Confession of Faith: Article XXXII

The church of God, as the work of His hand, has received ministers, elders, and deacons, as we saw in the previous article. These office-bearers are called to direct the matters of the church with the authority given unto them and to fulfill their offices for the well-being of the church of God. For the well-being of the church of God, there should be order in the church. We read in 1 Corinthians 14:40, “Let all things be done decently and in order.” A church without order, a church in chaos, cannot be a church in a good condition. It cannot be to the welfare of a church if everyone does that which is right in his own eyes, as in the times of the judges. We therefore need regulations; we need order. “Good order and discipline are the honor and strength of the church,” one of our fathers said. And to establish that order we need certain regulations; we need rules. These rules should be in accordance with God’s Word.

Rules imply that there are those who enforce or execute those rules, who have authority, and that there should be a certain type of church government, although it has a different character from the worldly government.

1. The highest, the supreme authority and, basically, the only authority for all other authority is derived from and is upon the shoulders of the King of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our fathers say it so beautifully in this article: “Christ, our only Master.” He is the Lawgiver of the church, yet He uses people.

We read in Lord’s Day 30, which speaks about the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the statement, “According to the appointment of Christ and His apostles.” First it is through Christ and then through His apostles. In Lord’s Day 31 we read, “According to the command of Christ.” Article 76 of our Church Order states: “Agreeable to the form adopted for that purpose according to the Word of God.” He is the first, the supreme Lawgiver.

2. This authority is executed, however, by means of office-bearers. The Lord gave them to the church. We read in Acts 15:28, “For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things.” Here we see that Scripture speaks of the “Holy Ghost and us.” The Lord used the apostles there in their meeting at Jerusalem. This council meeting laid, as it were, the groundwork for the synodical meetings, the ecclesiastical meetings, which are held for the good of the churches, if it is well.

We read that the Lord then gave certain power to the office-bearers. The apostle wrote in 2 Corinthians 13:10, “According to the power which the Lord hath given me to edification.” This power is not a worldly power, but it is the authority which the Lord gives unto those whom He places in His vineyard. And in Acts 16:4 we read a stronger word: “They delivered them the decrees for to keep, that were ordained of the apostles and elders which were at Jerusalem.” The Greek word for decrees is dogmata, in the plural. This is the same word which we read in Luke 2:1, where a decree, a dogma, went out from the emperor. The word “dogma” means something which pleased the emperor; he did what pleased him. You understand that this certainly does not mean that an office-bearer may just do what pleases him. Yet there is something of “good pleasure” in that word.

The good pleasure which comes from God through Christ is also executed, but then it is through His Word and, according to the order based on that Word, in His church.

3. A very important point is that this authority is confined within the order of Christ as given in His Word. Those who have received that authority, that power, may not do it outside of the Word. The confinement, the limit, is set by what God’s Word says. We read in Matthew 23:8, “For One is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.” Might we also have more of that in practice.

4. The order and discipline of the church must be used to maintain “unity, and to keep all men in obedience to God.” The fathers emphatically stressed that they do not admit anything which would be a human invention, a law of man which is not based upon the Word of God. “We admit only of that which tends to nourish and preserve concord and unity, and to keep all men in obedience to God.”

Arnoldus of Rotterdam, who provided a beautiful explanation of our Confession in questions and answers, stated two characteristics of such church order. “First of all, it will serve to maintain unity if the rules are not too many”; so that a new yoke would not be made, rule upon rule and precept upon precept. Calvin, who laid the groundwork for our Church Order, also insisted that rules should be made which are necessary to the well-being of the church, but nothing beyond that.

Arnoldus also added, “Observing them is not urged so much as if the keeping of them would be an essential part of piety itself, but it is as equally necessary as the keeping of God’s commandments.” In other words, he said, “One should never put human regulations and the human rules of church order on the same level as the commandments which God has given in His Word.” However, with the restriction that if the rules are not in conflict with God’s Word, we have to comply with them, based on the fifth commandment.

Good order and discipline are the honor and strength of the church.

A warning regarding this is, however, not out of place. We so easily speak about God’s Word and the Church Order as if they are two equal items, that is, equivalent to each other. We should never go that far; although we must abide by the rules established in the Church Order.

5. When we speak about order and discipline, then this is only in regard to those who are in the church. We read in 1 Corinthians 5:13, “But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.” And, dear friends, that means that those who are outside the church are judged by God; but within the church we are all subject to discipline and order in the church. We may not be our own lord in that regard, whether we be an emperor, a king, a president, or a subject.

Bishop Ambrose once felt compelled to excommunicate the emperor Theodosius because he had done cruel things in Thessalonica. Ambrose felt that he had to excommunicate the emperor, and he did. Only in the way of repentance could the emperor be readmitted into the church. He had to lie at the church door, crying and weeping, as a public testimony of his repentance and mourning. And then he was not readmitted immediately, but only when the time of mourning and repentance was completed. It is hard for us to imagine how a bishop dared to do this, but he had the honor of God in view.

6. Church order, and specifically the discipline of the church, has to be of a medical and not of a punishing character. The government in the world has the task to punish evildoers, but those who are clothed with authority in the church have to execute discipline for the purpose of healing, for the restoration of health. Even when excommunication is used, which is a very solemn thing, there is still behind it the form of readmission or restoration into the church. Upon true repentance there can be restoration.

7. This order and the decrees in this article have a historical basis. Church discipline was practiced in both the Old and New Testaments. Israel was protected from the evil influences of the idolatries and wicked heathen nations by the command to destroy the seven surrounding Canaanitish peoples.

In the Old Testament we read that idolators, blasphemers, and sorcerers had to be killed. The unclean were excluded from the tabernacle. Even King Uzziah, being leprous till his death, lived in a separate house. After they were led into exile in Babylon, there was the discipline of the synagogues to keep the Jews from mixing with the Gentiles. We read of this discipline also in Ezra 10:8, “And that whosoever would not come within three days, according to the counsel of the princes and the elders, all his substance should be forfeited, and himself separated from the congregation of those that had been carried away.”

In the days of the apostles and the apostolic fathers excommunication was used. After excommunication the repenting sinner could be restored in four steps of repentance. In the early Christian church there were meetings of bishops and presbyters, where decisions were made and rules for good order (canones) were accepted.

In the Greek church of the ninth century Johannes Scholasticus collected and assembled all the ecclesiastical decisions of the past centuries in a book. In the seventh century, the Latin church did the same with the decisions which had been made in the western churches. There were these collections of decrees, but later more and more man-made and man-invented decrees were added. The situation in the church of Rome was as we read in Luke 11:46: They “lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and [they] themselves touch not the burdens with [their] fingers.” Decrees were added not only by traveling bishops, but also in the days of Gregory IV and Boniface VIII, in 1254. In 1313 Paul Clemens V added his decrees, which were named The Clementines. Then there was the famous Council of Trent, which also made decrees, based on human inventions and traditions, which were binding for many centuries in the Roman Catholic church.

However, the Reformation rediscovered the Word of God. It had been covered by all the man-made decrees, so that Scripture had been put in the background. Human inventions, all the human and papal regulations, had obscured the clear testimony of God’s Word. Luther discovered that Word in his own life, and he was instrumental in bringing it back to the pulpit and into the homes and, by God’s grace, into the hearts of people. By burning the papal decrees, he showed that he would not have anything to do with them anymore. Luther did not do much to replace them with a reformed church order. He gave some general statements in which he said we have to obey God and follow Scripture, but he did not really work on a church order.

Calvin did, however. He gave outlines, or laid the groundwork, for what later on would be the material used in Reformed ecclesiastical meetings in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany, to arrive again at a scriptural church order. In Book IV, chapters 8 to 12, of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, the beautiful classic which so richly speaks of the honor of God and also of the order of the church, one can find much material; this material was later used to develop the rules needed for the government of the churches.

— to be continued —

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