Things go awry in the church when we don’t understand their purpose. In the early 400s, Pelagius thought the only purpose of the cross was to serve as a moral example. Believers, then, always had the heavy burden of needing to maintain goodness and follow the example. Thankfully, the purpose of the cross is much greater. Christ died to give us righteousness and take on our sinfulness! Rightly understanding this frees us to walk in confidence, having been forgiven of our sins. In the 1,500s, the church thought works served the purpose of securing salvation. This led to a general lack of assurance amongst the believers of the day. The purpose of works, however, is actually to give believers assurance of salvation they already received through grace alone!
In our day and age, we’ve developed a pretty clear understanding of the purpose of baptism in the life of the believer, but what about the purpose of baptism in the church? Baptism is not just for the individual believer. Baptism is also the ordinance for the church to admit new believers into church membership. Now, if you’re thinking there’s no verse or passage in Scripture that says, “Thus says the Lord, Baptism is an ordinance for the local church alone,” you’re right. But that doesn’t mean the connection isn’t there. To understand who has the right to baptize, we’ll need to examine a few key passages.
In Matthew 18:15-20, Jesus hands the keys of the kingdom to the local church. Verses 17b-18 say, “[I]f he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
The Greek word for “you” in these passages is second person plural, meaning “you all.” Jesus is talking about the church.
According to Christ, the local church has the authority to bind and to loose. Context indicates that loosing is the removal of a church member from the congregation due to ongoing sin. In this instance, a church member has continued in willful sin to the point where the church can no longer assume they have a relationship with Jesus, so they are removed. But what about binding? What does Jesus have in mind when he says, “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,”?
The rest of the New Testament gives us the answer: baptism. In Matthew 18, Jesus is contrasting loosing, the removal of a person from the church, with binding. Binding, then, is the admission of a person into the church! In order to understand how people are admitted to the local church, we have to turn to 1 Corinthians 12:12-14.
1 Corinthians 12:13 let’s us know how a person is admitted into a church. Paul writes, “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body”. The body here is the body of Christ (verse 27). When a person was baptized in the New Testament, they were added to the church as a member. We even see an example of this in Acts.
Take a look at what happens to those who have believed and been baptized in Acts 2:41: “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.” Immediately upon being baptized, the new followers of Jesus were added to the church that day! Now, someone might stop me there and say, “Hold up, they were added to the number of believers in general. Acts 2:41 is just saying some people got saved. You’re reading church membership into that passage.”
But look at the context! Acts 2:42 and 44 say these people, “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers…And all who believed were together and had all things in common.” These people had been baptized into a group that devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, breaking bread, prayers, and fellowship together. Clearly, they had been baptized into a church!
Now, this does not mean people are baptized every time they join a church. After a person is baptized once, the typical model is for members to transfer their membership, always maintaining connection with a local church. But when we put these passages all together, it’s clear that baptism is the means by which people first enter into church membership. This means baptism is the way believers are bound. And in Matthew 18, Jesus gives the authority to loose and bind to the local church, not the parachurch. Thus, we need to leave baptism to the local church!
When parachurch ministries leave baptism to the local church, a few things happen. First, new believers are much more encouraged to pursue church membership. If a new believer sees the Biblical mandate to be baptized, and the only place they can be baptized is into membership of a local church, then they will quickly become members! If we offer to baptize new believers, then they don’t have to be baptized into church membership. They can just be baptized at our event and delay membership.
Second, the difference between a local church and a parachurch ministry becomes clearer. Jesus gave the authority to bind and loose to the local church. If parachurch ministries (particularly those with a weekly gathering and preaching event) start binding, what can we point to and say, “See, this is why we’re not a church?” The more we look and act like a church, the less inclined our people will be to actively join and serve in a local church. When we leave baptism to the local church, we remind ourselves and our participants that we exist to support the bride of Christ!
Third, we help the witness of parachurch ministries. Sure, there are some churches that don’t mind if we baptize, but a significant number of them do. They rightly understand they have been given the authority to bind and loose. When we leave baptism up to them, we are effectively saying, “We’re not here to compete with you! We want to support you and help others join with you.” Baptizing helps our relationships with the churches that do care about the responsibility God has given them in Matthew 18.
When Pelagius misunderstood the purpose of the cross, the heavy burden of works were once again yolked upon the necks of God’s people. When we rightly understand the purpose of the cross, we can walk in freedom, knowing Christ has purchased our salvation! When the church misunderstood the purpose of works, the never-ending lack of assurance led to dread. When we rightly understand the purpose of works, we can taste the sweet assurance of salvation Christ gives us! When we misunderstand the purpose of baptism, we inadvertently harm the church and draw people away from membership. When we rightly understand the purpose of baptism and we leave it to the church, we encourage church membership, clarify the roll of the parachurch, and show the church we are here to support them.