Lessons for the Church of the ’90s Gleaned From the Dutch Second Reformation (Nadere Reformatie)

The lessons the Dutch Second Reformation can teach the contemporary church are numerous. Allow me to limit myself to seven basic lessons to be gleaned from our Dutch forebears:

(1) Wherever the doctrine of justification by faith is taught scripturally, the doctrine of sanctification will inevitably come to the fore. The Second Reformation was as naturally and inevitably an outgrowth of the Reformation proper as sanctification flows out of justification. Hence, the relationship between the Reformation and the Dutch Second Reformation (and thus also Puritanism) may be viewed as a macrocosm of the inseparable relationship between justification and sanctification — a truth that will be a contemporary issue until Christ returns. To aim for more sanctification in our churches calls for lucid and Word-centered teaching of justification by gracious faith.

Two extremes must be avoided: First, doctrinal precision relative to justification at the expense of biblical piety (sanctification) — as was generally true for Dutch orthodoxy prior to the Second Reformation; and secondly, godliness or sanctification at the expense of doctrinal precision relative to justification — as tended to be true for German Pietism. We must strive, as was true in the Second Reformation, to conjoin doctrinal precision and biblical piety and maintain a proper balance between both, thereby reinforcing the inseparable union between the two.

We must aim for proper strictness which, as TJwmas Boston says, means to be “strictly scriptural”— neither adding to Scripture in the unending cycle of works-righteousness and legalistic Phariseeism, nor subtracting from the Scripture in the unending cycle of free will and liberal religion.

(2) The Second Reformation transition from the practical syllogism (that is, assurance gleaned from the Spirit’s light shed over the fruits of the believer’s life as being God’s work) to the mystical syllogism (that is, assurance gleaned from the Spirit’s light shed over the inward workings of the soul as being God’s work) must be as a beacon in the sea. The favoring of the one over the other — or worse, the excluding of the one at the expense of the other — will inevitably lead to an unbiblical emphasis, and therefore a caricature of true, experiential Christianity. With the men of the Second Reformation, we must ever strive to approximate the perfect balance found in the beatitudes: The biblically mystical (beatitudes #1-3) and the practical (beatitudes #5-7) must be balanced upon the fulcrum of faith in exercise (beatitude #4).

(3) The Reformers were zealous to return to apostolic teaching and practice via Augustine; the Puritans and the divines of the Second Reformation were zealous to return to and revive apostolic teaching and practice as expounded by the Reformers. Likewise, we must be equally zealous to perpetuate the same historical line which has its origin in Christ Himself (who is the crowning piece and fulfillment of Old Testament truth, Heb. 3:1 ), and runs via the apostles, Augustine, the Reformers, the Puritans, and Second Reformation divines, to us their heirs. The church today must not accomodate people by simply teaching what they want to hear. Rather, she must be zealous to inculcate the clear tenets of the old, yet ever new, gospel message in all its unfettered purity — i.e., death in Adam and life in Christ — and thus, in dependency upon the Spirit, engender the simplicity of biblical, theocentric and Christocentric worship.

(4) Since the church, as Herman Witsius emphasized, is continually in need of being reformed, there must be an ongoing “second or continuing” reformation of doctrine and life in the church until Christ returns (Lk. 3:1 7). This reformation must, as the Dutch Second Reformation divines never tire of telling us, commence with us personally as individuals.

Also today we must pray earnestly for, and vigorously promote a biblically experiential religion — a religion in which both justification and sanctification are experienced realities. As essential as it is to be experientially acquainted with Christ as given of God unto justification, so essential it is that we know Him experientially as given of God unto sanctification. We must know Him as a priest after the order of Melchizedek — as a priest who rules us as King! The experiential religion of the Second Reformation movement was so filled with vitality because it encompassed both. Hence the great stress on scriptural meditation, on the cultivation of humility, and on the profit of affliction.

Moreover, as the Reformation and the Second Reformation had their origin in local pulpits (due to the reformation of individual hearts), and thus were “grassroots” movements rather than having been initiated by ecclesiastical hierarchy, so we must pray for the Spirit to reform local congregations to bring about a reformation in our day. Let us storm the throne of grace and use the means of grace diligently, under the Spirit’s blessing, to aim for the spirituality of ourselves and our family members. How negligent we have become in daily family worship, a practice in which the Second Reformation believers engaged!

(5) From the Dutch Second Reformation divines, we learn that we would do well to retrench ourselves in the great and eternal truths of Holy Scripture as God’s written Word. The Dutch divines found all they needed in the Bible. Here was a system of doctrine, a manual for worship, a church order — God-breathed, comprehensive, all-sufficient, and utterly compelling in its power and authority. This Word-centered authority we must relish. We must aim for proper strictness which, as Thomas Boston says, means to be “strictly scriptural”— neither adding to Scripture in the unending cycle of works-righteousness and legalistic Phariseeism, nor subtracting from the Scripture in the unending cycle of free will and liberal religion. To add to or to chip away at the Scriptures will inevitably lead to the church’s self-destruction (Rev. 22:19).

The Second Reformation calls us to cherish once again the vision of God spread across the pages of Scripture in the compelling self-revelation of a triune God’s majestic, yet tender perfections. It calls us to love the Lord Jesus in all His fulness with far more vitality than we do. In Christ there is majesty and glory. In His countenance we behold the glory of a triune God. In Him are hid all the treasures of knowledge and wisdom. In Him is mercy and love beyond degree (Col. 2:9). The Dutch

Second Reformation pastors would have men and women, young people, boys and girls, yes, all men bow before Him as Lord of all, and the Judge of all flesh. They would call every sinner to come to Him for cleansing, healing, and life, even as they would tell every sinner that his inability to come is his own guilt.

The Second Reformation has much to teach us about the necessary discipline of self-suspicion and mortification, and on the other, about the unending riches to be found in experiencing vital communion with the divine Persons of the blessed Trinity.

The Dutch Second Reformation sets before us the tragic reality of our desperately wicked hearts and of the vileness of this polluted world, even as it also balances sinful depravity by calling the redeemed to savor Christian liberty, particularly the freedom of worship enjoyed under the new covenant by the Spirit’s outpouring and application. We need to aim to restore in God’s people in our churches a dread sense of sin and a sorrow over our ongoing poverty in sanctification, as well as a call to exercise royal priesthood in the strength of Christ and His Spirit. On the one hand, the Second Reformation has much to teach us about the necessary discipline of self-suspicion and mortification, and on the other, about the unending riches to be found in experiencing vital communion with the divine Persons of the blessed Trinity. In both cases, the contemporary church is too carnal and too easily settles for a shallower brand of Christianity which does not plumb the depths of the soul, making the soul violent in taking the kingdom of heaven by force (Mt. 11:12).

(6) As was so prevalent during the Dutch Second Reformation, we must strive for a theological awareness which is entirely subservient to the coming of God’s kingdom in this world. Thus, we must avoid the pursuit and practice of theology for its own sake. The objectives of theological scholarship must be what they were for the preeminent theologians of the Second Reformation: “Hallowed be Thy Name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done.” These divines were propelled by a passionate love for the God of theology, rather than an academic love for the theology of God. What J. I. Packer learned from the Puritans in this regard we must also learn from their counterparts in the Netherlands:

The Puritans made me aware that all theology is also spirituality, in the sense that it has an influence, good or bad, positive or negative, on its recipients’ relationship or lack of relationship to God. If our theology does not quicken the conscience and soften the heart, it actually hardens both; if it does not encourage the commitment of faith, it reinforces the detachment of unbelief; if it fails to promote humility, it inevitably feeds pride. So one who theologises in public, whether formally in the pulpit, on the podium or in print, or informally from the armchair, must think hard about the effect his thoughts will have on people — God’s people, and other people.1

On the other hand, we must also be averse to the absence of theological study — which nearly became the norm in Dutch experiential Christianity in a later century; that is, after the Second Reformation had subsided. There is an obvious, causal relationship between the academic credentials of the divines of the Dutch Second Reformation, and their ability to exegete and expound the Scriptures — a training and ability sanctified by the Holy Spirit. It was their able exegesis and exposition of Holy Writ which the Holy Spirit used so mightily in their day and which has passed on to us their enduring legacy (Is. 33:6). God help us to be the kind of spiritual giants these divines were in our day of spiritual dwarfism.

(7) We must be on guard for the tendency observed in a minority of divines during the latter part of the Dutch Second Reformation to neglect the church’s role in the world in her striving not to be of the world. While striving to be pure in doctrine and life, we must simultaneously strive to be the salt of the earth and a light upon a hill, praying for the Spirit’s enlightenment and anointing. Happily, for the most part, the Second Reformation was possessed by Spirit-worked passion for effective action in every sphere of life — personal, domestic, ecclesiastical, and national.

The best of the Second Reformation divines aimed for spiritual balance in the whole of their lives. They longed and prayed for the Spirit’s work in their heart; but they yearned and supplicated no less for the manifestation of the Spirit’s fruits in every aspect of their lives. Thus, for them there was no disjunction between sacred and secular; their entire lives were devoted to divine service. All must be done and lived purposefully to the glory of God.

May God grant us grace to walk in the footsteps of our Dutch Second Reformation forebears, as they strove to walk by Word and Spirit, following the Lord fully like Caleb (Nu. 14:24).

1a Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton: Crossway, 1990), p. 15.

Best Wishes for Christmas and the Exchange of Years

Dear friends,

On behalf of the Banner of Truth, we desire to wish you and your loved ones a blessed holiday season. The word “holiday” is a shortened version of “holy day.” Would to God that Christmas, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s day this season might be holy days for us in Christ Jesus, notwithstanding our unworthiness!

By nature, we are far from such divine, Christ-centered holiness. To properly end 1992 and commence 1993, we need Christ put back into Christmas for our needy souls which naturally reject the anointed Messiah. We have stained every day of 1992 with our sins and move with rapid strides to the inevitableness of death, judgment, and eternity. Only the blood of Christ can serve to remove those stains and enable us to end this year and our very lives in quiet rest and peace between God and our souls.

What shall we render to the Lord for all His benefits bestowed upon us in 1992? “It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness” (Lam. 3:22-23). Surely, we have deserved to be consumed — not only because of our sin in Paradise and all the sins of our yesterdays, but also because of our ongoing transgressions in the face of a merciful God who deserves so much better treatment at our hands. As the curtain of 1992 descends, may it become a wonder to us that the Lord has borne with us for another year. Who can comprehend the patience and longsufferingness of His mercy?

Dear friends, as certainly as this year draws to a close, so the curtain that separates time from eternity shall soon descend upon us. Sooner than we think we must meet the holy Judge of heaven and earth in final judgment. In whose righteousness shall we be clothed when He appears? In the Adamic “fig-leaf righteousness” of our natural self-justification? In our religious “filthy-rag righteousness” of spiritual self-works? Or in the meritorious “whiterobe righteousness” of the triune God’s exclusive salvation in Christ Jesus?

Our heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones in 1992 or who have been compelled to carry multiple and heavy afflictions. May all our crosses be sanctified in 1992’s waning days. They then shall be laid in holy submission at the feet of the born Babe and be treated by God as gifts akin to gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The Lord delights in the submission and surrender of poor, begging sinners unto Him. How often God’s people must learn that through the surrender of all that is of self lies victory in all that is of Christ! If Scripture says of the spotless, precious Mediator, “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?” (Lk. 24:26), ought not you, dear child of God, expect suffering also as you are trained by the Master to walk in His footsteps, pursuing the narrow pathway of fellowship with Him?

May God bless us mercifully in 1993 — granting conversions in many congregations; causing His people to grow in grace; preserving us in the precious doctrines of free grace; blessing and enlarging the number of His servants; strengthening our student, consistories, mission workers, and school teachers — all to the glory of His worthy Name. May 1993 be a year in which many souls — near and far which are lying under the seal of gracious election — must be saved under the means of grace, be it under preaching or reading services, catechism and confession of faith teaching, family or pastoral visitation, reading of orthodox books or periodicals — including our Banner of Truth. In us there is no expectation, but we believe in “God the Father, Almighty.” May David’s confession in Psalm 39:7 become our cry for the first time or by renewal, “And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in Thee.” May the efforts of church, school, and home in 1993 be graced with divine favor.

The times are dark; sin is rampant; need is great; judgment is ripe. Oh, may God send forth His indispensable Spirit and revive us before the candlestick of the established churches is removed exclusively to the heathen! May man and self be crucified in the church, the world be despised, Satan be ashamed, God’s people be rightly grounded for eternity, interceders at the throne of grace be multiplied — yes, that God Himself may receive His rightful place among us; He — all in all; we — nothing at all.

We wish you and your families a blessed exchange of years in Christ Jesus, who exchanges Himself for Barabbases who deserve the center cross.

With pastoral warmth,

Rev. J.R. Beeke

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

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