The Church’s Perpetual Need: The Preservation of Old Paths (3)

“Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.”

— Jeremiah 6:16

5: The Experiential Path

I have already hinted at a fifth road which needs to be preserved: the experiential or experimental path.1 This path refers to the necessity of personal experience of the truth proclaimed. Each doctrine and truth of God’s Word, shall it profit us, must be “lived in” — that is, internally experienced, and “lived out” — that is, externally practiced. We need to experience truth in our souls and practice truth in our lives. For this we need the gracious influences of the Holy Spirit. Without the blessed Spirit of God, we will never have a grain of genuine, experiential religion. Thus, faithful, biblical preaching will always consist of a sound exposition of the truths of God’s Word, followed by an experiential application of these truths — an application which will flow out of and be in harmony with the expounded text. Such experiential preaching will of necessity explain both how spiritual life should go and how it does go in the daily exercises of God’s people.

You and I must know personally and experientially the doctrines we profess to believe. Never, never may we allow ourselves to be satisfied with only a head knowledge of doctrine or use study as a replacement for the work of the Holy Spirit. We need the Holy Spirit in His regenerating power, in His step-by-step teaching of misery, deliverance and gratitude, shall we remain with the old paths in truth and uprightness. We must have personal acquaintance with the marks and steps of saving grace. We must be warned time and again of how close we can appear to come to saving grace and still not possess it. We must be informed of the difference between the common and saving work of the Spirit, between temporal and saving faith, between common and saving convictions.

It is this old beaten path that we are in such great danger of losing today. For example, when we speak of experiencing by means of Word and Spirit the reality of the attributes of God, the signing of our own death sentence, or the drawing of faith which takes refuge to Christ Jesus, many are either ignorant of or minimize such experiences. Often present-day church members are more prone to claim experiential truth for themselves without a Word-Spirit foundation than our forefathers were. Like Jacob, by nature we desire to bring the venison quickly, rather than travel through the fields. Particularly when modern man opts for quick solutions and time-saving conveniences, we are prone to think we can handle religion by hurriedly patching up our ruined state, quickly assuming to ourselves that which we have not tried by the touchstone of Scripture. How easily some can construct a counterfeit religion out of common experiences, special providences, received texts, and momentary impressions! How few experience a Spirit-wrought returning to God’s cutting, stripping Word to examine themselves in its holy light! How few in our day have truly learned that to claim Christ without having experienced their sin and misery is meaningless, as the sinner will have no true need for Him. But also, how few have properly learned that the experience of sin and misery without Christ also provides the soul with no solution, for those who are truly convinced of sin can find no comfort or salvation in their misery. Rev. Fraanje has already warned years ago: “I fear that the day is coming in our congregations when sinners will be encouraged to consider themselves converted without having a personal knowledge of Christ.”

Let us seriously examine ourselves: Are we concerned or indifferent with respect to experiential truth? Are we concerned that we regularly hear the necessity of saving grace, the fulness of free grace, and the fruits of redeeming grace? Are we concerned to maintain the necessity of experiencing misery, deliverance, and gratitude in a balanced manner?

Are we also truly concerned that the steps of grace in the experimental life of God’s people be continually set before us? Are we concerned to maintain that there are steps within misery, within deliverance, and within gratitude? Do we distinguish in misery such steps as being made a concerned sinner, a miserable sinner, a guilty sinner, a lost sinner, and a cut-off sinner before the bar of divine justice? Do we distinguish In deliverance the steps of needing Christ, seeing a glimpse of Christ, experiencing a revelation of Christ, appropriating an application of Christ? Are we increasingly discovering Him to be All-in-all in His benefits, natures, offices, states, and Person? And through Christ, are we yearning to experientially be brought into a personal acquaintance with each of the three divine Persons consciously for our own soul? Are we experiencing in gratitude such steps as: “What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits towards me?”; being cut off from our own prayers and thanksgiving, and standing in need of the praying and thanking High Priest at God’s right hand; surrendering everything (including all the hellish rubble within) over to a triune God for time and eternity, so that that deepest of all petitions springs forth from the soul, “Thy will be done”?

How easily some can construct a counterfeit religion out of common experiences, special providences, received texts, and momentary impressions!

This is not to say that all of God’s children will be able to mark out with clarity of depth each of these steps in grace. Nor does it mean that true believers ought to succumb to doubts if they are led more deeply into one step of grace while hardly tasting anything of another. Bible conversions and the experience of the saints reveal great diversity in God’s salvific leadings; hence we do not proclaim a detailed list of steps of grace as an exclusive biblical distinctive, pattern, or method by which God is bound to lead His children. The preaching of the steps of grace must take into account the kind of diversity Thomas Watson observes:

The Lord does not tie Himself to a particular way, or use the same order with all. He comes sometimes in a still small voice; such as have godly parents, and have sat under the warm sunshine of religious education, often do not know how they are called. They know by the heavenly effects that they are called, but the time and manner they know not. Thus God deals with some. Others are more stubborn and knotty sinners, and God comes to them in a rough wind. He uses more the wedges of the law to break their hearts.... This call, though it is more visible than the other, yet is no more real.2

Reality in our religion is what we need. Real experiential tastes of “how great my sins and miseries are,” of “how I may be delivered from all my sins and miseries,” and of “how I shall express my gratitude to God for such deliverance” (Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 2), shall bear godly fruit of sanctification (cf. Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 86; Q. 90). And “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Gal. 5:22-23). In fact, sanctification and gratitude are ultimately inseparable; gratitude is sanctification flowing out of love. As the Westminster Confession of Faith, Article 24, states so movingly:

It is impossible that this holy [justifying] faith can be unfruitful in man: for we do not speak of a vain faith, but of such a faith, which is called in Scripture, a faith that worketh by love, which excites man to the practice of those works which God has commanded in His Word.

Dear friends, let us be honest: Without conviction, there is no need for Christ. Without Christ, there is no salvation and no gratitude. Without gratitude, there has been no taste of the sweetness of Christ, no evangelical repentance, and no faith that works by love. Misery, deliverance, and gratitude must be personally and repeatedly experienced. Usually God’s people experience these matters cyclically in ever greater measures. A sense of sin and misery which drives to Christ and reaps gratitude, shall in turn lead to a deeper, more evangelical repentance, which in turn leads the believer to a more profound sense of appreciation for that God who has delivered, does deliver, and shall deliver (2 Cor. 1:10) — notwithstanding sins committed after the gospel has been eprsonally revealed.

A growing experiential sense of sin and misery, deliverance and gratitude — is this also your life?

6: The Educational Path

It is a well-known fact that in contrast to the Roman Catholic promotion of ignorance among the common masses, the Reformed faith has always emphasized sanctified education for both clergy and laymen. Consequently, as a Reformed denomination our congregations have been long characterized in the Netherlands and more recently in North America by a significant educational path to which we must cling. From the infancy of our churches, Rev. G. H. Kersten has labored extensively, despite considerable opposition, to establish a theological school, and, along with the organization of many local Christian schools, the organization of a Christian educators’ association. Our congregations feel compelled to promote and support our own Christian education to nurture our youth in biblical truth, in our doctrinal distinctives, and in all that is essential to fear God and walk circumspectly in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation. We believe that our own Christian schools, both in the Netherlands and in North America, have been greatly used by God not only to keep our young people from wandering from the truth, but also in promoting a biblical understanding of what we believe and how we are to live.

All education is dependent, however, on the blessed and saving influences of the Holy Spirit. Unlike most present-day Reformed churches, our congregations never assume or presume conversion in covenant youth. We believe that the child growing up in the pale of the church receives the outward benefits of the covenant (which are many), but its true essence can only be received by regeneration. We agree with Archibald Alexander (d. 1851), renowned professor at Princeton Seminary, who wrote:

The education of children should proceed on the principle that they are in an unregenerate state, until evidences of saving grace clearly appear, in which case they should be sedulously cherished and nurtured. These are Christ’s lambs whom none should offend or mislead upon the peril of a terrible punishment. But though the religious education of children should proceed on the ground that they are destitute of grace, it ought ever to be used as a means of grace. Every lesson, therefore, should be accompanied with the lifting up of the heart of the instructor to God for a blessing on the means. ‘Sanctify them through Thy truth; Thy Word is truth.’3

Let us seek grace to preserve and promote the good, old path of our forefathers which always stressed that the knowledge of God is the highest goal of all education, for “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1:7). The deepest goal of education is not the knowledge of various subjects of mankind, or of state, but the knowledge of God. John Harvard, the godly founder of Harvard University, wrote: “Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well that the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life.” Though no teacher, no textbook, no visiting minister or office-bearer can form this knowledge within a student, such must prayerfully remain the ultimate aim of real education.

Moreover, sound education is not only God-directed, but God-centered as well. The Lord must be recognized and honored in every field in which the human intellect operates. The living God of the Bible must be the major premise of every textbook and in every classroom. He must be the Person whose handiwork is investigated in every laboratory. “In the beginning God” must be the watchword of all true education. In short, God must be at the center of every subject.

As we commence yet another school year in these weeks, may God grant us renewed zeal for Christian education, increase the number of converted teachers and students, and provide sorely needed Word- and God-centered textbooks for various subjects and grade levels. May abundantly show Himself to be the covenant-keeping Jehovah from one generation to the next, to the glory of His adorable Name.

1The terms “experimental” and “experiential” can be used interchangeably — the latter being more readily understood in contemporary thought, but the former more commonly used by post-Reformation divines to describe the inward life and experience of the believer. Calvin also used both terms interchangeably in their Latin form (experientia and experimentum), since both words contain the root meaning of “examining” or “testing” (from experiri) experienced knowledge by the touchstone of Scripture (Isaiah 8:20). Cf. W. Balke, “The Word of God and Experientia according to Calvin,” in Calvinus Ecclesiae Doctor (Kampen: Kok, 1978), pp. 20-21.

3Heaven Taken by Storm (reprint ed., Ligonier, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1992).

2Thoughts on Religious Experience (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1967).

[to be concluded]

Dr. J.R. Beeke is pastor of the First Netherlands Reformed Congregation of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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