Confessions of Faith: After sharing a few thoughts recently, thoughts some regarded as controversial, I received an email from a concerned believer. His message was extremely brief. He included a link to a confession of faith someone had cobbled together, fashioned after the old confessional standards, with little more said than: “Do you believe this?” The implication seemed unmistakable, that unless I endorsed his confession, further correspondence was futile. I tend to be long-winded by nature, but in this instance my reply was short. I simply replied NO, and pressed send. Not out of irritation, but simply because our allegiance is to Christ, not to the writings of men.
Brief encounters like this remind me how easily we drift from the simplicity that is in Christ. We seem to think that unity rests upon subscribing to documents rather than submitting to Scripture; that agreement in a formulated system is safer than walking together as learners at the feet of Christ. Confessions may have their place, but they were never meant to become gatekeepers of fellowship, nor substitutes for the living voice of God speaking in His Word. When a man requires my allegiance to his creed before he will speak with me, it reveals less about the truth and more about our fear of stepping outside the boundaries drawn by men. The gospel frees us from such bondage. It brings us back to Christ Himself, our only Teacher, our only Light, our only Foundation. Confessions can summarize what we believe, but they can never be the ground of what we believe. Only Scripture can bear that weight. Only the Spirit can give light. Only Christ can unite our hearts in truth.
I don’t often have the chance to listen to sermons, but earlier yesterday being Thanksgiving Day, while driving an hour round-trip to run an errand for my wife, I listened to a message on the presence of God that truly refreshed my soul. I intend to hear it again and share it with my wife as well. The brother made an observation that struck me, which is in nearly all the great confessions of faith, the very first thing they affirm is that Scripture alone is the standard of truth. It’s something I had never quite noticed. How revealing, and how ironic, that those who most strongly insist upon Scripture’s supremacy often begin by pointing to a document other than Scripture to say so. Hearing that made me realize how easily spiritual complacency can set in. When our theology is handed to us in neat, well-defined categories, we can mistake clarity for reality, thinking that because something is neatly stated, it must be spiritually understood. But the mind can grasp what the heart has never actually seen. Truth must be tasted, not merely transferred, and light must be revealed by the Spirit, not merely recited from a document.
Out of curiosity, I just pulled up the London 1646 Confession of Faith. When read in its proper setting, it becomes evident that it was not intended to impose a standard on all believers or to demand universal conformity. Rather, it was written as a statement of orthodoxy, a measured defense against the many false charges being hurled at them. These brethren were being misrepresented, slandered, and accused of teaching doctrines they never held. The confession was their attempt to say, in effect, “here is what we actually believe,” not “here is what all Christians must believe.” The confession stood as a “statement of orthodoxy,” intended to clarify, not to condemn. It was never crafted to strike at others, but to safeguard those whose teachings were being misrepresented.
Incidentally, I just took the time to carefully reread the first twenty sub-sections of that confession, the paragraphs dealing with the doctrine of God, the Trinity, and the Deity of Christ, and I can say without hesitation that these things reflect exactly what I have been brought to believe. I was struck again by the simplicity and clarity with which those early brethren expressed such weighty truths. There is nothing forced or speculative, just a sober, Scripture-framed confession of who God is and of the glory of His Son. There is something reassuring about hearing the same truth spoken with such simplicity and reverence. The clarity of those early statements blessed me; they made no attempt to exhaust the mystery of God, but faithfully echoed what Scripture plainly affirms.
Yet for all their simplicity and precision, these statements remain summaries, not sources, and their usefulness must not blind us to the reality that confessions, however accurate, cannot impart the life and light that only Christ, through His Word, can give. Confessions can summarize sound doctrine, but they cannot make it real to the soul. If we approach Scripture only through the lenses handed to us, we may lose sight of the ONE the Scriptures were given to reveal, and instead of encountering Christ in the Scriptures, we end up meeting our own theology, the shadow of our own assumptions reflected back to us. The Scriptures then function as a reference book or a support for our system rather than a living testimony of the Redeemer. Instead of Scripture shaping the confession, the confession begins shaping Scripture, and the direction of authority quietly reverses. And in such a framework, it is entirely possible for one’s intellect to expand while the heart almost imperceptibly grows cold.
It’s a subtle danger that believers have come to rely more on the safety of inherited systems than on the uncomfortable honesty of searching the Scriptures. Instead of coming to the Word as needy sinners, we often come as defenders of theological constructs, measuring truth not by Christ, but by the standards we have adopted. We read the Bible not to be taught, but to confirm what our system already assumes. This is a quiet but devastating inversion. Christ calls us to follow Him, not to guard the walls others have built around His truth.
When I notice my views aligning in perfect harmony and without any friction to every line of a confession or every conclusion held by men I deeply respect in the “faith” of Christ, it may be time to take a moment and stop and examine myself. True authority belongs to Christ alone. It urges me to ask whether Christ, through His Word, is truly shaping my convictions, or whether I am merely reflecting the theology of men I admire. It is a searching question, and a necessary one. If the Scripture is truly supreme, then we must sit under it with open Bibles, not merely with open confessional statements. MPJ