Wilderness Road Baptist Assembly

Kevin DeYoung has a very helpful post regarding an obscure Dutch Reformed minister, Jacobus Frelinghuysen (1691- 1747) who pastored at the beginning of the great awakening. Frelinghysen was known by George Whitefield and respected by Jonathan Edwards. In DeYoung’s article he highlights seven important lessons that can be gleaned from his ministry that can benefit all of us who hold to a reformed position.   Since it may be beneficial for us to think through each of these slowly, I thought that I would be best to post each of the seven individually in a series:

“1. Dead orthodoxy is deadly. It can be hard for those who bemoan the atheological nature of today’s church (as I do) to admit it, but it’s true: orthodoxy can be dead, and when it dies it is deadly. Frelinghuysen encountered Reformed churches filled with self righteousness and empty formalism. They had the appearance of godliness, but knew not its power. His emphases on conversion and piety were not always welcome, but they were necessary. Let us not be so afraid of emtionalism and subjectivism that we mistake lifeless orthodoxy for faithfulness.”

It is very easy for us to allow our heritage, our doctrine and our order of service to place a thin veneer of godliness over our cold, indifferent, stubborn and rebellious hearts and therefore deceive ourselves as to our true state before God.

Kevin DeYoung has a very helpful post regarding an obscure Dutch Reformed minister, Jacobus Frelinghuysen (1691- 1747) who pastored at the beginning of the great awakening. Frelinghysen was known by George Whitefield and respected by Jonathan Edwards. In DeYoung’s article he highlights seven important lessons that can be gleaned from his ministry that can benefit all of us who hold to a reformed position.  This is a second in the series.

2. Tradition is a wonderful servant but a terrible master. Frelinghuysen followed the Three Forms of Unity. He often preached from and referenced the Heidelberg Catechism. He was, gladly, a confessional Calvinist. He believed in harnessing the power of tradition.

But he was not a slave to traditionalism. In objecting to Frelinghuysen’s insistence on using free prayers and his collaborating with other evangelicals, Classis Amsterdam hurrumphed, “We must be careful to do things in a Dutch way in our churches.” The Dutch leaders did not like his deviation from the liturgy, nor did they appreciate his enthusiasm and the subjective nature of his preaching. They wanted a Dutch preacher who stuck with the Dutch ways.

Frelinghuysen did not reject his Dutch Calvinism, but he wanted to do more than carry on a tradition. He wanted to preach the new birth. As such, he was willing to partner with those who shared his theological convictions and ministry goals, regardless of denominational attachment, ethnic or linguistic background, or social distinctions.

We must be very careful that in our ongoing desire to be biblically orthodox that we do not hold tradition equal in authority to the Scriptures. However, we do hold that the Scriptures regulate how God desires us to worship Him and we must be careful that we do not allow subjective pragmatism to dictate how worship is to be offered to God. We believe that God honors preaching that is biblical, enthusiastic and pointed.  The “partnership” issue would have been a somewhat different matter in Frelinghuysen’s time and ours. How to carry out partnerships now would have to be one that was cautiously and very carefully considered in our day.

Each day we have been posting one of the seven points that Kevin DeYoung made concerning a Dutch Reformed minister Jacobus Frelinghuysen (1691-1747). There are some weighty lessons to be learned from DeYoung’s very helpful post.

3. God blesses preaching that is scriptural, personal, and evangelical. Some sermons don’t translate well to the printed page, but Frelinghuysen’s still burst with life. When they are not catechetical, his sermons invariably work from a single text and pulse with numerous biblical allusions and references. He knew his Bible, trusted it implicitly, and preached from it explicitly.

Besides being scriptural, Frelinghuysen’s sermons are evangelical in the best sense of the word. Nearly every sermon I read dealt with the sinfulness of man, the holiness of God, the reality of heaven and hell, and the necessity of receiving the gospel and experiencing the new birth. This is preaching God can use. And did. More than 300 were converted under Frelinghuysen’s ministry.

His sermons were also intensely personal. I don’t mean Frelinghuysen used personal illustrations or got “authentic.” He did something better. He spoke directly to his hearers.  He wasn’t afraid to warn, plead, and cajole. For example:

Oh, that you could be aroused! Seek the Lord, I pray you, while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. For you cannot be assured of your life for a moment. Avail yourself, then, of the present moment. The Lord may be found right now, but you do not know how long that will last. Right now He invites you to come so that He may offer you His favor and grace. He stands with open arms and waits. Do not let this season of grace–the time in which He may be found–pass you by.

Does the preaching in your church (my church!) sound like this? Are we preaching the gospel to our people or merely explaining what the gospel is about? No amount of structural tinkering or missional activity can replace the personal, passionate, pleading of robust gospel preaching.

The fourth installment in a seven part series that Kevin DeYoung posted regarding a Dutch Reformed minister Jacobus Frelinghuysen (1691-1747).

4. Do not neglect the third mark of the church. To the chagrin of nearly everyone, Frelinghuysen reintroduced the practice of church discipline. He set high standards for the Lord’s Table. The Supper was not a converting ordinance, but a meal for the truly regenerate. Following 1 Corinthians 5 and Matthew 18, Domine Frelinghuysen put unrepentant sinners out of the church, a practice that encouraged holiness and outraged many of his people.

In addition to DeYoung’s article here is a brief excerpt from Albert Mohler’s article regarding the shift in our culture and the resulting effects upon church discipline.

This great shift in church life followed the tremendous cultural transformations of the early twentieth century—an era of “progressive” thought and moral liberalization. By the 1960s, only a minority of churches even pretended to practice regulative church discipline. Significantly, confessional accountability and moral discipline were generally abandoned together.

The theological category of sin has been replaced, in many circles, with the psychological concept of therapy. As Philip Reiff has argued, the “Triumph of the Therapeutic” is now a fixture of modern American culture.³ Church members may make poor choices, fail to live up to the expectations of an oppressive culture, or be inadequately self-actualized—but they no longer sin.

Individuals now claim an enormous zone of personal privacy and moral autonomy. The congregation—redefined as a mere voluntary association—has no right to intrude into this space. Many congregations have forfeited any responsibility to confront even the most public sins of their members. Consumed with pragmatic methods of church growth and congregational engineering, most churches leave moral matters to the domain of the individual conscience.

As Thomas Oden notes, the confession of sin is now passé and hopelessly outdated to many minds.

Naturalistic reductionism has invited us to reduce alleged individual sins to social influences for which individuals are not responsible. Narcissistic hedonism has demeaned any talk of sin or confession as ungratifying and dysfunctional. Autonomous individualism has divorced sin from a caring community. Absolute relativism has regarded moral values as so ambiguous that there is no measuring rod against which to assess anything as sin. Thus modernity, which is characterized by the confluence of these four ideological streams, has presumed to do away with confession, and has in fact made confession an embarrassment to the accommodating church of modernity.⁴

The very notion of shame has been discarded by a generation for which shame is an unnecessary and repressive hindrance to personal fulfillment. Even secular observers have noted the shamelessness of modern culture. As James Twitchell comments:

We have in the last generation tried to push shame aside. The human-potential and recovered-memory movements in psychology; the moral relativism of audience-driven Christianity; the penalty-free, all-ideas-are-equally-good transformation in higher education; the rise of no-fault behavior before the law; the often outrageous distortions in the telling of history so that certain groups can feel better about themselves; and the “I’m shame-free, but you should be ashamed of yourself” tone of political discourse are just some of the instances wherein this can be seen.⁵

Twitchell sees the Christian church aiding and abetting this moral transformation and abandonment of shame-which is, after all, a natural product of sinful behavior. “Looking at the Christian Church today, you can only see a dim pentimento of what was once painted in the boldest of colors. Christianity has simply lost it. It no longer articulates the ideal. Sex is on the loose. Shame days are over. The Devil has absconded with sin.”⁶ As Twitchell laments, “Go and sin no more” has been replaced with “Judge not lest you be judged.”

4. Thomas C. Oden, Corrective Love: The Power of Communion Discipline (St. Louis: Concordia, 1995), p. 56.

5. James B. Twitchell, For Shame: The Loss of Common Decency in American Culture (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), P. 35

56. Ibid., p. 149.

The sixth installment in a seven part series that Kevin DeYoung posted regarding a Dutch Reformed minister Jacobus Frelinghuysen (1691-1747).

6. Doctrinal fidelity and evangelistic fervor do not have to be at odds.Frelinghuysen did not accept that head and heart had to pull in opposite directions. He embraced traditional Calvinist theology, utilized zealous frontier-style preaching, accepted confessional standards, and labored earnestly for conversions. He held together diverse inclinations that don’t have to be apart.

Martin Lloyd-Jones gives some theological principles for Reformed evangelism:*

1. The supreme object of the work of evangelism is to glorify God, not save souls.

2. The only power that can do this work is the Holy Spirit, not our own strength.

3. The one and only medium through which the Spirit works, is the Scriptures; therefore, we “reason out of the Scriptures,” like Paul did.

4. These preceding principles give us the true motivation for evangelism–a zeal for God and a love for others.

5. There is a constant danger of heresy through a false zeal and employment of unscriptural methods.

* Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Presentation of the Gospel, 6-7, and cited in Metzger, Tell the Truth, 26.

The fifth installment in a seven part series that Kevin DeYoung posted regarding a Dutch Reformed minister Jacobus Frelinghuysen (1691-1747).

5. Fear God, not people. Many of his contemporaries deeply despised Frelinghuysen. “I am the man everyone talks about,” he wrote about himself, “beloved by many, hated by many more.” Despite the onslaught of criticism and opposition, he pressed on with courage. His motto: “I seek not praise. I fear not blame.”

This quote from Curtis C. Thomas’ book Practical Wisdom for Pastors (Crossway, 2001) provides some practical insight about the fear of man in the pulpit.

If we ever get to the point where our message is rounded off so that we avoid a particular passage, a needed subject, a pointed rebuke or biblical command for fear that we are going to offend and thereby run off a member, then we have begun to fear men rather than striving to please our Master. That’s a temptation into which Satan wants us to fall. He wants people leaving after our messages very comfortable, soothed, and feeling good about us. But sometimes, in order for us to be faithful, some people will leave the message not feeling very good about us. The truth should comfort the hurting but also unsettle the comfortable.

The seventh and last post in a series that Kevin DeYoung posted regarding a Dutch Reformed minister Jacobus Frelinghuysen (1691-1747)

7. Passion and courage are no excuses for a harsh spirit. Like all heroes (save one), Frelinghuysen had his weaknesses. In fact, he probably had more than most. He was a hothead and seldom irenic. He was harsh toward his opponents and judgmental at times toward his congregation. His demand for a heart-experience kept from the Table some Christians who made a solid profession and were not living in immorality, but could not live up to Frelinghuysen’s subjective standards. Later in life, he became more aware of his character flaws and realized that some of the “persecution” was owing to his own prophetic bullheadedness. Likewise, he was sorry he had labeled so many of his colleagues “unconverted.”

I agree with DeYoung’s observation, but one wonders how Frelinghysen would have dealt with today’s atmosphere of undisciplined,  easily offended church goers and the wholesale disregard for the truth of the Scriptures. We certainly must use caution in dealing with individuals and seek to balance grace and truth, and we must speak the truth but in love. At the same time we must be careful not to become so concerned about becoming offensive that we never confront real issues and become afraid to speak boldly about them from the Scriptures.