Introduction

This book is not about staking out tribal distinctives. It was originally born out of a desire to write something for my local church about who we are and why we believe the things we believe. It is especially for laymen who are motivated to dig deeper and really understand the biblical and theological roots of our church’s beliefs. It is crucial to understand, however, that we are not Reformed Baptists because of a desire to lay claim to a particular historical tradition, or because we have some blind devotion to an ancient confession of faith, or because we want to set ourselves up as theological elites who are superior to other Christians. Rather, we are Reformed Baptists because we believe it is the most biblical thing to be. Every Christian and every local church has to wrestle with the Word of God to understand what it means as a whole. Those who take the Bible seriously are trying to reach a conclusion about what the whole Bible means because they long to know God and the way of eternal life in Jesus Christ. While we respect our dear brothers and sisters who have taken this journey and come to different conclusions about the non-essential doctrines discussed in this book, our church has concluded that the Reformed Baptist faith is the best reflection of the teachings of the Scripture.

The reason Christians should try to understand the Bible as a whole, with good hermeneutics and sound reason, is not so we can best our theological opponents or achieve a feeling of personal righteousness. We have no righteousness before God except through Jesus Christ. We could win arguments while losing people and giving up ground to the enemy. Rather, the reason we want to know the full breadth of Scripture, including its secondary and even tertiary doctrines, is that the Bible as a whole is God’s sufficient Word to His beloved people. It not only reveals things necessary for eternal salvation but also tells us what we need to know for health, strength, and godly wisdom in this broken world. We need the secondary doctrines and practices discussed in this volume to weather the storms of life, repel the attacks of the evil one, resist the seductions of the world, and overcome the temptations of our own flesh. Christ gives His beloved bride the Bible, which is a very big book, because He wants us to have everything we need to run this race well. In Scripture, He gives us what we need to continue in faith through great hardship and difficulty, to endure this world of suffering and trial for our own good, for the good of our brethren, for the church’s mission to the lost, and for the glory of our great God. Deuteronomy 32:47 says that God’s Word “is no empty word for you, but your very life.”

Another reason that Christians and local churches must understand the Word of God as a whole is that we need all of the Bible to support and defend the essential doctrines of God, Christ, and the gospel. The whole counsel of God is essential for a church to remain Christ-centered. If the doctrine of Christ is like the diamond on a ring, the secondary doctrines of Scripture are like the prongs that hold up the diamond. The secondary doctrines are not as beautiful as Christ, but when the church neglects them, the glorious truths about Jesus Himself start to become threatened. When churches opt for simplistic confessions of faith that correctly express the doctrines of Christ and the gospel but lack the fullness of biblical truth, they are, perhaps unknowingly, removing the prongs from the diamond ring that is the Christian faith. Later generations will lack the doctrinal substance necessary to continue confessing the gospel of Jesus. Thus, God requires churches to pass down the whole counsel of God to every new generation, so that the great truths about Jesus and His gospel are not imperiled through neglect of Scripture’s secondary teachings, which form an interconnected whole.

This book began as a very small work intended to reach a lay audience. But as I wrote, I found myself wanting to express these truths in greater detail, while still trying to keep things relatively simple and readable for motivated laymen. Thus, the book you are holding in your hands is written for laymen who want more than a brief introduction and are willing to think deeply. It is also written for pastors. I especially have in mind pastors who may not be Reformed Baptists. This is not a polemical work, but an attempt to state these truths positively. My prayer is that it will benefit broadly evangelical pastors, Baptist pastors, and Reformed paedobaptist pastors who want to understand what their Reformed Baptist brethren believe. Therefore, the book includes a history of Reformed Baptist theology, as well as explorations of the law of God, the covenants, the doctrine of the church, and Christian liberty. These are, in my view, the doctrines that help to locate Reformed Baptists within the broader stream of Christian orthodoxy, especially among evangelicals and other Reformed churches in our day. It is important for me to say that not every Reformed Baptist will agree with the way I have expressed every doctrine in this book. I do not claim to represent every Reformed Baptist. To be a faithful Reformed Baptist is to hold to one of our historic confessions of faith, especially the Second London Confession, and while I believe that what I have written here is within the mainstream of historic Reformed Baptist beliefs, there is room for variation on certain matters.

I would like to give special thanks to a number of people who helped me with the editing of various portions of this book, including Brandon Adams, Mitch Axsom, Jim Butler, Andrew Graham, D. Scott Meadows, Micah Renihan, and Caroline Williams. I am most grateful to Tom Ascol along with the other good brothers and sisters at Founders Ministries, who asked me to write on this subject and patiently worked with me as I wrote. I especially want to thank Fred Malone, my pastoral mentor, who taught me how to think pastorally and to apply Christ to His beloved people, and Tom Nettles, my doctoral supervisor, who taught me how all the doctrines of the faith are interconnected and integrated within Reformed Baptist theology. Above all, I am thankful for my wife, Joy, my beloved and my friend, who read every word of each draft and encouraged me along the way.