Introduction
In the last 5 years you’ve likely noticed that we talk more and more about Christian creeds and confessions in our congregation. We have been reciting the Apostle’s Creed weekly for five years in our gathered worship. We also alternate in reciting the Nicene Creed. We’ve taken an entire year to recite an edited version of the Heidelberg Catechism, and more recently, we taught through the seven ecumenical councils and their associated creeds and confessions in our adult discipleship class.
Today, I’m beginning what will be a long series expositing the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. I plan to address a paragraph or two of the confession every week until I’ve worked my way through the entire confession. The confession contains 150 total paragraphs so this series will take some time. The good news is, these expositions will be bite-sized making them perfect for a quick read or listen (on my podcast) while commuting to work or doing the laundry. Today, I will answer two questions: what is a Baptist and what is the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession? (LCF)
What is a Baptist?
Baptists are a denomination of Christians which arose out of congregational churches during the English Reformation in the 17th century. Several pastors, such as John Smyth (c. 1554-1612) and Henry Jacob (15-63-1624) desiring greater purity and holiness for the church, began to teach the following doctrines as Scriptural:
Believers’ Baptism: Only professing Christians ought to receive baptism, not infants.
Regenerate Church Membership: Only those who evidence conversion may be members of local congregations.
Separation of Church and State: The civil and ecclesiastical authorities are separate spheres. The state ought not wield the keys of the kingdom, and the church ought not wield the power of the sword.
Liberty of Conscience: Every person has the right to direct access to God. Man is made in God’s image and is responsible to God for his own soul. Christ alone is Lord of the conscience, and therefore Baptists historically defend the right of others to freely accept or reject God without coercion.[1]
Baptists are orthodox, meaning they are within the broad stream of Nicene Christianity along with Christians around the globe. Baptists are evangelical, meaning they hold to justification by faith alone as do other Protestants. Baptists are a separatist movement in church history, meaning they shun the interference of the civil authorities and desire the church to be free. Baptists are conscientiously confessional. Baptists have always produced confessions to explain their own views and as documents used to preserve and purify their members.[2]
One such confession is the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith which we turn to now.
What is the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith?
In early autumn of 1689, one hundred and eight English and Welsh Baptist churches were represented in a General Assembly at which thirty-three pastors and messengers signed the document which came to be known as the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. The Confession, first published in 1677, became the “most important and widely accepted of all Baptist confessions of faith…”.[3]
The Confession shares intentional friendly commonalities with the Presbyterian Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) and the Congregationalist Savoy Declaration (1658). The drafters of the Confessions desired to demonstrate their common descent from the Reformation of the 16th century while explaining their own distinct understanding of covenant theology and the church.
The structure of the Confession can be outline in four parts:
The confession begins with the doctrine of the Scriptures. We cannot know about any other doctrine without the divine light of Holy Scripture. The Confession then moves to the doctrines of God, His decree, creation, providence, and the fall of man into sin in chapter 6.
Chapters seven through twenty cover the topic of the atonement and its application. Here we learn of God’s covenant, Christ the mediator, free will, and other doctrines related to God’s covenants.
The third section of the Confession begins in chapter twenty-one and explains how Christians ought to live before the Lord. This section covers subjects such as worship, oaths and vows, marriage, and the church.
Finally, in chapters thirty-one and thirty-two, the confession concludes by instructing us in matters pertaining to the world to come. Here we learn of the resurrection of the dead and the last judgment.
Conclusion
I believe the future health of Baptist churches in general, and our Baptist church in particular, requires us to recover conscious confessionalism. Baptists have always been a confessional people, dating back to the first decades of Baptist existence.
Our generation of Baptist Christians are responsible to affirm and defend the faith, to call one another to fellowship and discipline, to properly evaluate and hold ministers accountable for their teaching, and to assure future generations that the church we have received finds her roots in historic, Biblically faithful predecessors.
May we do all of that for the glory of Christ and the joy of his Saints.
In Christ,
Pastor Jonathan
[1] For a thorough treatment of these distinctives, see The Baptist Way by R. Stanton Norman
[2] These four terms (orthodox, evangelical, separate, and conscientiously confessional) come from Tom Nettles’ masterful work The Baptists.
[3] James Renihan, To the Judicious and Impartial Reader: A Contextual-Historical Exposition of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2022), 1.