The Call to Work and Worship
Mark E. Dever
April 1, 1996
I have been pastor of a small congregation in Washington, D.C. for slightly more than a year and a half. Of all the controversies that I have—wittingly and unwittingly—brought upon our life together, perhaps none has been more surprising or more telling than the one involving Article XV of our Statement of Faith.
Our Statement of Faith is a typical mid-nineteenth-century Baptist confession of faith, known as the "New Hampshire Confession" (after the place of its composition). It has been the most widely used confession among Baptist churches in America for the last century and a half. It was this Statement of Faith that our church adopted at our first meeting in 1878. Since that time, the Statement of Faith has lain little used, residing in the church minutes, but not in members' minds.
As a part of re-establishing our church on firmer doctrinal grounds, I have felt it my duty to reacquaint our members with it. And, in this process, what do you think the most controversial aspect of our Statement of Faith has been? The statements on justification that set us off from Greek Orthodox or Roman Catholics? The statements on free grace and the perseverance of the saints that set us off from Arminian evangelicals? The statements on baptism and church government that separate us off from other Reformed bodies? The statements on the authority and inerrancy of
Scripture that mark us off from so many churches today?
None of these, in fact, has caused the stir that Article XV, "Of the Christian Sabbath" has caused. It reads "We believe that the first day of the week is the Lord's Day, or Christian Sabbath; and is to be kept sacred to religious purposes, by abstaining from all secular labor and sinful recreations; by the devout observance ...
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