What the 1689 Confession Did for Me
Many years ago, a friend advised me to undertake a close study of one of the reformed confessions of faith. This was soon after he and I had completed our seminary studies and were in pastoral ministry. The seminary course that we had pursued was excellent, but having begun pastoral ministry I felt a strong need to study more deeply the historic doctrines of the Christian faith that I was seeking to preach and teach. As I began to experience the reality of pastoral ministry, I felt keenly my need to be securely rooted in a historic and systematic presentation of biblical truth.
I failed to take my friend’s advice. I foolishly allowed the daily pressure of ministry to squeeze out the time that I could have given to such study. I deeply regret that it was not until much later in my ministry that I came to engage closely with the reformed confessions – especially the one formulated by the reformed Baptists of the later part of the seventeenth century: the 1677/89 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (or the ‘1689 Confession’, as it is familiarly known).
What did my study of that confession – and of other reformed confessions of the time – do for me? I would highlight four benefits.
1) It provided me with a strong, biblical, systematic framework for my understanding – and so my preaching and teaching – of the Christian faith.
2) It helped me to grasp more clearly the entire story-line of the Bible and understand the totality of its teaching on key doctrines, so as to communicate these more clearly and effectively.
3) It brought me more closely into contact with the reformed Baptist tradition, which I believe to be closest to the biblical model.
4) It took me back directly to Scripture, as I thought carefully about the biblical basis for the doctrinal statements that the Confession makes.
My study of the 1689 Confession and of other reformed confessions of faith has convinced me of the need in our day to recover a greater familiarity with these historic statements of orthodox Christian doctrine. Such a recovery would be of inestimable benefit to individual Christian believers, but also – and especially – to churches which put the time and effort needed into digging into the great truths which these confessions express.
The 1689 Confession teaches truths to live by – not merely to understand intellectually, but to believe in the heart and live out in daily service to Christ. They shape us as individual believers – and they shape the life of our churches. Christian life is nothing if it is not experienced in fellowship with Christian brothers and sisters in the local church and the 1689 Confession is of the greatest help to that end. The reason for this is simple – that the Confession expresses succinctly and clearly the great doctrines of the Bible.
