The Baptist Faith and Message is the Standard or Confession of Faith adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention in 1925. Though not as robust as its predecessors, this confession still manages to say something of substance about baptism (unlike so many “statements of faith” you find in contemporary churches). Here is what it says,
Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer’s faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Saviour, the believer’s death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus. It is a testimony to his faith in the final resurrection of the dead. Being a church ordinance, it is prerequisite to the privileges of church membership and to the Lord’s Supper.
As a Reformed Baptist, I can affirm every point in this paragraph concerning baptism. But like so much of the more contemporary Evangelicalism, this statement does not say enough to really help the believer understand that baptism is MORE than an act of obedience. In fact, it is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, meaning that here we have more to do with God’s work on our behalf than our work (i.e. obedience) towards his commandment.
Something mysterious happens in baptism, as God seals upon us the promises we believed in the gospel. The loss of a deep sacramental protestant theology as evidenced in the Baptist Faith and Message on baptism is a tragedy of which we are now reaping the results, as thousands and millions of former Protestants are fleeing to more mystical (and I believe superstitious) forms of Christianity in hopes of regaining a sense of God’s otherness, which the Reformers all managed to not only understand, but discuss and experience themselves.
