Before starting on the purpose of this post, I think it is appropriate to say a little about what a confession of faith is; its purpose, use, benefits….
- The WCF (and other confessions such as the Heidelberg Conf.) identify Bible doctrine such as where particular doctrines occur in scripture; what they are about; how they benefit believers and such things
- If you, for example, want to understand the doctrine of justification, and you owned a WCF, you could turn to chapter 11 and read about it. You could also trace it through scripture, if you had a WCF that included scripture citations
- A few other doctrines covered in the WCF include: Of God’s Eternal Decree; Of Providence; Of adoption; Of Sanctification; Of Saving Faith; Of Baptism; Of the Lord’s Supper…
- There are 38 chapters in the WCF
The language of the WCF is highly specific and theological. It is no easy document to understand. Although I read through it a couple of times and studied portions of it a decade or so ago, most of it went over my head.
I think that it is most useful in conjunction with Bible study, when a Bible student is striving to understand a particular doctrine.
For example, I explained in an early post of this mini-series, that I struggled to write against the Baha’i Faith. As I attempted to explain the intimate connections among Abraham, Moses and Christ, my knowledge of Bible covenants grew. As that knowledge base expanded, I then began to have other questions about the covenants and the relationship between the Testaments. When I learned of Dispensationalism, and their belief that there were two distinct people of God, Israel and the Church, I knew from my studies that this was an erroneous concept.
Since then, I have been struggling to put that to more specific words to help others make those connections, based on what the Bible says about covenants.
The WCF has aided me in more fully comprehending the above.
Merely reading the WCF in a vacuum, with no real-world task at hand, didn’t prove fruitful for me. Furthermore, I think God put it on my heart to write against the Baha’i Faith, to help some of them and to grow my own understanding about the unity of His word….
I highly recommend owning a WCF with scripture references as a reference book; to help you answer your own questions via the doctrines it explains as you read scripture and desire to understand it more fully.
John Gerstner was a mentor of the late R C Sproul, in case you’ve never heard of him. I excerpted a 7-minute, 35-second portion from one of Gerstner’s teaching videos on the WCF. He was reading and explaining the chapters 6-8, which includes:
- Chapter 6: Of the Fall of Man, of Sin and of the Punishment thereof
- Ch 7: Of God’s Covenant with Man, and
- Ch 8: Of Christ the Mediator
At the end of this post is a link to Dr Gerstner’s 24-message teaching on the WCF; the excerpt is from message 5:
The Westminster Confession of Faith – John H. Gerstner
The Westminster Confession of Faith has, for hundreds of years, served as the doctrinal foundation of the Reformed churches. In this series, Dr. Gerstner focuses his lifetime of scholarship on a comprehensive treatment of the meaning and application of this important confession for the life of the church. This is an exceptional series for pastors and church leaders.
This is the 5th in a series of messages by Dr. Gerstner on the the Westminster Confession of Faith. See other videos in the series: • The Westminster Confession of Faith -…
This message was originally published by Ligonier Ministries: https://www.ligonier.org/
Playlist of 24 messages on the WCF: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhORVCVz3B2YyeXLs8b0SAtC3OZW7Vokj