What Are the Ordinances and Why Do They Matter?

What Does the Bible Say About Baptism and the Supper?
by Sam Emadi

What Is the Relationship Between Baptism, Membership, and the Lord’s Supper?
by Jonathan Leeman

Don’t Take the Supper at Youth Camp or Get Baptized in the Jordan
by Ben Robin

What Constitutes a True Baptism?
by Sam Emadi

Must Baptism Precede Membership and the Lord’s Supper?
by Bobby Jamieson

How the Ordinances Make the Gospel Visible
by John Sarver

How the Ordinances Help Christians Struggling for Assurance
by Colton Corter

The Lord’s Supper as Foreshadow of the Messianic Banquet
by Ryan Bishop

What’s Wrong with the Federal Vision?
by Stephen J. Wellum

The How-To’s of the Ordinances

Who Can Administer the Ordinances?
by Josh Manley

When and How to Teach on the Ordinances
by Raymond Johnson

The Benefits of Examining Baptismal Candidates
by Rob Kane

Give Them Time: How to Protect the Assuring Nature of a Child’s Baptism
by Michael Lawrence

Why Baptismal Testimonies Serve Your Church’s Evangelism
by Troy Maragos

How to Fence the Table
by Nick Gardner

A Sample Liturgy for the Lord’s Supper

When Should I Abstain from the Ordinances?
by Bobby Jamieson

When the Paedobaptist Attends Your Baptist Church
by Jamie Southcombe

How the Ordinances Turn Your Church Plant into a Church
by James Choi

Introducing the Ordinances on the Mission Field
by Ryan Robertson

The Ordinances Across Traditions

Baptism in the Early Church
by Stephen O. Presley

Did Believers Baptism Die for 1000 Years?
by Gregory A. Wills

Why Couldn’t Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin Agree on the Lord’s Supper?
by Shawn Wright

Do Baptists and Presbyterians Differ on the Lord’s Supper?
by Michael Lawrence

What Do Lutherans Teach About the Supper?
by Josef Hageman

What Do Catholics Teach About the Supper?
by Leonardo De Chirico

The Lord’s Supper in the Patristic Era
by Zachary Hedges

Tickets and Teaching: How Spurgeon Fenced the Table
by Geoff Chang

Editor’s Note:

I need to lead off my first editor’s note with a confession . . . two confessions actually. First, I have performed multiple spontaneous-ish baptisms in various bodies of water with no local church in view. Second, my and wife and I took the Lord’s Supper at our wedding while all our guests simply watched. Now, you may be thinking, “What’s the big deal about that?” Keep reading and, hopefully, it will become clear! If you’re at all familiar with 9Marks, however, you are probably asking yourself a different question: “How did this guy get hired?!” I wonder the same thing.

To be fair, much has changed in my views on the ordinances since then. When I think back, what seems most strange to me now is how un-strange my individualistic instincts on the ordinances were to me then. I truly thought that so long as one approached baptism and the Lord’s Supper with faith and sincerity, then they had a Jesus-given right and responsibility to participate immediately. Why shouldn’t a new believer be immediately dunked after praying to receive Christ? Why wouldn’t I take the Lord’s Supper around our Christmas table or with my accountability bros?

The trouble with these questions is that they presuppose the primacy of the individual Christian. These questions say of the ordinances, “They’re all about me-and-Jesus.” But is this right?

The answer to that question is a resounding no. Of course, there is an individual aspect to the ordinances. In baptism, I profess my faith in Jesus; and in the Lord’s Supper, I remember that Jesus died for me. But Jesus didn’t give the ordinances to individual Christians. He gave them to the church. That’s why in my baptism my church actively affirms my faith and welcomes me into their number. Similarly, in the Lord’s Supper, my fellow members reaffirm my faith and we, together, renew our covenant to follow Jesus and love one another.

Paul wrote to the Romans, “We were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). Baptism functioned for Paul as the way for individual Christians to identify with Jesus and one another. Notice the plural “we.” Who believes in Jesus? “We” who have been baptized. Who agrees to walk “in the newness of life” that Jesus gives? Same answer. Baptism, in other words, isn’t just about me. It is also about us. Baptism is where my faith joins their faith and becomes our faith.

The corporate nature of the ordinances is even clearer when we consider the Lord’s Supper. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10:17). “Many” Christians become “one body” by eating together the “one bread.” Paul connects what it means to have benefitted from Jesus’s broken body and shed blood with belonging to everyone else who has done the same. To have Christ is to belong to Christ’s people. How does our having and belonging become visible? By eating the bread. And yet, on this side of heaven we can’t possibly enjoy the Lord’s Supper with every single Christian let alone those who are already home with the Lord. There isn’t a megachurch on either side of the Mississippi large enough for such a gathering. No, the immediate scope of 1 Corinthians 10:17 is the church in Corinth (i.e., those who ate from the same loaf). The bread constituted their body—it made them a church.

So, the ordinances are all about the church. My guess is that I am not the only one who previously missed this point. Who knows? Maybe even you, dear reader, spontaneously dunked someone while on a beach vacation. If so, email me and we can commiserate together. Either way, we hope this issue of Church Matters helps you locate the ordinances in the local church. For within that sacred gathering, Jesus offers your church the chance to see with your eyes and taste with your mouths what he has done for you all. As you do so, I pray your church would grow in its love for Jesus and for one another.

—Taylor Hartley