No One Can Believe for You
No one can believe for you. Your parents cannot, your pastor cannot, and your government cannot. The decision about Jesus Christ is yours to make, and you are the one who will answer for it.
Baptists call this conviction soul liberty. Each person is free, and responsible, to answer to God for what he believes. Beside it stands a second conviction, the priesthood of every believer: everyone who has trusted Christ may come to God through Him directly, with no human go-between.
The two are close kin, but they are not the same. The priesthood belongs to believers, for only those in Christ are priests. Soul liberty belongs to every soul, saved and lost, because every person will stand before God. The Priesthood of Believers teaches our access to God text by text. This study asks what it means to answer to God, why faith cannot be forced, and why this freedom is no license to believe whatever we like.
Each person is free, and responsible, to answer to God for what he believes. No church and no government may compel faith or bind the conscience with rules God has not given (Romans 14:12).
Every believer, through Christ the one Mediator, has direct access to God and is himself a priest, called to offer spiritual sacrifices and to serve others (1 Timothy 2:5; 1 Peter 2:9).
When you stand before God, who will answer for what you believed? Has someone else been doing your believing for you?
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For Deeper Study
- Baptist Distinctives and New Testament Church OrderAmazon Kevin T. BauderA book for church members (2012) by a fundamentalist Baptist, with chapters on individual Christian responsibility and on church and state.
- The Baptist Way: Distinctives of a Baptist ChurchAmazon R. Stanton NormanA Southern Baptist theologian's survey of Baptist distinctives, including freedom of conscience and religious liberty.
- Conscience: What It Is, How to Train It, and Loving Those Who DifferAmazon Andrew David Naselli and J. D. CrowleyA careful, practical study of conscience in the New Testament, with wise counsel on Romans 14.
- The Axioms of ReligionAmazon E. Y. MullinsThe 1908 book that made the competency of the soul a Baptist watchword. Important and influential, though it leans on religious experience more than we do.
- The Baptist Identity: Four Fragile FreedomsAmazon Walter B. ShurdenA moderate Baptist historian's account of Bible, soul, church, and religious freedom (1993). We differ on how confessions and doctrinal accountability fit with soul freedom.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
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The Priesthood of Believers
Every believer has direct access to God through Christ, the one Mediator, and serves Him as a priest without the need of any human priest.
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