When Jesus plucks us out of our own ashes, he doesn’t expect perfection—he has already attained that on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21). We have died with Christ, and he will raise us to life. He has purchased our right-standing with God. Still, he does want to change us, little by little, to love sin less and to desire him more.

The light was dim in my bedroom that night. I knelt, face-down, the fibers of the carpet tickling my nose. The world felt like it was shrinking around me to contain only this room, this moment. I had been blind for so many years, living—no, relishing—in sin. I chased it and held it near to me like my favorite pet. But that night the veil was lifted, and my sin was exposed before me. No longer could I take cover under the guise of being a “good person.”
Tears dropped to the floor as conviction crumbled the hardness of my heart. It was in this crumbling of everything I thought I knew that Jesus found me. As I was pursuing sin, he was unrelenting in his pursuit of me. This was my “go and sin no more” moment. In a blink of an eye, my worldview shifted in alignment with the God who created me, and the trajectory of my whole life changed.
He sought me, he saved me, and there was no way he wouldn’t change me.
A Woman and a Trap
There’s another woman whose life held a similar story. She was merely a pawn in their game—a test and a trap for the Lord Jesus Christ. The scribes and Pharisees discovered her sin of adultery and decided to use it to make a point. To them, her life meant nothing. They didn’t care if she lived or died. Dragging her into the middle of the crowd where Jesus was, they said, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” (John 8:4–5).
Scripture doesn’t tell us how this nameless woman felt as she stood in front of these men with their threatening looks. Perhaps she was bowed down with the weight of her shame and terrified as she seemingly stared death in the face. Maybe she was imagining what was to come, already dreading the sharp stones striking her flesh. Would God be gracious enough to let one hit her in the temple, ending her life quickly, or would she experience a slow, pelting death? Did she feel utterly hopeless?
The woman waited for the verdict as Jesus wrote something in the dirt with his finger. The Pharisees and scribes kept asking him until finally he silenced them saying, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7).
In pretending to care about the law and holiness, these men exposed their hard and darkened hearts. They sought to catch Jesus and find him guilty; instead, he caught them. One by one he exposed their sin, and each of them walked away (John 8:9).
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Written by Cornelis P. Venema |
Friday, November 19, 2021
Several of the most distinctive features of the Reformed doctrine of the church and sacraments receive special notice in this Confession. The holy catholic church is the “assembly of those who are saved, and outside of it there is no salvation” (Art. 28). The “marks of the true church” are identified as the preaching of the pure doctrine of the gospel, the pure administration of the sacraments instituted by Christ, and the exercise of church discipline. The government of the church is based upon the teaching of Scripture and requires the appointment of three kinds of church officers: ministers of the Word, elders, and deacons, who together comprise the “council” of the church.

Philip Schaff, the venerable historian of the church and her confessions, once observed that the Belgic Confession is “upon the whole, the best symbolical statement of the Calvinistic system of doctrine, with the exception of the Westminster Confession.” This Confession is known most commonly as the “Belgic” confession because it emerged from the French-speaking Reformed churches in the southern “Lowlands” or “Nether-lands” (now Belgium). It has served historically as one of the three confessional symbols of the Dutch Reformed churches. Affection for this confession among these churches stems as much from the poignant circumstances suffered by its original author and subscribers as from its rich statement of the Reformed faith.
Background and Setting
The Belgic Confession was originally written by a French-speaking, Reformed pastor, Guido de Bres (pronounced Gee-doe de Bray), who had been a student of Calvin’s in Geneva. Though the principal author of the Belgic Confession, other Reformed pastors and theologians, including Francis Junius, who was later to become a well-known Reformed professor at the University of Leiden, contributed to the final, received form of the Confession. First written in 1561, copies of the Confession were sent to Geneva and other Reformed churches for approval. The present form of the Confession stems from the time of the great Synod of Dort in 1618-19, when the text was revised and officially approved in four languages (the original French, Latin, Dutch and German).
In the face of intense persecution by Phillip II of Spain, Guido de Bres and Reformed believers in the Netherlands were eager to show that their faith was in accord with the teaching of Holy Scripture and the ancient consensus of the holy catholic church and her councils. Consequently, the Belgic Confession has an irenic tone throughout, especially in its careful demonstration of the Reformed faith’s commitment to the great biblical doctrines of the Trinity, as well as the Person and work of Christ. Roman Catholic teaching is rejected at critical points, but the aim of the Confession is to persuade its readers that the Reformed faith is nothing other than the historic faith of the Christian church.
Another purpose of the confession, which distinguishes it from the French or Gallican Confession of 1559 with which the Belgic Confession shares many striking similarities, was to demonstrate that the Reformed faith was distinct from that of the “Anabaptists.” Among the Anabaptists, who had considerable influence in the Netherlands in the early period of the Reformation, there were those who not only rejected the practice of infant baptism but also the legitimacy of the civil magistrate as a servant of God. The Anabaptists sharply distinguished Christ’s spiritual kingdom, the church, from the civil order, and advocated a strict separation from the world, which required a refusal of military service, the taking of oaths and the paying of taxes. The Belgic Confession was also written, therefore, to defend the Reformed faith against the suspicion that it embraced these features of the radical Reformation.
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Expressive individualism contends truth must be the most authentic expression of what comes subjectively from within us. In contrast, confessionalism affirms that truth exists objectively outside us and should shape us. The Christian worldview demands we conform to reality and truth as it comes to us from God via general and special revelation. Confessionalism helps us in that endeavor. In Crisis of Confidence, Trueman shows how confessions can strengthen our faith against prevailing ideological trends. That’s a welcome encouragement in a world gone mad.

What should Christians do when it seems the world has gone mad? Many believers in the West face that question daily. Action seems more effective than theological precision when dealing with the madness of crowds. Isn’t theological precision a luxury for when the church is prospering? That question presumes that rigorous theological reflection and insistence on tightly formulated doctrine is a nicety but not really what the church must pursue for the spiritual well-being of God’s people.
In Crisis of Confidence: Reclaiming the Historic Faith in a Culture Consumed with Individualism and Identity, Carl Trueman argues that careful theological reflection and historical rootedness are necessary for the church’s well-being precisely in moments of cultural discomfort. This lightly revised edition of his 2012 book The Creedal Imperative deepens Trueman’s case that confessional Christianity is biblical and consistent with the church’s historical practice. It’s an antidote for much of what ails the church today.
What Is Confessionalism?
Confessionalism entails the attempt to summarize the Scripture’s teaching into a public statement of our beliefs. As Trueman, professor of historical theology and church history, notes, “A confession is a positive statement of belief” that “inevitably excludes those who disagree with its content” (31). To write a confession is to endeavor to be transparent and cogent about what we believe to be true according to God’s Word. It’s an effort to be accountable to how we’ve understood the Bible and its implications. 
Most confessions in church history were written in times of cultural and theological turmoil like ours. As author and playwright Dorothy L. Sayers wittily argues in her essay “Creed or Chaos?,” “Teachers and preachers never, I think, make it sufficiently clear that dogmas are not a set of arbitrary regulations invented a priori by a committee of theologians enjoying a bout of all-in dialectical wrestling. Most of them were hammered out under pressure of urgent practical necessity to provide an answer to heresy.” Thus confessions are most important when cultural beliefs exert pressure on foundational doctrines.
Confessions are also vital to spiritual formation within the church. According to Trueman, “The person who knows the [Apostles’ or Nicene] creed knows the basic plotline of the Bible and thus has a potentially profound grasp of theology” (136). Historical confessions help inform contemporary moral formation because “they offer both a framework for ethical thinking and helpful examples of how Christians of earlier eras applied such thinking to the issues of their own day” (155).
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