Baptist Distinctive I: The Necessity of Personal Conversion

As promised, I want to extend my thoughts concerning Baptist distinctives and their effects in my life. I experienced personal conversion at a Southern Baptist church that helped me grow in Christlikeness in unimaginable ways. At the same time, I noticed a trend the longer I stayed in SBC churches. An average Baptist church member could not tell you what a Baptist is. They may say, “We vote,” while unable to define congregationalism. They may say, “we don’t baptize infants,” but are unable to define regenerate church membership and believers’ baptism. Many don’t even know that religious liberty is a Baptist distinctive. However, one distinctive stands out. You’re average Baptist could tell you, “You need to be saved.” Isn’t this what it means to be Christian after all?

Although many would say yes to the question above, is the necessity for personal conversion functionally believed in Baptist churches? In my experience, there are many functional malpractices that subvert Baptist’s confessional belief in conversion. By this I mean that though an average Baptist would say, “Duh, you need to be saved in order to be Christian,” there are unbiblical traditions that stand in the way of witnessing true conversion in many Baptist churches today. Before listing some of those, what do Baptists mean by conversion?

Two examples will suffice: one from a non-reformed confession and one from a reformed confession. First, the Helwys Confession, 1611 (Article 4) states:

even so now being fallen, and having all disposition unto evil, and no disposition or will unto any good, yet God giving grace, man may receive grace, or my reject grace, according to that saying; (Deuteronomy 30:19) I call Heaven and Earth to record. This day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: Therefore choose life that both thou and thy seed may live.

Second, The Second London Baptist Confession (10.1) states:

Such of the elect that are converted at riper years, having sometime lived in the state of nature, and therein served divers pleasures, God in their effectual calling gives them repentance to life (Titus 3:2–5).

In both confessions though different in soteriology (study of salvation), the necessity for personal conversion (repentance and faith, salvation by grace alone) is affirmed. God is the gracious initiator who brings about transformation in both examples. Thus, personal conversion can be defined as: the gift from God of faith and repentance toward God. Though this may be something obviously affirmed by Baptists, I fear that it has been functionally subverted at least two ways I have witnessed.

First, by emotional appeals to make decisions rather than a reliance on the Spirit to do his converting work on sinners. This can often be done with music and drawn-out rhetoric in altar calls and invitations. Altar calls are good in that they give a call to action, but the only calls to action regarding conversion the New Testament gives is to repent and believe (Mk. 1:14–15; Acts 16:31; Acts 20:21), confess (Rom. 10:13), or be baptized (Acts 2:38). Often emotional appeals can call people to the wrong action that does not save (e.g., walk an aisle, pray a prayer, respond to feelings).

Second, the malpractice of quick and false assurance. Believers can have assurance of salvation (1 John 5:13; Eph 1:13–14; Rom. 10:13). However, this assurance does not exclude a call to persevere to the end. Someone professing faith in Christ is not the same thing as them possessing faith in Christ. A profession is an initial confession. The possession of faith can only be proven with time. Fruit takes time to grow. What would happen among our churches if we took time to catechize and disciple new believers with the scriptures and creeds rather than giving quick assurance and hasty baptism? Given the number of young children who are “baptized” and re-baptized as older teenagers in Baptist churches, it is time to reconsider and act wisely concerning these matters.

Avoiding these two pitfalls would help us re-emphasize the necessity for personal conversion. Rightly defining and practicing the doctrine of conversion would help us guard the witness of the gospel. By this I mean calling sinners to repentance and faith without manipulation and having patience for evidence of fruit before giving assurance.

Much of the church’s witness has been tarnished by measuring fruit by quantity rather than quality. In the name of counting more decisions, the church has given false assurance to many, thus allowing unbelievers to be responsible for the witness of the church. The implications of this are massively hurtful to the church’s witness. More will be said about this when discussing the Baptist distinctive of a regenerate church. Without the necessity of personal conversion, Baptist churches will continue to decline because they continue to affirm Christians who think they’re saved but are not — simply because of a reliance on human tactics and perception rather than God’s converting power.

At the heart of the Christian faith lies miraculous, Holy Spirit-wrought new birth. Not moralism. Not salvation by slogan. Not salvation by prayer, but by the gift of repentance and faith in the resurrected Son of God. If Baptists really care about the Great Commission, they will quit coercing people to make decisions, quit giving false assurance, and instead make disciples. This requires the necessity of personal conversion, and it takes time. Dallas Willard said, “we [should] intend to make disciples and let converts happen instead of intending to make converts and let disciples happen.”