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Become a member of the staff at Prosper CRC. This is where you can apply for an open position at Prosper. Job Opportunities Prosper CRC is a Gospel Centered, Family Focused church on a mission to make disciples of Jesus. We have an incredible staff team that works hard, has a lot of fun, loves the Lord, and loves the Word. If that sounds like a mission and a community you want to be part of, check out the job opportunities below. We are not hiring currently Learn More Jobs We’ve got an incredible staff team that works hard, has a lot of fun, loves the Lord, and loves the Word. If that sounds like a mission and a community you want to be part of, check out the job opportunities below. Peace Church is a Gospel-Centered, Family-Focused church on a mission to make disciples of Jesus. What We Believe Go Leadership & Staff Go History of Peace Church Go What We Believe Go Go Staff & Leadership Go Our History About

Prosper Christian Reformed Church was founded in 1894 by Reformed believers who desired to worship God faithfully, raise their children in the promises of the covenant, and live out their Christian calling in a close-knit rural community of northern Michigan. From the beginning, the church has been shaped by a love for God’s Word, a commitment to the Reformed confessions, and a deep conviction that Christ builds His church through the ordinary means of grace. Our History Rooted in the Reformed Faith The story of Prosper Christian Reformed Church begins long before the church building itself was ever constructed. Our roots reach back to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century and the teachings of the Reformers who sought to bring the church back to the truth and authority of God’s Word. Prosper CRC stands within the Reformed tradition shaped especially by the ministry of John Calvin. Central to this tradition is the sovereignty of God — the truth that God rules over all creation with wisdom, grace, and power. The biblical teachings of God’s providence, election, and covenant faithfulness gave believers confidence that nothing can separate them from His care. These truths sustained generations of Christians through hardship, persecution, migration, and the challenges of frontier life. In the Netherlands, Reformed churches flourished for many years. Over time, however, many believers became concerned that the state church had drifted toward theological liberalism and away from biblical faithfulness. During the 1800s, a grassroots movement arose among ordinary Dutch believers who desired a simple, earnest, Bible-centered faith rooted in historic Calvinism. When church authorities began persecuting leaders of this movement, several groups separated from the state church under the leadership of Rev. Hendrik de Cock. This movement eventually became part of what would later develop into the Christian Reformed Church. A New Beginning in America Another key figure in our story was Rev. Albertus Van Raalte, who led many Dutch immigrants to America seeking both religious freedom and opportunity. In 1848, Van Raalte and a group of settlers established the community of Holland, Michigan. These immigrants carried with them a deep commitment to biblical truth, practical godliness, strong families, Christian education, and the desire to glorify God in every area of life. As Dutch communities in western Michigan grew, many families began searching for farmland elsewhere in the state. During the 1860s, settlers began exploring northern Michigan, including the area that would eventually become Prosper. John Vogel was chosen as a scout for the group. On November 7, 1867, Vogel and several companions claimed homesteads in Missaukee County. The following year, more family members and relatives arrived, and a small but determined Dutch farming community began to take shape. The Founding of Prosper CRC As the settlement grew, the need for a local church became increasingly clear. In 1894, when plans were being made for a new church building in the area, the believers living near Prosper recognized the importance of establishing their own congregation. Originally known as North Clam Church the congregation was officially organized on September 13, 1894, with approximately twenty families. From the very beginning, the church was more than simply a place for Sunday worship. It became the spiritual center of the community. Worship services were held faithfully, catechism classes were taught to the children, and plans were made for a parsonage even before the congregation had its first full-time pastor. For the first four years, the congregation functioned without a settled minister. Then in 1897, the church called its first pastor, Rev. M. DeBoer. During his ministry, plans were made for the church building that still serves the congregation today. When Rev. J. VanderWerp accepted the call in 1903, the congregation had already doubled in size to forty-three families. During this period, the church purchased its first organ, and the name was officially changed from North Clam Church to Prosper Christian Reformed Church . Growth Through the Generations As the years passed, God continued to bless Prosper CRC with steady growth and faithful leadership. During the ministry of Rev. A.J. Rus, the congregation became strong enough to organize a daughter church in Aetna, demonstrating Prosper’s desire not only to grow internally but also to help establish and encourage other congregations. Like many rural churches, Prosper CRC weathered difficult seasons throughout the 20th century — including economic hardship, changing communities, world wars, and shifting cultural values. Yet through every generation, the congregation remained committed to the preaching of God’s Word, the discipleship of families, and the fellowship of believers. The church building itself also changed over time to meet the needs of a growing congregation. Improvements and additions were made through the faithful labor and generosity of church members who desired to provide a welcoming place for worship, ministry, and fellowship. During the ministry of Rev. Ron Klimp, significant remodeling and expansion work was completed. A large fellowship hall was added, and the sanctuary interior was redesigned. The pulpit, altar, and organ were moved to the south end of the church, and new pews were installed facing south. The remodeled sanctuary was dedicated on November 6, 1988. These physical changes reflected something deeper: a congregation committed to preserving its heritage while continuing to serve future generations. A Legacy of Faithfulness Since its founding in 1894, Prosper Christian Reformed Church has been served by many faithful pastors, elders, deacons, teachers, musicians, volunteers, and families. Through every era, God has preserved and guided this congregation. For well over a century, Prosper CRC has proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ in northern Michigan. Generations have been baptized here, professed their faith here, been married here, raised families here, and been laid to rest in the sure hope of the resurrection. Today, Prosper Christian Reformed Church continues its mission of glorifying God through worship, discipleship, fellowship, and outreach. While methods and ministries may change over time, the heart of the church remains the same: to know Christ, to love one another, and to faithfully proclaim the truth of God’s Word. We thank God for His faithfulness throughout our history, and we look forward with confidence to the future He has prepared for our congregation. A special thanks to Bonna Baas for doing the research that went into this history page.

Emily DeRuiter CRU Prosper CRC Emily DeRuiter CRU Austin, Texas Emily serves with Cru’s Creative 1 Media video team in Austin, Texas, using her gifts in videography and media production to support gospel outreach around the world. She collaborates with a multi-studio team to plan, film, and edit compelling evangelistic, discipleship, and training videos that help introduce young people to Jesus, encourage believers in their faith, and promote events like Bible studies, conferences, retreats, and missions. Her work is used across Cru’s ministries globally to communicate the good news of Christ in engaging and culturally relevant ways. Emily has also created videos featured at major Cru gatherings — such as the Vision Conference, where students from dozens of nations hear the gospel and explore faith in Christ. Through her creative ministry, she seeks to glorify God by helping others encounter Jesus and grow in relationship with Him. Support Emily

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Upcoming Events Stay Connected Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and follow us on social media for the latest ministry updates. Newsletter Sign Up Contact Us Go Interested in Serving? Go Stay Connected Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and follow us on social media for the latest ministry updates. Newsletter Sign Up Interested in Serving? Go Go Stay Connected Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and follow us on social media for the latest ministry updates.

The Canons of Dort The First Main Point of Doctrine Divine Election and Reprobation The Judgment Concerning Divine Predestination Which the Synod Declares to Be in Agreement with the Word of God and Accepted Till Now in the Reformed Churches, Set Forth in Several Articles Article 1: God’s Right to Condemn All People Since all people have sinned in Adam and have come under the sentence of the curse and eternal death, God would have done no one an injustice if it had been his will to leave the entire human race in sin and under the curse, and to condemn them on account of their sin. As the apostle says: “The whole world is liable to the condemnation of God” (Rom. 3:19), “All have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), and “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Article 2: The Manifestation of God’s Love But this is how God showed his love: he sent his only begotten Son into the world, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (1 John 4:9; John 3:16). Article 3: The Preaching of the Gospel In order that people may be brought to faith, God mercifully sends messengers of this very joyful message to the people and at the time he wills. By this ministry people are called to repentance and faith in Christ crucified. For “how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without someone preaching? And how shall they preach unless they have been sent?” (Rom. 10:14-15). Article 4: A Twofold Response to the Gospel God’s wrath remains on those who do not believe this gospel. But those who do accept it and embrace Jesus the Savior with a true and living faith are delivered through him from God’s wrath and from destruction, and receive the gift of eternal life. Article 5: The Sources of Unbelief and of Faith The cause or blame for this unbelief, as well as for all other sins, is not at all in God, but in humanity. Faith in Jesus Christ, however, and salvation through him is a free gift of God. As Scripture says, “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is a gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). Likewise: “It has been freely given to you to believe in Christ” (Phil. 1:29). Article 6: God’s Eternal Decree The fact that some receive from God the gift of faith within time, and that others do not, stems from his eternal decree. For “all his works are known to God from eternity” (Acts 15:18; Eph. 1:11). In accordance with this decree God graciously softens the hearts, however hard, of the elect and inclines them to believe, but by a just judgment God leaves in their wickedness and hardness of heart those who have not been chosen. And in this especially is disclosed to us God’s act—unfathomable, and as merciful as it is just—of distinguishing between people equally lost. This is the well-known decree of election and reprobation revealed in God’s Word. The wicked, impure, and unstable distort this decree to their own ruin, but it provides holy and godly souls with comfort beyond words. Article 7: Election Election is God’s unchangeable purpose by which he did the following: Before the foundation of the world, by sheer grace, according to the free good pleasure of his will, God chose in Christ to salvation a definite number of particular people out of the entire human race, which had fallen by its own fault from its original innocence into sin and ruin. Those chosen were neither better nor more deserving than the others, but lay with them in the common misery. God did this in Christ, whom he also appointed from eternity to be the mediator, the head of all those chosen, and the foundation of their salvation. And so God decreed to give to Christ those chosen for salvation, and to call and draw them effectively into Christ’s fellowship through the Word and Spirit. In other words, God decreed to grant them true faith in Christ, to justify them, to sanctify them, and finally, after powerfully preserving them in the fellowship of the Son, to glorify them. God did all this in order to demonstrate his mercy, to the praise of the riches of God’s glorious grace. As Scripture says, “God chose us in Christ, before the foundation of the world, so that we should be holy and blameless before him with love; he predestined us whom he adopted as his children through Jesus Christ, in himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, by which he freely made us pleasing to himself in his beloved” (Eph. 1:4-6). And elsewhere, “Those whom he predestined, he also called; and those whom he called, he also justified; and those whom he justified, he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30). Article 8: A Single Decree of Election This election is not of many kinds, but one and the same for all who were to be saved in the Old and the New Testament. For Scripture declares that there is a single good pleasure, purpose, and plan of God’s will, by which he chose us from eternity both to grace and to glory, both to salvation and to the way of salvation, which God prepared in advance for us to walk in. Article 9: Election Not Based on Foreseen Faith This same election took place, not on the basis of foreseen faith, of the obedience of faith, of holiness, or of any other good quality and disposition, as though it were based on a prerequisite cause or condition in the person to be chosen, but rather for the purpose of faith, of the obedience of faith, of holiness, and so on. Accordingly, election is the source of every saving good. Faith, holiness, and the other saving gifts, and at last eternal life itself, flow forth from election as its fruits and effects. As the apostle says, “He chose us” (not because we were, but) “so that we should be holy and blameless before him in love” (Eph. 1:4). Article 10: Election Based on God’s Good Pleasure But the cause of this undeserved election is exclusively the good pleasure of God. This does not involve God’s choosing certain human qualities or actions from among all those possible as a condition of salvation, but rather involves adopting certain particular persons from among the common mass of sinners as God’s own possession. As Scripture says, “When the children were not yet born, and had done nothing either good or bad . . . , she (Rebecca) was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’ As it is written, ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated’” (Rom. 9:11-13). Also, “All who were appointed for eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48). Article 11: Election Unchangeable Just as God is most wise, unchangeable, all-knowing, and almighty, so the election made by him can neither be suspended nor altered, revoked, or annulled; neither can God’s chosen ones be cast off, nor their number reduced. Article 12: The Assurance of Election Assurance of their eternal and unchangeable election to salvation is given to the chosen in due time, though by various stages and in differing measure. Such assurance comes not by inquisitive searching into the hidden and deep things of God, but by noticing within themselves, with spiritual joy and holy delight, the unmistakable fruits of election pointed out in God’s Word—such as a true faith in Christ, a childlike fear of God, a godly sorrow for their sins, a hunger and thirst for righteousness, and so on. Article 13: The Fruit of This Assurance In their awareness and assurance of this election, God’s children daily find greater cause to humble themselves before God, to adore the fathomless depth of God’s mercies, to cleanse themselves, and to give fervent love in return to the One who first so greatly loved them. This is far from saying that this teaching concerning election, and reflection upon it, make God’s children lax in observing his commandments or carnally self-assured. By God’s just judgment this does usually happen to those who casually take for granted the grace of election or engage in idle and brazen talk about it but are unwilling to walk in the ways of the chosen. Article 14: Teaching Election Properly By God’s wise plan, this teaching concerning divine election was proclaimed through the prophets, Christ himself, and the apostles, in Old and New Testament times. It was subsequently committed to writing in the Holy Scriptures. So also today in God’s church, for which it was specifically intended, this teaching must be set forth with a spirit of discretion, in a godly and holy manner, at the appropriate time and place, without inquisitive searching into the ways of the Most High. This must be done for the glory of God’s most holy name, and for the lively comfort of God’s people. Article 15: Reprobation Moreover, Holy Scripture most especially highlights this eternal and undeserved grace of our election and brings it out more clearly for us, in that it further bears witness that not all people have been chosen but that some have not been chosen or have been passed by in God’s eternal election—those, that is, concerning whom God, on the basis of his entirely free, most just, irreproachable, and unchangeable good pleasure, made the following decree: to leave them in the common misery into which, by their own fault, they have plunged themselves; not to grant them saving faith and the grace of conversion; but finally to condemn and eternally punish those who have been left in their own ways and under God’s just judgment, not only for their unbelief but also for all their other sins, in order to display his justice. And this is the decree of reprobation, which does not at all make God the author of sin (a blasphemous thought!) but rather its fearful, irreproachable, just judge and avenger. Article 16: Responses to the Teaching of Reprobation Those who do not yet actively experience within themselves a living faith in Christ or an assured confidence of heart, peace of conscience, a zeal for childlike obedience, and a glorying in God through Christ, but who nevertheless use the means by which God has promised to work these things in us—such people ought not to be alarmed at the mention of reprobation, nor to count themselves among the reprobate; rather they ought to continue diligently in the use of the means, to desire fervently a time of more abundant grace, and to wait for it in reverence and humility. On the other hand, those who seriously desire to turn to God, to be pleasing to God alone, and to be delivered from the body of death, but are not yet able to make such progress along the way of godliness and faith as they would like—such people ought much less to stand in fear of the teaching concerning reprobation, since our merciful God has promised not to snuff out a smoldering wick or break a bruised reed.* However, those who have forgotten God and their Savior Jesus Christ and have abandoned themselves wholly to the cares of the world and the pleasures of the flesh—such people have every reason to stand in fear of this teaching, as long as they do not seriously turn to God. *Isaiah 42:3 Article 17: The Salvation of the Infants of Believers Since we must make judgments about God’s will from his Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature but by virtue of the gracious covenant in which they together with their parents are included, godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom God calls out of this life in infancy. Article 18: The Proper Attitude Toward Election and Reprobation To those who complain about this grace of an undeserved election and about the severity of a just reprobation, we reply with the words of the apostle, “Who are you, O man, to talk back to God?” (Rom. 9:20), and with the words of our Savior, “Have I no right to do what I want with my own?” (Matt. 20:15). We, however, with reverent adoration of these secret things, cry out with the apostle: “Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways beyond tracing out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has first given to God, that God should repay him? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen” (Rom. 11:33-36). Rejection of the Errors by Which the Dutch Churches Have for Some Time Been Disturbed Having set forth the orthodox teaching concerning election and reprobation, the Synod rejects the errors of those I Who teach that the will of God to save those who would believe and persevere in faith and in the obedience of faith is the whole and entire decision of election to salvation, and that nothing else concerning this decision has been revealed in God’s Word. For they deceive the simple and plainly contradict Holy Scripture in its testimony that God does not only wish to save those who would believe, but that he has also from eternity chosen certain particular people to whom, rather than to others, he would within time grant faith in Christ and perseverance. As Scripture says, “I have revealed your name to those whom you gave me” (John 17:6). Likewise, “All who were appointed for eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48), and “He chose us before the foundation of the world so that we should be holy . . .” (Eph. 1:4). II Who teach that God’s election to eternal life is of many kinds: one general and indefinite, the other particular and definite; and the latter in turn either incomplete, revocable, conditional, or else complete, irrevocable, and absolute. Likewise, who teach that there is one election to faith and another to salvation, so that there can be an election to justifying faith apart from a nonconditional election to salvation. For this is an invention of the human mind, devised apart from the Scriptures, which distorts the teaching concerning election and breaks up this golden chain of salvation: “Those whom he predestined, he also called; and those whom he called, he also justified; and those whom he justified, he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30). III Who teach that God’s good pleasure and purpose, which Scripture mentions in its teaching of election, does not involve God’s choosing certain particular people rather than others, but involves God’s choosing, out of all possible conditions (including the works of the law) or out of the whole order of things, the intrinsically unworthy act of faith, as well as the imperfect obedience of faith, to be a condition of salvation; and it involves his graciously wishing to count this as perfect obedience and to look upon it as worthy of the reward of eternal life. For by this pernicious error the good pleasure of God and the merit of Christ are robbed of their effectiveness and people are drawn away, by unprofitable inquiries, from the truth of undeserved justification and from the simplicity of the Scriptures. It also gives the lie to these words of the apostle: “God called us with a holy calling, not in virtue of works, but in virtue of his own purpose and the grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time” (2 Tim. 1:9). IV Who teach that in election to faith a prerequisite condition is that humans should rightly use the light of nature, be upright, unassuming, humble, and disposed to eternal life, as though election depended to some extent on these factors. For this smacks of Pelagius, and it clearly calls into question the words of the apostle: “We lived at one time in the passions of our flesh, following the will of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in transgressions, made us alive with Christ, by whose grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with him and seated us with him in heaven in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages we might show the surpassing riches of his grace, according to his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith (and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God) not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph. 2:3-9). V Who teach that the incomplete and conditional election of particular persons to salvation occurred on the basis of a foreseen faith, repentance, holiness, and godliness, which has just begun or continued for some time; but that complete and nonconditional election occurred on the basis of a foreseen perseverance to the end in faith, repentance, holiness, and godliness. And that this is the gracious and evangelical worthiness, on account of which the one who is chosen is more worthy than the one who is not chosen. And therefore that faith, the obedience of faith, holiness, godliness, and perseverance are not fruits or effects of an unchangeable election to glory, but indispensable conditions and causes, which are prerequisite in those who are to be chosen in the complete election, and which are foreseen as achieved in them. This runs counter to the entire Scripture, which throughout impresses upon our ears and hearts these sayings among others: “Election is not by works, but by him who calls” (Rom. 9:11-12); “All who were appointed for eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48); “He chose us in himself so that we should be holy” (Eph. 1:4); “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16); “If by grace, not by works” (Rom. 11:6); “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son” (1 John 4:10). VI Who teach that not every election to salvation is unchangeable, but that some of the chosen can perish and do in fact perish eternally, with no decision of God to prevent it. By this gross error they make God changeable, destroy the comfort of the godly concerning the steadfastness of their election, and contradict the Holy Scriptures, which teach that “the elect cannot be led astray” (Matt. 24:24), that “Christ does not lose those given to him by the Father” (John 6:39), and that “those whom God predestined, called, and justified, he also glorifies” (Rom. 8:30). VII Who teach that in this life there is no fruit, no awareness, and no assurance of one’s unchangeable election to glory, except as conditioned upon something changeable and contingent. For not only is it absurd to speak of an uncertain assurance, but these things also militate against the experience of the saints, who with the apostle rejoice from an awareness of their election and sing the praises of this gift of God; who, as Christ urged, “rejoice” with his disciples “that their names have been written in heaven” (Luke 10:20); and finally who hold up against the flaming arrows of the devil’s temptations the awareness of their election, with the question “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?” (Rom. 8:33). VIII Who teach that it was not on the basis of his just will alone that God decided to leave anyone in the fall of Adam and in the common state of sin and condemnation or to pass anyone by in the imparting of grace necessary for faith and conversion. For these words stand fast: “He has mercy on whom he wishes, and he hardens whom he wishes” (Rom. 9:18). And also: “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given” (Matt. 13:11). Likewise: “I give glory to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and have revealed them to little children; yes, Father, because that was your pleasure” (Matt. 11:25-26). IX Who teach that the cause for God’s sending the gospel to one people rather than to another is not merely and solely God’s good pleasure, but rather that one people is better and worthier than the other to whom the gospel is not communicated. For Moses contradicts this when he addresses the people of Israel as follows: “Behold, to Jehovah your God belong the heavens and the highest heavens, the earth and whatever is in it. But Jehovah was inclined in his affection to love your ancestors alone, and chose out their descendants after them, you above all peoples, as at this day” (Deut. 10:14-15). And also Christ: “Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! for if those mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes” (Matt. 11:21). The Second Main Point of Doctrine Christ's Death and Human Redemption Through It Article 1: The Punishment Which God’s Justice Requires God is not only supremely merciful, but also supremely just. This justice requires (as God has revealed in the Word) that the sins we have committed against his infinite majesty be punished with both temporal and eternal punishments, of soul as well as body. We cannot escape these punishments unless satisfaction is given to God’s justice. Article 2: The Satisfaction Made by Christ Since, however, we ourselves cannot give this satisfaction or deliver ourselves from God’s wrath, God in boundless mercy has given us as a guarantee his only begotten Son, who was made to be sin and a curse for us, in our place, on the cross, in order that he might give satisfaction for us. Article 3: The Infinite Value of Christ’s Death This death of God’s Son is the only and entirely complete sacrifice and satisfaction for sins; it is of infinite value and worth, more than sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world. Article 4: Reasons for This Infinite Value This death is of such great value and worth for the reason that the person who suffered it is—as was necessary to be our Savior—not only a true and perfectly holy human, but also the only begotten Son of God, of the same eternal and infinite essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Another reason is that this death was accompanied by the experience of God’s wrath and curse, which we by our sins had fully deserved. Article 5: The Mandate to Proclaim the Gospel to All Moreover, it is the promise of the gospel that whoever believes in Christ crucified shall not perish but have eternal life. This promise, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be announced and declared without differentiation or discrimination to all nations and people, to whom God in his good pleasure sends the gospel. Article 6: Unbelief, a Human Responsibility However, that many who have been called through the gospel do not repent or believe in Christ but perish in unbelief is not because the sacrifice of Christ offered on the cross is deficient or insufficient, but because they themselves are at fault. Article 7: Faith God’s Gift But all who genuinely believe and are delivered and saved by Christ’s death from their sins and from destruction receive this favor solely from God’s grace—which God owes to no one—given to them in Christ from eternity. Article 8: The Saving Effectiveness of Christ’s Death For it was the entirely free plan and very gracious will and intention of God the Father that the enlivening and saving effectiveness of his Son’s costly death should work itself out in all the elect, in order that God might grant justifying faith to them only and thereby lead them without fail to salvation. In other words, it was God’s will that Christ through the blood of the cross (by which he confirmed the new covenant) should effectively redeem from every people, tribe, nation, and language all those and only those who were chosen from eternity to salvation and given to him by the Father; that Christ should grant them faith (which, like the Holy Spirit’s other saving gifts, he acquired for them by his death). It was also God’s will that Christ should cleanse them by his blood from all their sins, both original and actual, whether committed before or after their coming to faith; that he should faithfully preserve them to the very end; and that he should finally present them to himself, a glorious people, without spot or wrinkle. Article 9: The Fulfillment of God’s Plan This plan, arising out of God’s eternal love for the elect, from the beginning of the world to the present time has been powerfully carried out and will also be carried out in the future, the gates of hell seeking vainly to prevail against it. As a result, the elect are gathered into one, all in their own time, and there is always a church of believers founded on Christ’s blood, a church which steadfastly loves, persistently worships, and here and in all eternity praises him as her Savior who laid down his life for her on the cross, as a bridegroom for his bride. Rejection of the Errors Having set forth the orthodox teaching, the Synod rejects the errors of those I Who teach that God the Father appointed his Son to death on the cross without a fixed and definite plan to save anyone by name, so that the necessity, usefulness, and worth of what Christ’s death obtained could have stood intact and altogether perfect, complete and whole, even if the redemption that was obtained had never in actual fact been applied to any individual. For this assertion is an insult to the wisdom of God the Father and to the merit of Jesus Christ, and it is contrary to Scripture. For the Savior speaks as follows: “I lay down my life for the sheep, and I know them” (John 10:15, 27). And Isaiah the prophet says concerning the Savior: “When he shall make himself an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days, and the will of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand” (Isa. 53:10). Finally, this undermines the article of the creed in which we confess what we believe concerning the Church. II Who teach that the purpose of Christ’s death was not to establish in actual fact a new covenant of grace by his blood, but only to acquire for the Father the mere right to enter once more into a covenant with humanity, whether of grace or of works. For this conflicts with Scripture, which teaches that Christ “has become the guarantee and mediator” of a better—that is, a new—covenant (Heb. 7:22; 9:15), “and that a will is in force only when someone has died” (Heb. 9:17). III Who teach that Christ, by the satisfaction which he gave, did not certainly merit for anyone salvation itself and the faith by which this satisfaction of Christ is effectively applied to salvation, but only acquired for the Father the authority or plenary will to relate in a new way with humanity and to impose such new conditions as he chose, and that the satisfying of these conditions depends on human free choice; consequently, that it was possible that either all or none would fulfill them. For they have too low an opinion of the death of Christ, do not at all acknowledge the foremost fruit or benefit which it brings forth, and summon back from hell the Pelagian error. IV Who teach that what is involved in the new covenant of grace which God the Father made with humanity through the intervening of Christ’s death is not that we are justified before God and saved through faith, insofar as it accepts Christ’s merit, but rather that God, having withdrawn his demand for perfect obedience to the law, counts faith itself, and the imperfect obedience of faith, as perfect obedience to the law, and graciously looks upon this as worthy of the reward of eternal life. For they contradict Scripture: “They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ, whom God presented as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood” (Rom. 3:24-25). And along with the ungodly Socinus, they introduce a new and foreign justification of humanity before God, against the consensus of the whole church. V Who teach that all people have been received into the state of reconciliation and into the grace of the covenant, so that no one on account of original sin is liable to condemnation, or is to be condemned, but that all are free from the guilt of this sin. For this opinion conflicts with Scripture which asserts that we are by nature children of wrath. VI Who make use of the distinction between obtaining and applying in order to instill in the unwary and inexperienced the opinion that God, as far as he is concerned, wished to bestow equally upon all people the benefits which are gained by Christ’s death; but that the distinction by which some rather than others come to share in the forgiveness of sins and eternal life depends on their own free choice (which applies itself to the grace offered indiscriminately) but does not depend on the unique gift of mercy which effectively works in them, so that they, rather than others, apply that grace to themselves. For, while pretending to set forth this distinction in an acceptable sense, they attempt to give the people the deadly poison of Pelagianism. VII Who teach that Christ neither could die, nor had to die, nor did die for those whom God so dearly loved and chose to eternal life, since such people do not need the death of Christ. For they contradict the apostle, who says: “Christ loved me and gave himself up for me” (Gal. 2:20), and likewise: “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? It is Christ who died,” that is, for them (Rom. 8:33-34). They also contradict the Savior, who asserts: “I lay down my life for the sheep” (John 10:15), and “My command is this: Love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for one’s friends” (John 15:12-13). The Third and Fourth Main Points of Doctrine Human Corruption, Conversion to God, and the Way It Occurs Article 1: The Effect of the Fall on Human Nature Human beings were originally created in the image of God and were furnished in mind with a true and sound knowledge of the Creator and things spiritual, in will and heart with righteousness, and in all emotions with purity; indeed, the whole human being was holy. However, rebelling against God at the devil’s instigation and by their own free will, they deprived themselves of these outstanding gifts. Rather, in their place they brought upon themselves blindness, terrible darkness, futility, and distortion of judgment in their minds; perversity, defiance, and hardness in their hearts and wills; and finally impurity in all their emotions. Article 2: The Spread of Corruption Human beings brought forth children of the same nature as themselves after the fall. That is to say, being corrupt they brought forth corrupt children. The corruption spread, by God’s just judgment, from Adam and Eve to all their descendants—except for Christ alone—not by way of imitation (as in former times the Pelagians would have it) but by way of the propagation of their perverted nature. Article 3: Total Inability Therefore, all people are conceived in sin and are born children of wrath, unfit for any saving good, inclined to evil, dead in their sins, and slaves to sin. Without the grace of the regenerating Holy Spirit they are neither willing nor able to return to God, to reform their distorted nature, or even to dispose themselves to such reform. Article 4: The Inadequacy of the Light of Nature There is, to be sure, a certain light of nature remaining in all people after the fall, by virtue of which they retain some notions about God, natural things, and the difference between what is moral and immoral, and demonstrate a certain eagerness for virtue and for good outward behavior. But this light of nature is far from enabling humans to come to a saving knowledge of God and conversion to him—so far, in fact, that they do not use it rightly even in matters of nature and society. Instead, in various ways they completely distort this light, whatever its precise character, and suppress it in unrighteousness. In doing so all people render themselves without excuse before God. Article 5: The Inadequacy of the Law In this respect, what is true of the light of nature is true also of the Ten Commandments given by God through Moses specifically to the Jews. For humans cannot obtain saving grace through the Decalogue, because, although it does expose the magnitude of their sin and increasingly convict them of their guilt, yet it does not offer a remedy or enable them to escape from human misery, and, indeed, weakened as it is by the flesh, leaves the offender under the curse. Article 6: The Saving Power of the Gospel What, therefore, neither the light of nature nor the law can do, God accomplishes by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the Word or the ministry of reconciliation. This is the gospel about the Messiah, through which it has pleased God to save believers, in both the Old and the New Testaments. Article 7: God’s Freedom in Revealing the Gospel In the Old Testament, God revealed this secret of his will to a small number; in the New Testament (now without any distinction between peoples) God discloses it to a large number. The reason for this difference must not be ascribed to the greater worth of one nation over another, or to a better use of the light of nature, but to the free good pleasure and undeserved love of God. Therefore, those who receive so much grace, beyond and in spite of all they deserve, ought to acknowledge it with humble and thankful hearts. On the other hand, with the apostle they ought to adore (but certainly not inquisitively search into) the severity and justice of God’s judgments on the others, who do not receive this grace. Article 8: The Earnest Call of the Gospel Nevertheless, all who are called through the gospel are called earnestly. For urgently and most genuinely God makes known in the Word what is pleasing to him: that those who are called should come to God. God also earnestly promises rest for their souls and eternal life to all who do come and believe. Article 9: Human Responsibility for Rejecting the Gospel The fact that many who are called through the ministry of the gospel do not come and are not brought to conversion must not be blamed on the gospel, nor on Christ, who is offered through the gospel, nor on God, who calls them through the gospel and even bestows various gifts on them, but on the people themselves who are called. Some in self-assurance do not even entertain the Word of life; others do entertain it but do not take it to heart, and for that reason, after the fleeting joy of a temporary faith, they relapse; others choke the seed of the Word with the thorns of life’s cares and with the pleasures of the world and bring forth no fruits. This our Savior teaches in the parable of the sower (Matt. 13). Article 10: Conversion as the Work of God The fact that others who are called through the ministry of the gospel do come and are brought to conversion must not be credited to human effort, as though one distinguishes oneself by free choice from others who are furnished with equal or sufficient grace for faith and conversion (as the proud heresy of Pelagius maintains). No, it must be credited to God: just as from eternity God chose his own in Christ, so within time God effectively calls them, grants them faith and repentance, and, having rescued them from the dominion of darkness, brings them into the kingdom of his Son, in order that they may declare the wonderful deeds of the One who called them out of darkness into this marvelous light, and may boast not in themselves, but in the Lord, as apostolic words frequently testify in Scripture. Article 11: The Holy Spirit’s Work in Conversion Moreover, when God carries out this good pleasure in the elect, or works true conversion in them, God not only sees to it that the gospel is proclaimed to them outwardly, and enlightens their minds powerfully by the Holy Spirit so that they may rightly understand and discern the things of the Spirit of God, but, by the effective operation of the same regenerating Spirit, God also penetrates into the inmost being, opens the closed heart, softens the hard heart, and circumcises the heart that is uncircumcised. God infuses new qualities into the will, making the dead will alive, the evil one good, the unwilling one willing, and the stubborn one compliant. God activates and strengthens the will so that, like a good tree, it may be enabled to produce the fruits of good deeds. Article 12: Regeneration a Supernatural Work And this is the regeneration, the new creation, the raising from the dead, and the making alive so clearly proclaimed in the Scriptures, which God works in us without our help. But this certainly does not happen only by outward teaching, by moral persuasion, or by such a way of working that, after God’s work is done, it remains in human power whether or not to be reborn or converted. Rather, it is an entirely supernatural work, one that is at the same time most powerful and most pleasing, a marvelous, hidden, and inexpressible work, which is not less than or inferior in power to that of creation or of raising the dead, as Scripture (inspired by the author of this work) teaches. As a result, all those in whose hearts God works in this marvelous way are certainly, unfailingly, and effectively reborn and do actually believe. And then the will, now renewed, is not only activated and motivated by God, but in being activated by God is also itself active. For this reason, people themselves, by that grace which they have received, are also rightly said to believe and to repent. Article 13: The Incomprehensible Way of Regeneration In this life believers cannot fully understand the way this work occurs; meanwhile, they rest content with knowing and experiencing that, by this grace of God, they do believe with the heart and love their Savior. Article 14: The Way God Gives Faith In this way, therefore, faith is a gift of God, not in the sense that it is offered by God for people to choose, but that it is in actual fact bestowed on them, breathed and infused into them. Nor is it a gift in the sense that God bestows only the potential to believe, but then awaits assent—the act of believing—by human choice; rather, it is a gift in the sense that God who works both willing and acting and, indeed, works all things in all people and produces in them both the will to believe and the belief itself. Article 15: Responses to God’s Grace God does not owe this grace to anyone. For what could God owe to those who have nothing to give that can be paid back? Indeed, what could God owe to those who have nothing of their own to give but sin and falsehood? Therefore those who receive this grace owe and give eternal thanks to God alone; those who do not receive it either do not care at all about these spiritual things and are satisfied with themselves in their condition, or else in self-assurance foolishly boast about having something which they lack. Furthermore, following the example of the apostles, we are to think and to speak in the most favorable way about those who outwardly profess their faith and better their lives, for the inner chambers of the heart are unknown to us. But for others who have not yet been called, we are to pray to the God who calls things that do not exist as though they did. In no way, however, are we to pride ourselves as better than they, as though we had distinguished ourselves from them. Article 16: Regeneration’s Effect However, just as by the fall humans did not cease to be human, endowed with intellect and will, and just as sin, which has spread through the whole human race, did not abolish the nature of the human race but distorted and spiritually killed it, so also this divine grace of regeneration does not act in people as if they were blocks and stones; nor does it abolish the will and its properties or coerce a reluctant will by force, but spiritually revives, heals, reforms, and—in a manner at once pleasing and powerful—bends it back. As a result, a ready and sincere obedience of the Spirit now begins to prevail where before the rebellion and resistance of the flesh were completely dominant. In this the true and spiritual restoration and freedom of our will consists. Thus, if the marvelous Maker of every good thing were not dealing with us, we would have no hope of getting up from our fall by our own free choice, by which we plunged ourselves into ruin when still standing upright. Article 17: God’s Use of Means in Regeneration Just as the almighty work by which God brings forth and sustains our natural life does not rule out but requires the use of means, by which God, according to his infinite wisdom and goodness, has wished to exercise that divine power, so also the aforementioned supernatural work by which God regenerates us in no way rules out or cancels the use of the gospel, which God in great wisdom has appointed to be the seed of regeneration and the food of the soul. For this reason, the apostles and the teachers who followed them taught the people in a godly manner about this grace of God, to give God the glory and to humble all pride, and yet did not neglect meanwhile to keep the people, by means of the holy admonitions of the gospel, under the administration of the Word, the sacraments, and discipline. So even today it is out of the question that the teachers or those taught in the church should presume to test God by separating what God in his good pleasure has wished to be closely joined together. For grace is bestowed through admonitions, and the more readily we perform our duty, the more lustrous the benefit of God working in us usually is, and the better that work advances. To God alone, both for the means and for their saving fruit and effectiveness, all glory is owed forever. Amen. Rejection of the Errors Having set forth the orthodox teaching, the Synod rejects the errors of those I Who teach that, properly speaking, it cannot be said that original sin in itself is enough to condemn the whole human race or to warrant temporal and eternal punishments. For they contradict the apostle when he says: “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death passed on to all people because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12); also: “The guilt followed one sin and brought condemnation” (Rom. 5:16); likewise: “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). II Who teach that the spiritual gifts or the good dispositions and virtues such as goodness, holiness, and righteousness could not have resided in the human will at creation, and therefore could not have been separated from the will at the fall. For this conflicts with the apostle’s description of the image of God in Ephesians 4:24, where he portrays the image in terms of righteousness and holiness, which definitely reside in the will. III Who teach that in spiritual death the spiritual gifts have not been separated from human will, since the will in itself has never been corrupted but only hindered by the darkness of the mind and the unruliness of the emotions, and since the will is able to exercise its innate free capacity once these hindrances are removed, which is to say, it is able of itself to will or choose whatever good is set before it—or else not to will or choose it. This is a novel idea and an error and has the effect of elevating the power of free choice, contrary to the words of Jeremiah the prophet: “The heart itself is deceitful above all things and wicked” (Jer. 17:9); and of the words of the apostle: “All of us also lived among them” (the children of disobedience) “at one time in the passions of our flesh, following the will of our flesh and thoughts” (Eph. 2:3). IV Who teach that unregenerate humanity is not strictly or totally dead in sin or deprived of all capacity for spiritual good but is able to hunger and thirst for righteousness or life and to offer the sacrifice of a broken and contrite spirit which is pleasing to God. For these views are opposed to the plain testimonies of Scripture: “You were dead in your transgressions and sins” (Eph. 2:1, 5); “The imagination of the thoughts of the human heart is only evil all the time” (Gen. 6:5; 8:21). Besides, to hunger and thirst for deliverance from misery and for life, and to offer God the sacrifice of a broken spirit is characteristic only of the regenerate and of those called blessed (Ps. 51:17; Matt. 5:6). V Who teach that corrupt and natural humanity can make such good use of common grace (by which they mean the light of nature) or of the gifts remaining after the fall that they are able thereby gradually to obtain a greater grace—evangelical or saving grace—as well as salvation itself; and that in this way God, for his part, shows himself ready to reveal Christ to all people, since God provides to all, to a sufficient extent and in an effective manner, the means necessary for the revealing of Christ, for faith, and for repentance. For Scripture, not to mention the experience of all ages, testifies that this is false: “He makes known his words to Jacob, his statutes and his laws to Israel; he has done this for no other nation, and they do not know his laws” (Ps. 147:19-20); “In the past God let all nations go their own way” (Acts 14:16); “They” (Paul and his companions) “were kept by the Holy Spirit from speaking God’s word in Asia”; and “When they had come to Mysia, they tried to go to Bithynia, but the Spirit would not allow them to” (Acts 16:6-7). VI Who teach that in the true conversion of men and women new qualities, dispositions, or gifts cannot be infused or poured into their will by God, and indeed that the faith [or believing] by which we first come to conversion and from which we receive the name “believers” is not a quality or gift infused by God, but only a human act, and that it cannot be called a gift except in respect to the power of attaining faith. For these views contradict the Holy Scriptures, which testify that God does infuse or pour into our hearts the new qualities of faith, obedience, and the experiencing of his love: “I will put my law in their minds, and write it on their hearts” (Jer. 31:33); “I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring” (Isa. 44:3); “The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5). They also conflict with the continuous practice of the Church, which prays with the prophet: “Convert me, Lord, and I shall be converted” (Jer. 31:18). VII Who teach that the grace by which we are converted to God is nothing but a gentle persuasion, or (as others explain it) that the way of God’s acting in conversion that is most noble and suited to human nature is that which happens by persuasion, and that nothing prevents this grace of moral persuasion even by itself from making the natural person spiritual; indeed, that God does not produce the assent of the will except in this manner of moral persuasion, and that the effectiveness of God’s work by which it surpasses the work of Satan consists in the fact that God promises eternal benefits while Satan promises temporal ones. For this teaching is entirely Pelagian and contrary to the whole of Scripture, which recognizes besides this persuasion also another, far more effective and divine way in which the Holy Spirit acts in human conversion. As Ezekiel 36:26 puts it: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; and I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. . . .” VIII Who teach that God in regenerating people does not bring to bear that power of his omnipotence whereby God may powerfully and unfailingly bend the human will to faith and conversion, but that even when God has accomplished all the works of grace which he uses for their conversion, they nevertheless can, and in actual fact often do, so resist God and the Spirit in their intent and will to regenerate them, that they completely thwart their own rebirth; and, indeed, that it remains in their own power whether or not to be reborn. For this does away with all effective functioning of God’s grace in our conversion and subjects the activity of Almighty God to human will; it is contrary to the apostles, who teach that “we believe by virtue of the effective working of God’s mighty strength” (Eph. 1:19), and that “God fulfills the undeserved good will of his kindness and the work of faith in us with power” (2 Thess. 1:11), and likewise that “his divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1:3). IX Who teach that grace and free choice are concurrent partial causes which cooperate to initiate conversion, and that grace does not precede—in the order of causality—the effective influence of the will; that is to say, that God does not effectively help the human will to come to conversion before that will itself motivates and determines itself. For the early church already condemned this doctrine long ago in the Pelagians, on the basis of the words of the apostle: “It does not depend on human willing or running but on God’s mercy” (Rom. 9:16); also: “Who makes you different from anyone else?” and “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Cor. 4:7); likewise: “It is God who works in you to will and act according to his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). The Fifth Main Point of Doctrine The Perseverance of the Saints Article 1: The Regenerate Not Entirely Free from Sin Those people whom God according to his purpose calls into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord and regenerates by the Holy Spirit, God also sets free from the dominion and slavery of sin, though not entirely from the flesh and from the body of sin as long as they are in this life. Article 2: The Believer’s Reaction to Sins of Weakness Hence daily sins of weakness arise, and blemishes cling to even the best works of saints, giving them continual cause to humble themselves before God, to flee for refuge to Christ crucified, to put the flesh to death more and more by the Spirit of supplication and by holy exercises of godliness, and to strain toward the goal of perfection, until they are freed from this body of death and reign with the Lamb of God in heaven. Article 3: God’s Preservation of the Converted Because of these remnants of sin dwelling in them and also because of the temptations of the world and Satan, those who have been converted could not remain standing in this grace if left to their own resources. But God is faithful, mercifully strengthening them in the grace once conferred on them and powerfully preserving them in it to the end. Article 4: The Danger of True Believers’ Falling into Serious Sins The power of God strengthening and preserving true believers in grace is more than a match for the flesh. Yet those converted are not always so activated and motivated by God that in certain specific actions they cannot by their own fault depart from the leading of grace, be led astray by the desires of the flesh, and give in to them. For this reason they must constantly watch and pray that they may not be led into temptations. When they fail to do this, not only can they be carried away by the flesh, the world, and Satan into sins, even serious and outrageous ones, but also by God’s just permission they sometimes are so carried away—witness the sad cases, described in Scripture, of David, Peter, and other saints falling into sins. Article 5: The Effects of Such Serious Sins By such monstrous sins, however, they greatly offend God, deserve the sentence of death, grieve the Holy Spirit, suspend the exercise of faith, severely wound the conscience, and sometimes lose the awareness of grace for a time—until, after they have returned to the right way by genuine repentance, God’s fatherly face again shines upon them. Article 6: God’s Saving Intervention For God, who is rich in mercy, according to the unchangeable purpose of election does not take the Holy Spirit from his own completely, even when they fall grievously. Neither does God let them fall down so far that they forfeit the grace of adoption and the state of justification, or commit the sin which leads to death (the sin against the Holy Spirit), and plunge themselves, entirely forsaken by God, into eternal ruin. Article 7: Renewal to Repentance For, in the first place, God preserves in those saints when they fall the imperishable seed from which they have been born again, lest it perish or be dislodged. Secondly, by his Word and Spirit God certainly and effectively renews them to repentance so that they have a heartfelt and godly sorrow for the sins they have committed; seek and obtain, through faith and with a contrite heart, forgiveness in the blood of the Mediator; experience again the grace of a reconciled God; through faith adore God’s mercies; and from then on more eagerly work out their own salvation with fear and trembling. Article 8: The Certainty of This Preservation So it is not by their own merits or strength but by God’s undeserved mercy that they neither forfeit faith and grace totally nor remain in their downfalls to the end and are lost. With respect to themselves this not only easily could happen, but also undoubtedly would happen; but with respect to God it cannot possibly happen. God’s plan cannot be changed; God’s promise cannot fail; the calling according to God’s purpose cannot be revoked; the merit of Christ as well as his interceding and preserving cannot be nullified; and the sealing of the Holy Spirit can neither be invalidated nor wiped out. Article 9: The Assurance of This Preservation Concerning this preservation of those chosen to salvation and concerning the perseverance of true believers in faith, believers themselves can and do become assured in accordance with the measure of their faith. By this faith they firmly believe that they are and always will remain true and living members of the church, and that they have the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Article 10: The Ground of This Assurance Accordingly, this assurance does not derive from some private revelation beyond or outside the Word, but from faith in the promises of God which are very plentifully revealed in the Word for our comfort, from the testimony of “the Holy Spirit testifying with our spirit that we are God’s children and heirs” (Rom. 8:16-17), and finally from a serious and holy pursuit of a clear conscience and of good works. If God’s chosen ones in this world did not have this well-founded comfort that the victory will be theirs and this reliable guarantee of eternal glory, they would be of all people most miserable. Article 11: Doubts Concerning This Assurance Meanwhile, Scripture testifies that believers have to contend in this life with various doubts of the flesh, and that under severe temptation they do not always experience this full assurance of faith and certainty of perseverance. But God, the Father of all comfort, “does not let them be tempted beyond what they can bear, but with the temptation he also provides a way out” (1 Cor. 10:13), and by the Holy Spirit revives in them the assurance of their perseverance. Article 12: This Assurance as an Incentive to Godliness This assurance of perseverance, however, so far from making true believers proud and carnally self-assured, is rather the true root of humility, of childlike respect, of genuine godliness, of endurance in every conflict, of fervent prayers, of steadfastness in crossbearing and in confessing the truth, and of well-founded joy in God. Reflecting on this benefit provides an incentive to a serious and continual practice of thanksgiving and good works, as is evident from the testimonies of Scripture and the examples of the saints. Article 13: Assurance No Inducement to Carelessness Neither does the renewed confidence of perseverance produce immorality or lack of concern for godliness in those put back on their feet after a fall, but it produces a much greater concern to observe carefully the ways which the Lord prepared in advance. They observe these ways in order that by walking in them they may maintain the assurance of their perseverance, lest, by their abuse of God’s fatherly goodness, the face of the gracious God (for the godly, looking upon that face is sweeter than life, but its withdrawal is more bitter than death) turn away from them again, with the result that they fall into greater anguish of spirit. Article 14: God’s Use of Means in Perseverance And, just as it has pleased God to begin this work of grace in us by the proclamation of the gospel, so God preserves, continues, and completes this work by the hearing and reading of the gospel, by meditation on it, by its exhortations, threats, and promises, and also by the use of the sacraments. Article 15: Contrasting Reactions to the Teaching of Perseverance This teaching about the perseverance of true believers and saints, and about their assurance of it—a teaching which God has very richly revealed in the Word for the glory of his name and for the comfort of the godly, and which God impresses on the hearts of believers—is something which the flesh does not understand, Satan hates, the world ridicules, the ignorant and the hypocrites abuse, and the spirits of error attack. The bride of Christ, on the other hand, has always loved this teaching very tenderly and defended it steadfastly as a priceless treasure; and God, against whom no plan can avail and no strength can prevail, will ensure that the church will continue to do this. To this God alone, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be honor and glory forever. Amen. Rejection of the Errors Concerning the Teaching of the Perseverance of the Saints Having set forth the orthodox teaching, the Synod rejects the errors of those I Who teach that the perseverance of true believers is not an effect of election or a gift of God produced by Christ’s death, but a condition of the new covenant which people, before what they call their “peremptory” election and justification, must fulfill by their free will. For Holy Scripture testifies that perseverance follows from election and is granted to the chosen by virtue of Christ’s death, resurrection, and intercession: “The chosen obtained it; the others were hardened” (Rom. 11:7); likewise, “He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not, along with him, grant us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? It is Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised—who also sits at the right hand of God, and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Rom. 8:32-35). II Who teach that God does provide believers with sufficient strength to persevere and is ready to preserve this strength in them if they perform their duty, but that even with all those things in place which are necessary to persevere in faith and which God is pleased to use to preserve faith, it still always depends on the choice of human will whether or not to persevere. For this view is obviously Pelagian; and though it intends to make people free it makes them sacrilegious. It is against the enduring consensus of evangelical teaching which takes from humanity all cause for boasting and ascribes the praise for this benefit only to God’s grace. It is also against the testimony of the apostle: “It is God who keeps us strong to the end, so that we will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:8). III Who teach that those who truly believe and have been born again not only can forfeit justifying faith as well as grace and salvation totally and to the end, but also in actual fact do often forfeit them and are lost forever. For this opinion nullifies the very grace of justification and regeneration as well as the continual preservation by Christ, contrary to the plain words of the apostle Paul: “If Christ died for us while we were still sinners, we will therefore much more be saved from God’s wrath through him, since we have now been justified by his blood” (Rom. 5:8-9); and contrary to the apostle John: “No one who is born of God is intent on sin, because God’s seed remains in him, nor can he sin, because he has been born of God” (1 John 3:9); also contrary to the words of Jesus Christ: “I give eternal life to my sheep, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand” (John 10:28-29). IV Who teach that those who truly believe and have been born again can commit the sin that leads to death (the sin against the Holy Spirit). For the same apostle John, after making mention of those who commit the sin that leads to death and forbidding prayer for them (1 John 5:16-17), immediately adds: “We know that anyone born of God does not commit sin” (that is, that kind of sin), “but the one who was born of God keeps himself safe, and the evil one does not touch him” (v. 18). V Who teach that apart from a special revelation no one can have the assurance of future perseverance in this life. For by this teaching the well-founded consolation of true believers in this life is taken away and the doubting of the Romanists is reintroduced into the church. Holy Scripture, however, in many places derives the assurance not from a special and extraordinary revelation but from the marks peculiar to God’s children and from God’s completely reliable promises. So especially the apostle Paul: “Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39); and John: “They who obey his commands remain in him and he in them. And this is how we know that he remains in us: by the Spirit he gave us” (1 John 3:24). VI Who teach that the teaching of the assurance of perseverance and of salvation is by its very nature and character an opiate of the flesh and is harmful to godliness, good morals, prayer, and other holy exercises, but that, on the contrary, to have doubt about this is praiseworthy. For these people show that they do not know the effective operation of God’s grace and the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit, and they contradict the apostle John, who asserts the opposite in plain words: “Dear friends, now we are children of God, but what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he is made known, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure” (1 John 3:2-3). Moreover, they are refuted by the examples of the saints in both the Old and the New Testament, who though assured of their perseverance and salvation yet were constant in prayer and other exercises of godliness. VII Who teach that the faith of those who believe only temporarily does not differ from justifying and saving faith except in duration alone. For Christ himself in Matthew 13:20ff. and Luke 8:13ff. clearly defines these further differences between temporary and true believers: he says that the former receive the seed on rocky ground, and the latter receive it in good ground, or a good heart; the former have no root, and the latter are firmly rooted; the former have no fruit, and the latter produce fruit in varying measure, with steadfastness, or perseverance. VIII Who teach that it is not absurd that people, after losing their former regeneration, should once again, indeed quite often, be reborn. For by this teaching they deny the imperishable nature of God’s seed by which we are born again, contrary to the testimony of the apostle Peter: “Born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable” (1 Pet. 1:23). IX Who teach that Christ nowhere prayed for an unfailing perseverance of believers in faith. For they contradict Christ himself when he says: “I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith may not fail” (Luke 22:32); and John the gospel writer when he testifies in John 17 that it was not only for the apostles, but also for all those who were to believe by their message that Christ prayed: “Holy Father, preserve them in your name” (v. 11); and “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you preserve them from the evil one” (v. 15). Conclusion Rejection of False Accusations And so this is the clear, simple, and straightforward explanation of the orthodox teaching on the five articles in dispute in the Netherlands, as well as the rejection of the errors by which the Dutch churches have for some time been disturbed. This explanation and rejection the Synod declares to be derived from God’s Word and in agreement with the confessions of the Reformed churches. Hence it clearly appears that those of whom one could hardly expect it have shown no truth, equity, and charity at all in wishing to make the public believe: that the teaching of the Reformed churches on predestination and on the points associated with it by its very nature and tendency draws the minds of people away from all godliness and religion, is an opiate of the flesh and the devil, and is a stronghold where Satan lies in wait for all people, wounds most of them, and fatally pierces many of them with the arrows of both despair and self-assurance; that this teaching makes God the author of sin, unjust, a tyrant, and a hypocrite; and is nothing but a refurbished Stoicism, Manicheism, Libertinism, and Turkism*; that this teaching makes people carnally self-assured, since it persuades them that nothing endangers the salvation of the elect, no matter how they live, so that they may commit the most outrageous crimes with self-assurance; and that on the other hand nothing is of use to the reprobate for salvation even if they have truly performed all the works of the saints; that this teaching means that God predestined and created, by the bare and unqualified choice of his will, without the least regard or consideration of any sin, the greatest part of the world to eternal condemnation; that in the same manner in which election is the source and cause of faith and good works, reprobation is the cause of unbelief and ungodliness; that many infant children of believers are snatched in their innocence from their mothers’ breasts and cruelly cast into hell so that neither the blood of Christ nor their baptism nor the prayers of the church at their baptism can be of any use to them; and very many other slanderous accusations of this kind which the Reformed churches not only disavow but even denounce with their whole heart. Therefore this Synod of Dort in the name of the Lord pleads with all who devoutly call on the name of our Savior Jesus Christ to form their judgment about the faith of the Reformed churches, not on the basis of false accusations gathered from here or there, or even on the basis of the personal statements of a number of ancient and modern authorities—statements which are also often either quoted out of context or misquoted and twisted to convey a different meaning—but on the basis of the churches’ own official confessions and of the present explanation of the orthodox teaching which has been endorsed by the unanimous consent of the members of the whole Synod, one and all. Moreover, the Synod earnestly warns the false accusers themselves to consider how heavy a judgment of God awaits those who give false testimony against so many churches and their confessions, trouble the consciences of the weak, and seek to prejudice the minds of many against the fellowship of true believers. Finally, this Synod urges all fellow ministers in the gospel of Christ to deal with this teaching in a godly and reverent manner, in the academic institutions as well as in the churches; to do so, both in their speaking and writing, with a view to the glory of God’s name, holiness of life, and the comfort of anxious souls; to think and also speak with Scripture according to the analogy of faith; and, finally, to refrain from all those ways of speaking which go beyond the bounds set for us by the genuine sense of the Holy Scriptures and which could give impertinent sophists a just occasion to scoff at the teaching of the Reformed churches or even to bring false accusations against it. May God’s Son Jesus Christ, who sits at the right hand of God and gives gifts to humanity, sanctify us in the truth, lead to the truth those who err, silence the mouths of those who lay false accusations against sound teaching, and equip faithful ministers of God’s Word with a spirit of wisdom and discretion, that all they say may be to the glory of God and the building up of their hearers. Amen. *Islam

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Lord's Day 12 Prosper Christian Reformed Church Lord's Day 12 In Life & In Death Mitchell Leach Sunday, February 1, 2026 Audio Lord's Day 12 Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 22:33 Sermon Transcript Our scripture reading today comes from 1 Peter 2: 4-10. So if you would open your Bibles with me to 1 Peter 2: 4-10. Verse 4. As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it It stands in scripture, Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and a stone of stumbling in a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobeyed the word as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness, in into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. This is God's word. This passage answers a belonging question. Who are we? Where do we fit? And what makes us secure? And it does this by putting Jesus at the center, not as an accessory, but as the stone we build on. It leads us to our big question for tonight. How do you become someone who belongs without pretending? How do you become someone who belongs without pretending? Most of us answer by auditioning. We pick the room, we learn the lines, we hide the parts that don't fit in. In the world, belonging comes with conditions. We have to be impressive, be useful, be interesting, be unproblematic. So we curate a picture of ourselves. We achieve, we signal the right signals to the people around us. We live with a low-grade fear that if people really knew me, I'm out. But it's not just out there. The church has its own form of auditioning. You can start to think, I belong if I'm put together, if my marriage looks stable, if my kids behave, if my sins are vague, if I'm serving enough to be considered safe. So we keep things general. We say, I've been struggling or I've been busy, or I could use some prayer. We say anything except the truth. And here's the diagnostic for us. Where do you feel the pressure to edit yourself? Where do you make sure? What part of your life do you make sure that no one sees? What would it cost you to be honest, to be really honest? Because if belonging requires pretending, the truth is we never get rest. You either perform or you pull away or you judge those who seem to fit in. So the question remains, how do you become someone who belongs without pretending? Peter's answer is this. It's not by cleaning yourself up. It's to come to him. A rejected stone. A rejected stone who makes rejected people. Feel safe. So let's watch Peter answer our question in three movements. We'll see, first, he tells you who you are or who Jesus is. Then he tells you who you are. Then, he tells you how to live. So let's look at that first section, verses 4 through 8, the title, Come to the Anointed Stone. Jesus is not a helpful teacher here. Peter says, As you come to him, look at verse four. As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious. As you come to him, this is not a one-time visit. This is a direction. Christianity is coming again and again to the same person, Jesus Christ. And look at how Peter describes him, rejected and at the same time, chosen and precious in the sight of God. The world makes a judgment, a vote against Jesus to say no. And yet look at the verdict that God renders on Jesus. You are mine, precious. That's the answer to the belonging question right there. Whose verdict gets to name you? Because if your life is built on human approval, you'll always be managing, always editing, always being afraid of being found out. But if your life is built on God's verdict, well, you can't hide. There's no sense in doing that. He sees everything. So we can stop pretending. We can finally find rest in a God who knows all things. Peter proves it from scripture, Whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. That's what verse 6 says. This This isn't a motivational slogan. This isn't something that we put on a bumper sticker or sew into a pillow. This is safety. Safety for the exposed, honor for the ashamed, in a solid place to stand. Peter also says that the same stone does two things. For those who believe, the cornerstone holds you up. And for those who refuse him, it becomes a stone of stumbling, something you keep colliding with because you keep colliding with him. No one gets to approach God and leave Jesus neutral. You either see him for who he is, and it totally transforms you. We have to walk away and say, I don't know if I really like that guy at all. But you can't walk away from him neutral. You either build on him or you trip over him. And don't miss what savior this is. Jesus knows rejection. Jesus was rejected. He walked straight into it on the cross. He was cast out. So people like you, people like me, people like us could be brought in. Not because we've cleaned ourselves up, but because he's been chosen. He's precious. And by faith, we belong to him. So Peter's first word to us isn't perform. It's come. Come to the living stone and watch what happens next. You don't stay alone. Verse 5 says, We get built in. And here's where Peter gets very specific. What do we get built into? Who do we get built in? That's what we see in this next section. Be built into an anointed people. 1 Peter 2: 5-10. Peter moves from the stone to stones, from Christ to the church. Notice the grammar here. You are being built up. You are not the builder. We are not the builder. God is. Christianity is not self improvement. It is making or it is God making a new people. It's plural. Living stones don't float. They fit. They belong. Peter says, We're being built into a spiritual house, a place where God God dwells into a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. These sacrifices, they're not a payment for sin. They are thank you offerings from people who understand what it means to be forgiven. Then Peter gives the church a name. He says that we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and a people for his own possession in verse 9. Those four titles are straight from Israel's story. This is Exodus language. This is covenantal language that we see here. Peter is saying something massive. God's people are now defined by union with Christ, not an ethnicity. In other words, God didn't scrap his promises. He kept them. He kept them by centering every Everything on the cornerstone, the rock of Christ. He gathered then Jew and Gentile into one people connected in unity around Jesus. When Peter says a chosen race, he's not talking about ethnicity. Diversity anymore. It doesn't matter what group of people you've come from. He's talking about a new people, a new family line defined by Jesus. Verse 10 is proof. He says, once you were a people, now you are God's people. That means your belonging with God did not start with you finding him. Started with God claiming you. And catch the purpose here. Verse nine, that you may proclaim the excellencies. It's that order. First, identity, then mission. You don't proclaim your way into belonging. You proclaim your way You proclaim because you belong. And verse 10 seals it. Verse 10 says this, once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you've received mercy. Verse 10 is Peter's before and after picture. Verse 10 makes it clearer than ever. Peter is using Hoseia's words, not my people, my people, and applying them to the church. That means the church isn't a religious club that showed up later. It is a reformed people of God, built on Christ, made up of all who believe. That reality kills all boasting. It is not our effort. It is not what we do. It is God bringing us together in this beautiful thing he calls the church. Peter is saying something specific here. The church is the true Israel, not earned, but that we are bought with his mercy. If you understand verse 10, you can't be arrogant towards anyone. It eliminates any hierarchy that we can place on ourselves, Jew or Gentile, elite, any educational status, any socioeconomic status. We have We have been received by grace. We are here by grace. We are built into one spiritual building together by the builder. So when Peter calls you or Paul calls the church, royal and priesthood, and proclaiming. He's saying, In Christ, the calling of Israel becomes the calling of the church. Peter doesn't leave it with those words as poetry. He turns them into a vocation. To proclaim is what we see in becoming a prophet, priesthood, being the priests and royal and the king. And that's what we see in our third point, live out the shared anointing, prophet, priest, and king, from question and answer 31 and 32. Peter does not just give us new names here in verse 9. He gives us a new calling. Proclaim, priesthood, royal. The catechism isn't adding anything to what first Peter is saying. It is naming what first Peter has already said. The prophet isn't someone who needs to be right. When we think of a prophet, we think of someone who maybe who's a little bit brash. Prophet's not that. Prophet's not somebody who argues with people online. Prophet is the one who confesses Christ clearly. Verse nine says this, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him. Prophets We don't need to win arguments. Prophets make Christ clear. They proclaim who Jesus is. So the challenge for us is to do this in your home. Name God's mercies out loud. In your relationships, speak truth and grace, not vague spirituality. And in the church, encourage, admonish, disciple each other. The diagnostic for us as we look at what it means to be a prophet, If someone followed you for a month, would they know that you belong to Jesus, or would they think that you're just a good person? When was the last time you said the name of Jesus out loud with someone who doesn't already agree with you? If we never confess his name, we might be people who admire Christ, but we're not yet sharing the name of Christ. We're not proclaiming the name of That doesn't mean that every Christian needs to be bold. They don't need to be on the corner shouting apologetics to people passing by. But it means that silence can't be our settled posture. Because mercy makes Jesus speakable. Now, for some of you who are quiet, you're not quiet because you don't believe in Jesus, but it's because there's fear. It's scary sharing our faith. My challenge to you would be this. Bring that to Jesus. Bring that to God. Ask the King for courage. Start small. We don't need to speak to the masses. Think of one clear sentence you could use this week, someone you know. As we move on to what it means to be a priest, priests are ones who offer sacrifices. And yet when it looks When we look at what it means to do that in the New Testament, our sacrifices don't pay for sin. Christ did. Peter's phrase is everything here in verse 5, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. That means your obedience It's never a stand-alone offering. It's always carried in by Christ. Your sacrifices are thank you offerings, not guilt offerings. So that means that we have to stop treating repentance like self-punishment. Repentance is agreeing with God and returning to God because the sacrifice has already been made. We need to be a people who practice repentance, prayer and worship, generosity, service that costs you, and reconciliation, one of the most easily recognizable Priestley acts. We don't offer sacrifices to get God to love us. We offer ourselves because Because the priest has already brought you here. Because Christ's sacrifice is once and for all, and his intercession is ongoing. You don't have to keep trying to make yourself seem acceptable. The Christ has already made you acceptable. Now your obedience comes as gratitude, not panic, not as a way to try to twist God's arm into doing what you want him to do or to accept you. We are already already firmly found in Christ. As we look to what it means to be a king and to act in that kingly office, some of you might confuse this idea of freedom with comfort, but the idea of kingly anointing, it goes beyond those categories. Kingly anointing means that we In some regard, we engage in warfare, not coasting, because with a free conscience, because we can do it with a free conscience, not a condemned one. This warfare is not to earn our place. It's not to fight our way in. We wage war against sin, against evil, the sin and evil that we see in ourselves, the oppression that we see in the world, not because we're trying to find a place, but because we already have one. Your struggle is not proof that you're losing. It's proof that we're alive. As Christ fought, he's calling us to fight, and Christ guards what he has already won. The comfort underneath the fight is the King does not just command, he keeps. Your grip on him is real, but his grip on you is even stronger. That leads us into our main idea. Our main idea for tonight is this, the spirit anointed Christ makes spirit anointed people. The spirit anointed Christ makes spirit anointed people. Jesus is called Christ because the Father appointed him and the spirit anointed him, Prophet, priest, and King. He doesn't just give us information. As prophet, he reveals God's will for our deliverance. He doesn't just give us an example. As priest, he offers himself and keeps us as he intercedes for us. He doesn't just give us inspiration. As king, he rules and guards the freedom he won. And Peter says, When you come to this living Stone, you don't just get forgiven. You get built in. You become a holy priesthood, a holy priesthood, a royal priesthood, a people for his own possession. That means Christian isn't just a label that we wear. It is an identity we have been given. If we are united to an anointed one by faith, we share in his anointing. So the question isn't, do you have the name Christian? The question is, is the anointed Christ producing an anointed life? Do we confess? Do we see sacrifice in ourselves? Mercy. God's mercy makes a people, and mercy gives that people a mission. So what does an anointed person do this week? The catechism gives three verbs: confess, offer, and strive. So our application for tonight starts off with this. The first point, Confess his name, Prophet, verse 9, that we should proclaim the excellencies. This week, make Jesus audible, not just vague, but explain his name. Pick one person and say one clear sentence. Something like, I'm a Christian. I belong to Jesus. I'm grateful for what he has done for me. Or, I'm trying to follow Jesus, and I need his mercy every day. That's a good one you can use if you've messed up in front of that person. That's all right. We don't have to laugh here. It's a night service. It's all good. Why does Peter give us this? Peter says this, that God has made you his people so that you would proclaim him, proclaim the one who has called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. If you're thinking, I don't I don't know if I can do that. Don't start with a crowd. Start with a person. Start small. But we can't stay silent forever. The second point of application is this. Present yourself as a living sacrifice. Repentance without self-protection is what we're called to do. We're called to engage in generosity that costs us. We're called to serve, serve people when it's inconvenient, that we should be a people who initiate reconciliation, initiate peace with those in our life, and that we worship even when we don't feel like it. That leads us into our third point of application, strive with a free conscience against sin and the devil. Name one sin that you've been excusing this week and put it in front of the cross. Confess it to someone and resist the fear of man, which was Peter's temptation if you were here for the morning service. By remembering those... Or by remembering whose approval makes you clean. We are cleansed by Christ. As we strive for a free conscience against sin and the devil, remember, when you fail, don't run from Christ. Don't do what Adam and Eve did in the garden, trying to guard themselves and run and hide from God. Run to him. Kings, get back up because the King guards them. We've asked, how do you become someone who belongs without pretending? Peter's answer is not clean yourself up. It's come. Come to him. But why can we come? Because belong Our longing always has a cost. In our faith, we know Christ pays it. Our problem isn't only that we're wounded, it is that we are guilty. We have a record. And a Holy God does not just call evil no big deal. He has to judge it. So on the cross, Jesus does not suffer with us. He suffers for us. He takes the penalty that our sins deserve. The stone, the rejected stone, is rejected under judgment. So rejected people like us can be received in mercy. He gets your shame. You get his honor. He gets your condemnation, you get welcomed in. That's why Peter can say, whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. So we can drop the mask, we can drop the resume, and we can come empty-handed to the true and perfect King. Don't leave tonight as an applicant, Grace, but as one who has received mercy and belongs. Because you can belong without pretending, because Christ has taken your place. Remember this, the spirit anointed Christ makes spirit anointed people. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for who you we are. We praise you that we get to share in your anointing because we take on the name of Christ. We are grafted in. We are yours. Father, I pray as we continue in this series that we would remember where our comfort comes from, that we can proclaim and know that we belong to you, body and soul, in life and in death. God, you are our comfort. You are our peace. God, I pray today on your Sabbath day that we would be able to find our rest in you. Father, help us to respond. Help us to respond in worship as we sing how How Great Thou Art. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

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One Another Sermon Series Description One Another is a series about what it means not merely to attend a church, but to belong to one. In a culture shaped by independence, consumerism, and private spirituality, the New Testament presents the Christian life as shared life under the lordship of Christ. Jesus does not save isolated individuals and leave them alone. He gathers a people to live together in humble service, intentional discipleship, mutual belonging, and cheerful generosity. This series helps the church see that membership in Christ’s body is not a sentimental label or a loose association. It is a covenant reality created by the grace of God and expressed in concrete obedience. To belong to Christ is to belong to his people, and to belong to his people is to take up the responsibilities of love. Each sermon presses that truth from a different angle: we serve because Christ served, we make disciples because Christ reigns, we honor every member because one Spirit made us one body, and we give generously because God’s grace abounds to us. As we walk through these passages, the church is confronted with a searching question: are we merely near the church, or are we truly living as Christ’s church? One Another calls us to reject isolated Christianity and embrace joyful, sacrificial, embodied life together under King Jesus. Because Christ has joined us to himself, he calls us to give ourselves to one another. Giving 2 Corinthians 9 Watch

Greater Than You Know Prosper Christian Reformed Church Greater Than You Know Consider Your Ways Mitchell Leach Sunday, May 24, 2026 Audio Greater Than You Know Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 01:04 Sermon Transcript Haggai 2:1-9 In the 7th month, on the 21st day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet: Speak now to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to all the remnant of the people, and say, who is left among you who 'Who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel,' declares the Lord. 'Be strong, O Joshua son of Jehozadak the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land,' declares the Lord. 'Work, for I am with you,' declares the Lord of hosts. According to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst; fear not. For thus says the Lord of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts. This is the word of the Lord. In 126 BC, there was a Roman general who conquered Carthage. It was a 3-year campaign and finally after the city fell, he stood there looking at the city as it was in its ruins and he started to weep. And there was a historian there, it was his good friend, and he asked him why he was crying. He said, "This is a foreshadowing of what's going to happen to my city someday." Looking forward, looking toward the city that he had just conquered, it should have been a victory, should have been something that was a happy moment for him, but he looked at it and knew that one day this too would come for him. And that's what ruins do to us. They don't just tell us about the past. They make us afraid for the future. You don't have to be in ancient Rome to know this, to see this. You can just drive really anywhere, you see this. You've driven past a barn 1,000 times and one day it's leaning and then one strong spring storm hits it and it's down. Then it's just a pile of wood in a field. And something in us sinks in, not just because we feel like we needed the barn, but the landscape tells us that something's missing. Big Question Are things getting better or are things getting worse? We realize that things are in decay. Brings us to a question that we all ask, either out loud or in our hearts: "Are things getting better or are things getting worse?" Things getting better or things getting worse? We all ask this question and yet, as a people, we have a united answer to it. It doesn't matter what ethnic group you're from, it doesn't matter what location, socioeconomic status, what political party you voted for; we're all united in this. It doesn't matter what time period you're from; we can go back throughout history and see the way We've always said things are getting worse. Talk to somebody on the left. They'll tell you that institutions are failing, the planet is dying, or the system's rigged. If you talk to someone on the political right, you'll hear that morality is gone and the family is falling apart and that there aren't values like we once had them. Talk to a parent and they'll tell you that kids aren't safe in the way that they used to be. Talk to a grandparent and they'll tell you nobody knows their neighbors anymore. Talk to a 20-year-old who's trying to buy a house and says they can't, everything's too expensive. Talk to someone who's retired, and they'll tell you that the world they built is unrecognizable. Here's what's remarkable in all of this: nobody thinks the arrow's pointing up. Nobody thinks that things are getting better. Left, right, young, old, rich or poor, one thing that Americans all generally agree on is that the— our best days are behind us. Declinism isn't a political position, it's the air we breathe. And if that's the air we breathe out there, It's almost certainly the air that we breathe in here too. The church is not immune to this. And so are things getting better or worse? Fortunately, the Bible has an answer for us. So if you would, keep your Bibles open to Haggai as we're going to look at two major movements in this passage, in these 9 verses. First, we'll see God meets discouragement with his presence, Haggai 2:1-5, and then God promises a glory greater than the former in Haggai 2:6-9. Outline God Meets Discouragement with His Presence (Haggai 2:1-5) God Promises a Glory Greater Than the Former (Haggai 2:6-9) God Meets Discouragement with His Presence (Haggai 2:1-5) So let's look at that first section, God meets discouragement with His presence. This is all happening in a certain time and that time is important for us to understand. This is happening, this, "The word of the Lord came to Haggai the second time during the festival of Sukkot." This was a festival that was celebrated in Israel all the way up through Jesus' time. Jesus actually celebrated this. It was called the Feast of Booths. What would happen is Um, people would move out into the desert. They would sit in booths, they would sit in tents to remember Israel's journey through the wilderness. But this was also a harvest festival, which would have had to make people feel uneasy. Harvest is a time to celebrate bounty. It's a time to celebrate what God has done, what God has provided. And they've been in a time of scarcity. In Haggai 1, we saw God had given them pestilence. He had given them a plague. He had given them, uh, a drought on the land, and that they had not been able to harvest what they wanted. Haggai 2:3, God then asks 3 important questions, all 3 leading up to the last one. The first question addresses those who saw the last temple. The middle temple there that got destroyed in 586 BC. Some of those people were children when they saw— who were alive during this time in Haggai's life. They would have been children that saw the temple and had a memory of what it looks like. The last question that Haggai asks, or that God asks, is rhetorical. It's this: "Is this nothing in your eyes?" As they're looking at the new temple that had just been built, God's telling them it looks like nothing. God is naming discouragement that already exists. He isn't here saying, "Well, this isn't too bad. Let's look on the bright side of things." Why don't we just be optimistic here? Why don't— why don't we look at this as a glass half full moment? God does not dismiss their grief. He names it, but he doesn't let them— he doesn't allow them to sit in their grief or to let it be the lord over them. I think it's something important for us to understand. Oftentimes, I think in Christianity when hard things come our way, we so often want to be the people who respond by saying, "Well, God's on the throne and things are okay and it's going to be alright." And it's okay to feel that, to know and to trust that God has everything, that he holds the world in his hand. But Haggai, the book of Haggai, allows us to recognize when things are disappointing. When things aren't the way that they're supposed to be. The temple that was built was a shadow of what it once was. It was not nearly as glorious as what Solomon had built. Their grief was specific. Not just grief about the future in general, but grief that the future would not match the past. A belief that the best days of their people are behind them, that their building and what they're building now will never be what it once was. This is a moment where we have to pause as a church and recognize that God is speaking to us in this moment, not just the universal church, but here at Prosper. If you haven't felt those same temptations about this place, it's probably your first time here. You might be a visitor. I haven't been here long enough to hear every story, but I've been here long enough to hear the heartache. Prosser's been through a lot in the last 5 years. You've lost some tragically We've lost some pillars of this community. Some of your cousins, relatives, children, maybe they don't worship with us anymore. I've heard that a lot. I've heard that we've lost a lot. I've heard that there aren't as many children in the children's message. Each of those things are Haggai 3:3. Just dressed up in modern language. Does this seem as nothing in your eyes? See, there's a way to honor the saints who came before us, before us, that strengthens our faith. There's also a way to honor them that quietly accuses God of being less faithful now. To be faithful, to do this, to do this right, we must believe that God is still present, still speaking, still shaking, still building. Because I know this to be true: that the best days of this church are not behind her but in front of her. I know that we believe that too. I know that I've heard little things here and there and I've heard some of those heartaches But overwhelmingly, I have heard of the amazing things that God is doing here. Elderly people setting aside their preferences, praying that God would set aside their preferences in order to reach the next generation. Young people loving and coming to love the hymns that their ancestors have sung for generations. People stepping out of their shell and out of their comfort zone to serve. People who are battling addictions seeing victory over those same addictions. I've seen elders genuinely care for the people here. I've seen deacons serve widows and take care of widows and shut-ins unlike any other church I've been in. I've seen so many things here that are proof that we believe the best days are ahead of us. The God of Haggai 2, does not allow us to sigh over what used to be. He promises what's coming. That's what he does in this next section. He continues by saying, "I am strong and I am with you." He says, "Be strong." But that's not a strength that comes somehow from finding it within us, right? This isn't a Disney movie. This is not, you know, the end of the story is not, "You had it in you the whole time." The story here is be strong because I am with you. Be strong in the work, not because your work looks promising, because I am the one who is with you. The promise is not that the work will always even look impressive. The promise is that his presence will make the work worth doing. The person who loves their idea of being strong will eventually collapse because the idea has no power to sustain what it promises. The person who trusts God, trusts what He commands, that strength will endure, not because that they are impressive, but because of the One who they rely on. All throughout the Bible, anytime that there's been a command to have courage or to be strong, it is never one that says, "Find it within you. You have the courage. If you just unlock these things, if you just try these tips, and you can finally become the man that you're— man or woman that you're supposed to be." Whenever God commands strength, whenever he commands courage, He does so and then immediately after he says, "For I am with you." This biblical pattern is not for strong people to do big things. It is for a strong God to, to use weak people. That weakness is the point. All throughout the Bible, God uses the weakest. The overlooked, the people who have no, no right to be able to be used that way. If God were to only use the smartest, the strongest, the fastest, the people with most, the most power, we would say, well, God's good at picking a good team. But because God uses those who are overlooked, who no one would pick to lead, who no one would pick to do the things that God picks them to do. All throughout the Bible, it shows that God is the one who's glorious. It puts his power on display, not ours. So why, why can God be with his people here in Israel and during this time but here with us today? It's because he is a God of covenant. He is a God who is faithful. That's what we see in Haggai 2:5. Haggai 2:5 says this: "According to the covenant I made with you when you came out of Egypt, my Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not." Another way to say that would be like this: This is the covenant commitment I made to you in Exodus. God is telling Israel that my promise to you is stronger than anything that you could have done to kill it. And that's the foundation of everything that God says next. Before God tells them what he's going to do, he reminds them of what he's already promised that he will do. His future glory rests on his past faithfulness. The same God who brought them out of Egypt, is the same God who kept the covenant with them in the wilderness, is the same God whose Spirit remained with them after the exile, the same God who promised that he would be with them as they rebuild his temple, is the same God who says now, "I'm not finished." So the next words are not merely comfort for us; it's a promise. God Promises a Glory Greater Than the Former (Haggai 2:6-9) God does not merely meet their discouragement with his presence. He meets it with future glory that is greater than anything that they lost. And that's what we see in this next section. God promises a glory greater than the former, Haggai 2:6-9. Haggai 2:6 says this: "For thus says the Lord of hosts, 'Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land.'" God continues by saying, "I'm about to do something. I'm about to upend history itself." That word that he uses for shake here is important because it's the same word that he used and that Moses used when he described what happened on Mount Sinai, that the mountain shook. God's using that language intentionally. He's saying what happened at Sinai is going to happen again. Sinai shook and God soon will shake the the world again. But not just them, not just Israel, not just everything around them, but the nations. He's saying the oppressors you have, I will shake, I will upend, I will disrupt history. I think we know this to be true. We know this to be true about what God promises us that he will come back one day and that he will make everything sad come untrue; that everything be made right in his second coming. I think we would confess that; we know that that's true. But it's so easy for us to live like it isn't. It's so easy for us to forget that. I think we have, without realizing it, stopped believing that God shakes things. I think we believe that God comforts, that he heals, that he inspires. We've forgotten that that he overturns, that he shakes the world. Haggai is telling us that the current arrangement of power is not final. It wasn't for Israel and it isn't for us either. The God who shakes the nations has not retired. Then he moves on to something even greater in Haggai 2:9. He says this: "The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the glory of 'than the former,' says the Lord of hosts. God had just told his people that the, the temple that they're looking at is a disappointment. And then he says something so encouraging here in Haggai 2:9. He's not telling them that the temple will be bigger or more beautiful, but he says, 'My presence will be made greater than it was before. One quick kind of thing that we don't get in our English version of this text, God is saying that this is one temple. He's saying this might be two different buildings, two different constructions, but this is one temple. There is one continuation of what God has promised to do. The building might have changed, but God's promises didn't. And that's how God does things. The temple is one continuous story from the garden to the tabernacle, from Solomon to Zerubbabel, from Jesus to the church to the new creation. Every step of the way is one promise, and that promise is the same one we see here. It is a greater glory in each step. Each step along the journey gets better and better. And I want to say this, make sure that you understand this clearly. I'm not saying that every step along the way is going to feel good. This is not a message saying that everything is going to be alright and everything's going to be fine. God brings disappointment in our life. He brings things that are hard. I don't want to move past the pain and suffering, the miseries that we experience in this life. So it doesn't mean that every congregation gets bigger, that every budget gets easier, or every generation looks more faithful than the last. But what it does mean is that the story God is writing is moving towards His glory, not away from it. The overall direction of God's— of God's story, of God moving is better and better. There's a reason for hope. We see this all throughout the Bible that Jesus is the greater temple. Jesus is the greater Jonah. He's the greater Solomon. The new covenant is greater than the old covenant. The heavenly tabernacle is greater than the earthly one. The latter glory of the gospel surpasses the fading glory of the law. And that's what this is about. It's about God's glory becoming greater and greater every step of the way, every step of our faith, every, every moment of our life. Everything that we do is about God's glory. I love the Heidelberg Catechism but the Westminster Catechism asks this question: What is the chief end of man? It's to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. That's our primary purpose as people is to glorify God because glory is the only thing that will be left throughout all eternity. Revelation 21:23 says this, I think this is beautiful, "And the city had no need for sun, of sun or moon to shine on it." for the glory of God gives it its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. We will have no need for sun in heaven. We'll have no need for the moon to illuminate where we go and what we do, because the glory of the— of God will be great enough, great enough for us to see. That's what we will use to see. God is promising this glory to the temple, but also to the church as well. Haggai 2:9 is the Old Testament seed of the entire pattern of God's glory and how it grows over time. The people in Israel's time in this passage were mourning the glory that they lost in the temple that Solomon had built. They were mourning something. That was always meant to be surpassed. They were weeping over a candle, right, right as dawn was about to break. The temple looked unimpressive because they were judging it by its components— how it was built, the stones that it was made of, the wood that it was made out of— and God was judging it by his promise. And that's what we need to hear. If ever our numbers feel small, if ever our budget feels tight, if ever we feel like culture has won and we have no hope, whenever we're discouraged, when it seems like everything is in ruins, God is telling us that he is about to shake everything up. Not to try harder, not to put more on our shoulders and just give a little bit more effort, Not to remember what used to be. He's imploring us to trust him, to trust him, to not look inward, not to look at us, but to look at what he's done, to look towards his faithfulness. Notice what God gives in the place that looks unimpressive. Haggai 2:9 ends with peace; not size, not wealth, not Not visible success; peace. The peace of his presence and the peace of his covenant. And ultimately, the peace that comes through Jesus Christ who makes peace by the blood of his cross. And that changes everything about how we look because if he can bring peace through a crucified Savior, then we have to admit that our eyes are not always a good judge of what God is doing. The cross looks like defeat. It looks like weakness. It looks like the end of the story. But God called it salvation. God called it victory. God called it glory. So the question is not, does this look impressive to me? The question is, what has God promised? And that leads us into our main idea. Main Idea Judge the work by God's promise, not by what your eyes can see. Because we worship a God who's faithful. Not just as a component of who he is, but that he is faithfulness itself. Look at your life. Look at what God has done all throughout the Bible. Has he ever failed you? Has he ever failed his people? All of God's promises come true. And yet, it's not just about being an optimist. The temple was disappointing. It was. And yet, God would use it for his glory and in even greater glory than what was there before. All throughout the Bible, God takes disappointments and turns them into testaments for his goodness and for his glory. Abraham waited decades for a son. David was anointed king and then spent years hiding in caves. The disciples followed Jesus and then watched him die on a Friday. Every single one of these stories looked like they were dead while they were living in it. And yet none of them were. And neither is yours. So what do we do with this? If God is the one who turns disappointment into glory, what does it look like to live like we actually believe that? Application Pray for What God Has for This Church — Haggai 2:9 Our first point of application is this: Pray for what God has for this church. If we judge by promise, not by sight, then our prayers need to match. Stop praying for what Prosper was or for whatever your home church is and start praying for what God says it will be. This is not the same prayer, right? One looks backward and the other looks at God. This week when you pray, when you pray for your church, when you pray for this church, don't pray, God, give us what we had. Pray, God, show us what you're building. Anytime God resurrects something from the dead, he doesn't bring it back to what it used to be; he brings it to an even greater glory. And that's Haggai 2 in a prayer and that's a prayer that God answers. Work Because God Is With You — Haggai 2:4 Second point of application is this: Work because God is with you. God commands us in this passage; God commands Israel to work. But not just to work because they've got great ideas and they can conquer, they can do the right thing. He says to work because God is with you. So teach children even when there are fewer than there used to be. So sing with conviction even when your voice seems stronger than it used to be. Invite a neighbor even if you think that they'll say no. Serve in the nursery, visit shut-ins, disciple a teenager, encourage an elder, give faithfully. Pray for someone by name. Not because prosper is impressive but because God is present. Haggai talks about God's glory filling the house. Everyone was expecting something like what had happened at the tabernacle. In Exodus 40, it says, "Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle, and everyone praised God." Everyone was weeping. But that didn't happen when this was finished. When this temple was constructed, Jewish rabbis have recorded that the Holy Spirit was missing and it seemed like God has broken his promise because he said there will be a glory in this, this place that is greater than what left it. But he hadn't broken his promise. 500 years later, after the temple was built, the presence entered it. Not with thunder, not with a cloud, not with an overwhelming display of power. It was a young mom carrying a baby. The glory came. Luke records, in the Gospel of Luke, he records Simon saying this: "Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation," that you have prepared in the presence of all the peoples a light for revelation for the Gentiles and a glory for your people in Israel. Simon said that when he met the baby Jesus as he entered the temple. The glory finally came. A greater glory did not come because the temple was more impressive. The greater glory came because Jesus walked into it. But it came far lower, far more humble than anyone had expected. Not a glory that kept sinners at a distance, but a glory that came so close that sinners could touch it. This is the greater glory. It's Jesus, the true temple, the presence of God with us, and the sacrifice for sinners. Because the glory of God is seen most clearly not in a building, filled with a cloud, but in the Son of Man lifted up on a tree. At the cross, the true temple was torn down and on the third day it was resurrected; it was rebuilt. So now, peace is not found in a place. It's not found in a physical location. Peace is found in a person—Jesus Christ crucified for sinners. That is why we judge the work not by God's promise, but by what we see. And not by what we see with our eyes, but by God's promise. Because our eyes would have looked at the cross and we would have said, "This is nothing." But God looked at the cross and said, "This is his glory." Church, hear this. Judge the work by God's promise, not by what your eyes can see. Let's stand and pray as we respond. And we're prepared to respond in worship. I'm going to invite the worship team to come forward at this time. Let's pray. Closing Prayer Father God, we praise you for who you are. We praise you that you are a God who remains with us, who promises and delivers on that promise. Father, help us not to rely on what our eyes can see but on who you are; that you are a God who is faithful and that your promises can be trusted. Father, I thank you for all of those who paid the ultimate price to serve our country so that way we could gather in a place like this, this morning. God, it's true, greater love knows nothing than this, that someone someone would lay down their life for their friend. Thank you that people have laid down their life for us to be able to worship in that freedom. God, help us to respond to your word this morning in worship and by glorifying you. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

Crucified with Christ Prosper Christian Reformed Church Crucified with Christ Christ Alone Mitchell Leach Sunday, February 8, 2026 Audio Crucified with Christ Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 46:03 Sermon Transcript Introduction/Big Question What brings people together? What brings people together? Or another way to ask that question would be, how do we determine where we belong? Culture says you belong if you perform, if you fit in, if you signal the right virtues. In the church, things can be similar. You belong if you behave. We can believe this. We belong If we clean up first, if we come from the right family or do the right thing, serve in the right ways. And yet both are the same move with the same motive, building our belonging based on our record. You can tell what you believe makes you belong based on what you're building it on. When you fail, are you sad or do you feel condemned? When you're criticized, do you feel humbled or do you feel erased? When you are excluded, do you feel disappointed or do you feel panicked? These are more than just emotions. They are a way for us to see where our standing is before God. What is our verdict system? What determines in our own hearts what we believe about where we belong? Galatians 2 is Paul saying that your belonging isn't built on your record, is built on something more. If our verdict is built on this, we will either become people who are crushed, people who are proud. And yet, either way, we won't have peace with that. And then Paul says something that's really shocking. In order for us to feel like we're in, in order for us to actually be in, our focus has to be on admitting that we're outsiders. Stop trying to get in by law keeping. What brings people together? And fortunately, the Bible has an answer for us. So keep your Bibles open to Galatians 2, as we see two primary movements in this passage. 2:15-16 — The Shared Problem: No One Is Justified by the Law 2:17-21 — The False Inference Rejected: Grace Does Not Promote Sin Paul is going to do two things here. He's going to tell us how people are made right God, and then he's going to protect that gospel from the most common misunderstanding that humans make towards it. In this section, what we'll see is that justification comes through faith in Jesus Christ because righteousness is not by law keeping, and to try to do so actually nullifies and denies the death of Christ. This passage that we're in today is a bridge between last week and next week. I think we could say that about all passages in this series, but specifically between Paul making a case for his apostelship to next week, what we're going to see is the truth of the gospel really clarified and explained. A Shared Problem: No One is Justified by the Law - Galatians 2:15-16. Galatians 2:15 says this, We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. I want to stop there. What Paul Paul is talking about, he's saying this ironically, he's saying to the Gentiles or to the Galatians, the way that you've been looking at this difference between Jew and Gentile, who can sit with who during mealtimes, is you look at them like Gentile sinners. That's what they would say about these Gentiles. Paul is saying, We're not like them. We are Jewish people, and yet we're going to see something here. And yet this is how the human heart works. It doesn't just break rules. It tries to use rules to create divisions among people. Rules are a way that we can say, Well, at least we're not like them. We don't break those rules. If you love rules more than you love what they're protecting, what you're doing is you're trying to use them in a way to leverage people. You're trying to leverage the law over people. It's a ladder for you to step above them, to get higher than them. If you're first instinct when you sin is not confession, but comparison, then you've turned the law into a tool for self-justification. The solution is not to hate the law. It's to see it correctly. God gave us the law in order to reveal who he is. Paul is not anti-obedience. He's not anti-law. He's anti-earning our salvation. Paul is essentially saying here, the the law is a good mirror. It's a good mirror. It's a terrible savior. The solution here is to see the law as good, and yet to see ourselves correctly as people who are law breakers. And that's what we see in this first part in Galatians 2:16. Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith. Paul saying, Even though we were Jews, no one is justified by the law. And that's the core message of this letter, this epistle, is that of justification. Justification or being justified is a legal term. It was used in courtrooms. It still is used in courtrooms. And yet today, outside of the courtroom, outside of church, the word to justify something largely carries a negative connotation. Really, what it means is, and how it's used commonly today in culture, is to excuse bad behavior, to allow someone to get away with something that they shouldn't. You might say it in this way, somebody justified his friend's adultery because he, I don't know, fill in the blank. I don't know why there would be a good way to justify someone's adultery, but using it in that way. And it sounds like God is allowing bad things to go unpunished. When we read this word, it can seem like it's carrying this connotation. And yet this is what the Bible says, a good definition of the law or of what justification means. God declares a sinner to be righteous in his sight, not because the person has become morally perfect, but because God forgave their sins and counts them righteous on the basis of Jesus Christ. Justification is not a feeling. It is not a motive. It is not an emotion. It is a verdict. It is a declaration. It is a pronouncement over you. So the law, and what Paul is saying is the law is not something that can put you in a right standing before God. But why? Why is that? Why is it that we talk about the law cannot be something that we add onto scripture or it cannot be something that saves us? Well, first, no one can keep the law. We see that throughout scripture, but we see it in our own lives. We cannot even keep the laws that we make. If you had a tape recorder or someone had a tape recorder and they followed you around for your life, and they recorded every time you said, You should, whatever that fill in the blank is afterwards. You should eat your vegetables. You should obey the speed limit. You should, whatever. You would not be able to keep your own laws that you tell other people to keep, let alone the laws that God gives for us. The second part of why we can't use the law to save us is that the law, by its nature, is not something that saves us. It can't. Laws are there, whether by God or human laws. Laws are there not to save people. They are there to convict. They are there to reveal wrongdoing and evil. They show us when we've crossed the line. They don't bring us back towards it. See, God is pleased when we obey him, and yet when we obey him out of a heart of love. It's just like parenting. You love when your kids obey you the first time, when they do it out of a right motive, when you don't have to argue with them, when you don't have to try to twist their arm into doing the right thing. It's the same with God. Obedience can't reverse the damage that we've caused. It would be like speeding and getting into a car accident. Going the speed limit after that. There isn't an amount of going the speed limit after that that can reverse the damage done to your car. We need someone to take care of it. We need someone to fix it for us. Obedience can't reverse the damage. We don't need a second chance. We need a substitute. We need someone who will come and fix what we could not. We need grace. We need the gospel to rescue us. And that's why Paul continues on in verse 16, But through faith in Jesus Christ, so that we have also believed in Christ in order to be justified by faith in Christ, not by works of the law, because by works of law, no one will be justified. It is in faith in Christ that saves. And so what is faith? It might feel like this is another work, that this is something that we're adding on to Jesus, that faith is something that's required. No, faith is not a payment. Faith is not leverage. Faith is not a way for us to earn good standing with God. It's not impressing God with our sincerity or with our devotion. Faith is going to God with empty hands. Faith is saying, I'm spiritually bankrupt. I have nothing to offer. I have nothing to bring. I need to be saved. I need to be raised from the dead. Faith is what allows us to reach to God after we've been resurrected, after we've been raised from the dead, to be able to wake up and receive the grace that God has given us. It's why Jesus says in the Beatitudes, blessed are those who are poor in spirit, who have spiritual poverty. Because it's only then that we can realize that we need a savior. If we think that we're good, if we think that we have it figured out, if we think that there's anything that we can offer God to make him want us, to make him desire us on our own, we don't have it. We've lost it. We have to say, God, there's nothing that I bring. Faith is not a work. It is a response to God's grace. It is a response to his grace. And anytime we think that we can add anything to it, we start to determine who gets to be in and who gets to be out. And that's the problem that the Jewish people had. That's the problem that we see in this book. The Jews thought they knew who was in, and they were sure that it was them. They knew that they could follow the law, that they could do whatever. They had the right relationship with God. And they knew that Gentiles, they were sinners. They were out. Yet the gospel says the opposite, not about Jews and Gentiles, but about that mindset. If you believe that you're in, you're out. If you know that you're outside, you're an outsider, you're in. If your confidence is in, well, I'm basically a good person, and I take my faith more seriously, or I take my devotion to God more seriously than others, I'm from the right background, I'm from the right family, I've cleaned up my behavior, God knows that I'm trying really hard and I do the right things. If that's where your confidence is in, then you're using the law like the pharisees used it, not to repent, but to essentially Collect a case together for yourself to try to declare your own verdict, to try to twist God's arm into seeing, See, I really am innocent. And that's not how justification works. If that's how you see your standing before your God, you can't come in. But if you know that you have no hope before our heavenly Father, if you see your identity outside of Christ, if you see your identity as As with the Gentiles, as a sinner, if you feel crushed by the weight of your sin so greatly that you believe you have no hope to get into heaven, then you're in. The doorway into Christ is not competence, it is confession. The only people who Jesus can justify are the people who stop trying to defend themselves, stop trying to be their own lawyer, their own advocate, and accept the advocate of the Holy spirit. If it sounds like what we were talking about earlier, that God is justifying or allowing sinful people to go unpunished, you're half right. God does let sinful people go, but he doesn't let them go unpunished. He does justify the ungodly, but he doesn't erase sin by just sweeping it under the rug or letting it go. He erases sin by placing it not on us, but on his son, where justice is satisfied, where mercy is sealed. The moment that we say free grace, the moment that we talk about free grace, there are two fears that commonly come up. The first is that the moral person feels chaos and that the guilty person will feel condemned. Paul answers both. He says, First, grace is not permission to sin. And second, grace is power to change. Charles Spurgeon says it this way, If Christ has died for me, then I cannot trifle with the sin which killed my best friend. The false inference rejected: grace does not promote sin - Galatians 2:17-21. In Galatians 2:17, Paul continues on. He says, But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners. I'm going to stop right there. Our natural posture of our heart is to put people into two camps, good guys and bad guys. It's always how we've seen the world. It's a human problem. We've always done this. We put two groups of people. It's us versus them, this group versus that group. Regardless of whatever group you find yourself in, the group that you're in is always the good guys, right? No one ever puts themselves in the bad guys side. Whatever side you are on, it doesn't matter what you've done or what your group has done, you're the good guys. Yet God is telling us, We cannot look at the world this way. This is not how the world operates. Every other works-based religion says, You can divide up the world into good and bad people because it is based on what you do. Christianity says, The whole world is running directly towards hell. We are all sinful. Verse 17 says, Whether you are Jew or Gentile, we too were found to be sinners. All of humanity is sinful. Sin is the great equalizer. It puts us all on the same playing field. It's the beautiful thing about Christianity. It's what makes Christianity different from every other works-based religion. See, if you're a Mormon, those outside of Mormonism, those are the Gentiles. If you're Muslim, everyone else is an infidel. If you're a modern day Jew, everyone else is goyam. If it's based on works, our salvation, our right standing with our creator, then they're There is a divide. There are good and bad people. There are people who obey the law, and there are people who don't. Christianity says, That is not how this works. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. Christianity says, Everyone is an outsider. No one gets in. We are all running directly away from God. If you are a Christian, it is not because you are a good person. You are a Christian because Christ has died for your sins. You are not a Christian because you grew up in the right family or in the right church or said a special prayer at summer camp, whatever it is. Our right standing with God is not based on an I statement. It is based on what he has done for us. Christians are the only people who can say, We are getting into heaven without bragging about it. It is not a boast. It is not prideful to say that we get to be in heaven because we did nothing to secure our ticket into heaven. Christians are the only people who say, I get into heaven, and it's not because I'm a good person. It's because I've admitted I was a bad person and I was saved by an even better savior. So now the question is this, and that's what we see in the second part of Galatians 2:17, If Christ saves by faith, is Jesus then promoting sin? It says, Is Christ then a servant of sin? Paul goes on to answer, Certainly not. For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. Paul emphatically answers, No. Christ does not promote sin. In no way does he do this. Jesus already tore down the dividing wall of hostility, the barrier that was set up between the Jews and the Gentiles in the temple. Jesus tore it down. There was a literal wall that said only Jews could get closer to the Holy of Holies. Gentiles had to stay out. When Jesus died on the cross, he tore down that dividing wall for Christians, for the church. This is what the Galatian church misses, had missed so clearly. They this unity that Christians can have, this unity that the church has that is second to none. There's nothing that unites people, that brings people together, that makes them belong in the way that Christ does. There's a mission trip that I was on when I was a youth pastor. We were working on a 30-foot roof. We were putting metal roofing up on this. I don't remember if it was rainy or had rained earlier that day, or if it was early in the morning, they were still due on the roof, but there were places where we couldn't step because it was too slippery. I was at the bottom of this. I was on a ladder, and I was reaching to grab some screws out of my tool belt, and all of a sudden I heard three noises is three kids sliding down. They had stepped where they shouldn't, and they were coming directly at me. I grabbed the gutter. I had nothing else to grab, and it knocks me back. I almost fell. But we stopped these three kids from from falling. I mean, off of 30 feet, it would have been tragic. We sat down afterwards and just realized how scary that moment truly was. I don't want to say it was a near-death experience, but it was something It was something nearly dramatic at minimum. Of the kids I stay in contact with, I like to stay in contact with a lot of the students that I've had the chance to pastor, those kids, those three kids that fell, are some of the three closest kids I stay in contact with. And I would like to say we just had a better relationship, but I think it's largely due to that moment. It's true with men when they get out of the military. There is a relationship that they have with men that they've served that almost no one else can understand because the brothers that they serve with are some of the only people on Earth who understand exactly what they went through. There's nothing like a near-death experience that brings people together. And yet, as Christians, we don't have a near-death experience. We have a shared death experience. That's what Paul talks about in this passage. We have all died. We have all gone through the excruciating pain of died, crucifying ourselves, putting ourselves to death. What Jesus says in Matthew, that we go and sell everything we have to buy the treasure hidden in the field. We let go of all the passions that we once had. We let go of all the things that we held on to so tightly, and we've sold it all. There's something excruciating in that. But now we've been raised with Christ. That's what it says in Galatians 2:19, For through the law, I died to the law so that I might live to God. Might be that I might live to God. Galatians 2:20, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life I now live, I live in the flesh. I live by faith, sorry, in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. This is all set in faith, not faith in faith, but faith in a person, faith in the one who loved me, faith in the son of God. Look at the motivation here. The motivation is love. It's not a global love, although God absolutely loves the world. This love that we see here is individual. It lands on specific people. It lands on you. Christ loved you. God loved you. Not because we were lovable, not because we've cleaned ourselves up first, not because we've earned it, not because we bring anything inherently within ourselves. We don't have any special talents within ourselves that makes God go, Well, okay, he's got this How can I get it? Well, that makes me love him more. No. Love came first, and he gave himself for me, not merely as a teacher, not merely as a martyr, not merely as an example. Christ came as our substitute He came to take our place, taking what we deserve. So when you hear that grace promotes sin, that this theology that we believe gives us a license to sin, It gives us the ability to just say, Well, if I sin, well, Christ will forgive me. It'll be fine. That is clearly wrong. That's what Paul is saying. Absolutely not. No, certainly not. Grace does not lead to sin. If you believe that, you don't understand what grace is. Grace is not permission, it is power. Grace unites us to God. That leads right into Paul's Closing Line, Galatians 2:21, I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. You can nullify grace without denying Jesus out loud. You can nullify it by adding something to it. Jesus plus effort, Jesus plus law keeping, Jesus plus an improvement plan, Jesus plus my spiritual resume. If I can add to God, if I can add to Jesus, then I could have saved myself. There's no reason for the cross. If I can add one thing, if I believe that Jesus took me to the one yard line, he's handed me the ball, and he's saying, You go score. If it's just one yard, right? Because it's a Super Bowl Sunday. If it's one yard that I can do, then it needed to be on me the whole time. Then I could have saved myself. Then what Jesus did on the cross Essentially was divine child abuse. If I can save myself, if I have the ability to save myself, then it's on me the whole way. It's not just the last step. If I can get right with God by my performance, if my obedience can declare my verdict, then I need to be the one to make it right. Then Christ died for no purpose. The cross becomes unnecessary. It becomes an add-on. It becomes optional. Instead of Jesus being my own only hope, he becomes one of them. He becomes one way. And Christianity just becomes another ladder. It becomes, how obedient are you? How good are you? It makes our only boast not in Christ, but in ourselves. Paul's point is this, you do not get You get wholeness by climbing a ladder. You get wholeness by living out your union with God, dying to yourself and becoming alive in something better, in something new, alive in Christ. So the false inference is rejected. Grace does not make Jesus a servant of sin. Grace makes sinners new, and he makes Christ central. That leads us to our main idea. Main Idea: We are justified by faith and alive in Christ. We are justified by faith and alive in Christ. The gospel is not what we offer God. The gospel is what we receive from God. We don't seal the deal. Christ sealed it when he said, It is finished. There is nothing we add on. Jesus didn't get up on the cross and said, Well, now I've got it started. That wasn't his last breath. Jesus said, It is finished. To add anything on to Christ after that is to make him a liar on the cross. This is the wonderful part about being a Christian. If you feel like you've done too much, too much evil, if you feel like you're an outsider, congratulations. The good news of the gospel is that it's not on you. Whether you were good, whether you were born in the right family, you did everything right, or you lived the most morally corrupt life you could have. It's not on you. There isn't a single thing you can do to make you outside of the love of Christ that he has for you. This is the good news of the gospel, that we don't even hold ourselves to Christ, that he is the one who holds us to him. It simply does not matter what you have done. Paul was a murderer. Paul was a murderer. I mean, look at every character in scripture. God does a great job of painting every character, except for one, in a negative light. There isn't a single person in here besides Christ who isn't a total screw-up. If you think that he can't use you, he used Paul, a murderer. The Son of God loved you and gave himself for you. There isn't a sin that the blood of Christ cannot redeem, cannot make right. And that's a call for us as a church. There's something here, an application before we get to our application, for us as a church, because if Christ receives sinners by grace, we as a church cannot demand people to get themselves cleaned up before they can start worshiping with us, for people to start earning their seat before they sit down. We do not clean people up and bring them to Christ and bring them to Jesus. We don't clean them up first. We bring people, and Jesus cleanses them. Every church is tempted in two directions. First, to make people pretend they're clean or to invite people to become brand new. Church, we have to be that second church. We cannot force people to act like us, to do X, Y, or Z, to dress like us, to sing like us, to perform a certain way in order to be accepted here. Except for the gospel, which we will never move away from. We will never dilute the gospel. As long as I'm your pastor, that won't happen. We will never move from this. We will never lower the bar. But as a church, we can't ask people to perform. We can't ask people to pretend like they're not messy. If we demand that people aren't messy in order to come worship with us, Sunday morning, we'll have zero people. I won't be able to be here. We are all a mess. I'm not saying that we all have to dress a certain way. We don't have to all lower our dress standards. Sometimes I like wearing a suit and tie. I mean, I'm weird. I understand that, but sometimes I like it, okay? But we cannot pretend that dressing up, that looking clean on the outside, doesn't mean that we're not messy. One of my favorite things about this is my grandpa was one of the men who had faith that I aspire to. He was an incredible man. He was a farmer. And during harvesting season, he would come in straight out of the combine with a hat on, with overalls on, and he would be dirty. He'd be a mess. He'd be dusty. And I remember thinking, how awesome is that? He He would have looked at himself and gone, I don't have the right clothes on. I still have a hat on. I haven't showered today. And yet he said, I'm going to take an hour, I'm going to take an hour and a half to be here on Sunday to worship. If you have to debate whether you're going to be here because you feel like you're too messy. If you're wondering whether you need to... If you're running late and you're going to show up, you're going to miss the first part of worship, come. I'd love for you to be here for the whole thing. I think the whole thing is worth it, but come. If you're coming in your overalls out of the field, come. If you haven't showered today, If you're physically messy, come. If you're spiritually messy, even more of a reason to come. I would so much rather you come messy and experience Christ, experience the worship here, experience the God that we see in scripture, than to try to stay at home and fix yourself. That leads us into our points of application. Use justification as a weapon against guilt and pride. Justification means God's verdict over you is settled. It is God banging the gavel and saying, Innocent. It is not up for renegotiation today. So this gospel hits on two two opposite sins. It hits on guilt that says, I am condemned, and it hits on pride that says, I am better. When Satan comes and assaults you this week, when he comes against you and he says, I know what you've done, and you call yourself a Christian. I saw you in high school. I saw you in college. I saw what you did then. I saw what you did last week. How dare you call yourself a Christian? We can say, Satan, you're absolutely right. That was the old me. That was the old Mitchell. But I am raised in Christ, and you have no longer a claim over me. The gospel sets sinful people free, sets sinful people away from the condemnation that we feel from the judgment that we feel from the enemy. Heidelberg Catechism, question and answer 60. The answer says this, part of the answer says this, Although my conscience accuses me, yet God, out of mere grace, imputes to me Christ as as if I never committed any sin. What beautiful language that encapsulates the gospel here. When your accuser comes and says, You are not good enough, we can say, Absolutely, I wasn't. But Christ was good for me. When your heart says, Prove that you're worth loving this week by trying harder, being better, you can say, If righteousness were through me We're through the law. Christ died for no purpose. Absolutely not. I will not try to make my obedience pay Jesus back. I could never pay him back. I will not nullify grace by doing it that way. And when your pride shows up by saying, Well, at least I'm not like them, you can say, We, too, were found to be sinners. I, too, was found to be morally corrupt, to be It's an absolute mess. The beauty of the gospel is that the cross is at a level playing ground. It is at eye level for everyone. We are all equally convicted of sin before God. It is only because Jesus was my substitute that I have even the faintest hope of being right with God. Live in union with Christ as the engine of Holiness and unity. Union with Christ means dying to the old self and living with Christ. So Holiness is not Earning acceptance. Holiness is living from acceptance. Use the gospel for your Holiness. When tempted to say, I will try harder and be better, tell yourself. That is not who I am anymore. I've been crucified with Christ. Fight sin from identity. Fight sin from identity, not for identity. Use the gospel for unity. Stop ranking Christians as somehow on a different letter, on a different rung in the ladder. There aren't JV Christians. In fact, there is no such thing as a good Christian. It's my least favorite heresy that when people say, Oh, so and so is such a good Christian. There's no such thing as a good Christian because a Christian is not based on what you do. If someone asks you why you're a Christian, you cannot answer in the first person. You cannot answer by saying, It's because I grew up in a Christian home, or I went to Bible camp and I said a magic prayer, or because I decided I wanted to get baptized. No, you are a Christian because Christ, because he. You must answer it in the third person. You cannot be a good Christian. Christianity is not based on what you do. Therefore, it cannot be based. You can't be good at it. You are either a Christian, you are either in Christ or you aren't. We are all justified the same way, so we cannot despise one another. We can't put each other into categories of good Christians and bad Christians. We are all equally in the same category. We are sinners, and some of us have accepted and received the grace that Christ offers. This is why the church has always had a radical unity. It's why some of you might have Some of you might have a struggle with people, even in your own family, connecting deeply with them, where you can connect with someone across the country, across the world, maybe even someone who doesn't speak the same language as you. You have nothing in common with. And your own brother or sister, your own father or mother, you cannot connect with them on that level because you have a shared death experience with that person who you may have never met. You can't talk about that with maybe even someone in your own family. We are called, we are bonded, we are unified in something radical. Why is it that we can be alive in Christ? Because Christ came to be death for for us. Through the law, I died to the law, meaning that the law could never save me. It put me in the grave, but God did not keep me there. The gospel is not, Try harder, be better. If that's at all what you've heard, get your hearing check, because that is not what this says nor what I have said. The gospel is, Jesus came to die for your sins, to be your substitute, to raise you from death to life. He came to be what sin deserved, to be death, to be the separation, to be judgment for us so that we could be what grace received. We can be life, forgiven and accepted. Christianity is not a moral betterment program. It is not behavioral modification. It is life transformation. It is a new source of life and identity. So here's why you can be alive, because he entered death for you, because he took your verdict, and now he shares his life with you. The gospel is not work your way to life. The gospel is: die with Christ and be alive with Christ. We are justified by faith and alive in Christ. Let's stand and pray and respond in worship for the God who has raised us in him in newness of life. Father God, we praise you and thank you that we are no longer dead, that we no longer are ourselves. God, that Satan has no longer a claim on us because we can say, We are alive in you. Father, I pray that we would live as renewed people, that we would live as transformed people, whether we've heard this the first time today or we've heard this a hundred times before. God, let this be a well of living water bursting out of our souls. God, let us declare in this next song that you are holy, holy, holy as people who have been radically transformed. Let us love one another because you first loved us. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link