I don't know any congregation in my area that thinks we 'earn' anything by being obedient, even the wacky extreme groups don't believe that.
***I have that certainty. I have never seen a CoC or an Irish Restorationist who did.***
Huh.
Can't speak to the Cooneyite thing, but my little congregation of 350 people are certain of being washed in the blood and saved by grace. Oh yeah, we believe in trying to be obedient too. Is that earning anything? Ha. Nope. It is the response to already being saved.
Like most baptism rejecters, you keep trying to hang a works-based salvation on me Ruy. Nope. Obedience is simply that, obeying a command. I have never thought, nor has it ever been taught from any pulpit I know of that God owes me salvation for being obedient.
Oh, and here's a clue; Baptism is NOT a work. I don't do it. Somebody does it to me. I put more effort into believing. I actually have to DO that. But nobody pretends believing is a work.
You throw these volumes of words out to convince yourself that baptism is optional. It ain't. It is part of the response to God's grace.
***Like most baptism rejecters,***
I’m not rejecting it. You are just making it a wall of separation between your group and others who may believe the same way but don’’t dot the i or cross the t YOUR WAY.
I remember, in high school, a girl who was a good Christian in a baptizing church who was crying because her CoC boyfriend did not consider her a Christian.
It is the same way I was not considered a Christian even though I had been baptized by immersion, in a real proper running water biblical scriptural immersion, and not some tank in a church, and why many other churches are not considered by your group to be Christians because you find some irrelevant reason to separate yourselves.
I am reminded of a certain gent who went into the temple and prayed....”Thank you Lord I am not like other men are...” “I”...”I”..”I”..(do it right).
This very article from the Mabelvale CoC, where I went to church for a while, proves that point.