Theological term
Washing of Regeneration
3 sermons · All terms
2LCF Chapter 18 - Of the Assurance of Grace and Salvation
Assurance of salvation is grounded not in the strength of faith or the quality of obedience but in the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ revealed in the gospel. This exposition of 1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 18 works through the four paragraphs of that chapter: assurance stated, assurance grounded, assurance realized, and assurance disquieted. The objective foundation of assurance is the active and passive obedience of Christ, proclaimed in the gospel and sealed to the believer by the testimony of the Holy Spirit. Believers are called to rest upon Christ alone, to attend the ordinary means of grace, and to resist grounding their hope in their own acts of obedience.
Of Baptism (2LCF29)
Baptism, as confessed in chapter 29 of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (2LCF), is examined here as a divine and mediatorial ordinance instituted by Jesus Christ for the New Testament church. The exposition grounds the doctrine of baptism in a web of interconnected doctrines — Scripture, the covenant of grace, effectual calling, union with Christ, and the regulative principle of worship — demonstrating that believers' baptism by immersion is the necessary conclusion of consistently applied Reformed theology. The confession's fourfold structure is traced: what baptism is, to whom it is properly administered, in what element, and by what mode, with sustained argument from Romans 6, Galatians 3, Mark 16, and Matthew 28 that only professing believers are lawful recipients of the ordinance.
The Three-Fold Exhortation
Hebrews 10:19–25 sets forth a two-fold foundation and a three-fold exhortation for corporate Christian life. The foundation is Christ's blood-purchased boldness of access into the holiest and His abiding high-priestly intercession — both of which make the old-covenant sacrificial system not merely obsolete but inferior in kind, not degree. From that foundation the apostle issues three commands: draw near with a true heart in full assurance, hold fast the confession of hope without wavering, and (deferred to a subsequent sermon) consider one another to stir up love and good works. The sermon presses hearers to root their weekly confidence not in the quality of their obedience but in the dignity of Christ's person and the virtue of His once-for-all sacrifice.