Over the past few years, God has placed within us a desire for mercy ministry. With this call, he has provided us with a number of wonderful opportunities to love and grace others. But whereas we originally began answering the call with the idea that we would be bringing mercy and grace to others, we have come to find that transformative power in God’s call has more frequently been directed towards us. God has taught us many things over the past few years. Just when I feel I’m getting to the point where I “get it," God reminds me that he still has quite a bit of work to do on me. |
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If you don't want to have to read this in parts and click through all the links below, you can download the whole file here.
Part 1: Circumcision and Baptism - Introduction, importance, and the connection of baptism's symbolism and application between the Old and New Testaments
Part 2: Sprinkling and Consecration - The connection between the mode of consecration in the Old and New Testaments as well as the identification of the person of the godhead responsible for cleansing and consecration, the Spirit. Part 3: The Family and Federal Headship - Explores how God has deemed the children of believers holy, and how representation through federal headship is a beautiful aspect of God's grace to us as seen particularly through God's view of our holiness via Christ. This provides a framework for how we, in our independent, decisional culture can baptize individuals before their own faith in view of their parent's faith. Part 4: Contextual Evidence - Addresses some of the problematic logistics of immersion, specific baptism events in the NT, and some of the "problem passages" for sprinkling as the mode of baptism (e.g. Jesus's baptism and the Eunuch's baptism) Part 5: Church History - Church Father quotes from (approximately) the first 350 years of church history following the writing of the first NT books. I also very briefly address a few key archaeological points. Part 6: Counter-Rebuttals - I very briefly address what I believe to be some of the most common and/or strongest counters to the case I laid out (Israel vs. the church, one verse zingers, Greek word baptizo, circumcision practiced alongside baptism, and "just because"). Part 7: Conclusion and Resources - Self-explanatory
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*The views and ideas on this site are in no way affiliated with any organization, business, or individuals we are a part of or work with. They're also not theological certainties. They're simply thinking out loud, on issues and difficulties as I process things.
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