Expert: Rev. Robert Woods - 7/30/2007

Question
QUESTION: I grew up in a Free Will Baptist Church and was baptized within the Church.  I am currently attending a First Baptist Church that tells me that Free Will Baptists' beliefs in Salvation are a strong enough difference that if I joined the First Baptist Church, I would need baptized again.  They tell me the FWB believe that man has to work to maintain his salvation while Southern Baptists say their is nothing man can do to attain or maintain his salvation, yet when I read about FWB it states the latter.  This is what I believe.  Is the difference so great that I would need to be baptized again just to join the church?

ANSWER: Blessings and thank you for your question.

There really isn't much difference between Free Will Baptists and Southern Baptists.  Your church is wrong when it says that Free Will's don't believe in salvation by grace alone.  

The difference is that Free Will's idea of eternal security (or once saved always saved) is different than Southern Baptists.  The SBC says that once you are saved, nothing can keep you from losing that salvation.  Free Will's say the same thing, that you cannot "back slide or sin" and loose your salvation, but they say you can "lose faith" or "denounce your faith."  

For example, let's say a born again Christian suddenly decides that he no longer believes in Jesus and becomes a Muslim.  Then he dies, where does he go? The SBC would say that if he was truly saved then he would go to heaven.  Free Will's would say that he goes to hell since he "lost faith or denounced his faith."

Let's say a person is a born again Christian and falls into a sinful lifestyle and stops going to church.  Then he dies.  Both groups would say that he goes to heaven.  He did not loose faith, he just moved away from it.

So, I do not think you need to be re-baptized.

Blessings

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank you for replying.  This makes a lot of sense, however, the Church says I need to be baptized again because I believed something different.  Is this a Southern Baptist doctrine?

Answer
Blessings and thank you for your question.

No, it isn't SBC Doctrine.  The SBC only requires re-baptism when the person's first baptism was not "believers" baptism or baptism by immersion.  This rule that you must be rebaptized sounds like a local church rule.  You see, every baptist church is autonomous, meaning it can make its own rules without the convention having a say.