John MacArthur, Jr.’s Assertion Number 4. “Well, let me give you a fourth reason. I reject infant baptism because infant baptism is not consistent with the nature of the church.”

Ours is a church where all Evangelical Christians who are not living in open defiance of God could sit down at the Lord’s Table in complete unity. We embrace the doctrine that the Church, as people see it, is a mixed multitude, not unlike Israel of old. We accept a relatively untaught person’s simple profession of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior to be enough. We don’t require communicant or catechism classes. We believe that the means of grace are that, and we believe that they are a two-edged sword: they draw the elect to Christ; they drive away the reprobate. My preaching is both gentle and winsome and at the same time greatly offensive to some—I mean it to be that way.

To demand a regenerate membership, that is, only those about whom we are sure have been converted, is wicked and violates the Word of God. In the Parable of the Wheat and Tares, the tares are sown “among the wheat,” (Matthew 13:25 .) To be sure, the field where all this takes place “is the world,” (Matthew 13:38.) but the tares are actually in the Kingdom, as it is manifested “in the world:” the angels “will weed OUT of his KINGDOM everything that causes sin and all who do evil.” (Matthew 13:41.) In response to the fanatics who would exclude some true, but weak believers in their zeal for a “Pure Church” — “Do you want us to go and pull them up?”—our Lord Jesus Christ declares: “No . . . because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.” (Matthew 13:28-30.)

We are explicitly commanded to “Receive one who is weak in the faith . . . ..” (Romans 14:1) And a straightforward reading of the book of Acts points to the Church’s responding to a simple confession of faith in Christ by receiving the professor fully into the life and communion of the Church with no other requirement. There was no waiting period, no communicant’s class, no new member’s class, and no probing examination by the elders. People, as individuals and as families, simply professed that they were turning from their sin to the Lord Jesus, were baptized and received into the fellowship of the Church. It was and should be a simple matter. But it is not the end of the matter. To be baptized is to begin a life-long calling to take up the cross and follow Jesus.

This does not mean that the church should not exercise discipline over her members. If someone who professes faith in Christ is living in sin, he must be admonished. If he fails to repent, he must be excluded from the life and fellowship of the Church. It is only those who persevere to the end who have ever been born again. That is the teaching of the New Testament, e.g. 1 John 3:4 ff. and Hebrews 3:14 (“For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.”) You and I do not know who those people are. Those who deny the faith by rejecting clear-cut biblical truth or by a wicked and unrepentant way of life, and who rebelliously continue in such must be put out of the Church. But the Church may not exclude others; her doors must be open to all.

The question often arises as to how we can maintain the purity of the Church with such an easy policy of accepting people. The preaching of the gospel creates faith in Jesus Christ, but it also repels the hypocrite. As Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 2:15, 16: “For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life.”