. . . the language typically
employed by the earliest Christian witnesses, all of it diverse but having the
same character, speaking of God’s personal agency: forgiveness,
justification, reconciliation, redemption, healing, love, and so on. These
words testify to an encounter with God in which God does not work by a force
that guarantees its results. God works in a manner analogous to how personal
agents work when they witness. (John W. Riggs, Baptism in the Reformed
Tradition: An Historical and Practical Theology [Columbia Series in
Reformed Theology: Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010], 103)