An Address to the Young

Seek to come faithfully under the preaching of the Word, and to join yourself to the church to which you already belong by birth and baptism. You cannot remain baptismal members. Confirm by your confession that you do not wish to leave the church, but perpetuate in confession and conversation the blessing God gave you of being reckoned to belong to His visible church. A baptismal member is a minor for whom the parents are responsible. When, however, you assume responsibility for yourself, you are obliged to join yourself to the church, or else you withdraw from the church and choose the world for your portion, treading upon a way that surely will lead to destruction. Oh, young men and young women, do not despise the statutes of the Lord!

Must then everyone who makes confession be regarded as regenerated? Far from it. God made you members of the visible church by birth and baptism, and in making confession you declare that you want to remain so. Could the Lord have made a mistake when He made you a member while you were still unconverted? That is not possible, and therefore we need not consider every confessing member to be regenerated. The church, as is said of the kingdom of heaven, is as a group of five wise and five foolish virgins, as a field in which wheat and tares grow, as a threshing floor upon which wheat and tares lie, as a net in which good and bad fish are found. They who want a church of only converted people fall into the objectionable doctrine of de-Labadie. (Jean deLabadie, who was minister in Middleburg, Netherlands in 1666, wanted to have a church composed entirely of true believers, but was sadly disappointed.)

Everyone must search himself whether he is a living member of the church, for one day the Lord shall come with the fan in His hand and thoroughly purge His floor. Oh, unconverted members of the visible church, how terrible your lot shall then be! The chaff will be burned with unquenchable fire, and your lot shall be with the wicked forever in the fire that shall not be quenched. Were they not all Israelites of whom it is written, “But with many of them God was not well pleased”?

Testify before God whether the Lard did not faith fully warn you about approaching destruction and invite you to salvation in Christ.

I pray you, do not rest upon your membership in the visible church, but let the necessity of regeneration weigh upon your heart. Life and death is placed before you from Sabbath to Sabbath in the pure preaching of the Word of God. Would you just lay that serious preaching aside and think no more about it? Are your thoughts during the preaching and your conversation at the close of the service only about worldly things? How then shall the ministry of God’s testimony ever work upon your conscience? You are withdrawing yourself from its influence. Do not lay the blame upon God if you then live on unconverted, although it is only free grace if the Word is sanctified to you for salvation. Testify before God whether the Lord did not faithfully warn you about approaching destruction and invite you to salvation in Christ. And if you cannot justify yourself before the bar of the gospel, how will you acquit yourself before God’s judgment seat?

Do not let your poor soul be misled with advice that has become so common, “Just believe and be converted.” The Lord uses His Word, baptismal and confessing members, to discover to you the state of your misery. May one day the arrow that Christ shoots from the bow in His hand strike you, so that you leave the church crying, “It is lost!” Oh, may we never lose sight of the necessity of becoming a living member of the church by regenerating grace, so that all the benefits God has bestowed on us will not testify against us in the day of days! Do not use sovereign election and reprobation as a fig leaf. God’s eternal counsel shall surely be fulfilled, but we fulfill it, and one day we shall be judged according to our sins. Oh, how our conscience shall then gnaw as a worm in the fire that shall not be quenched, and reproach us, saying, “Your own fault, your own fault. “May God sanctify to your heart the benefit He gave you of belonging to His visible church and living under His Word to your salvation.

Rev. G.H. Kersten (1882-1948) served congregations at Meliskerke, Rotterdam-Centrum, and Yerseke in the Netherlands, and was the promary individual involved in the organization of the Gereformeerde Gemeenten (Netherlands Reformed Congregations) in7907. This article is reprinted from theBanner of Truth (1973).

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