Providence Reformed Baptist Church

Reformed Baptist Church in Remlap, Alabama

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Worship with Limits

In Chapter 22 of the 1689 Baptist Confession we have the exposition of what has been historically called, “The Regulative Principle of Worship.” This doctrine and its practice is what separates Calvinistic Baptists from Reformed Baptists by showing that it’s not only what we believe about salvation which is regulated by Scripture – but Scripture also determines how we worship God.

In the latter half of the opening paragraph in Chapter 22, the Regulative Principle is spelled out in the following terms: “But the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by Himself, and so limited by His own revealed will, that he may not be worshipping according to the imaginations and devices of men, nor the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representations, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures.” There are two principle things to be observed by this statement. First, there is an “acceptable way of worshipping God” which clearly implies an unacceptable way God can be worshiped. We see this clearly in Scripture. For example, in the second commandment of the Decalogue, God declares, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them” (Exod. 20:4-5a). This divine prohibition has everything to do with how we worship God. And the principle point of the command is that there is a wrong way to worship the Lord. Essentially, God’s people are not to worship God via man-made images. In fact, even if we identify the man-made images as the Lord we’re still offering worship to God which He does not accept. This tells us that the worship God does accept is not strictly about our intentions or motives in the act of worship, but the form of worship matters as well. God has therefore specified a certain way in the second commandment He is not to be approached for worship, despite how sincere we may be.

Another example under this point is in Deuteronomy 12:29-32. In this passage God orders Israel not to worship Him in the same way they see the pagan nations worship their gods. But rather, the Lord says, “Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it” (12:32). This single declaration is the clinching point of the Regulative Principle. It’s all about doing what God has said to do in how we approach Him in worship. It’s God who sets the standard for the way His people serve Him in worship. The world has no say in this matter. When God’s people see how the world worships their gods, we’re not to mimic the world’s ways.

In fact, it is this point in particular which sets apart the worship service in a local church from any other gathering in the world. The whole service is centered on God with His glory as the end for which everything is done from the singing to the praying to the preaching. No other institution or society in the world has this end in view, since no other institution has this kind of distinctive relationship to God but the church. As Sam Waldron put it: “The church is holy in a way that the rest of life is not.” It is only the church of Jesus Christ which is described as “the household of God” (1 Tim. 3:15). Neither the government nor one’s own family gets this kind of status. Hence, the church as God’s household has God’s unique presence which thereby demands a special regulation as to what the church does in the name of worship. Like Israel under the Old Covenant, the church under the New Covenant is not to be of the world. But how the gathered church honors God in this way is by being careful to do what God has commanded and thereby accepts for His worship.

Second, since God has instituted how He’s to be worshipped, then such worship the church offers the Lord is “limited by His own revealed will.” Limited…worship. This is the worship we bring to God. Limited by His own revealed will which is the revelation of His written Word. Thus we cannot worship God in any way we choose. It cannot be, as the 1689 Confession puts it, “according to the imaginations and devices of men, nor the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representations, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures.” To apply this to our own times – this means that skits and dramas and fog machines are out. It means that interpretative dance is gone. It means that women leading and teaching in a pastoral role or as “worship leaders” is forbidden (see 1 Cor. 14:34; 1 Tim. 2:11-15). It further means that when pastors stand to preach they actually deliver a clear, faithful exposition of God’s Word and not a clever home-spun homily which tickles the ears (see 2 Tim. 4:1-4). Moreover, the entire spirit and atmosphere of a worship service should not look like nor sound like a pop concert or a Saturday morning at the Waffle House. We are talking about God’s household. And in God’s household – the gathered church of Jesus Christ –  there’s to be nothing profane or common in our whole service to God. Our worship is holy worship because it is limited by the directives of God’s Word.  This sets the church apart from what we do at a football game to shopping at the local Walmart to celebrating one’s birthday. The worship of God is a sacred service. It therefore is not to be like what we see and hear and do in all other activities in life. When a local church then is engaged in worship, the point is not whether it’s contemporary or traditional but whether what was offered is “prescribed in the Holy Scriptures” and thus acceptable to God. Hence, we worship God by the limits He sets down.

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The Regulative Principle & The Sufficiency of Scripture

One of the great marks of Reformed Baptist churches is their practice of the regulative principle of worship (see Chapter 22 in the Second London Baptist Confession for a full exposition of this principle). By simple definition this principle teaches that when it comes to how the gathered church worships God – whatever is commanded by God is right and what is not commanded is wrong. At the heart of this principle is the fact that God alone determines how He is to be worshiped. It is not man who decides what elements are most appropriate or fitting to serve as part of a worship service. It is God who says what is right and what is wrong in the matters of His worship. Thus, it is God who regulates His worship.

But how do we know what God has regulated or commanded for His worship? The answer to this question is straightforward: it is by God’s Word alone. What God has revealed in His Word by divine command, as it pertains to those portions of what His gathered church carries out in worship of Him – this and this only is what a worship service should consist of. Hence, there should be the reading of Scripture (1 Tim. 4:13), the preaching and hearing of Scripture (2 Tim. 4:2), the teaching and admonishing of one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in our hearts to the Lord (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16), corporate prayer and intercession (1 Tim. 2:1-8), and lastly, the administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These are the sacred and divinely prescribed elements of biblical worship. They are to be effected by the church with spiritual understanding, faith, reverence, and godly fear in submissive obedience to the Lord (Heb. 12:28-29).

What should strike us on the surface is the simplicity of God’s regulated worship. To the average onlooker it is a plain, unadorned affair that might be scorned as boring. But such a charge betrays two things: first, this mocker of such biblical worship has only an appetite for the flesh. If there is nothing in this service to appeal to his flesh then he’s ready to leave and discard it as not worthy of his affection nor attendance. But here he only reveals how worldly he is when he thinks about God’s worship. His thinking about the worship of the church is something which terminates only on what his natural senses find attractive. It is therefore not God’s worship he’s really after but a time spent for his own liking and entertainment.

Second, the mocker who decries biblical worship as boring is further revealing his own distrust in the sufficiency of God’s Word. God has said all that He’s going to say about how and what He expects His church to do when it comes to offering Him acceptable worship. He has not nor will He ever reveal anything further. Hence, those scriptural elements commanded by God for His worship are enough for the church of Jesus Christ to carry out every Lord’s day. Nothing is to be added nor taken away. However, when well-meaning, sincere Christians believe it best to add or subtract from what God has commanded for His worship – they expose their lack of faith in the sufficiency of God’s own Word. They really don’t believe that such simplicity in worship as regulated by God is enough. They surmise that the reading, singing, preaching and hearing of God’s Word is too bare and restrained. They worry that people won’t like it and they won’t come back if a worship service doesn’t have other elements which excite and thrill the congregation. But what they don’t understand is that God is only going to bless and anoint what He has authorized by His Word (see Lev. 10:1-3). The Lord therefore is not looking for His church to be novel and creative in worship but obedient to what He has commanded. And what He has commanded the church to do in His worship is sufficient to be called true worship. 

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Why do Baptists not baptize infants?

Why do Baptists not baptize infants? Answering this question in 1853, Patrick Hues Mell (1814-1888) wrote very bluntly: “Infant Baptism finds no warrant in God’s Word. No precept enjoins it – no inspired example sanctions it, and no analogy suggests it…The Scriptures furnish, in precept and example, no baptism but that of a believer, upon a profession of his faith in Christ.” So then, based on what P.H. Mell contends, infant baptism is an unbiblical baptism and thereby, what we might call, a pseudo-baptism. With neither a divine command nor a biblical example to support its practice – as Mell points out – it ends up falling under the indictment of being labeled a false church ordinance.

But P.H. Mell’s strong words against infant baptism were merely an echo from the Baptist Catechism of 1693 – where question ninety-nine reads: “Are the infants of such as are professing believers to be baptized?” The answer follows: “The infants of such as are professing believers are not to be baptized, because there is neither command or example in the Holy Scriptures, or certain consequence from them to baptize such.” 

What is most significant to highlight from both the Baptist Catechism and the pen of P.H. Mell, is the larger doctrine driving Baptists in their refusal to baptize the unconverted infants of Christian parents. It is the doctrine known as “The Regulative Principle of Worship.” This doctrine simply states that true worship is only that which is commanded by God in His Word. False worship is anything other than what is commanded.

Expanding further on this principle, Ernest Reisinger (1919-2004) wrote: “The regulative principle flows from the fact that humanity’s ability to approach God was barred as a consequence of the fall, and that it was impossible for man on his own to renew the fellowship that he had enjoyed with God in the garden. Thus, the way of communion with God could be opened again only by God’s determination. Not only that but the very terms of a renewed communion, intercourse and fellowship with God had to be determined by God and God alone.”

Now for our Baptist forbearers, the regulative principle was applied exclusively to church ordinances, church government, and acts of worship. Hence, in Chapter 22 of the 1689 Baptist Confession, this principle is expressed as follows: “But the acceptable way of worshiping the true God, is instituted by Himself, and so limited by His own revealed will, that He may not be worshiped according to the imagination and devices of men, nor the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representations, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures.”

This confessional statement makes it unmistakably clear that the only “acceptable way” to worship God is determined by God and not man. Moreover, this statement implies the obvious fact that if extra-biblical practices are enjoined to what God has commanded for worship, then such unscriptural elements will actually undermine what God has appointed. Furthermore, the sufficiency of the Scriptures themselves are called into question by the addition of unwarranted sanctions in worship. Is not God’s holy infallible Word enough to instruct us and reveal to us what He has commanded for worship, without adding what we believe would perhaps enhance the worship experience? The question answers itself.

Therefore, when it comes to rejecting infant baptism, Baptists are only being faithful and obedient to what God has appointed in His Word. Infant baptism is a practice introduced by man and sanctioned by man and thereby established as a tradition according to man. God does not approve it because He has never appointed it as a divine ordinance to be carried out in His church. Thus, to carry out this practice as an integral part of sanctioned worship in the church, is the equivalent of Nadab and Abihu’s “strange fire” offering before the Lord (Lev. 10:1-3). While God did not forbid the sons of Aaron from offering their “strange fire”, yet He did not authorize it. In short, God did not command the offering given by these young men. Hence, their offering was condemned by God because it was not commanded by God. And for infant baptism, it’s no different.