At the heart of church membership is regular communing together at the Lord's Supper. Those who are regularly welcomed to that table are essentially a church's members. They are those who are self-examined (1 Cor 11:28) and also examined by others (that is, by those who have not been excluded as an act of discipline). Being baptized is part of the obedience that would be expected for one to come to the table.1 Thus Baptists have traditionally thought that baptism is "a prerequisite to other rights and responsibilities in the church, including participation in the Lord's Supper."2 As John Gill put it, "After the ordinance of baptism, follows the ordinance of the Lord's Supper; the one is preparatory to the other; and he that has a right to the one has a right to the other; and none but such who have submitted to the former, ought to be admitted to the latter."3
In the New Testament we have no record of anyone taking the Lord's Supper who had not first been baptized. The sign of union with Christ—baptism—precedes the sign of communion together. In Christ's Great Commission, baptism is mentioned before "teaching them to obey everything" that Christ commanded. It is clearly intended to be an initial step in discipleship. This also fits with the analogy from the relationship of circumcision to the Passover in the Old Testament. No uncircumcised male was to take the Passover meal. So only those who are baptized are to take the Lord's Supper.4
How should such biblical truth affect the practice of the local church? Should churches take as members those who have not been baptized?5 These are pressing questions for this generation. If agreement on a particular matter is not essential for salvation, should agreement be regarded as essential for church membership? If the question springs from a receding grasp on the truth or at least a declining willingness to define and defend the truth—a mere essentialism—then more basic and dangerous issues than a misunderstanding of baptism are at stake. If, on the other hand, the question emerges from a sincere desire for the unity of the body of Christ, then the question is a noble one and deserves serious consideration. Christians from John Bunyan to D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones have pled for liberty on this point. They have advocated that agreement on the legitimacy or illegitimacy of infant baptism not be required for church membership.6
This position of neutrality over a matter not essential for salvation is gaining in popularity. The question essentially is, or at least very nearly is, Should we continue to have Baptist churches? If the question is posed as one of love versus dogmatism, the answer is easy, but the real issues at stake may be obscured. Two matters in particular cannot be overlooked.
First, some things are not essential for an individual's salvation, yet agreement on them is essential in order for a church to function. One thinks of questions surrounding church government, qualifications for membership, or women serving as pastors and elders. Such issues of polity and practice may be declared "matters indifferent," and freedom may be allowed among different congregations for determining their own answers to these questions. But finally, each congregation must do one thing and not the other. A congregation either recognizes women as elders or it does not, an outside bishop as an authority or not, and infants as viable subjects of baptism or not.
This brings us to the second and more important matter which must not be overlooked—fidelity to Scripture. If baptism is not essential for Communion and church membership, it effectively becomes a matter of individual judgment. The desire for doctrinal inclusiveness and unity in the Spirit ironically reduces obedience to a matter of subjective preference. Some, like John Bunyan, have argued that disobedience to a command of Christ, especially when done in ignorance, represents a mere lack of light to be borne with more than it represents a disciplinable offense or a sin.
A sin can consist of either an action or an intention. Certainly the intention to disobey God is sin. But a disobedient action toward God is also a sin even if the individual does not intend to sin. The Bible teaches clearly that there are unintentional sins.7 Intentions are an important consideration in the nature and gravity of a sin, but they are not the only consideration. One of the effects of sin is to stupefy the sinner, to dull and darken the faculties. So those dwelling in sin are said to dwell in darkness, but that darkness does not ameliorate one's guilt. In the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25), Jesus taught with stark clarity that obedience to God does not lie in the eye of the beholder, unless the beholder is God himself. Many goats thought they had lived righteous lives, but Jesus said they have not.
How then do we know what God considers obedience? By his own self-revelation. There is no other sure and certain guide! If Christ has commanded Christians to be baptized, then countermanding that instruction, or substituting mere intention, even sincere intention, does not serve him best.
Christ's glory is most displayed in the church when baptism guards both the regeneracy of church membership and the consistency of the church's corporate witness. If we understand that Christ commands the church to baptize only those who believe, then it seems clear that a biblically faithful church is a Baptist church.
1 D. Broughton Knox, relying on Paul's statement in 1 Cor 1:17, denied that New Testament baptism was important for those brought up in Christian homes. Advocating infant baptism, Knox wrote: "It is not identical with the baptism of holy scripture, which was a baptism of repentance with a view to forgiveness. Such a baptism does not fit the circumstances of a Christian family. . . . To confess Christ by being immersed under water is only practiced because it is believed that Jesus sent us to baptize with water. But, as Paul makes clear, this is not the case" (Selected Works, vol. 2 [Youngston, OH: Matthias Media, 2003], 308–9).
2 Charles Kelley Jr., Richard Land, R. Albert Mohler Jr., The Baptist Faith and Message (Nashville: LifeWay, 2007), 97. See John Hammett, "Baptism and the Lord's Supper" in The Baptist Faith and Message 2000, ed. Douglas K. Blount and Joseph D. Woodell (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littleton, 2007), 75. That this is what Southern Baptists have traditionally and officially believed, see The New Hampshire Confession, Article XIV, and The Baptist Faith and Message, Article 7.
3 John Gill, A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity (1839; repr., Paris, AR: The Baptist Standard Bearer, n.d.), 915.
4 The implication of differing understandings of baptism means reduced fellowship between Christians of otherwise similar convictions. Since no one has questioned the validity of believer's baptism, it has always been the believer Baptists who have been left in the difficult position of not recognizing the baptisms of Christians coming from paedo-Baptist churches. Many defenses of Baptists against the charge of being bigots on this point have been written. One that is both a classic and typical is Abraham Booth, A Defense for the Baptists (1778; repr., Paris, AR: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 2006).
5 A good, simple work on this topic is Bill James, Baptism and Church Membership (Darlington, England: Reformation Today Trust, 2006). Another contemporary defense of having Baptist churches is chap. 4 of John S. Hammett, Biblical Foundations for Baptist Churches: A Contemporary Ecclesiology (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2005).
6 The controversies about terms of admission to communion among nineteenth- century Baptists provide a rich resource for more biblical thinking on these matters. For example, see R. B. C. Howell, Terms of Communion.
7 E.g., Leviticus 4–5; Numbers 15; Ezekiel 45.