In a world where impurity is not just tolerated but celebrated, we are called to be different. We are called to be a people marked by purity, both individually and collectively. Let us strive to live out this calling with intentionality and commitment, supporting one another in our pursuit of holiness. As we do, we will not only honor God but also become a powerful witness to the world around us, demonstrating the beauty and freedom of a life lived in obedience to His commands.

Purity in an Impure World
When Scripture commands, “You shall not commit adultery,” it’s speaking to far more than just the physical act of genitals colliding. This commandment opens the door to an entire world of innocence and purity, calling all of God’s people to a life that is perfectly spotless in every aspect. In a culture where moral boundaries are increasingly blurred, it is crucial to understand that adultery, as defined by Scripture, goes far beyond mere physical infidelity.
The Deception of Minimizing Sin
Consider the infamous attempt to downplay the seriousness of adultery, like when William Jefferson Clinton famously declared, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Such efforts to obfuscate, redefine, or minimize sin stand in stark contrast to the unyielding clarity of God’s Word, which leaves no room for such ambiguity or philandering.
Adultery, according to God’s standard, includes every unchaste thought, action, and inclination that mars the purity He demands from us. The Westminster Larger Catechism wisely instructs us to maintain “chastity in body, mind, affections, words, and behavior and to preserve this purity in both ourselves and others.”
A Call to Holy Living
This command is more than a prohibition; it’s a divine mandate for you and me to cultivate a life of holiness. It challenges us not just to avoid sin but to actively guard, nurture, and promote purity in every aspect of our lives and those around us. In a world that often celebrates moral compromise, God calls His people to rise above, to shine as beacons of righteousness, and to uphold the sanctity of chastity with unwavering commitment.
Vigilance in Every Area of Life
This holistic approach to chastity demands vigilance in every area of our lives. Our first line of defense begins with ourselves—guarding our thoughts, safeguarding our desires, and taking deliberate action against anything that might lead us toward impurity. It means avoiding situations that tempt us, censoring the media we consume, and refusing to laugh at or entertain sin. As John Piper famously observed, we often laugh at the things God hates. Even shows that seem mild by today’s standards—like Friends—promote a laissez-faire attitude toward sex, which is contrary to God’s law. How much more vigilant should we be today when the media we consume is far more explicit?
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An action I alluded to above, concerning Freemasonry, is a good example of that. We as a Synod passed some recommendations about Secret Societies, which include a set of questions that a local church session can use to help their members and other members of the local church think through whether or not being a member of the Lodge is in keeping with their Christian commitments, and make certain that the local church knew the Synod’s feelings on it the Synod passed this statement, “That the 220th General Synod explicitly and forthrightly declare that Freemasonry is incompatible with Christianity.”

What a week. The 220th General Synod will be remembered for a lot of things: good preaching, spending a whole day on one recommendation (we’re not the OPC), lots of good stuff on the inter-church front, condemning Masonic orders, kicking the can down the road on women deacons/deaconnesses (however you say that), and erecting a study committee to deal with ESS (I’ll explain what this is in a minute) in a twenty-year old paper online. However, for those present at Bonclarken from June 11-13 there is one phrase none of us wants to ever hear again. This needs to go to the Committee On Revisions first. I’ve decided that if one of my kids is playing the fool I am going to start threatening with sending them to the Revisions committee if they don’t get themselves together.
Let me start this review by saying being ARP is the best. I love the spirit, the comradery, and the genuine seriousness mixed with a lack of arrogance which makes us unique in the modern confessional world. As I say all the time, in the ARP we are Reformed, but not mad about it. No place was this more evident than our ability to laugh at ourselves. As I was acting reading clerk I completely skipped a recommendation in a report, and no one went to a mic to scold, or passive aggressively point out my mistake. I noticed it, the Synod had a big laugh about it, and we moved on. That’s not to say things didn’t get heated, they did. You can’t dissolve a whole presbytery, especially for the reasons the Synod decided to do it, and not have the temperature rise in the room. We got intemperate at times, even our Canadians showed some emotion. But, at the end of it the ARP moved to do what it needed to do, not just for recent events, though they were the primary motivation, as it should be, but for a being a place where the basics of Christian life could not be held without controversy. Dissolving a Presbytery is never a light action, it needs gravitas, Biblical mercy and grace, and the hard love of a brother for a brother.
I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of the because at the heart of how we got there are some very sensitive issues. You can probably find them online elsewhere but for the sake of the victims I’ll let them tell their own story. Suffice to say that sin must be strangled in its crib, if not, it will destroy everything around it. A 224-year-old presbytery will cease to exist on September 1, 2024 because of the misguided, and gaslighted Presbyterian shenanigans of men under the sway of an individual who did not have the church of Christ in his heart. Presbyterianism is the Scripturally commanded form of government, and when it is used as a parlor game to abuse trust it is as ugly as anything man ever made. Yet, when followed it is the best way to help.
One of the things you learn as you get older is that it is a lot easier and simpler just to do the right thing than to try and stop something from happening that you may not like. There is also a lesson to be learned from Numbers 32:23 as well.
One of the things some learned this week is that in the ARP the Synod is an appellate court, not a court of top-down commands. This makes us more Scottish than some of our American Presbyterian compatriots and points to some of the differences concerning being a Synod versus a General Assembly. I lost count how many times the Parliamentarian had to get up and remind the body that the Synod cannot tell you to do something. Only the Presbyteries, or the local Session, can do that. It can encourage, it can condemn, or even bless, but only the lower courts have teeth, excepting certain judicial cases. An action I alluded to above, concerning Freemasonry, is a good example of that. We as a Synod passed some recommendations about Secret Societies, which include a set of questions that a local church session can use to help their members and other members of the local church think through whether or not being a member of the Lodge is in keeping with their Christian commitments, and make certain that the local church knew the Synod’s feelings on it the Synod passed this statement, “That the 220th General Synod explicitly and forthrightly declare that Freemasonry is incompatible with Christianity.” While the Synod left it up to the personal conscience of each individual man, the wording of the above motion has little room for nuance. This is a sensitive issue that demands pastoral counsel and care, regardless of what your personal opinion may be on the matter.
A couple other matters worth noting from Synod this week is that while we dissolved one presbytery, we also began the work of dismissing another, in this case for sad, yet good reasons. There were even motions brought forward to stop our Canadian brothers from absconding north of the border. Yet, in good Christian love the ARP Synod (which I guess is of the South again since we are in that direction from Canada) voted to allow the Canadian Presbytery of the ARP to begin the process of establishing their own, national ARP denomination to begin September 1, 2025. I can’t express in words how much I am going to miss our Canadian brothers. Many of us look up to those men with gratitude at their humble strength, quick wit, and the times where their erudition teaches us backwoods folks some new words. The ARP in one Synod went from Ten Presbyteries, to soon-to-be Eight. It’s an interesting time to be ARP, but the Lord continues to bless us in many ways and I want to end with a few examples.
In some ways the most underrated, yet important thing to happen at Synod this week was the bringing in of our IPAR (Iglesia Presbiteriana Asociada Reformada de Mexico) brothers as fraternal fellows. What this means practically is that it opens up opportunities for peer-to-peer ministry works, especially around education and missions. We are hopeful that as much as we can be of help to our brothers in Mexico, that this is actually much more of a blessing to us in the States as we can learn from them for ministry to the growing Hispanic population in the U.S.A. The first fruits of that are already being seen in conversations happening with Erskine Seminary and Comunidad Reformada de Estudio Superiores (CRES), the denominational seminaries of the ARP and IPAR respectively. Likewise, World Witness’s SEED Ministry are looking into ways to help the Huasteca people learn more of Christ in concert with IPAR’s existing churches and presbyteries in the region.
As we begin this renewing of a relationship began in the 19th century we also got to hear from a dear friend of the ARP, Rev. Zeeshan Saddiq, of the ARP Church of Pakistan. We look forward to the future when we can become even closer, and there is a chance of that as the ARP Inter-Church committee looks to travel to Pakistan in the near future. Likewise, brothers from the OPC, RPCNA, Canadian Reformed Churches, and the United Reformed Churches gave fraternal greetings. It’s always a great help to hear how the Lord is working in our sister denominations as we work together for God’s glory. We have a lot to learn, if we listen.
I mentioned above that I would say a little bit about the study committee we made to study the issue of Eternal Subordination of the Son (the second person of the Trinity). To try and summarize it the issue is over the unity of the Godhead, and whether or not God as the Bible reveals Jesus Christ to us in His divinity and humanity has one will or two wills, one human and one divine, and how that plays out in the relationship between the Father and the Son. If you would like more here is a good place to start.
In closing, it was a great week, as it always is. My good friend Jeff Temple likes to say that the ARP Synod is like a family picnic. Sometimes at family events things can get heated, no one hates like family, and no one loves like family, yet at the end-of-the-day we all still family. That’s the way it is in the ARP. We don’t feel like we need to be anyone other than we are. No need to be pretentious, because we ain’t, and we are fine with that. If you need to peacock to feel special, well there is another place you can be. We just are who we are, in Christ, to the ends of the earth, together.
Rev. Benjamin GlaserPastor, Bethany ARP Church
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Written by Richard D. Phillips |
Saturday, December 9, 2023
What a difference it will make if Christian men will check out of the self-centered grid paraded around us in secular society and instead embrace God’s calling to work and keep — to till the soil of hearts and stand guard over God’s treasured ones. Christian men will spend our lifetimes learning what it means to serve sacrificially so that others may abound in life and to guard vigilantly so that our wives, children, communities, and church are kept safe. But what a difference such biblical manhood makes.

I come from a cavalry family — as in horse soldiers. My grandfather commanded the US Army’s last cavalry regiment, until we shifted to tanks together with the rest of the twentieth century. Given this background, I am steeped in the old cavalry movies, the greatest of which is John Wayne’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Portraying Captain Nathan Briddles, a grizzled Civil War veteran facing the end of his career, this cavalry classic unleashes a torrent of manly quips. According to Captain Briddles, true manliness can be summed up in two words: Never apologize.
When I became a Christian, I learned that not every manly saying in John Wayne movies should be adopted. “Never apologize” sounds great in theory, but in practice it may combine with a man’s sin nature to make him overbearing and arrogant. Yet it turns out that the biblical ideal of manhood may also be summed up in two words. They are found in Genesis 2:15, which contain the Lord’s calling to the first man, Adam, for his life in the Garden of Eden.
The creation account in Genesis 1 and 2 supplies a wealth of information regarding God’s design for human society, including men. Genesis 1:27 states that “God created man in his own image . . . male and female he created them,” stating that God created two sexes of equal value and dignity. Genesis 2:7 says that “the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground,” showing that mankind is specially created by God and not the product of evolution. Moreover, God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” so that man is a spiritual being designed for covenant union with God through faith and obedience.
Armed with all this useful information, Genesis 2:15 goes on to provide the how of biblical manhood: how is the distinctive male calling lived out? I have called this verse the “Masculine Mandate,” because it establishes the architecture of biblical manhood in a way that is confirmed throughout Scripture. It is blessedly direct and to the point: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). At the heart of this calling are two words that shape the biblical view of manhood: work and keep.
A Man’s Work
God’s first calling to men directs us to work. It is commonly realized that men were made to be productive. Yet the idea here is not simply labor, but specifically the work of cultivating. We gain this insight from the context in which Adam was to work: as the cultivator of God’s garden. The man was called by God to till the soil and cultivate living things so that they would grow and bear beautiful fruit.
What does a gardener do to make his garden grow? The answer is that he tends the garden. He plants seeds and prunes branches. The gardener digs and fertilizes.
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