The confidence in facing death comes from our union with Christ in his life, death, and resurrection. As the God-man, Christ’s victories become our victories through faith. When the shepherds bowed before the babe lying in a manger, they weren’t bowing to a mere earthly king who would scourge their physical enemies. Even though they may not have anticipated the fullness of the resurrection and ascension, the little town of Bethlehem was ground zero for death’s inevitable demise. To defeat death, God passed through its shadows. Born of a virgin, the spotless lamb walked the paths of righteousness that lead right into the mouth of death where he blasted off the gates of hades (Acts 2:27). Where he went, so we are empowered to follow—through death into life.

In my first year as a youth pastor, my mentor told me that ministry is just helping people die. These words bounced in my head as I paced the empty hallway to room 472. All the precise and prepared answers learned in seminary can easily fly out the window when it’s just you, a dying saint, and your Bible. Have you stood beside a perishing soul? What you say next—what I had to say next—exposes our theology. In those moments, we come uncomfortably aware of the depth of our faith.
Do we believe what we believe we believe?
Will that Christian close their eyes in this life and truly awake in paradise? Do we really expect to see them again? If we haven’t settled these questions in our own conscience, our shepherding from this life to the next will confuse rather than comfort.
Death is ugly. And the Christian has a complicated relationship with it. In one sense, death reminds us of the horror and consequences of sin (Rom. 6:23). On the other hand, dying is, as Charles Spurgeon said in his comments on Psalm 23, the porch to heaven. To reach those green pastures—to be with Jesus in paradise—we must traverse the valley of the shadow of death.
So, in a believer’s final moments, do you expound on the punishment wrought by death or the shining sea waiting beyond? One may produce fear, the other hope, but both are true. I want to offer an attitude that gets the best of both. The attitude Paul assumed, and the attitude displayed by Christ—mockery. Paul mocked death on the basis of Christ’s resurrection:
“When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”“O death, where is your victory?O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 15:54–57).
Mocking death reveals a confidence in Christ’s incarnation and resurrection. The slayer of death began his triumph in the manger and continues his victory march until he will plunge the final enemy into the lake of fire (1 Cor. 15:24–26, Rev. 20:14).
Though Dead, Yet History Speaks
Reading church history brings us into conversation with those who’ve gone before us into death.
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The progressive Protestant project of North America and Northwestern Europe is fast concluding. It abandoned orthodoxy early in the 20th century in favor of a cold modernism that rejected supernaturalism in favor of stern moral reform. That focus on science and rationality gave way to postmodern self-discovery and deconstruction, with obsession over self-identity, including race and ethnicity, but most especially of late sexuality and gender.

There was an online hullaballoo last week about the “sparkle creed” at a very progressive Lutheran church outside Minneapolis. Offered as a substitute for more traditional creeds, the clergywoman cited God as “nonbinary,” having “two dads”.
A Fox News segment reported on the sparkle creed as a “crisis” for Christianity. But no one needs to worry that Christian orthodoxy is seriously threatened by sparkle theology.
The cleric at Edina Community Lutheran Church cited her belief in the “rainbow spirit who shatters our image of one white light and refracts it into a rainbow of gorgeous diversity.” What does that mean?  Likely neither she nor the congregation that stood to join her could really explain.
The church’s website highlights the congregation’s advocacy for “LGBTQIA+, inclusion, racial justice and ecofaith.” It also cites immigration and “reproductive justice.” And it highlights misdeeds towards native peoples:
We acknowledge that Edina Community Lutheran Church is located on the traditional, ancestral and contemporary lands of the Dakhóta Oyáte*, the Dakota nation. Treaties developed through exploitation and violence were broken. Tribes were forced to exist on ever smaller amounts of land.
Acknowledging this painful history, we as a congregation confess our complicity in the theft of Native land and acknowledge that we have not yet honored our treaties. We further confess that Christians and Christian churches have benefited from this land theft. We commit to being active advocates for justice for Native People and to truth telling that leads to healing.
Do any native people attend Edina Community Lutheran Church?  Most churches with native people tend to be more traditional and more focused on traditional Christian work, not the activism preferred by some white liberal Protestant churches. And the overall project of theological deconstruction almost entirely belongs to white progressives in fast declining Mainline Protestant denominations.
Theological progressives often herald their latest favorite fads as representing the inevitable future. And some dour traditionalists gladly collaborate in this prediction. After all, isn’t the world, and the church, constantly degenerating to ever new depths of depravity? And nothing can be done but complain!
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It should be clear that oaths and vows play an important role in societies of all kind (and in society in-general). They build trust. They teach people to tell the truth and to fulfill promises. Yet what we have today is the breakdown of such trust. And this is tied with the weakening of oaths. Brothers and sisters, God is the foundation for oath-keeping. Those who do not fear God (or believe in Him) will not take their oaths seriously, for they do not believe God will judge them for such violations. Yet God has promised to punish all who break their oaths. We need to restore the importance of oaths and vows if we are going to have a healthy society of any kind. And this must start in the church of Christ.

Every communing member in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) takes membership vows. While officers (elders and deacons) take vows to uphold the Westminster Standards and Book of Church Order, church members take vows acknowledging their sin (vow 1), affirming their trust in Christ’s salvation (vow 2) and promising to live as Christians, support the church, and submit to its government (vow 3–5).
Although the church member is not required to affirm the entire Westminster Confession and Catechisms, his vows are no less serious than those of the minister. In fact, the very reason vows are required is because church membership is a serious thing. In taking membership vows, a person makes “declarations and promises” by which he or she “enter[s] into a solemn covenant with God and His Church” (BCO 57-5). The member takes such vows before the elders, and usually also before the entire congregation. But they are also vows before God Himself, as God is witness to such promises.
PCA Membership Vows
The PCA’s five membership vows are as follows:

Do you acknowledge yourselves to be sinners in the sight of God, justly deserving His displeasure, and without hope save in His sovereign mercy?
Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and Savior of sinners, and do you receive and rest upon Him alone for salvation as He is offered in the Gospel?
Do you now resolve and promise, in humble reliance upon the grace of the Holy Spirit, that you will endeavor to live as becomes the followers of Christ?
Do you promise to support the Church in its worship and work to the best of your ability?
Do you submit yourselves to the government and discipline of the Church, and promise to study its purity and peace? (BCO 57-5)

Sadly, it is all too common for church members to break these vows. The last two vows are particularly difficult – we might even say, “counter-cultural” – in our day and age, as they require respecting and honoring church leadership. Members vow to “support” the church and “submit” to its “government and discipline.” This means members promise to live godly lives in accordance with the Bible and Westminster Standards (“discipline”), as well as yield to the Session when it makes a decision that the member disagrees with (“support the Church” and “study its purity and peace”). Submission requires humility, but that is what God requires of us. Consider the following clear precepts from Scripture:
Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” (1 Peter 5:5, ESV)
Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. (Hebrew 13:17)
Breaking Membership Vows
There are many ways to break these membership vows, including promoting false teaching or factions in the church. Transferring membership to another church for insufficient reasons is also a violation of these vows. However, it is too frequently the case that members of PCA churches break their vows by leaving the church and not transferring to another church. When a member stops attending church for a long period of time or requests to be “removed from the rolls” – and does not transfer to another gospel-preaching church – then he has broken his membership vows.
In this case, he has not endeavored to live as a follower of Christ (vow 3), since a Christian attends corporate worship (Heb. 10:25). He has not supported the church in its worship and work (vow 4). He has not submitted himself to the government and discipline of the church or studied its purity and peace (vow 5). Because he “has made it known that he has no intention of fulfilling the church vows,” the Session is to “erase” his name from the membership rolls as a form of “pastoral discipline without process” (BCO 38-4). Yet the Session has a duty to remind the member of the “declarations and promises by which he entered into a solemn covenant with God and His Church… and warn him that, if he persists, his name shall be erased from the roll.”
Such violation of vows and erasure from membership rolls is not to be taken lightly. It is “discipline without process,” meaning there is no formal discipline process of excommunication. Yet the person erased from membership is no longer a member of Christ’s visible church, and thus he is no longer welcome to partake of the Lord’s Supper in a PCA church (until there is reconciliation and restoration to church membership).
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