Creeds and Confessions #2 - How Creeds and Confessions Work in the Life of a Church?

The Church’s Responsibility to Disciple Its Members

Hopefully you got one of the handouts for this class, if you haven't. Eddie, would you mind grabbing them from the front, just in case anyone doesn't have one? We'll definitely need that to follow on what track, I should say, this morning.

Allow me to pray, and we will get straight to work in this lesson in our little series about being a creedal and confessional church. So let me pray, and we'll get to work. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your goodness to us.

Thank you for the Lord's Day, another opportunity to come, and to worship, and to encourage one another, and to grow in our faith. And we pray that as we begin this day with time of instruction, pray that your spirit would help us to think well, to think in a way that glorifies you, and to have the right heart about the things that we believe, and how we express those things.

Ask all this in Jesus' name, and for his sake. Amen. All right, so as you can see from the screen, we are picking up with our little mini-series here on being a creedal and confessional church. This is part two of that, as we think about how creeds and confessions work in the life of a church.

As we get started, you know, you all know I like my little icebreaker questions, and so I have one for this morning, which is very simply, how does a church faithfully disciple its members? How does a church faithfully disciple its members?

So obviously we all here, we've gathered together, we're a church. How does the church go about the work of faithfully discipling its members? I'd like to take, let's take five minutes with the folks nearest to you, and let's discuss that question.

What are some ways in which the church can faithfully disciple its members? Let's take five minutes or so to discuss that, and then we'll.

Share. All right, we'll go ahead and give it one more minute, and then we'll come back together. Okay, so.

Come back to our little question here before I bring up my board. How does a church faithfully disciple its members? How does a church faithfully disciple its members? Who would like to share first?

Yeah, this is a good question. So many other things in the world that try to disciple us, you know, so one of the things that we mentioned in our group was simply just church on Sunday, you know, that it's about every aspect of the Lord's Day is meant to teach us about Jesus and disciple us and bring us closer to Him, and it's, you know, that's vital, especially in our world where there's so many different distractions, you know.

So yeah, just gathered worship.

Absolutely, and actually our next Redeemer U class, after we finish the Sermon on the Mount, we'll spend a lot of time talking about gathered worship and the role it plays in our discipleship, but absolutely.

There's a critical part that doesn't get as much play. Back in the back.

So our group decided to look at it from the point of view of how does anyone learn anything kind of universally? So Loretta brought up the example of her dad teaching her how to draw. So we concluded one of the things was that you don't just learn it in one shot.

You have to be persistent and practice and continue to learn and learn and learn to build your skill. So in a discipleship sense, being regular, persistent, meeting with others is going to be important because with our hard hearts and hard heads, it takes us, by God's grace, practice and practice to grow and learn in this group.

All right, appreciate that. That's definitely true. A discipleship is not a one-shot thing. It definitely requires regularity and persistence for sure. And commitment, yes.

Joseph was making a point about teaching his members, the disciples, about history of the church. Okay. And that is a very important, I was telling him, it's a very important point for our ground, for us to grow in the right, you know, in the right doctrine, the right theology, going back to how was history through church, through history,.

Starting with the disciples. No, absolutely. And that is a very, I think, neglected but important part of the church's discipleship. We'll talk about this actually a little bit in our lesson in a minute or two.

We are not the first Christians to have read the Bible. We are not the first Christians to have professed the name of Jesus. And we do ourselves a massive disservice when we disconnect ourselves from that.

So absolutely, absolutely. Anyone else?

Some of my most fruitful learning times have been one-on-one with someone who was older than me and committed to me. So older and younger, older in the Lord and younger. And there's just a commitment there, a commitment to pass on what we know.

And that's pretty sweet.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, I have us do that little exercise because I think it's good.

For us to think about, especially in the context of what we're going to talk about today. I'll pull up the question once again. There we go. We're asking the question as we do this, how does the church faithfully disciple its members?

That assumes, first of all, that the church has a responsibility to do that. Which, if you want to turn your Bible to 2 Timothy 1, we'll read these verses that are kind of forming a foundation for what we're thinking about.

2 Timothy 1, beginning in verse 13. 2 Timothy 1, reading from verse 13. I'm just going to read the two verses that kind of bookend this section. So 2 Timothy 1 .13, Paul says, hold on to the pattern of sound teaching that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

Guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit who lives in us. And then end of that little section. Chapter 2, verse 2. 2 Timothy 2 .2. What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

I won't go through all these verses again. We did that in our first week. You can go back onto the website and listen to that. But essentially, we acknowledge that as Christians, there is a body of truth that has been given to us by the Lord Jesus.

It was then spread by those that he sent in his name, the apostles. And in every generation, that truth is passed down. And what we're thinking about with this series of studies that we've called being a creedal and confessional church, what we're thinking about is how does the church effectively do what Paul describes here?

How does it hold on to the pattern of sound words? How does it guard the good deposit? And how does it commit the things that we have seen and heard to other faithful men who be able to teach others also?

That's what we're thinking about. And as I said, we're thinking this week about how creeds and confessions, which we argued in week one, is one way of doing this. How creeds and confessions work in the life of a church.

Defining Creeds and Confessions

Since it's been about a month since we last did this, I'm going to do a very, very rapid review of what we looked at last time. So last time we began by defining our terms, what a creed is and what a confession is.

Anybody remember what the two definitions we gave were for.

What a creed is versus what a confession is? So remember we said last time that,.

If I've got my whiteboard here, we said that a creed, there we go, a creed.

Answers the question of who do we believe in? And a confession answers the question, what do we believe in? So when we talk about creeds, we're asking the question,.

Who do we believe in? They are, remember the quote from the first session, those of you who are here, they are statements of allegiance. This is who we believe in as Christians. That's what a creed does.

A confession isn't answering the question of who, it's answering the question of what. What things do we believe in as people who believe in the God who has revealed himself in the Bible? So we spent some time asking that question of what is a creed, what is a confession?

We then looked at some objections that people have to having creeds and confessions. And then we talked about some of the benefits just in general of having creeds and confessions. But what we're going to do this morning, and let me warn you in advance, this is going to be a slightly more technical lesson than normal, just because there's a number of concepts we need to get our head around if we're going to have a healthy view of holding to creeds and confessions.

So I apologize, I'm going to do my best to explain as much as I can, but if it feels like some of this is going over your head, that's why we're recording this. I encourage you to go back, listen to it again, try and catch more of this on the second and third go around if possible.

But what we're going to do this morning is essentially to, like I said, answer the question. Okay, if we agree that churches should be creedal and confessional, which is what we talked about in our first session, then we now need to ask, well, how does that work?

How are churches to be creedal and confessional? That's what we're going to consider in our Sunday school hour this morning. So to help us with that, I've got a number of questions I want us to think through, a number of questions.

And so let's begin with, like I said, this is going to be the more technical part of this. Question number one, how can churches hold to confessions? Now I italicize that word there, can, because there are different ways in which churches who agree about the importance of creed and confessions, there are disagreements as to how to do that well.

And you'd expect that because the Bible itself doesn't give us a particular way to hold to creeds and confessions. We have to be honest about that, which means that as God's people, as we read the scriptures, as we reflect, as we think on things, we're going to have to apply what I think one of the confessions refers to as Christian prudence, sanctified common sense a little bit as to how we hold to confessions.

And so for a moment, I want to consider five different ways in which Christians have viewed the issue of what we say subscribing to or holding to confessions. Again, I'll do my best not to make this overly technical, but five different ways that Christians have viewed this.

So first of all, there are what some churches will call absolute subscription. Absolute subscription. So absolute subscription basically says you have to hold to this creed or confession as it is written with no exceptions.

So you can't disagree with wording. You can't disagree with how things are phrased. You can't definitely disagree with any of the doctrines that the confession holds. You must hold this confession in its entirety.

It's absolute. So that's one way. I'm not going to say which one I think is right or wrong yet. I'll save that for a little bit later. Right now, I'm just describing the views. So absolute subscription says the individual must hold to the entire creed or confession as it is written without any exceptions to wording, phrasing, or doctrine.

So churches, again, if we try to plot this on a map a little bit, churches in the Dutch reform tradition tend to ask their members when they come into membership, not even leaders, just members, to hold to what they call the three forms of unity, which are their set of confessions.

You're expected to hold to those without exception. That's one way of looking at it. Another view, which is kind of close to this, is what some people call historical subscription. Historical subscription.

This view essentially says, yes, we want to hold to confessions, but what we want to do is to hold to the confession in line with the original intent of the people who wrote it. And more than that, you as the person who's coming to hold to it or subscribe to it, you have to hold that historical view.

So the historical view, where I wrote this down, requires a person not to merely agree with the basic sense of the words, the ideas, and the doctrines in the confession, but the very worldview that the authors brought to it, the very way that they would have perceived how we know the truth, all of that you need to know and understand to hold to the confession.

There's a book that's just come out in the last year or so. It's actually a really good book. I highly recommend it. It's called To the Judicious and Impartial Reader. It sounds like a high fluting title.

All it is, it's a walkthrough of the Second London Baptist Confession. It's another confession of faith. And the author of that book, Dr. Jim Renahan, who I've met, he's a wonderful brother in the Lord, he holds the historical view.

So a lot of his book is taken up with, well, here's what the people in the time when this was written, this is what they would have said. And so this, since this is what they would have said, we have to hold it just like this.

Again, that's another way of looking at this. There are what some people call a full or strict subscription. Now you may think, wait a minute, isn't that the same thing as absolute? Not so much. I told you this can get slightly technical.

So if I'm losing anyone, feel free to put your hand up. I will go back and do my best. Full subscription says, yes, we want you to hold to the whole confession. However, you can take exception to words or phrases, not the teaching per se, but the way things are worded.

So what this view tries to say is, yeah, human beings write these documents, which means human beings will get things wrong sometimes. They will word things that maybe they'll say things in ways that aren't worded the most helpfully.

So they will say, yes, you want to hold to the whole confession, but yes, there's going to be moments where I don't particularly agree with the way they worded that, excuse me. There we go. I don't agree with the way they worded that, but I agree with the confession as a whole in terms of what it teaches.

Again, one way of looking at that. Another view is what some people call system subscription. This says essentially the confession isn't meant to teach you everything, you know, jot and tittle, word for word.

It's giving you a system of belief. As long as you believe in the general system, you don't have to hold to each individual point as long as you're not contradicting the essential parts of what this confession teaches.

Again, another way of looking at that. Finally, there's what some people call substance subscription. It's my last one. Substance subscription basically just says you don't even have to hold to all the system of it, just the spirit of the confession you have to agree to.

So can you see how honest, if we're to kind of plot this on a spectrum, you go from the most strict to like the most lenient, from the most tight to the most loose. We think, okay, Kofi, that was a lot.

Why do we need to think about this? Well, I think it's important for two reasons. First of all, can I put it to you that it's not enough to know what you believe or even why you believe it? I think it's important for us, let me put it this way, it's not enough for us to just know what we believe, as good as that is.

I don't think it's even enough to say we know why we believe it. I think it's also important for us to be able to answer the question of how do we believe these things. If we're going to think about this, the Bible says, Matthew chapter 22, I believe, that the great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Which means if we're going to glorify God and know him well, it's not enough to just say, well, I know what I should believe, which is good. You should know what you believe. It's not enough to even say, I know why I believe it, which is good.

You should know why you believe what you believe. But I think if we're going to glorify God well, it's going to include thinking about the how of what we believe. How did we get here? Now, there's differing levels of detail to which we should think about that, of course.

But I do think it's important for us to not just consider, to not just consider, excuse me, what we believe and why we believe it. We should always ask that question of, okay, how did we get here? And so that's one reason it's important to think about this.

But more than that, on a more practical level in the life of a church, but what, how do you handle disagreements with the confession? If we acknowledge the confession is not the Bible, which means we're going to have moments of disagreement with the confession, well, how do we handle that?

If, think about this, if we're going to have moments of disagreement as Christians will, that requires us to think about, okay, how do we view our confessional statements? Are they absolute to where you cannot have any disagreement?

Do we disagree maybe with wording but not with doctrine? Can we disagree with doctrines in it? These are the kinds of things that we have to think about as we hold to confessions. Now, do I think we can answer those questions?

I think there are some biblical principles that can help us with that, which leads to my second question this morning, which is, what biblical principles lead to a healthy view of confessions? Now, in asking that question, I'm assuming a little bit, which is that there is an unhealthy way to hold to confessions.

And personally, I think there is. I think when a confession basically does all of the heavy lifting for you, and you don't have to actually think about, come back to our little thing here, the what, the why, and the how, when you don't have to think about any of that, I think that's an unhealthy way to approach that.

You want to be thinking people when it comes to our faith, and that requires us to have a healthy view of how we hold these confessions. Well, the question becomes, what are the biblical principles that lead us to a healthy view of confessions?

I think there are a few that we need to think about. I think, first of all, we have to start by asking, what's the purpose of a confession? So, what's the purpose of a confession in general? Well, what did we say?

Think back to our first lesson, or if you haven't heard it, I encourage you to go back and listen to that, because we answered that question. A confession is designed to be a simple summary of the important truths of the faith.

Now, that phrase, simple summary, is incredibly important, because if it's a summary, we're not trying to answer every question, and we really shouldn't expect our confessions to answer every question, because they're summaries.

So, if we think about it like this, if a confession is designed to be a summary of the important details of the faith, then we'll readily have to admit that confessions don't tell us everything, but they do tell us about everything that is important.

So, when we think about a healthy view of confessions, we shouldn't view them as, well, basically, this is the 67th book of the Bible, please treat it as such. Far from it. There are only 66 books in the Bible.

Those are God's Word. Whatever we are reading in the confessions of faith that we hold to, they're not designed to tell us everything. God's Word is designed to tell us everything we need, and even that, we don't always understand everything equally.

But what the confessions are designed to do are to give us simple summaries of the faith, which means there are going to be some things where we should have freedom to discuss and freedom to ask questions.

Kind of leads to my second principle. Not only do we need to think about the purpose of a confession, we need to think about, secondly, the virtue of clear and honest conversation. One writer put it like this, well, we want to employ a form of confessional subscription, so holding to a confession, that requires transparency and honesty.

I think that's a good way to put it. Transparency and honesty. If you have to, so think about this, if someone's coming into membership and we say, okay, well, this is our church's confessional position, you have to agree with this completely.

Kind of showing my hand a little bit as to where I stand on this issue. Here's a problem I think you've run into. What if the person doesn't understand everything in it? At some point, you're either going to ask the person to lie, because they're going to say, well, yeah, I understand it, if they don't.

I love this church, so I want to join, but they're expecting me to understand every single thing here. Or, you're going to have to say, okay, look, I don't disagree, but I don't understand it. That's where the clear and honest conversation part comes into it.

There needs to be some freedom of conscience in these areas where you give people room to grow. Actually, that leads to my third principle. You think, progressive sanctification? What does that have to do with anything?

Well, simple. All of us are still growing in our faith. Even the man who's standing in front of you, he's still growing and learning. I don't hold all the same views that I held even a year ago. Now, the big picture of my theology remains the same and unchanged, but as I'm growing and learning and spending more time in God's Word and sitting under good teachers, my view on things is constantly growing and changing.

Just like you are growing and learning new things, you are growing in your faith. A healthy view of confessions, a fancy term, a healthy confessionalism, gives people a ceiling for growth without demanding too much too soon because you recognize everybody is still growing.

Everybody is still learning. If we don't give room for that, what ends up happening is we either expect too much from people, which is a bad thing, or we become easily frustrated with people because, well, you should know this all now.

Well, no. I think understanding that our sanctification includes being made more and more like Jesus in how we think and in what we think, well, that means that's going to take time. That's not something you can rush.

I think another important principle, which kind of follows on from the last one, is that the Holy Spirit does a work in all of us of illumination. Illumination is just a fancy way of saying that the Spirit grants us spiritual light so that we can understand the Word of God.

If you are a Christian, one of the things that you enjoy by virtue of Jesus' death on the cross is that you receive the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is given for a multitude of reasons, one of which is to continue to help us to understand the things that God has given us.

1 Corinthians chapter 2 makes that point. And so, if we want a healthy view of confessions, it's going to have to include the fact that the Spirit of God works in every Christian to grant them light and understanding.

And He doesn't do it at the same pace and to the same degree with everyone because we are all different. There's also the reality that there's a certain degree of responsibility on all of us. So, if I can use this example, if you only read your Bible once a week, firstly that's a good thing, it's better than not reading it, but if you only read your Bible once a week, are you going to know as much as the person who reads their Bible every day?

No. Now, the person that's not always an absolute, the person who reads every day might not understand what they read every day. That's a whole other set of issues versus the person who reads once a week and does get it.

So, let's not be too absolute there. But in general, we can agree if you're not exposing yourself to the Word of God and thus giving the Spirit of God an opportunity to grant you understanding, you're not going to understand as much.

Okay, Kofi, what does that have to do with confessions? Simple. Part of the illumination the Spirit gives us is through, remember Ephesians chapter 4 that we've talked about, God gives to His church teachers, people who can explain the Bible.

Well, creeds and confessions are one way the church exercises that teaching ministry. But for that teaching ministry to make any sense, the Spirit of God has to be at work. I don't care how good a teacher you have in front of you, without the Spirit of God, you can't understand what that person is saying.

And so, the work of the Spirit in illumination becomes important. It also becomes important in thinking about confessions because the Spirit doesn't just illumine individuals. He doesn't just give understanding to individuals.

He gives understanding to the church corporate. That's why I said earlier on that we are not the first generation of Christians to have read the Bible. Unfortunately, I think a lot of Christians can function like that, but that's just not the reality.

The reality is we are in a long line of people who have been reading God's Word since the beginning of the church in the book of Acts. We stand in a long line of godly men to quote a series of books that's a personal favorite of mine.

And they too have been reading the scriptures, and they too have experienced the illumination of the Spirit. And so, whatever we believe, we want to take that into account. Yes, it's not of equal authority to the Bible.

Only the Bible is perfectly inspired, perfectly given to us by the Holy Spirit. But whatever view we hold of confessions, it should take into account the fact that the Spirit of God grants understanding.

He grants light. That's the picture. It's like, if you go into a dark room, all the things in the room are still there. But when you turn the light on, you can see what's in the room better. Well, that's what the Spirit of God does for the Christian.

And I would also argue it's what he does for the church corporately. And so, whatever view we take of confessions needs to account for that reality, that he grants understanding to the individual Christian, and he has granted understanding to the people of God corporately.

I'm ahead of where I was thinking to be at this point, so I'm going to pause. Does anybody have questions? Stuff that maybe I could clarify before we move on? Everyone tracking with me so far? I would not be mad if you're not, but if everyone's tracking with me, okay, if I move on?

Okay, you've got a question. All right. About what you mean when the Spirit.

Turns the light on in the room? Okay. So, 1 Corinthians chapter 2, let's look at that.

I think that will give us some help. I've got my little whiteboard here, so I can draw something. 1 Corinthians chapter 2, and let me kick us off in verse 10. I'd really need to.

Start in verse 6, but we don't have that kind of time, so I'll just jump midway. Verse 10, Paul is talking about the fact that he and his apostolic colleagues were given revelation by the Spirit, and that the Spirit's revelation was what he proclaimed to the church at Corinth.

Verse 10. Now, God has revealed these things. He's referring to the gospel, essentially. God has revealed these things to us by the Spirit, since the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

But who knows a person's thoughts except his Spirit within him? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now, we have not received the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who comes from God, so that we may freely understand the things that are given to us by God.

So, Paul says there are people who don't have the Spirit. Actually, no, that's not the contrast he makes. Let me be accurate. He says there are people who.

Have the Spirit of the world, and then he says there are people who have the Spirit of God.

And for the people who have the Spirit of God, remember what he said? We do not have the Spirit of the world, verse 12, but the Spirit who comes from God, so that we may understand what has been freely given to us by God.

So, the people who have the Spirit of God have, boil it down to one word,.

Understanding. Verse 13. We also, we being Paul and his apostolic counterparts, we also speak.

These things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people. But then he comes back to this person who doesn't have the Spirit of the world, verse 14.

But the person without the Spirit does not receive what comes.

From the Spirit. In other words, the person who doesn't have the Spirit has no understanding.

The person without the Spirit does not receive what comes from God's Spirit because it is foolishness to him that the message of the gospel sounds like gobbledygook, for lack of a better term, to the person who doesn't have the Holy Spirit.

But for the person who does have the Spirit, in fact let me finish reading verse 14, because it's foolishness to him, he is unable to understand it since it is evaluated or judged or discerned spiritually.

The person who has the Spirit of God has understanding. The understanding gives them the ability to discern. Well, discern is just a fancy way of saying to be able to determine what is true and not true.

When we say that the Spirit of God turns the light on, it's that he gives us this understanding which in turn gives us an ability to determine what is true and not true. Paul's point is the person who has the Spirit of the world or who doesn't have the Spirit of God, interchangeable, doesn't have that understanding.

In fact, he can't even discern it. The text says since he can't understand it, look at verse 14, excuse me, it's foolishness to him, verse 14. There's no ability to discern what is true and not true. It all just sounds like static to him, essentially.

Verse 15, the spiritual person, however, can evaluate everything, yet he himself cannot be evaluated by anyone. For who has known the Lord's mind that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

Oh, so this understanding includes having the mind of Christ. When you became a Christian, what the Spirit of God did was he gave you understanding. He gave you the ability to comprehend the truths of the gospel, first and foremost, that's how you got saved, but he continues to give you an understanding, not just of the basic gospel message, but of all the things that God has given to us by his Spirit in his Word.

That's the one, that's one of the things, I won't say it's the one thing, but it's one thing that marks the Christian from the non-Christian, that the Christian can understand what it is that God is saying to us in his Word.

That's why I use that analogy of the turning on the light in the room. It's not that the Spirit of God puts things in the room when you become a Christian, in terms of the gospel message and what the Word of God says.

The Word of God is always there, but it would be like this, if you went into a room that had blackout curtains, no lights, no windows, it's completely dark, and I send you into that room with a Bible in your hand, even with a Bible in your hand, there's no light, you can't read any of that.

Does turning on the light create a new Bible for you? No, what it does is gives you the to see what's always been there. And so when we talk about the Spirit's work of illumination, it's not that he is creating new revelation for us to understand, it's more that he is helping us to understand the revelation that God has already given.

And that's true of every Christian. Well Kofi, I don't feel like I understand everything. Well, it's a lifelong process of learning and growing, none of us arrive overnight, but if you are a Christian, you can be guaranteed of the reality that you will, at some point, grow in your understanding and grow in your ability to discern what is true and not true.

Does that make sense of your question? All right, anyone else before we move on quickly? If not, well, we've kind of thought big picture here. Okay, what are some biblical principles that lead to a healthy view of confessions?

How do churches in general hold to this? Well, let's talk about here at this church, because I think that's where this can get simpler very quickly. So, question for the morning, how does our confession work at Redeemer?

How the New Hampshire Confession Works at Redeemer

So, here at Redeemer, I think I've said this, but if not, we hold to a confession called.

The New Hampshire Confession of Faith. In our next lesson, I'll have a printed out version for you.

That you can look at. But we hold to the New Hampshire Confession of Faith here. The question is, how do we hold to it? So, think back to those five kind of complicated views we talked about. Absolute, historical, fall, system, substance.

How do we hold to those, or how does that work in context of our church? It's not my job to necessarily judge what happens in every church everywhere. It's not my place. I'm the pastor of this church, which means I'm concerned with the teaching and doctrine that we hold here.

So, how does our church hold to the New Hampshire Confession? How can we say that, in a sense, we are a confessional church? Well, I think that if you're going to be fair and take into account all of those principles that we talked about, I've, for the purpose of our church, come to the conclusion that you need something of a two-tiered approach here.