Vox Populi Blogeth

Curing the Intellectual Assent Problem

Gregory Koukl

In the New Testament there were no “altar calls.” Instead, baptism was the public focal point of conversion in the early church. It served to protect against substituting mere intellectual assent for genuine faith, and it can serve the same function today.
If people tell you they already believe in Christianity, but you suspect something’s amiss, ask, “Are you willing to be baptized? Are you willing to stand up as an adult in public and confess your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, and to publicly identify yourself with Christ’s Church?” If they’re not willing, I suspect their so-called faith is just intellectual assent, not saving faith.
Willingness to be baptized helps separate the sheep from the goats, spiritually speaking. It distinguishes those who have a genuine faith in Jesus Christ from those who are merely giving intellectual assent to the doctrines of Christianity. True biblical faith entails action and identification. If one acts to publicly identify himself with Jesus Christ and with His people in baptism, then he’s probably moved beyond mere intellectual assent.

So according to Greg:
Mere intellectual accent = someone affirming they believe in the doctrines of Christianity

and

Genuine faith = affirming the Christian doctrines and being baptized in public

If however you refuse to do so you are a goat. In other words, on the day Christ separates the goats from the sheep he will say, “Depart from me you workers of iniquity and those of you who were not baptized for I never knew you”. Sounds like someone has spent too much time in Jerusalem!

None of the above is new, as a matter of fact most, if not all of us have at some point believed something along these lines (much like Peter and the other apostles at the beginning of Acts). Indeed we zealously went about ‘saving souls’ and ‘leading’ people to Christ, not knowing we were making them twice the sons of hell that we were.

May it serve as a reminder to all of us even though this guy travels the world speaking at conferences, has his own pod cast and website and no doubt spends much time in his bible; God still determines when He will by His Grace impart a knowledge of the Gospel through Faith in Christ alone.