Baptist Distinctives
Do you ever wonder what we believe? Do you wonder why we call ourselves “BAPTISTS”?
Join me as we take a brief dive into our beliefs. I will post daily for the next few days, to continue our study. Every day we will look at one Baptist Distinctive.
Why are we Baptist, and not something else?
We live in a time when people reject labels of all kinds. Why is it important to be a Baptist? Why not drop the name and be a non-denominational church? Why does it matter what Christian group with which you identify?
Labels are useful. Imagine how foolish it would be if you went to the canned food aisle at the grocery store and there were no labels. Perhaps there were hundreds of cans marked “Beans.” Are they green beans, pinto beans, kidney beans, or lentils? Are the beans seasoned or unseasoned? No one would know unless they bought the can, took it home and opened it.
Furthermore, how foolish would it be if every restaurant in the world was generically named? Before you enter a restaurant, you want to know if they serve Italian, Mexican, American, Indian, or Chinese. Labels help us see at a glance what kind of food we can expect to find inside the restaurant.
We rely on labels daily to tell us what to expect. They are necessary when it comes to churches as well. Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Pentecostal, Universalist Unitarian, Nazarene, Charismatic, etc. are more than archaic labels. Each one signals a body of doctrine and philosophy that is vastly different from one another. Furthermore, a non-denominational church can be any one of these! How confusing! These various churches can’t all be right.
Many believers pick a church based on how it makes them feel, how many of their friends go there, the personality of the pastor, or if the music appeals to them. Far more important than any of these is what the church teaches regarding God and the Bible!
- Do you receive salvation by grace through faith or must you earn it?
- Can God hear your prayers or must you go through a priest?
- Should you pray to Mary and the saints?
- What is the proper relationship between church and government?
- Do religious rituals supply grace?
- Are Mass and the Lord’s Supper the same?
- Can you lose your salvation?
- What Bible version should you use?
- What are your responsibilities as a Christian?
- How should my faith affect my life daily?
- What is the correct model of church leadership?
- How/When/Why am I supposed to be baptized?
All of these questions are extremely important, and God gives clear answers to them in the Bible. Yet, you will get different answers in different churches! Unfortunately, tradition trumps God’s Word in many churches and false doctrine is prevalent.
When looking at our church, we call ourselves “Baptist”. And it is more than a useless label. It indicates that the church holds to eight Biblical truths known as the Baptist Distinctives. A pastor or group of members did not mandate these beliefs. They are accepted through a sincere study of Scripture.
Since the time of Christ, there have always been Christians who followed the teaching of our Lord and His Apostles as revealed in the New Testament. As false teaching began to corrupt some churches, these believers held to the Biblical position and were persecuted and martyred for their faith.
They have been called by many different names throughout history, but their fundamental beliefs have remained the same. Eventually, the name Baptist was given to them because they insisted that infant baptism was not Biblical and would “rebaptize” their converts. Historical Baptists are not part of a denomination, but a family that traces its core beliefs back to Christ. These cohesive truths are called the “Baptist Distinctives.” They are what make Baptist churches unique. Some Christians believe some of them, but real Baptists believe them all.
