Five Days With Spurgeon: Baptism and the Lord’s Supperنموونە

Baptism as Convictional Obedience

What was Spurgeon’s baptismal theology? Three points are worth highlighting. We’ll look at the first today and the second and third tomorrow.

Firstly, Spurgeon rejected any salvific or meritorious understanding of baptism. Baptism was for those who had already been saved through repentance and faith in Christ, performed as an act of obedience. “Baptism is for saints, not for sinners; like the Lord’s Supper, it is in the Church, not out of it. Believing you are saved. Baptism does not save you; you are baptized because you are saved.” To miss this point would be to miss the gospel.

One of the most significant controversies that Spurgeon sparked was the Baptismal Regeneration Controversy in 1864, attacking the growing influence of Roman Catholic theology in the Church of England. The sermon that started it all attacked the language of baptismal regeneration found in the Book of Common Prayer. Spurgeon believed that such language that declared baptized infants to be regenerate by their baptism was antithetical to the gospel. Such an understanding of baptism compromised the gospel in the Church of England, and Spurgeon called evangelicals to leave the Church. Spurgeon took baptism seriously, and any salvific understanding of baptism effectively “unchurched” a church.

While baptism was not saving, Spurgeon viewed it as a matter of convictional obedience. Recounting his own experience of baptism, Spurgeon writes, “I did not fulfill the outward ordinance to join a party, and to become a Baptist, but to be a Christian after the apostolic fashion; for they, when they believed, were baptized.” When he became convinced of believer’s baptism, Spurgeon didn’t even know that Baptists existed as a denomination. As far as he was concerned, this was a matter of obedience to Scripture.

Therefore, those coming from a paedobaptist background and wanting to join the Tabernacle needed to be convinced from Scripture about believer’s baptism. It was not sufficient for them to merely be willing to submit to the church’s requirement of baptism. They had to do it out of conviction; otherwise, they could not join the church.

Tomorrow, we’ll examine the final two points that characterized Spurgeon’s baptismal theology.