Dear Baptized Ones,

     At our 10:30 am service this Sunday, we will have the joyous occasion to participate in Lucas Benjamin Oldham’s baptism! One major benefit from this will be the opportunity to improve upon our own baptisms. Lucas’s baptism will remind us of Jesus’s death to suffer the full cost of our sin and of His resurrection to gift us God’s righteousness and eternal life. This serves to help empower us by the Holy Spirit to love God and our neighbors as baptized ones. Remember, our sanctification is the process by which we come to more fully appreciate our justification in Christ and coming glorification at His final return. Charles Hodge in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans offers us a helpful insight to consider:

“Holiness is the consequence and not the cause of our justification, as the apostle (Paul) proves at length in the subsequent parts of (Romans). This righteousness is through faith, as it is received and appropriated by faith.”     

We are able to walk in resurrected newness of life as holy (or justified) because of the finished and applied work of Christ by God’s grace alone through faith alone.

     Our prayer for Lucas is that he would one day respond to his baptism with a humble but hearty “Yes and Amen!” to God’s call to surrender his sinful separation and receive eternal restoration by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. We further pray that his baptism would serve him throughout his life to help him appreciate and more fully live out his justification in Christ just as our baptisms have done for us. For Clay and Barbie, we pray that they would actively participate in Lucas’s discipleship in God’s character and love for him. We also offer to faithfully serve alongside them in this process as their church family. What a gift it would be to someday celebrate the fruit of Lucas’s baptism in his justification by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone!

In Christ,
Cameron