ANSWER: The very things that make us a New Testament Baptist are what make us different.
When we look at our prototype, John the Baptist, it was what he was by God’s will and authority that made him different. John the Baptist not only served God, he was sent from and by God, identified by God, with heaven’s authority to perform his mission: “…to make ready a people prepared for the Lord,” Luke 1:17.
For a people to be made ready for the Lord, it involved:
–their responding to the preaching that they must repent, Matthew 3:2,8
–their acceptance of Christ as “the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world,” John 1:29,35-37.
–that they be administered New Testament Baptist baptism, sent from heaven, (John 1:33, Acts 1:22) at the hands of the first Baptist preacher, Matthew 3:1.
Christ (who submitted to Baptist baptism to fulfill all righteousness, Matthew 3:13-17) took those whom John had prepared for Him and set them first in His New Testament Church, 1 Corinthians 12:28. It was the fact they were prepared by a ministry of Divine authority, baptized by a minister authorized and identified by God’s authority, and set in the church by the authority of Christ–that’s what made the first New Testament Baptist Church at Jerusalem different from all other religious bodies.
Christ taught that His Body, the New Testament Church He built from those apostles whom John the Baptist prepared for Him, was not a product of human making, but had come to pass, i.e. been created by the Divine authority that had brought it all to pass, see John 15:1-5. The vine with its branches exists due to the life God has given it by His authority. Whereas man cannot create life, he can only produce something that is artificial.
It was this “life” that existed in the New Testament Church that Jesus built that made it different, that made it the work of God, the same way that it was the authority of God that sent and made John the Baptist’s baptism different and sanctioned by heaven.
Today, a New Testament Baptist Church is different because it has descended from the church that Jesus built, with this same existing authority and baptism that God once delivered to the saints, having the same Head (Christ), the same authority and Biblically identifiable baptism that Jesus and the apostles had (Baptist), who were the first set in the church.
These distinctives are not subject to the arguments of men, but are rather afforded to those who accept them by faith.
With God, there is but “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” Ephesians 4:5
SHARING
