Theodore Van Der Groe: A Faithful Watchman upon Zions Walls

Faithful workers in God’s vineyard, elders, deacons, and also servants of God are a gift of the ascended Mediator who sends them to that part of the vineyard where He, in His wisdom, wants them to bring His Word, the message of justice and mercy, of God’s righteousness and grace. They have different gifts and characters, which also will be evident in their preaching, but if it is well, they will deny themselves and will not seek the approval of men, but the honor and glory of God. It is their desire that their King may be served and acknowledged, as in Psalm 72:15, “And he shall live, and to Him shall be given of the gold of Sheba.” For also in this psalm we see Him who is greater than Solomon.

Undoubtedly, one of these ascension gifts was Theodore Van Der Groe whom the Lord placed as a watchman upon the walls of His church. Theodore (meaning, “gift of God”), was born on September 3,1705, at Zwammerdam, in the western part of Holland, where his father, Ludovicus, ministered until his early departure from this wilderness at about forty years, leaving three small children. The oldest was Theodore’s sister, Eve, and the youngest, born about two years after his brother Theodore, was named Simon. His saddened wife had to now care for the three young children alone. The Lord Himself cared for this family, wherein He so richly glorified His grace. Theodore’s sister, Eve, his brother, Simon, and both parents feared the Lord. It seems that his mother was converted when she already was at an advanced age.

After having passed through elementary school and grammar school, Theodore began his studies at Leiden University when he was almost nineteen years old. Five years later, in 1729, he became a candidate for the ministry. In Leiden he was taught church history by the renowned Joh. a Marck, and T.H. Van Den Honert taught him dogmatics. Theodore’s trial sermon was from Deuteronomy 18:15, “The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto Me; unto Him ye shall hearken.” He proclaimed the only Name given under heaven, but he himself did not know Christ at that time although his preaching was sound.

A trial, as many other candidates experienced in those days due to a surplus of ministers, was that he had to wait for about a half year before he received his first call which was from Rijnsaterwoude, a small town in a rural environment. He accepted the call and was installed on March 19, 1730, taking up the shepherd’s rod in his first charge which was near Alphen a/d Rijn, and within walking distance of Woubrugge, where his contemporary, Alexander Comrie, would pastor for many years. There he ministerd for ten years, soon well-liked and loved because of his serious view of life and experiential preaching. He appeared to his people able and eloquent; he was well-acquainted with the letter of Scripture and he spoke of Christ, but as yet he was a “dead sign-post”: he did not know the way wherein the Lord deals with His people. Oh, what a dangerous condition—humanly speaking, hopeless—to be an orthodox minister, to preach Christ as the only way of salvation, but not to know Him in truth. It is a blessing if God’s children who perceive the missing note, not only pray for such a minister, but also visit him and speak to him out of the way wherein the Lord has led them. The Lord can use a simple word, spoken in love, by dear relatives, friends, or others, to open the eyes of a blind leader of the blind.

God Himself opened the eyes of this young minister to see himself as a poor, blind, cursed sinner and God as an angry, righteous Judge. There all his knowledge, even all his labors in God’s vineyard and his righteousnesses appeared to be filthy rags. The young minister became a lost sinner before God, but there in Rijnsaterwoude, he also was brought savingly to believe in Jesus Christ who was revealed unto his soul as the only sacrifice which is acceptable to God. You can understand that his conversion, which took place in the fall of 1735, highly influenced his preaching. Now he had learned something of the depth of the state of death, of fallen man, of the deceitfulness of his corrupt heart, and of the enmity against the offering and work of Christ. He preached forcefully that everything outside of Christ is insufficient, and he showed the many sandy, false foundations upon which one can build, but which will be insufficient when the streams will beat vehemently upon the house of our hope. It is understandable that this preaching was rejected by some, that he experienced resistance from those that hated this discovering proclamation. To others, however, it became an eternal blessing, and his faithful preaching became known far and wide. On April 14 Van Der Groe received a call to Kralingen, a suburb of Rotterdam, which he felt he had to accept. And so he had to leave his beloved flock.

July 10, 1740, Van Der Groe was installed in his second charge. The ordination sermon was from Revelation 2:10, “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” And indeed, this message was a prophesy of the forty-four years that he would minister there. In Kralingen he married Johanna Cornelia Bichon, which marriage remained childless. In this large field, Van Der Groe labored diligently and faith-fully for many years, warning against a life in conflict with God’s law but also applying Christian censure, if necessary. This was done in cases of desecration of the sabbath, drunkeness, irreverent and irreligious bringing up of children, and practicing fraud of public funds. His faithful ministry shone like a beacon amid the mere moral preaching of that time. Often he preached for crowds of people in densely populated Kralingen. We can say that his message was in the spirit of Elijah and of John the Baptist. Therefore he was called a Boanerges, a son of thunder, although he also fed the lambs and the sheep of his Master’s flock with tenderness, and he was a guide to lead to Christ.

Theodore Van Der Groe had a good reputation among those who loved the principles of the Reformation. Some considered him as the last prophet, the last true, faithful and sound messenger of the gospel of free grace, clearly making a separation between true and false grace.

After Van Der Groe’s death, they say, decay spread rapidly through the church, with God leaving the visible churches, darkness of error and ignorance spreading everywhere, and many souls being deceived for eternity. There being no food for God’s children anymore, the only solution was to stay home, have your own private gatherings at home, and read the old writers, especially Van Der Groe. This was obviously in conflict with Scripture, which says that also in times of decay, God’s church must come together and obey the Master’s command,—”Ye do show the Lord’s death till He come.”

Van Der Groe himself did not have such high thoughts of himself. He knew that he needed the blood of the only perfect Office-bearer, Jesus Christ, for the sins of his office, and that those sins alone made him worthy to be cast away from before God’s holy countenance. Once, from his sickbed, he wrote a letter to a friend, wherein he expressed how useless, how incapable he felt himself to be, barren and unfruitful in himself. In another letter he stated, “Oh, that I was, with Lodensteyn, truly but a dead dog before God—but I laid all on Christ; I was carried by Christ. Upon Him all my sins and my debts are laid, reconciled, and paid.” And so, experiencing death in himself, he also knew that Christ was his life. And that is the only reliable foundation, and all other grounds Van Der Groe tried to take away. He warned against a Christianity that helps itself with a Savior for whom room never was made in the heart. And he clearly explained the difference between historical, temporary, and true saving faith.

Van Der Groe has been a blessing to many, not only by his preaching, but also by his written messages, and he has written much during his long ministry. We mention the following:

1. His Beschrijvingen van het oprecht en zielzaligend geloove (De-scription of true soul-saving faith).

2. Sermons about De genezing van de blinde Bartimeus (The healing of the blind Bartimaeus).

3. An explanation of the Heidelberg Catechism in three volumes.

4. “De weg der bekering en andere predikatien” (The way of conversion and other sermons).

Very well-known became his “Toetsteen der waare en valsche genade”—”Touchstone of True and False Grace,” which was published in 1752–53, wherein he clearly separated saving grace from the common gifts or operations of the Holy Ghost.

5. Forty-eight sermons about The Suffering of Christ, and several other works.

In all those works Van Der Groe tried to uncover false grounds, to warn against self-deceit and hypocrisy to the almost Christian, and to proclaim the necessity of being justified by faith. How evident it is, that he himself has experienced the danger of misleading one’s self, and relying on a self-made religion without the righteousness of Christ.

He also warns other workers in the vineyard as he talks about preaching: “The spirit of discernment seems to be gone. One does not touch firm enough the heart of the outward professor and of the deceitful nominal Christian, or the false hypocrite with the sword of the Spirit.” But he does not exalt himself above others, as he says: “Do not think that I want to exclude myself, as if it were better with me. Oh, no, I would esteem it to be a great blessing, if I might see myself today as the most guilty one of this land!’

When speaking about the necessity of true gospel repentance, he explains that with the example of the publican’s prayer, Luke 18:13. He says: this publican had penitent feet, penitent eyes, penitent hands, and a penitent mouth. How clear is his description of true repentance, when he pictures the publican, standing afar off: because of his anxious fear and trembling before the tremendous majesty of God, against whom he had so deeply sinned; because he was in a state of separation and estrangement of God; to confess thereby his deep unworthiness; this publican knows that the Lord justly might cast him off and say to him, “Depart from me, thou cursed sinner, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”

Such a sinner is ashamed, and Van Der Groe warns that a medicine which lacks the most important and particular ingredient is never a virtuous or health-giving medicine; and so a repentance, without deep and heartfelt shame for sin was never a wholesome and God-pleasing repentance which could truly benefit a man savingly, though it could nonetheless humble him, alarm him, stir him, yes, even outwardly renew or change him.

And very instructive is his statement that true penitence of a convinced sinner must not be measured by the awful fear, anxiety, dread, and loud commotions and convulsions of men, but only by the spiritual light of inward sin, the measure of bitter mourning and holy shame which the true knowledge of sin always causes. All the rest is but a general operation of the Spirit, under which often much deceit of Satan can hide, which is rightly seen but by few. So it was with that woman who dared not come before the face of the Lord Jesus, but crept behind Him, or to His feet as she washed them with her tears, without much noise (Luke 7:37,38). Oh, how sincerely Van Der Groe warns of those who “have healed also the hurt of the daughter of My people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14). And he states that this means that the Lord says that it is not yet time to speak of peace and of salvation, or to work yet with the piasters of the gospel in order to cure and heal, until the wound has bled enough and has been examined and cleansed, and from the bottom up is well-prepared for healing. And very applicable to the situation today also is when he says that this is quite another treatment than, at once, whenever some conviction or concern is found in a person, to introduce the balm of Gilead and to spread it thickly upon the wound. Soft surgeons make stinking wounds, and those poor souls are not a little to be pitied who fall into the hands of such tender-hearted physicians, who dare not use a sharp lancet if necessary. And what a truth it is when he says that we must realize that the handling of never-dying souls is the greatest skill on earth, and that those are best fitted for it who are granted most intercourse with God in the sanctuary of His Word and institutions. And so we can find many precious treasures in the works of Van Der Groe, very practical also for our days. For we fear that also today many take and accept a Jesus without ever having been lost, and that many are such tenderhearted physicians who are stumbling blocks, instead of guides unto the Lord Jesus.

Law and gospel are proclaimed by the Kralinger minister. And he preached them scripturally, soundly and clearly. The law, to rightly convince of sin by the work of the Spirit, and the gospel, to rightly comfort by God’s mercy. In his theological opinions, he felt a strong connection with such ministers as the Erskines, which is evident in his fore-words which were written in several collections of translations of sermons of godly Scottish ministers. In his extensive library you could find their works, as also Perkins, Hildersham, Hill, and other Puritans.

In June, 1784, he fell ill and on the 24th of that month the old servant of God gladly departed out of this wilderness to inherit eternal glory and communion with God, to serve Him day and night in His temple. Many mourned this serious loss for the church on earth, but, by his works he may still speak to us. And his warning voice might be blessed to the uncovering of unreliable foundations, and to the confirmation and comfort of God’s dear children.

Rev. C. Vogelaar is pastor of the Netherlands Reformed Congregation of St. Catharines, Ontario.

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