(upbeat music) - Happy Friday everyone. A podcast listener named Lauren Belozian writes in to ask about confessional Christianity. Dear Pastor John, I'm a fan of your podcast. My question is this. Do you subscribe to the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith? If not, why not? And in general, what are your thoughts on the confessional movement and associations?

What would you say, Pastor John, to Lauren? - Well, before I declare myself with regard to the 1689 Baptist Confession, just some general thoughts, some encouraging, hopeful thoughts about confessional Christianity. I think confessional Christianity, Christianity that's unified around a written confession of faith, confessional Christianity at its best is the best Christianity.

In other words, all other things being equal, it is a good thing for a people to be united around a written summary of biblical truth. And I've got, I think, maybe four reasons that come to mind why that is. One, Paul, when he was saying farewell to the elders in Ephesus, declared, "I am innocent of the blood of you all "because I did not shrink from declaring to you "the whole counsel of God." So that phrase, whole counsel of God, points to some kind of unified summary of essential biblical truth.

And Paul said to Timothy in another place, similarly, I think it's 1 Timothy 6.20, "Guard the deposit entrusted to you." So there's some kind of deposit, an apostolic deposit that's put down that you should guard and hand on. So some kind of body of unified truth. Same thing in Romans 6.17, Paul said, "You who were once slaves of sin "have become obedient from the heart "to the standard of teaching "to which you were committed." So we've got the phrase standard of teaching, deposit, whole counsel of God, and those all to me say, all right, have you done that, John Piper?

Did you deliver to Bethlehem Baptist Church the whole counsel of God? Is there a deposit of truth that you gave there? And I think that points us towards, yeah, we need something like that summarized or written down for us. The second thing is that without a written summary of biblical truth, we tend to be vague about what we believe.

Some people think that avoiding confessions of faith provides greater Christian unity because writing things down requires precision and clarity and explicitness, and all of those precipitate disagreement and arguments. But the alternative is to obscure those disagreements under a cloud of vagueness. And the effect of that so-called unity is that it constantly depends on keeping clarity of truth at a distance.

You can't see it with precision up close, and it lets you down in the end when crucial applications and decisions have to be made on the basis of truth, and it's now been kept obscure all this time, and we don't have it there to apply in crucial cases. The third reason I think it's important to have something like a summary of biblical truth or a confession is that the slogan, "No creed but the Bible," conceals the fact that in almost any group, crucial biblical statements will be properly understood by some and misunderstood by others.

In such cases, it's naive to say that the Bible unites us. It may not be uniting us at all. It may be instead a vague cloak for significant disunity, and that doesn't honor the scriptures. It was a great education for me to do a study of Athanasius and realize that in the debates that he had with the heretic Arius, both sides affirmed the authority of scripture, and both sides did extensive quoting of the Bible.

And so, "No creed but the Bible," in that case, would simply be used to cover the fact that the denial of the deity of Christ doesn't matter. Of course it matters, and somebody has to stand up and say, "That's not what the Bible teaches." And the fourth reason for why I think the confessional movement is a good thing is that such confessional summaries of biblical truth really do help us in our faith, because I think faith thrives on deep, true doctrine that is brought out of the scriptures, properly summarized, applied to people's lives, and in our souls, in our families, in our churches, even in society.

That kind of clear doctrinal truth is healthy for life and for obedience to Jesus. I know that there will always be Pharisaic misuses of doctrine, of biblical truth, which turn them into a vehicle of pride and abuse of God's people, but those kinds of misuses of truth should not stop us from the right use of truth, which is to treat it like kindling, thrown on the fires of love for God and love for people.

That's the way it's functioned in my life over the years anyway, that clear, faithful, doctrinal teaching has been an inflaming means to my faith and my love for God and love for people. So yes, I'm in favor of churches and schools and ministries being defined by robust affirmations of faith.

One of the practical effects that had on me was after about 15 years of my serving Bethlehem Baptist Church, the elders then, with my encouragement, worked their way for about four or five years to the point of composing and agreeing upon the Bethlehem Baptist Church Elder Affirmation of Faith.

And that affirmation of faith now governs the church and Desire in God and Bethlehem College and Seminary. And there are advantages and disadvantages of composing a new affirmation of faith. I realize there are dangers. The great danger is that we might be trendy or idiosyncratic or selective, based on our own preferences.

The advantage is that it can be expressed in language that is more understandable and can deal with issues and terms that we're facing today that need to be dealt with doctrinally and ethically. So we tried very hard not to be trendy or idiosyncratic. And we tried to send out the affirmation of faith in its process of coming into being to Christian leaders across the country and get feedback.

So that was our approach. Now, here's the deal with the 1689 Baptist Confession. I didn't choose to go that route, even though it's a good, solid, reformed Baptist version of the Westminster Confession. And there are several reasons why. Here they are. Number one, the language is somewhat foreign. And its vocabulary, it uses King James.

It's like reading the King James Version. And I think it's probably a mistake to try to enshrine that today as the one that, if you expect families to use it without any updated form. So that was one reason. Number two, while I'm able to affirm that Genesis 1 referred to literal 24-hour days, I had a hard time thinking that I should make that a matter of confessional faithfulness to Christianity.

And so I stumbled over that section. Third, the understanding of the Sabbath is perhaps more rigorous and narrow than my understanding of the implications of Jesus' teaching about the Sabbath. Fourth, there are certain historic categories of theology, like the covenant of works and others, that have proved useful, but you might wonder, shall I make that the structure of the theology I'm going to present?

A fifth idea was that there are little things, I mean, this is gonna sound so piddly, and yet you can't be piddly in a confession, little things like saying that bread and wine are prescribed in the Lord's Supper. Nowhere in the New Testament does it say that wine was used in the Lord's Supper.

That comes as a shock to a lot of people. It doesn't say that's what was used. Now, I suspect it was, I suspect it was wine, but it always uses the term cup or fruit of the vine, and therefore, if you get into a knockdown battle and say, we're gonna settle this confessionally, and you go to a 1689 confession, it's gonna say wine is what you're supposed to use.

And I would say, well, that's just unbiblical, because that's not what the Bible says, even though that's totally legitimate and maybe even preferable, but not at all required. So I think the 1689 confession of faith is a glorious, wonderfully faithful expression of biblical truth. I fellowship down to my toenails with people who love that doctrine, but there are enough little things and things like I've mentioned here that made me think, I think probably for us, we would wanna go another direction.

But my main point here that I wanna say and leave Lauren with is, I think affirmations of faith are very important, and that churches should not shy away from them, but patiently, over time, work their way towards a unified expression of biblical faith for the sake of the preservation and the vitality and the mission of the church.

- A hearty amen to that, thank you, Pastor John. And I can hear follow-up emails piling in already in the inbox about creation and Sabbath and wine. - So can I, oh my, what have I done? - All right, thank you, Pastor John. Well, if you wanna see the Bethlehem Baptist Church Elder Affirmation of Faith, you can find that at desiringgod.org, it's a beautiful document, and I know many churches have adopted it as their own.

You can check it out online. Well, we're gonna break for the weekend, and we are back on Monday with a fascinating discussion on the differences between praising others and flattering others. You don't wanna miss this one. And if you've missed any episodes from the week, you can catch up in our free app for your phone, and of course, you can catch up online at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke, have a wonderful weekend. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)