Introduction
What happens when a pastor tries to cure easy-believism with a dose of human obedience? In the 17th century, Richard Baxter faced real licentiousness in his congregation and constructed a doctrine of justification that made our evangelical obedience the ground of God’s acceptance. The remedy was worse than the disease. In this episode, Pastors Jim Butler and Cameron Porter explain what Baxterianism is, where it departs from Reformed theology, and how chapters 11 and 19 of the 1689 Confession answer it with pastoral clarity.
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Transcript
Keywords: Baxterianism, Richard Baxter, justification by faith, evangelical obedience, Westminster Confession, 1689 Confession, Reformed doctrine, imputation, sanctification, moral law, active and passive obedience of Christ
Speakers: Pastor Jim Butler, Pastor Cameron Porter, Wim Kerkhoff
Setting Up the Question
Wim Kerkhoff: Okay, we were going to do this as two different questions, but it sounds a lot like Baxterianism.
Pastor Cam Porter: Sure. It does sound a lot like Baxterianism. It does. Yeah.
Wim Kerkhoff: What is that? What’s going on there?
Richard Baxter and His Response to Licentiousness
Pastor Cam Porter: Yeah, what is Baxterianism? Well, from that particular word itself, or that word is taken from Richard Baxter, who was a 17th century Church of England minister initially, a Church of England minister in the 1600s, in the early, mid-1600s.
And what Richard Baxter essentially did, and it may be that it was informed by his opposition to licentiousness, looking around at the landscape of what we may today call easy-believism, where I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, but I’m going to live like the devil, a licentiousness. Because I’ve been saved by grace, I don’t need to live in accordance with that grace. Paul deals with that in Romans 6, for example.
So Baxterianism is essentially Richard Baxter’s response to the licentiousness of his day, where justification, his doctrine of justification, is not and was not the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith alone, but rather it was God justifies us by looking upon our evangelical obedience as the ground of our justification.
So he gave perhaps a measure of lip service to imputation, but did not emphasize it the way that the Reformers did, which is the imputation of the active obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ and his passive obedience in his death for our whole and sole righteousness. So Baxter basically answered licentiousness by a doctrine of justification that sees our evangelical obedience the ground of our justification. And it’s certainly so much closer to Rome than it is to Geneva. It isn’t the Reformed doctrine of justification.
The Confession’s Answer on Justification (Chapter 11)
Pastor Cam Porter: In our confession in chapter 11, paragraph 1, it actually, in essence, is dealing with Baxterianism with one of the clauses and others who would assert this approach to justification.
But in chapter 11, paragraph 1 of justification, we read, “Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth, not by infusing righteousness into them.” That’s another error at the point of justification.
“But by pardoning their sins and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous, not for anything wrought in them or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone, not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing,” or notice, “or any other evangelical obedience to them as their righteousness.”
So Baxterianism says that our evangelical obedience is our righteousness before God whereby we are justified in his sight. The confession masterfully, according to the blessed biblical witness, says that our justification is by imputing Christ’s active obedience unto the whole law and passive obedience in his death for our whole and sole righteousness. And so, yeah, Baxterianism, we could say, as so many errors on the point of justification does, it conflates justification and sanctification as that by which God looks upon in order to accept us in his sight.
Is Evangelical Obedience a Good Thing?
Pastor Cam Porter: Now, we ought to say, is evangelical obedience a good thing? Absolutely. In chapter 13 on sanctification, that phrase is used with regards to our sanctification.
But justification, as Pastor Butler mentioned earlier, being that blessed gift of grace whereby we’re justified not by our own righteousness, but by the righteousness of Christ, excludes any human merit, whether it’s works solely, whether it’s our works added to the finished work of Christ, which let’s just think about that. That’s terrible.
Then what is the purpose? Why the incarnation? Why the perfect life of Christ? Why the perfect death of Christ? Why the vindication of his perfect work in his resurrection?
Baxter’s Second Error: Relaxing the Law of God
Pastor Cam Porter: But so yeah, Baxterianism is an error at the point of justification. And in that, it’s also an error with regards to the law of God. Baxter taught essentially a new law in the new covenant, the law of the gospel, if you will, where God actually relaxes his requirements for his people, for sinners, for believers, and that obedience to that relaxed law, that evangelical obedience to a relaxed law, is that whereby we are justified.
Chapter 19 and the Permanence of the Moral Law
Pastor Cam Porter: There’s a very important or strong statement in chapter 19 of our Confession of Faith that speaks to that particular error of God’s law in the gospel somehow being relaxed.
And in chapter 19 of The Law of God, we read in paragraph 5, “the moral law doth forever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof, and that not only in regard of the matter contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God the Creator who gave it.” And listen to this, “neither doth Christ in the gospel any way dissolve but much strengthen this obligation.”
Christ’s Perfect Work in Our Stead
Pastor Cam Porter: So another error of Baxterianism in the horror of destroying the doctrine of justification is relaxing the law of God. Praise God that the God of unmitigated perfect holiness does not relax his law, but rather in upholding the perfection of his law and upholding his holiness and justice, he sent the Son of his love into this lower world to perfect the law’s obedience in our stead, to bear the curse of the law, and to bring many sons and daughters to glory by virtue of that perfect work.
And so anything, whether it’s the federal vision, whether it’s Baxterianism, anything that destroys our resting upon the perfect and finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ is something that should not be touched with a 135,000-foot pole.
Pastor Jim Butler: Amen.
The Witness of Galatians
Wim Kerkhoff: And that’s been so clear as you’ve been preaching through Galatians. It’s like almost every verse that’s coming up there, right?
Pastor Cam Porter: Yeah. Yeah. How many times does the Apostle Paul have to say that we’re justified by faith and not by the works of the law? He repeats it 5 times in Galatians 2:16. It’s repeated throughout the book. It’s repeated in Romans. The other apostles pick it up using perhaps some different language, but the same truth. That we’re saved from first to last, midst and throughout, by a triune God who saves without a helper, and that by virtue of the sole work of the Lord Jesus Christ, his active obedience unto the whole law and passive obedience in his death for our whole and sole righteousness.
Pastor Cam Porter: Amen.
Wim Kerkhoff: Excellent. Amen.
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