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Article 29: The Marks of the True Church.

THE oldest of the doctrinal standards of the Christian Reformed Church is the Confession of Faith, popularly known as the Belgic Confession. 

During the sixteenth century the churches in this country were exposed to the most terrible persecution by the Roman Catholic government. To protest against this cruel oppression, and to prove to the persecutors that the adherents of the Reformed faith were not rebels, as was laid to their charge, but law-abiding citizens who professed the true Christian doctrine according to the Holy Scriptures, de Bräs prepared this confession in the year 1561. 

Although the immediate purpose of securing freedom from persecution was not attained, and de Bräs himself fell as one of the many thousands who sealed their faith with their lives, his work has endured and will continue to endure. 

One Article that should be revisited these days is the 29th Article which contains: 

Article 29: The Marks of the True Church. [excerpts] 

The true church can be recognized if it has the following marks: The church engages in the pure preaching of the gospel; it makes use of the pure administration of the sacraments as Christ instituted them; it practices church discipline for correcting faults. In short, it governs itself according to the pure Word of God, rejecting all things contrary to it and holding Jesus Christ as the only Head. By these marks one can be assured of recognizing the true church-- and no one ought to be separated from it. 

As for those who can belong to the church, we can recognize them by the distinguishing marks of Christians: namely by faith, and by their fleeing from sin and pursuing righteousness, once they have received the one and only Savior, Jesus Christ. They love the true God and their neighbors, without turning to the right or left, and they crucify the flesh and its works. 

As for the false church, it assigns more authority to itself and its ordinances than to the Word of God; it does not want to subject itself to the yoke of Christ; it does not administer the sacraments as Christ commanded in his Word; it rather adds to them or subtracts from them as it pleases; it bases itself on men, more than on Jesus Christ; it persecutes those who live holy lives according to the Word of God and who rebuke it for its faults, greed, and idolatry. 

These two churches are easy to recognize and thus to distinguish from each other. 

I have been a Christian for only twenty-some years and have seen the demise of a number of congregations because the leadership chose to assign more authority to itself than the Word of God. They saught to give more authority to the sinful behaviors of men than they did to the pursuit of righteousness. Church leaders and congregants these days are embracing and justifying sin and not “fleeing from sin”, which in the end leads to their spiritual death. Imagine where the church in America would be today, if it wasn’t so compromised with sin. 

It brings me back to Christ’s own words in  Luke 18:8b. “However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"