What is a church? Certainly every group that has "church" on their front sign would not qualify! Instead, we need to see the faithful implementation of at least three marks, in an ongoing manner. Article 29: The Marks of the True Church We believe that we ought to discern diligently and very carefully, by the Word of God, what is the true church— for all sects in the world today claim for themselves the name of “the church.” We are not speaking here of the company of hypocrites who are mixed amo...
Jul 22, 2025•33 min•Season 2Ep. 229
Does a Christian need to be a member of a Church? Isn't salvation based on our relationship to Jesus? While that is the root of our salvation, God still expects His people to gather together! Article 28: The Obligations of Church Members We believe that since this holy assembly and congregation is the gathering of those who are saved and there is no salvation apart from it, people ought not to withdraw from it, content to be by themselves, regardless of their status or condition. But all people ...
Jul 15, 2025•33 min
When did the church begin? Who decides who is in or out? Article 27 teaches that God has one united people, all saved in Jesus, from all times, places, and social and ethnic backgrounds included. Article 27: The Holy Catholic Church We believe and confess one single catholic or universal church— a holy congregation and gathering of true Christian believers, awaiting their entire salvation in Jesus Christ, being washed by his blood, and sanctified and sealed by the Holy Spirit. This church has ex...
Jul 08, 2025•32 min•Season 2Ep. 227
Prayers and petitions calling upon dead saints, or Mary? While they shared our humanity, why would we think they hear us, or care more than He who demonstrated His love by laying down His life for us? Article 26: The Intercession of Christ We believe that we have no access to God except through the one and only Mediator and Intercessor, “Jesus Christ the righteous,” who therefore was made human, uniting together the divine and human natures, so that we human beings might have access to the divin...
Jul 01, 2025•33 min•Season 2Ep. 226
Is God's ceremonial law still important? Should Christians keep all of these commands? Are these laws now purposeless, and to be ignored? Christ has fulfilled these laws, but they still point to Him! Article 25: The Fulfillment of the Law We believe that the ceremonies and symbols of the law have ended with the coming of Christ, and that all foreshadowings have come to an end, so that the use of them ought to be abolished among Christians. Yet the truth and substance of these things remain for u...
Jun 24, 2025•32 min
The process of Sanctification can not be stopped in those who have been given the Holy Spirit, and yet not all are growing at the same rate. Article 24 challenges us to strive to grow in God's ways. Article 24: The Sanctification of Sinners We believe that this true faith, produced in us by the hearing of God’s Word and by the work of the Holy Spirit, regenerates us and makes us new creatures, causing us to live a new life and freeing us from the slavery of sin. Therefore, far from making people...
Jun 17, 2025•33 min
This article reminds us of the absolute necessity of our Salvation and Justification being based solely upon God's work! If we trusted or relied upon our own works at all, Alas, we would be undone. Article 23: The Justification of Sinners We believe that our blessedness lies in the forgiveness of our sins because of Jesus Christ, and that in it our righteousness before God is contained, as David and Paul teach us when they declare those people blessed to whom God grants righteousness apart from ...
Jun 10, 2025•32 min
Today we focus on our Justification, how God can now treat us just as if we had never sinned nor been a sinner! How? Not by works, but through the gift of Faith! Article 22: The Righteousness of Faith We believe that for us to acquire the true knowledge of this great mystery the Holy Spirit kindles in our hearts a true faith that embraces Jesus Christ, with all his merits, and makes him its own, and no longer looks for anything apart from him. For it must necessarily follow that either all that ...
Jun 03, 2025•32 min
In contrast to the never ending sacrifices of the Old Testament, in Jesus atonement, we learn how our Lord, by his precious blood, provided the effective and once for all sacrifice for my sins! Article 21: The Atonement We believe that Jesus Christ is a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek—made such by an oath—and that he presented himself in our name before his Father, to appease his Father’s wrath with full satisfaction by offering himself on the tree of the cross and pour...
May 28, 2025•32 min
The Gospel can be distorted, when one focuses only upon God's Justice or Mercy. But, as Article 20 teaches, the good news of the Gospel is that these two have perfectly met in Christ' sacrifice! Article 20: The Justice and Mercy of God in Christ We believe that God—who is perfectly merciful and also very just— sent the Son to assume the nature in which the disobedience had been committed, in order to bear in it the punishment of sin by his most bitter passion and death. So God made known his jus...
May 20, 2025•32 min
What do we do with the Biblical account of who Jesus is? Divine? Human? We see that He was both, yet He was just one person? This reality is our focus today, what theologians call the Hypostatic Union. Article 19: The Two Natures of Christ We believe that by being thus conceived the person of the Son has been inseparably united and joined together with human nature, in such a way that there are not two Sons of God, nor two persons, but two natures united in a single person, with each nature reta...
May 13, 2025•32 min
We worship on Sunday, remembering Jesus resurrection. But as we do, we are also remembering and celebrating the incarnation that made Jesus' death, and thus resurrection possible! Article 18: The Incarnation So then we confess that God fulfilled the promise made to the early fathers and mothers by the mouth of the holy prophets when he sent the only and eternal Son of God into the world at the time appointed. The Son took the “form of a slave” and was made in “human form,” truly assuming a real ...
May 06, 2025•32 min
One of the shortest Articles in the Confession, here we continue to explore what our God has done to accomplish our salvation. Article 17: The Recovery of Fallen Humanity We believe that our good God, by marvelous divine wisdom and goodness, seeing that Adam and Eve had plunged themselves in this manner into both physical and spiritual death and made themselves completely miserable, set out to find them, though they, trembling all over, were fleeing from God. And God comforted them, promising to...
Apr 29, 2025•32 min
Recognizing our hopeless condition in sin, the Belgic now turns our attention towards our Lord, as we begin to consider what He has done to save us, first through His electing love in Jesus Christ. Belgic Confession Article 16 Eternal Election We believe that all the posterity of Adam being thus fallen into perdition and ruin, by the sin of our first parents, God then did manifest himself such as he is; that is to say, merciful and just: Merciful, since he delivers and preserves from this perdit...
Apr 22, 2025•32 min
The world shares the message of Lady Gaga, encouraging us that "we are on the right track because we were born this way." But David, Job, and Paul, warn us that we have a problem from our conception. Article 15: The Doctrine of Original Sin We believe that by the disobedience of Adam original sin has been spread through the whole human race. It is a corruption of the whole human nature—an inherited depravity which even infects small infants in their mother’s womb, and the root which produces in ...
Apr 15, 2025•33 min
Here we begin to consider the tragedy that is humanity, in that we were created with such honor, in the image of God, but in sinful rebellion, have plunged ourselves into animal like shame. Article 14: The Creation and Fall of Humanity We believe that God created human beings from the dust of the earth and made and formed them in his image and likeness—good, just, and holy; able by their will to conform in all things to the will of God. But when they were in honor they did not understand it and ...
Apr 08, 2025•31 min
The Providence of God is not fully revealed to us, yet from the Biblical testimony, we rest assured that our Lord is engaged and active in His world. What a comfort for God's people! Article 13: The Doctrine of God's Providence We believe that this good God, after creating all things, did not abandon them to chance or fortune but leads and governs them according to his holy will, in such a way that nothing happens in this world without God’s orderly arrangement. Yet God is not the author of, and...
Apr 02, 2025•31 min
Here we confess that our Lord's creation of all things includes the angels. This opposes those that deny the reality of spirits, or who claim there are equal opposing forces of good and evil. Article 12: The Creation of All Things We believe that the Father, when it seemed good to him, created heaven and earth and all other creatures from nothing, by the Word—that is to say, by the Son. God has given all creatures their being, form, and appearance and their various functions for serving their Cr...
Mar 25, 2025•32 min
One reason the Eastern and Western Church divided, was a difference over the role and work of the Holy Spirit. With the Western Church, the Belgic testifies that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son. Article 11: The Deity of the Holy Spirit We believe and confess also that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son—neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but only proceeding from the two of them. In regard to order, the Spirit is the third person of the Trinity—of one and th...
Mar 18, 2025•33 min
Jesus was not just a human, like us, but he is also revealed to be eternal, and thus God. Though this brings us into conflict with Muslims, and challenges our civil religion, we can not deny Scripture. Article 10: The Deity of Christ We believe that Jesus Christ, according to his divine nature, is the only Son of God—eternally begotten, not made or created, for then he would be a creature. He is one in essence with the Father; coeternal; the exact image of the person of the Father and the “refle...
Mar 11, 2025•30 min
While the word Trinity isn't found in God's Word, in Article 9, we have an example of how we take such truths straight from the Scripture. Proof texting is not the "bogeyman" that some today claim! Article 9: The Scriptural Witness on the Trinity All these things we know from the testimonies of Holy Scripture as well as from the effects of the persons, especially from those we feel within ourselves.The testimonies of the Holy Scriptures, which teach us to believe in this Holy Trinity, are writte...
Mar 04, 2025•32 min
One Essence, yet Three Persons? The word Trinity isn't in the Bible, so when did the church start using it? And how do songs from Arius and the Ghost Busters play into our proper understanding of God? We cover it all in this episode! Article 8: The Trinity In keeping with this truth and Word of God we believe in one God, who is one single essence, in whom there are three persons, really, truly, and eternally distinct according to their incommunicable properties— namely, Father, Son, and Holy Spi...
Feb 25, 2025•31 min
The sixth article addressing the authority of God's Word, we consider how catechisms, confessions, and even creeds, hold authority only to the extent that they properly reflect Scripture. Article 7: The Sufficiency of Scripture We believe that this Holy Scripture contains the will of God completely and that everything one must believe to be saved is sufficiently taught in it. For since the entire manner of service which God requires of us is described in it at great length, no one— even an apost...
Feb 18, 2025•31 min•Season 2Ep. 207
What are God's people to do with the extra-Biblical books of the Apocrypha? They appear in Roman Catholic Bibles. They are regarded by the Eastern Orthodox Church. Are they banned and forbidden by Protestants? Or, should they be read, even if they are kind of mediocre? Learn more in today's Episode! Article 6: The Difference Between Canonical and Apocryphal Books We distinguish between these holy books and the apocryphal ones, which are the third and fourth books of Esdras; the books of Tobit, J...
Feb 11, 2025•32 min
What came first, the Bible or the Church? In Article 5 of the Belgic Confession, we continue to outline what we understand about God's Word, and both its authentication and authority. Article 5: The Authority of ScriptureWe receive all these books and these only as holy and canonical, for the regulating, founding, and establishing of our faith. And we believe without a doubt all things contained in them—not so much because the church receives and approves them as such but above all because the H...
Feb 04, 2025•30 min
Why is the Bible called Canonical? Did the church create the Bible, or does the Bible create the church? When were the 66 books of the Protestant Bible recognized? Episode 204 answers these questions and more! Article 4: The Canonical BooksWe include in the Holy Scripture the two volumes of the Old and New Testaments. They are canonical books with which there can be no quarrel at all.In the church of God the list is as follows: In the Old Testament, the five books of Moses—Genesis, Exodus, Levit...
Jan 28, 2025•32 min
The second of six Articles focusing on God's Revelation, and specifically the Scripture. Here we discuss how we have received God's Word, and recognize it as both Holy and Divine. Article 3: The Written Word of God We confess that this Word of God was not sent nor delivered “by human will,” but that “men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God,” as Peter says. Afterward our God— with special care for us and our salvation— commanded his servants, the prophets and apostles, to commit thi...
Jan 21, 2025•31 min
While Article 1 confesses the reality of God, Article 2 starts to explore how we come to know this God. Scripture and the Confession point to two books telling us of who God is, Creation and His Word. Article 2: The Means by Which We Know God We know God by two means: First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of Go...
Jan 14, 2025•32 min
The Belgic Confession begins with a declaration of who God is. We discuss what the confessions means when it says He is a "simple Being," and then explore ten of His attributes that it focuses on. Article 1: The Only GodWe all believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that there is a single and simple spiritual being, whom we call God— eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, unchangeable, infinite, almighty; completely wise, just, and good, and the overflowing source of all good. This is a...
Jan 07, 2025•33 min
Our hosts share about an upcoming training opportunity in West Michigan. For more details, or to register, check out the Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/our-three-forms-of-unity-tickets-1050672167737?msockid=3c83194c9de6682f223b0bcc9c986909 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threeformspodcast.substack.com...
Dec 17, 2024•9 min
