

So begins Jeremiah 30-33, a unit known as the "Book of Consolation," in which the triumph of God's grace even over this catastrophe is promised.

I think this is something we too easily take for granted. Of course God was going to bring His people back from exile. But if we had been there, if we had felt the burden of centuries of borrowed time and the apocalyptic level of destruction unleashed on Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, we would probably feel as utterly hopeless as Jeremiah did when he wrote Lamentations. Of course this was the end.

But it wasn't. And all through Jeremiah chapters 30 and 31 we hear God, like a father with a child He cannot abandon, commit himself to saving and restoring His people, even after all of this.

But there's a major issue lying there, isn't there? After the golden calves, after the gang rape in Gibeah, after king after king burned his own son to death in a blood sacrifice to the demon-gods of Canaan, whatever is going to happen next cannot be a return to the status quo.

We can't go back! We can't go back to just repeating the same old cycle over and over again. We can't go back to a nation that doesn't know the Lord.

And that's why these words in Jeremiah 31:31, close to the half-way point in this Book of Consolation, come to us like a warm sunrise after a dark and bitter night. Hear the birds singing, see the snow melting away, feel the dawn of this long-awaited spring.

Verse 31: “‘Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord." (Jeremiah 31:31–32).

Do you feel it? The grief of a father who walked hand-in-hand with his firstborn son, of a husband cheated on by a wife whom he did nothing but love?

But all of this is going to change. There's a new covenant coming, not like the old covenant. So what's it going to be like? What will be new about this new covenant? There are four statements from verses 33-34 which describe what this new covenant will be like and how it will be different from the old covenant made at Sinai.

1. Internal Instruction

First, this covenant will be internal. Verse 33: "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts."

In the old covenant, in the Sinai covenant, the instruction or Torah God gave to His people was external. It was outside of them, written on tablets of stone, and later on scrolls, stored safely in golden boxes and synagogue cabinets, taught by scribes, and taken to heart by only a very few.

“I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you,” wrote the Psalmist (Psalm 119:11), but for most of Israel, the instruction of the Lord was not in here. It was out there—easily forgotten, easily missed.

And not only was the instruction out there, but the motivations were out there. Do these things and be blessed, do not do them and be cursed. It was all carrots and sticks, instead of heart-driven obedience. You could be a part of the covenant people of God in the days of the Sinai Covenant and have no internal desire to know God's instruction and no internal desire to do it.

As a pastor I've had people drop out of ministries because "my heart's just not in it any more." How true that was for so many in Israel—their heart was not in it, because it was not in their heart.

But in the days of the New Covenant, that will all change. This covenant will be marked by internal reality. The truth of God written on the very hearts of His people.

2. God And His People

Second, also in verse 33: "And I will be their God, and they shall be my people." Now, if you're familiar with the Old Testament, you know that these are not new words. This has been the central promise of the covenant since the days of Abraham. He would be their God, and they would be His people.

The problem is that we seldom see this promise being enjoyed, at least not consistently. The people were always off finding new gods for themselves. They barely lived and worshipped as His people.

But in this new covenant, all of that will change. He will be their God, and they will be His people.

3. Knowledge of the Lord

Third, in verse 34, in this covenant there will be universal knowledge of the Lord: "And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord."

This is huge, isn't it, given what we've seen? And this is really what it all comes down to: the new covenant community will not be a mixed community of those who know the Lord and those who don't. No longer will you have a situation where covenant member says to covenant member, "You should know the Lord."

"For they shall all know me." To be in this covenant is to have personal knowledge of God. This covenant will be a one in which every member has God's instruction written on their hearts and in which they personally know their God. From least to greatest. All without distinction, and all without exception.

4. Forgiven Sin

Fourthly and finally, the good news of the new covenant includes the forgiveness for sins. As verse 34 concludes, "For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Sin will be present in the New Covenant community, but this sin will not get in between God and His people, for it will be forgiven, fully and finally.

It's Here!

So these are the glorious promises of the New Covenant. And there is more. Jeremiah has more to say, Isaiah has more to say, Ezekiel has more to say—the prophets lips are dripping with the promises of this new era.

And yet, as the people came back into their land, they found themselves still operating on an Old Covenant basis with God. Not all of them did know him. Things fell apart. You know that the Romans were invited into the Holy Land by two brothers engaged in a civil war over who would be high priest?

The people had come back from Babylon, but nothing had really changed, and so they waited for centuries longer for these promised days to arrive.

So imagine the scene as twelve men gather in a rented room with their Rabbi, eating a meal to remember their forefather's escape from Egypt so many generations before, and this man from Nazareth holds up a goblet of ruby-red wine and says, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20).

This is it. This is the moment they'd been waiting for. The New Covenant was here, and would be sealed with sacrificial blood the next day as the Servant of the Lord was crushed for the iniquities of His people. And as Christ rose from the dead and ascended to His father and poured out His spirit, the New Covenant, in all of its glory, was being unleashed on a weary world.

“But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises,” says Hebrews 8:6. And the author goes on to quote Jeremiah 31:31-34 in its entirety, and concludes by saying, “In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (Hebrews 8:13).

The Old Covenant is over. The days of the New Covenant are upon us. It's here.

And we see this truth painted all over the New Testament. The New Covenant is not only introduced in the gospels, preached in Acts, and taught in the Epistles, it is also assumed at every point. In every description of the church in Acts, in every greeting written to the saints in every epistle, in every instruction given in the pastorals, it is assumed that the New Covenant church is not a mixed assembly like Old Covenant Israel, filled with people who may or may not know the Lord.

No, at every point it is assumed that the New Covenant churches are filled with people who have had God's instruction written on their hearts, who personally belong to God, who have come to know Him, and who have had their sins forgiven.

That's why Paul can write a letter to "the church of God that is in Corinth" (1 Cor 1:2), and say to that church, “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:4–8).

To be in the church is to have experienced that, because the New Covenant is here.

It's why, like in 2 Thessalonians 1:8 and all throughout the New Testament, those who do not know God are those who are outside of the church—and who will be judged when Christ returns.

The consistent witness of the New Testament is that the New Covenant is here and we're living in it.

What It Means to Be a Baptist

And this is what it means to be a Baptist. Baptists are simply witnesses to this great redemptive movement of God, drawing attention to the newness of the New Covenant, and seeking to live in its light.

And we've done that by insisting on this central truth: a new covenant church is not, and cannot be, thought of as a mixed company of believers and unbelievers, regenerate and unregenerate.

Because the New Covenant is here, and all of the members of this covenant know the Lord, then a New Testament church is a company of the believing. A church must be able to say, "Our church is made up, composed, constituted, of people who know the Lord. People who have been born again. We are a company of the redeemed."

A church is, in the words of one of my favourite Baptist confessions, "a union of believing and baptized Christians, who have covenanted to strive to keep all that Christ has commanded..." (Swedish Baptist Confession of 1891).

And so Baptists say to our Presbyterian and Anglican brothers, "The new covenant is here, and we cannot live like it is not. If your doctrine of the church, or your doctrine of baptism, or your doctrine of the covenant, results in a church that is a mixed company of believers and unbelievers, regenerate and unregenerate, born-again and-dead-in-sins, then your doctrine needs to change because it's out-of-sync with redemptive history."

But that's about all I'm going to say about our baby-baptizing brothers because Keith is going to be talking about that issue more this evening, and honestly, they are not my main audience in this talk.

For the rest of my time here I want to address those who consider themselves Baptists, or baptistic in some sense. They'd never baptize a baby, and yet many still operate as if the New Covenant were not here. They fail to practice this Baptist distinctive of regenerate church membership.

Our Context

And in particular, I want to address those who do this in particularly Canadian ways. Which requires a word about our context here. Many of the teachers and resources that have helped us figure out how to be faithful, Biblical baptists in recent decades have come out of the United States. But we need to understand that average Baptist church in the United States, particularly in the southern part of that country, tends to have a very different set of problems in relation to membership than the average Baptist church in Canada.

In the U.S., becoming a member of your local Baptist church, at least in certain areas, tends to be just what you do. Churches there may have many more people on their membership rolls than people who actually show up and participate in the life of the church. And faithful pastors beginning ministries in these churches often need to labour for their first several years to get people off their membership rolls so that their membership accurately reflects the group of believers who actually compose that church.

Here in Canada, our problems tend to be the opposite. Becoming a member at a church is not just what you do most of the time. Churches here tend to have far less people on our membership rolls than people who actually participate in the life of the church. And so faithful pastors in Canada tend to need to labour for years to get people on their membership rolls in the first place.

Making Peace With a Mixed Company

But many pastors don't. They make peace with their church's membership culture, relegating membership as a neat little extra that people sign up for a year before they want to get on the board, but otherwise can easily ignore without consequence.

And what they end up with, over time, is a church that is not defined by public confession of the gospel or shared affirmation of faith or mutual agreement in the truth. You end up with a church that is defined by some human-level factor, like, how long someone has attended your church, or how often they attend, or what ministries they are involved in.

If you ask a pastor or group of elders, "Who is your church? Who constitutes your church?" you will get a list of people, some of whom are members, some of whom have simply come most Sundays for the past two or three or twenty-five years, and all of whom are equally involved, equally responsible, equally invested in and by the church.

And what's the problem with this? The problem is that unregenerate people can attend church for 25 years. People who are dead in sins can show up every Sunday. Pharisees can give regularly and generously. You don't need to be born again to bring great food to every potluck. You don't need to be transformed by the gospel to sing along loudly with the great worship band.

Pastors, how many of you have been in that spot where you're doing a funeral for someone who had been around your church for years, and you're preparing to give the funeral message, and you're wondering, did they really know the Lord? They were at every event. They always had a smile on their face. But I never heard them say much about Jesus and His work in their life. Was this just their social club, and all of this God business was just the price of admission to getting to be with this group of friendly people?

How many pastors look out over their church and have only a foggy idea of who has been born again and who has not, who understands the gospel and who doesn't? And every Sunday they are saying "know the Lord" to their church, trying to convince people to care about God and his ways.

Do you see where this all goes? The old model of baptizing babies, and the new model of thinking of your church as whoever shows up on Sundays, essentially has the same effect of redefining the people of God as a mixed company of people with uncertain spiritual status, brought together by a merely human-level factor, and causing us to essentially live under Old Covenant conditions.

And the result is that many churches are living like they're still back in the book of Judges. Like Jesus never came and poured out His blood and His Spirit. And without recognizing it, they are saying "no thank you" to Jesus' gift of the New Covenant.

See, this isn't just about ecclesiology. This is about redemptive history. This is about the gospel. If you don't practice meaningful membership, your church is still acting like you’re in ancient Israel and missing out on some of the best things Jesus bought for us at the cross.

What Do We Do About This?

1. Practice Meaningful Church Membership

So, what do we do about this? If all of this is true, where does this leave us? And I would suggest this leaves us with several imperatives.

First, churches must practice meaningful church membership. And this starts with understanding what church membership is.

Church membership isn't like a Costco membership or Amazon Prime. The word "member" means "part of a body," and church membership is about saying: these are our body parts. These are the people who make up, who constitute, this body.

And in a New Covenant church, that means saying: these are the people who have agreed together about the identity of Jesus, the definition of the gospel, the validity of each other's confessions of faith, and who have covenanted together to be a church together.

Membership is about knowing who constitutes your church as a New Covenant assembly. Now of course we welcome anybody to come and be with us on Sunday, like 1 Corinthians 14 shows us. But, like 1 Corinthians 14 shows us, we know the different between insiders and outsiders, so that we can warmly invite the outsiders to become insiders.

And for this to work, you need a clearly defined membership process. There are various ways in which membership can be practically done, and my guess is that each Baptist church represented here does things slightly differently.

But what is non-negotiable is that a church has some process by which it can say, "These are the believers who constitute our church." That a pastor can say, "These are the souls for whom I will give an account." That fellow Christians can say, "These are the saints whom I am to hold accountable to their profession of faith."

2. Teach People About The Church

Now, I understand that getting people to think about church in this way is a hard shift. So many in North America have grown accustomed to church as a service provider they attend, not a specific body they must identify with. No matter how nice you are about it, people will struggle when they encounter this vision of the church.

And so we need to gently and courageously guide people towards membership by teaching them what a church is, and why it is crucial for the people of God to stand and be counted.

I'm sure that I've made more mistakes than not on this file, but what we have done at Emmanuel is tried to faithfully and consistently teach our people what a church is. We've preached through the pastoral epistles. We did a series of topical expositions on the church from Matthew 16 and 18 and Ephesians and other passages.

Time and time again, we've worked to define instead of assume the answer to the question, "What is a church?" Because this question is the soil from which meaningful membership arises.

3. Only Admit Believers to Membership

Third, and this one should be fairly basic, but churches must only admit believers with a credible profession of faith to membership. This means that a major part of a membership process should be interviewing candidates, asking them to share their testimonies and explain the gospel in their own words. We can assume nothing. We have to guard the front door.

And honestly, in our context, 99% of the time this is such an encouraging process. I love hearing people share how God has saved them, and hear them explain the old, old story once again. When you make membership about partnership in the gospel, every new member that joins your church is a fresh reminder of what this is all really about.

4. Practice the Ordinances Meaningfully

Fourth, practice the ordinances in a meaningful way. Only baptize believers, which Keith is going to convince us of tonight.

But this is about more than baptism. It means fencing the Lord's table. The Lord's table is a New Covenant meal for the New Covenant community, and this must be emphasized.

For the sake of time I'm avoiding a fuller discussion about open and closed communion, but at the very least, every time you go to the table it must be clear that this is a meal for those who know Jesus as their saviour and are walking in obedience to His commandments. It means having the courage to say to some people that they are welcome to be with you on Sunday, but they are not welcome to eat and drink with you.

When you practice the Lord's supper in this way, it makes a distinction between those who know the Lord and those who don't. And that's a part of the point. The Lord's supper is not a private deal between me and God. Read 1 Corinthians 11: the Lord's Supper is a corporate meal where a church visibly celebrates its unity as the New-Covenant people of God.

So honour the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus by practicing the ordinances meaningfully.

5. Practice Meaningful Church Discipline

Fifth, practice meaningful church discipline. Regenerate church membership isn't just about the front door—it's about the back door. Matthew 18 and 1 Corinthians 5 demonstrate that a New Covenant church has the responsibility to dismiss those whose behaviour undermines their Christian confession.

When you do this, as we've learned from experience, the process is painful, but the result is a stronger, healthier church that more clearly and joyfully reflects the beauty of the New Covenant to a watching world.

6. Treat Your Members Like They Are the Church

Sixth, treat your members like they are the church. If it's true that the members of our church know the Lord and have been inwardly transformed by Him, than that means that pastors are not priests or CEOs who regulate or administrate our people's relationship with God. The Spirit has been poured out on all flesh, and pastors and elders have been given to equip the saints for ministry so that the body may build itself up in love.

So, brother pastors here, apply this truth by treating your members like they are the church. Train them to live out their calling as a kingdom of priests. Equip every member to be a minister.

We won't say much more here, because this leads us into congregationalism, which Shaun will speak on tomorrow. But when churches really practice regenerate church membership, they begin to unleash an army of ministers who can do together so much more than what any single pastor or elder team can do on their own.

Because we no longer have a group of attenders, but a growing body, empowered by the Spirit, nourished by Christ the head, growing up into maturity together.

7. Help Your People Understand the Glory of the New Covenant

Finally, seventh, help your people understand the glory of the New Covenant. Don't avoid the Old Testament, but also don't teach the Old Testament in the way I was taught it in Sunday School when I was a kid—as if those were the glory days. Back then was when the really exciting stuff happened. And today the most exciting thing that happens is when a new song gets introduced on Sunday or someone adds an extra scoop of grounds to the church coffee.

Do what Paul did in 2 Corinthians 3: as a minister of the New Covenant: help your people understand the glory of the New Covenant. Which means preaching through the Old Testament and helping them see just how much better we have it now.

We preached through the book of Judges last year and it was so good to be reminded, week after week, just how good we have it in the New Covenant, just how wonderful it is to know the Lord and have His instruction written on our hearts, to experience the Spirit and see the glory that we know, and how the Old Testament saints would have given anything to experience a week of our normal lives.

The New Covenant is bursting at the seams with glory and we need to help our people see this from every page of Scripture.

So, brothers and sisters, praise God for the New Covenant. Let us ever live in its light.