Introduction

There are times, I think, in the lives of all of us when doubts and questions arise in our souls concerning the truth which we confess as Protestant Reformed people. Sometimes these doubts are simply due to our own weakness of faith – as the Psalmist sings: “These doubts and fears that trouble me / Are born of my infirmity.” Other times, however, these doubts arise out of the fact that we are a very small denomination – one of the smallest in the world. Yet we profess that we, of all the denominations which we know have the purest manifestation of truth. And therein lies the difficulty. It is this sense of loneliness which often raises the question in our minds whether the truth we confess is indeed the truth of Scripture. Are we, among so many thousands and millions, right? If there are so few who maintain the truth, could it be perhaps that we are wrong while the other millions are correct? Is there not a certain strange pride in a couple of thousand people standing up among the world’s billions and claiming that we, small handful though we are, hold the truth in its purest form?

I have found, over the years, that there is a great comfort in the study of the history of the Church of Christ. This comfort lies in the fact that the Church of all ages has confessed this same truth which we confess. There is an unbroken line of the truth, beginning with the apostles, and continuing to today which is a line drawn according to the Scriptures. There were many that departed, many who help strange doctrines; indeed, those who maintained the truth were usually in the minority – as we are. But the fact remains that the heritage of the truth continues in unbroken succession till this very day. We stand in the company of great men of bygone years and of every age and join our confession with them. I find this to be of great comfort and help in maintaining the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

1. How It Takes Place

When Jesus and His disciples were in Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked His disciples whom men said that Christ was. After giving the various answers which were given in those days, Jesus asked His disciples whom they thought He was. To this Peter made the confession: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus immediately reminded Peter, however, that flesh and blood had not revealed this to him, but His Father in heaven.

The truth of this Jesus made clear in a more direct way when He was eating the last Passover with His disciples on the eve of His crucifixion. The apostle John records a long discourse which Jesus made at that time. In this discourse, there are no less than five references to the Spirit of truth which Jesus promised to give His Church. So often is this Spirit of truth mentioned that it really constitutes the main theme of what Jesus had to say. These references can be found in John 14:16, 17, 26; 15:26; 16:7, 13.

Concerning these passages a few points ought to be noticed. The repeated reference in them to the Spirit of truth or the Comforter is a reference to the Spirit whom Jesus poured upon His Church on Pentecost. By this Spirit, Christ Himself promised to be with His Church so that His own words would be fulfilled: “Lo, I am with you always, even to the world.” This Spirit Christ will use to lead His Church into all truth so that they will always know and understand, confess and defend that truth throughout the whole New Dispensation until Christ Himself comes again.

There are two points about this which need our attention now. The first is that by the work of Christ through His Spirit, we will indeed be able to know the truth. It is true always that we cannot know that truth of ourselves. It must be given to us, revealed by a power in us greater than ourselves. But it is also true that, by this work of Christ’s Spirit, we will indeed come to know that truth. Those are wrong who say that the truth of Scripture cannot be known with any certainty. We always seem to have that problem. We often take the position that every man has a right to his own opinion as long as he is sincere. We often state that it really does not make very much difference one way or the other what a man believes. The truth of Scripture is too complicated and difficult to understand for us to be absolutely certain of it. But all this is wrong. The Spirit of Christ does reveal the truth so that we do know it. And the Church which possesses that truth must be very intolerant of it.

The second point which needs saying in this connection is that the Spirit of Christ dwells in the whole Church. The whole Church, from the least to the greatest of the saints, can and does know the truth. It is therefore, the business of the whole Church to defend and develop that truth. We must not assume the rather strange position that the defense and development of the faith is the task of ministers and Seminary professors. It is everyone’s business – yours too. In fact, there will be no successful defense of the faith and no successful development of the truth unless all God’s people are vitally involved in it. The Spirit dwells in you as well as in me. It reminds me of what Rev. Ophoff used to say when we would argue with him in Seminary classes concerning a certain point of doctrine. In exasperation, I think, he would finally blurt out: “All right; have your own way; you are all prophets anyway.” But so it is. The truth is defended and developed only when the whole Church is interested in, studies and discusses, and grows in knowledge of the truth which is in Scripture.

So, first of all, the truth develops by the work of the Spirit of truth in the hearts of God’s people.

There is another point here concerning the development of the truth to which we next turn our attention.

It is sometimes maintained that the truth develops much like a wall is built. The figure is of the Church as a city with the truth forming a wall of defense around it. The foundation for this wall is laid by Christ in the Holy Scriptures. Each generation of the saints adds a layer of bricks to that wall so that, as the years go by, the wall gets higher and higher and forms an increasingly better defense of the Church. Thus each generation builds on what the Church before her has done and the walls which guard the city of God become increasingly strong.

Now, it is evident that, from certain points of view, that picture of the development of the truth is a good one. But the fact is that it is incomplete. If the figure were good, the conclusion would then be that the Church never has but a part of the truth while certain doctrines remain unknown. And it would seem that in all the history of the world, the whole wall is never built.

It would perhaps be better to compare the development of the truth with the growth of a tree. In the early history of the Church this tree of the truth was a very small sapling. Over the centuries, this sapling has continued to grow until it stands today as mighty oak – so strong and sturdy that all the efforts of men to chop it down are unsuccessful. They dull and break a thousand axes, but the oak stands unharmed.

But it is characteristic of a tree that, whether it be a sapling of two feet tall or a mighty oak of sixty feet, the whole tree is there. The sapling has every part of the tree that the mighty oak has. So it is with the development of the truth. The church always possesses every doctrine which is found in Scripture and which belongs to our faith. It may be that some doctrines are present in the Church only in germinal form so that there is little else than a bare statement concerning that truth. And it may be that that one truth develops and grows and comes to clearer expression with the passing of the centuries; but the whole truth is there nevertheless.

We confess nothing today which the Church, immediately after the apostles, did not already confess. Although we confess that truth in fuller and richer form. This is why, e.g., we read yet today in every evening church service the Apostle’s Creed.

2. The Evidences of It.

If what we have said is true, then it follows from this that the truth is always the same throughout all time. There are, as you know, those who deny this. We live in a time of doctrinal relativity. It is almost as if Einstein’s theory of relativity has been applied to the truth of Scripture. It is claimed, e.g., that the truth changes with every generation. The old truths of past years are no longer important or true. They were fine for people in earlier years, but are not valid for us. It was all right for people in the Middle Ages to believe in a “three-tiered” universe of heaven, earth, and hell. It was all right for them to believe in devils and angels, in miracles and wonders. But we live in a scientific age when science has shown all these things to be untrue. And so we must realize that the truth undergoes change. We must have a gospel for the Twentieth Century which fits the needs of men in our enlightened age. We must have a gospel which abandons doctrine and comes to grips with the social problems of our world.

This is sheer nonsense. The truth always remains the same whether it is confessed by a washerwoman in the court of a Roman nobleman or a minister of the gospel living in Chicago, Illinois. The truth is the same whether it is confessed by a barbarian in Gaul or by a lawyer in New York City. The truth is confessed in an identical way whether it be confessed in an age when people though the sun went around the earth or in an age when we know that the earth goes around the sun. The truth never changes.

It does not change because the truth is of God Who is eternally the same. It does not change because the truth is centrally Christ Who is the same yesterday, today and forever. The truth is the same always because it is the truth of Scripture from which one jot or one tittle shall never pass away.

This truth comes down to us especially in our confessions. It is not a surprise that confessions were written over the years. The Church of Christ has always loved the truth dearly. The Church has always lived in the consciousness that she must live in obedience to her Lord Christ. The Church knows that Jesus says, “He that confesses me before men, him will I confess before my Father in heaven.” And the Scriptures tell us that he that believes with his heart and confesses with his mouth will be saved. Out of a living desire to confess that truth in the world our confessions were born.

But then again, confessions were born out of bitter and fierce controversy to defend the truth over against heresy. In fact, this struggle to maintain the truth is, more than anything else, the reason why confessions were written. God’s people know that if the truth is taken away, the Church goes down to defeat. And if God’s people know this, Satan knows it better yet. And so He tries at every opportunity to take that truth from the Church. But the Church knows that her life is at stake; her very existence is the issue. She is not arguing and fighting about abstruse points which no one cares about – about truth which roughly approximate the Pythagorean Theorem. She knows that she is fighting for her very life. It is a life and death struggle in which she engages. And so she not only loudly shouted of her faith in the truth, but she also wrote it down so that all might know what the truth of Scripture is. These confessions come to us therefore as the fruit of a bloody and bitter battle in defense of the faith.

Yet even that is not all. Sometimes, in an almost literal way, the confessions of the truth were written in blood. This is especially the character of our own precious Belgic Confession. It was written when the Roman Catholic Church was butchering Protestants in the Netherlands. They were being slaughtered by the thousands for the faith which they loved. One man, brave and courageous in the faith, wrote this Confession and said: “Look, here is what we believe. Either admit that this is the truth of Scripture and stop persecuting us; or show that we are wrong and we will recant.” As his mutilated body turned slowly in the wind at the end of a rope he gave testimony to all generations following that this was the truth and that he would pay the ultimate price to defend it.

And so the Church has, almost without her will, impelled from within, confessed her faith and written it all down so that we might have it as our treasure.

3. The Benefits of Knowing It.

The truth is of supreme importance in all our walk. We may not separate doctrine and life. We may not take the position that what we believe does not count from much while how we live is the all-important question. To do so reduces our faith to a mere moralism along the line of Norman Vincent Peale and his power of positive thinking and Ann Landers and her wisdom which is earthly, sensual, and devilish. This is true, after all, in every area of life. If you need to take your car to a mechanic for repairs on the transmission, you are going to want to take it to a man who thoroughly understands all there is to know about transmissions. And it is perfectly obvious that the more he knows about transmissions, the more likely you will be to bring it to him to be fixed. If you are looking for someone to do your cooking for you, you will not hire on someone who does not even know how to boil water. But the more one knows about cooking, about nutrition, about the value of foods of different kinds, the better cook that person will be. Doctrine is the same way. The more we understand and love the truth, the better we will know how to walk as God’s people in the midst of the world.

All this does not mean that we rest upon our collective doctrinal laurels. There is altogether too much of that today. There is a certain attitude around that we are Protestant Reformed; that we have the truth; that we can, therefore, live as we please. The trouble is that those who spout the loudest this kind of language haven’t a knowledge of even the abc’s of the Reformed faith. And the result is a godless and wicked walk.

The truth must be a living confession. We must know and understand it; but we must love it with a passion that will send us to the scaffold to die for it if that is required of us. It must burn in our hearts and be a confession which shines out in our walk. Then it will put steel in our hearts and iron in our backbones. It will fill our souls with courage and hope.

It makes no difference then how many believe the truth or how few. The truth is not decided by majority vote. The truth which we confess is the truth which the saints have always confessed. I cannot be long on this point. A few examples will suffice. The old patriarch, Athanasius, living in the Fourth Century, was exiled five different times in the course of his life for the truth that Jesus Christ is the son of God. The truth of infant baptism, whatever the Baptists may claim, is a truth which goes all the way back to the apostles. Predestination, with both election and reprobation, was taught by the great Augustine in the Fifth Century and Gottschalk rotted in prison in the Ninth Century for confessing the same thing. That Scripture is the infallible Word of God and belongs to all the people of God was not only the ringing battle cry of the Reformation, but it was the truth of Wycliffe in the Thirteenth Century, the truth of John Huss who was burned at the stake because he confessed it and the confession of the Waldensians in the fourteenth century which led to such terrible persecution at the bloody hands of Rome that the blind poet, John Milton, could write of them: “Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter’d Saints, whose bones / Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold, / Ev’n them who kept thy truth so pure of old.”

And so we stand in our confession in the noble company of saints and martyrs who have believed and confessed what we do. What would you? Are you content to sell this glorious heritage for a mess of spoiled pottage? Are you prepared to turn your backs in cold scorn upon the blood of thousands before you? Do you find solace in standing in the company of the wishy-washy church of our day? Though they number in the millions? Let it be then. Stand with them. As for me, I find my joy and delight in joining that battalion of heroes of faith who have now gone to join the souls of just men made perfect and whose confession is that of mine. With them I shall live. In their company I shall die. And God grant that with them I shall be in glory forever.