People often wonder what makes a Baptist Church stand out as different from other Christian churches. As a Baptist Church, Hockliffe Street shares common characteristics with several thousand other such churches across the United Kingdom. Indeed, Baptist churches form one of the largest Protestant denominations in the world today.
The characteristic by which most people recognise the church is the practice of "believer's baptism". However, this characteristic appears because of a much more significant issue for Baptists, and that is the importance of Biblical teaching. Baptists hold that the Bible alone is the authoritative teaching about God, and that it is actually inspired by God through the leading of the Holy Spirit in the human authors of the various books that it contains.
This understanding of the importance of the Bible leads Baptists to accept its teaching that God, who is just, cannot accept sinful man into a relationship with Himself. However, the Bible clearly teaches that God has addressed this problem by sending His Son, Jesus, to live on this earth, and then to die bearing our guilt and punishment. Baptists thus declare that the only way back to God is through Jesus.
The Bible says that Jesus died for sinners, in order to offer all people the gift of forgiveness and peace with God, so that only those who reject God's gracious gift are excluded from it, by their own decision and will. Baptists are thus evangelicals, who want people to know about God's offer of forgiveness, so that everyone can decide for themselves whether to accept or reject what God has done.
The practice of "believer's baptism" comes about because this is the pattern seen in the Bible as a response to accepting Jesus as Saviour and Lord. The apostle Peter called on people in Jerusalem to "repent and be baptised", and this pattern of baptism following repentence is repeated in many other places in the New Testament. The Baptist churches follow this practice by choosing not to baptise infants who cannot decide to follow Jesus for themselves; instead, baptism is offered to those who are old enough to have considered the claims of Christ and accepted them. The form of baptism used is by immersion; this again reflects the New Testament biblical practice, and is rich in symbolic meaning about being "born again".
The fact that Baptists don't christen children is not to devalue them; we give thanks for every child born in the congregation and dedicate the child, the parents and the church to the task of teaching them what we believe; but we recognise that it is the individual's choice to accept the Christian faith, not something that is given to them by a religious ceremony.
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