People sometimes ask whether Sovereign Grace Baptist Church is a Reformed church or whether I am a Reformed pastor. The answer depends entirely on what the questioner means by the word, because two different folks can ask the same question for two very different reasons.

Some who ask mean it kindly. They have heard us preach sovereign election. They have heard us say that man is dead in his sins, that the Father draws sinners to the Son, and that salvation is the work of God from start to finish. They want to know whether we believe what they believe about the gospel. To them the answer is yes, gladly. We hold the doctrines of grace. We affirm the five solas. We say with the Reformers that God is the hero of salvation and man contributes nothing to it but the sin from which he must be saved.

Others ask in a less friendly tone. They mean the larger Reformed system, which is far more than the five points. They mean covenant theology. They mean the 1689 Second London Confession and the federal framework it inherited from Westminster. They mean the view that the church has absorbed Israel, or that there is one undifferentiated people of God across both Testaments. To that question the answer is no. We are not a Reformed Baptist church. We are an Independent Baptist church that shares a Calvinistic soteriology with our Reformed Baptist brethren. The difference is real, and pretending otherwise would not honor either side.

What We Share

At the gospel level we share more with Reformed Baptists than separates us. We confess that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God and the only sufficient rule of faith and practice. We confess the Trinity, the deity of Christ, His virgin birth, His substitutionary death, His bodily resurrection. On the authority of Scripture alone, we hold justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. We hold that man is dead in his sins and cannot raise himself, and that no one comes to Christ unless the Father makes him willing (John 6:44).

These are not small things. They are the heart of the gospel. Any man who holds them is our brother, whether or not he calls himself Reformed (Mark 9:40).

Where We Differ

There is more to Christian doctrine than the order of salvation, and on several points we part company with the Reformed Baptist tradition.

We do not hold covenant theology. The New Testament teaches that Israel and the church are distinct peoples in God’s redemptive program. The church did not begin with Abraham. The church is not the new Israel. God has not finished with national Israel, and the promises He made concerning land and seed will be kept literally, not absorbed into the church. Paul settles the question plainly: “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29).

We do not hold to an invisible, universal church. The New Testament uses the word church to describe a local assembly. The Lord Himself uses the word that way when He instructs a wronged believer to “tell it to the church” (Matthew 18:17). There is the family of God across all ages, yes, but the family of God and the church are not the same thing. The church is what Christ instituted on earth, and it meets in particular places under particular pastors.

We do not practice open communion or open pulpits. The Lord’s Supper was given to the local church for the local church. The order at Pentecost is the order we keep:

So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls. And they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers. Acts 2:41–42 (LSB)

Repentance, baptism, addition to the local church, and only then the breaking of bread. We do not invite the unbaptized to the table, and we do not place men in our pulpit who have not been properly baptized in a New Testament church.

Our confessional alignment is different as well. Reformed Baptists typically subscribe to the 1689 Second London Confession. We align primarily with the 1833 New Hampshire Confession and the First London Baptist Confession of 1644, revised in 1646. The First London predates the federal framework, which is exactly why it fits us. It articulates Baptist soteriology without importing the covenantal system that the Particular Baptists and the Reformed Baptists later embraced.

On eschatology we hold a literal premillennial return of Christ, with a pretribulational rapture of the church. Most Reformed Baptists are amillennial or postmillennial. We consider this a secondary matter, not a line of fellowship, but we believe the Scripture teaches it plainly.

A Word About Our Brethren

None of this should be read as hostility. Reformed Baptists are our brothers. They preach the gospel we preach. I count Reformed Baptist pastors among my friends, men I have sat with, prayed with, and learned from. What I know about them I know firsthand. They love the Lord, and many of them serve Him with greater faithfulness than I do. A Reformed Baptist visiting our service this Sunday would hear nothing strange in the way we exalt Christ or call sinners to repent and believe.

We are simply not what they are. The label Reformed Baptist carries a particular history, a particular confessional tradition, and a particular set of distinctives. We do not fit inside it, and we would mislead people by wearing it. Independent Baptist is the older, plainer name, and it tells the truth about where we stand.

So when someone asks whether we are a Reformed church, here is the honest answer. If you mean the doctrines of grace, yes. If you mean the whole system, no. We love our Reformed Baptist brethren for what they preserve. We are not them, and we will not pretend to be.

For more about what we believe, please visit our About Us page. Sermons may be found online at SermonAudio.

If you do not have a church home, we would love to have you visit us at Sovereign Grace Baptist Church in Brunswick, Georgia. You can find our service times and location at sgbcbrunswick.com/services, or contact us with any questions.