Hearing, Faith, Repentance, Confession, and Baptism
As taught in the Restorationist / Churches of Christ tradition
How the Stone-Campbell tradition reads the New Testament order of conversion
Within the Restorationist movement that grew from the labors of Thomas Campbell, his son Alexander Campbell, and Barton W. Stone in the early nineteenth-century American frontier, the question "What must I do to be saved?" is answered by pointing not to a private experience awaited in anxiety but to a sequence of plain, biblical responses to the gospel. This sequence has come to be called the "plan of salvation" or, more colloquially in the Churches of Christ, Christian Churches, and Disciples of Christ that descend from this movement, the "five steps" or "steps of obedience": hearing the word, believing it, repenting of sin, confessing Christ, and being immersed for the remission of sins. The lesson below describes how this tradition reads that sequence, where it grounds it, and how it differs from the wider Christian world.
By the end of this lesson
- Reconstruct the five-step sequence of hearing, faith, repentance, confession, and baptism as the Stone-Campbell tradition draws it from the conversion narratives of Acts.
- Explain why this tradition reads the phrase 'for the remission of sins' in Acts 2:38 as expressing purpose, and how that differs from a causal or symbolic reading.
- Distinguish the Restorationist view of baptism's role in forgiveness from the evangelical, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Reformed positions.
- Trace the doctrine to its primary sources in Stone's Last Will and Testament, Thomas Campbell's Declaration and Address, and Alexander Campbell's Christian System.
- Apply the 'facts, commands, promises' framework to show how faith, obedience, and assurance are related in this account of salvation.
- Evaluate the tension between the movement's plea for Christian unity and its distinctive baptismal teaching, identifying where the three descendant streams differ.
Scripture
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