pilgrim people

The Pope and the Christian Reformed Church. Read about it here. (HT Shane Lems and Kim Riddlebarger)

No, those are not representatives from the CRC kissing the pope's ring in the picture to the left, but hopefully the picture makes the point. The question is this: Does the CRC believe the Three Forms of Unity or not? If so, will someone please give a copy to Rev. Dykstra? Apparently, he has forgotten what it says with regard to justification sola fide and the marks of a true church. Our unity as Christians is in the truth we confess. Attending the Pope's ecumenical prayer service led by Pope Benedict XVI does NOT "demonstrate that unity." And what exactly is this nebulous thing called the "Reformed world and life view"? How about a Reformed confession? You know, that thing to which Reformed ministers subscribe and promised before witnesses to uphold and defend.  

I realize that there are still some faithful ministers in the CRC, but as far as I am concerned, the sooner the denomination drops the title "Reformed" from their name, the better it will be for everyone.

Can the precise language of our confessions be improved? John Owen thought so. Evidence of this can be found in the Savoy Declaration of 1658, a confession of which he and his colleague Thomas Goodwin were the principal architects. The Savoy Declaration was essentially a modified version of the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF), written for the Congregationalist churches and their form of ecclesiology. While several things in the Savoy Declaration may alarm Presbyterians and Continental Reformed believers, two areas stand out as sterling examples of the way good confessional language can be made better (that is, if you believe it is an improvement to add explicit language about the Covenant of Redemption and the imputed active obedience of Christ in justification).

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As treacherous as the first error is (i.e. thinking of the church as being only [or even primarily] visible), the second error is no less deadly and unquestionably more common in American evangelicalism. How many times have you met a professing Christian who does not attend church regularly, let alone possess membership in a particular congregation? The reasoning of such people usually goes something like this: “I don’t need to worship God in a formal setting or belong to a particular congregation; I have a personal relationship with Jesus and worship God in my own way.” Such reasoning, however, is not based on Scripture, but on the pagan concept that “organized religion” should be set against “spirituality:” the former is disparaged as passé at best and hatefully intolerant at worst, while the latter is readily embraced as chic and healthy. Organized religion is viewed as something very particular that manifests itself in narrow doctrines, liturgical customs and exclusive tradition. Spirituality, on the other hand, is seen as something universal that can express itself in a wide variety of personal faiths and individual practices that generally seek one common goal, namely, self-improvement. Influenced by this mode of thinking, many professing Christians believe they can have membership in the invisible church while opting out of membership in the visible church.

But such a concept is foreign to Scripture. The New Testament reveals to us a church established by Christ that is not purely invisible, but an observable society made up of real flesh and blood members and real organization and structure. It is a kingdom described as a “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (1 Pet 2.9a; cf. Ex 19.6). The King of this kingdom, the Lord Jesus, rules his citizens by his Word and Spirit through the officers he has appointed at the local congregation. He has furnished his kingdom with ministers of the Word so that his people will grow from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity (Eph 4.7-16). He has ordained the offices of pastor and elder as guardians to watch over the souls of his flock and ensure that everything is done decently and in good order (Acts 14.23; Phil 1.1; 1 Tim 3.1-7; 5.17; Titus 1.5-9; Heb 13.17; 1 Pet 5.1-4). He has provided the office of deacon in order that the poor and needy in the church would be cared for (Acts 6.1-7; Phil 1.1; 1 Tim 3.8-13; 5.3-15). He has commanded that discipline be exercised to maintain the purity and peace of his church (Mt 18.15-20; 1 Cor 5; 2 Thes 3.6, 14-15; Titus 1.10-14; 3.9-11). He has supplied his church with the tangible elements of ordinary bread, wine and water, which the Holy Spirit uses to nourish our faith (1 Cor 10.16; 11.17-34; cf. John 6.41-58).

All of this Christ has provided to his church in his infinite wisdom. Nevertheless, some professing Christians try to be wiser than Christ. The person who abandons the church or does not see his need to be under the spiritual care of ministers and elders in a local congregation, seems to think that he knows what is best for his spiritual wellbeing and sanctification, even if it is contrary to what God has revealed. Being turned off by life in the visible church, he opts for a life of “Lone Ranger Christianity” – acting as pastor, elder and deacon to himself and abstaining from the means of grace in the preached gospel and the sacraments to the injury of his own soul (Heb 10.24-25).

For this reason, we confess in Article 28 of the Belgic Confession: “We believe, since this holy assembly and congregation is the assembly of the redeemed and there is no salvation outside of it, that no one ought to withdraw from it, content to be by himself, no matter what his status or standing may be.” The fact that in this life the visible church is imperfect and mixed with hypocrites gives no Christian the right to depart from it. As the Third-Century church leader Cyprian put it, “You cannot have God for your father unless you have the Church for your mother. If you could escape outside Noah’s ark, you could escape outside the Church.” Except in otherwise extraordinary cases, a person cannot belong to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church without also belonging to a visible manifestation of the same, which, according to the New Testament, is the local congregation that preaches the gospel, administers the sacraments and exercises church discipline.

Thinking about these things, we are able to see why the distinction of the visible-invisible church is such an important one. Until the Head of the church returns, the church is both visible and invisible. When He returns, however, the distinction will no longer exist, as the church visible and invisible will be one and the same.

Many professing Christians have grown up in churches in which they have been taught – either by formal doctrine or a cultural tradition – that their salvation depends more on their baptism and church membership than on the righteousness of Christ received by faith alone. While this sort of teaching comes in a wide variety of forms and churches (everything from Rome to certain cults), it can also exist in certain Protestant groups who have rejected the visible-invisible church distinction. There is even a trend in some Reformed circles to speak of every baptized person in the church – “head for head” – as being truly elect and united to Christ. The recent controversies within NAPARC churches over the notorious "Federal Vision" teachings is a sterling example.

But it must be understood that membership in God’s visible covenant community does not guarantee membership in God’s elect people. This is Paul’s point in Romans chapter nine in which he defends the fidelity of God’s promise to Abraham: “But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel” (Rom 9.6). In other words, not all in the visible church belong to the invisible church. While the visible church is no longer identified with a national, geo-political Israel, it still contains a mixture of both Jacobs and Esaus, that is to say, true believers and hypocrites. Like Esau, it is still possible for one to be in the covenant externally but not actually united to Christ through faith.

This is why the writer to the Hebrews includes many warnings in his letter about the necessity of true faith; he doesn’t want his readers to rely solely upon their membership in the visible church. In 3.7-4.11, he reminds them of the Israelites who fell dead in the wilderness; although they belonged to the visible covenant community and heard the gospel, they did not respond to it in true faith. Consequently, they did not enter the Promised Land. The writer deliberately uses this as a warning to the New Testament heirs of the same covenant of grace: “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.” (3.12)

Being baptized into the visible church is very important, but every baptized member still has the responsibility of embracing with true faith the promise made to him in his baptism, apart from which he will not enter the eternal Sabbath rest.

I thought it might be helpful to follow up the recent series of posts on creeds, confessions, and Sola Scriptura, with a few posts on the Protestant distinction between the visible and invisible church. This is a very important distinction for us to make, because the church, as it is in this age, is both visible and invisible. Being a Christian is not a mere privatized, individual affair. There is a real, visible church which Christ has instituted. Membership in a real, local manifestation of that church is necessary for the Christian. And yet, membership in the visible church does not guarantee one's union with Christ and justification by God. The visible-invisible distinction helps us understand this properly.

In the Reformed churches, we confess this distinction in Article 29 of the Belgic Confession when we say that there are “hypocrites, who are mixed in the church along with the good and yet are not part of the church, although they are outwardly in it.” Likewise, Chapter 25 of the Westminster Confession of Faith points out that “the catholic or universal Church which is invisible consists of the whole number of the elect” and that “the visible Church…consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion and of their children.”

Protestants confess this because we recognize that this is the clear teaching of Scripture. The Bible portrays the church as both the elect people of God, whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life (Rev 21.27) but invisible to the world, and the visible community of faith established on earth (Matt 28.18-20). Yet, as Scripture also shows us, these two are not always one and the same. There is the church as we see it and the church as God sees it. What is discernable to us with the physical eye is not exactly the same as what is known to God in his omniscience. That is why the Reformed and Presbyterians have included specific language in their confessions to uphold this important distinction as part of their ecclesiology.

But we also speak of this distinction because it guards us against two unbiblical and spiritually dangerous extremes: that of a superstitious formalism on the one hand, and that of a radical individualism on the other. Perhaps the Nineteenth-Century Scottish theologian John MacPherson put it best when he said, “Protestantism sought to find the proper mean between the magical and supernatural externalism of the Romish idea and the extravagant depreciation of all outward rites, characteristic of fanatical and sectarian spiritualism.” These are the two perilous errors that the visible-invisible distinction helps us avoid. In the next couple of posts, I will take up each of these dangers that the visible-invisible distinction helps us to avoid.