What do membership vows mean?

Church membership vows summarize what it means to be a Christian, telling you what Christians believe and are called to do.

The first vow describes how we can know God. Nature can tell us that a great and powerful God exists. For us to know much more, God Himself must speak to us. He has. He has spoken in the Bible, a book written by many people the Holy Spirit inspired through many centuries. The first vow asks if you believe the Bible is what it claims to be: the Word of God.

The second vow is based on who God revealed Himself to be. He has revealed Himself to be one God, eternally existing in three persons. Persons is the best word we have. But it doesn’t exactly match our normal use of the word. For us, different persons are separate beings. But for God, the three persons are one God. The church coined the term Trinity to describe this complex reality. So the second vow asks: Do you believe God is as He has described Himself to be? The third vow shows who we are in relation to God. Who am I? Who are you?

One wonderful thing about the Bible is that it reveals a moral God. Pagans typically pat themselves on the back and blame the gods for their problems. Why was Troy destroyed in a war? Because the goddesses were jealous. Why was there a great flood? The gods thought man was too noisy. People would be fine if the gods would leave them alone.

That’s not what the Bible tells us. The Bible is far more realistic about people: we’re messed up. So the third question asks: do you confess that people are messed up? And that you are a messed-up person who needs to confess sin and profess Jesus?

Some people resist confession because they think denying guilt is the best defense. Denial is often effective with people. But it’s useless with God. It’s worse than useless; it’s a lie, and God knows it. So the third question calls for confession, and then describes the only remedy for guilt: Jesus Christ, the Savior and Lord.

The fourth vow describes our relation to other people who have made the same profession. Jesus founded the church. It’s where people who believe in Him gather. So this question asks: do you agree with the branch of the church you are joining? Do you promise to do the things Jesus tells you to do inside the church? Do you promise to be a contributing part of the body?

The fifth vow uncovers how we learn new things about God and godly living. God has given us ways to communicate with Him and cultivate our relationship with him. We call these things means of grace. We study what He said, we talk to Him in prayer, we work when we are called to work, we rest when we are called to rest, we worship Him as He directs (since worship is to glorify Him, not to entertain ourselves). So the fifth question asks if you promise to use the means of grace, so that your relationship with God will get stronger.

The sixth vow asks if we will seek God’s kingdom first—not just Sunday mornings, but at all times. What place does a Christian profession have in your life? Does it rank with your swim club membership? Jesus said to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and the things that people worry about would be added to us. And since Christians are like beggars who have been brought to the bread, we have a duty to tell other beggars where to find the same bread.

The last vow reminds you that when you take these vows, you are responding to God. You aren’t doing it for your parents. You are not doing it for the pastor. You are responding to God. Since you are responding to God, you trust that God will help you, lead you, guide you, and strengthen you until your struggle is over.

Why does the church require vows?

The Bible describes the church as the body of Jesus. Jesus is the head, and the head directs the body. What does Jesus say? “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge. Whoever denies me before men, I also will deny” (see Matt. 10:32).

Unlike some depictions of Jesus, He is not a weakling—not a God you can beat up. He is almighty, and He insists that His followers acknowledge him. Because He is almighty, we are not to be scared into silence about Him. By requiring public vows, the church gives members an opportunity to acknowledge Christ before men. Public profession of faith during membership vows is a clear time that you can remember and hold on to.

Jesus is not one for muddled compromise. He said, “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matt. 7:13-14, ESV). Jesus calls for clarity and resolute decision, so the church calls for resolute decision by means of these vows.

Furthermore, the church itself is founded by the new covenant Jesus made. It is a community created by a covenant: a sacred agreement with God and with each other, in which members eat the covenant meal, the Lord’s supper. To enter this covenant community as a full adult member, it is necessary to make a covenant. We enter the covenant community by making the same covenant as others, thereby acknowledging Jesus before people, and making a resolute decision.

Why Should We Make These Vows?

There is only one God. God says He rewards those who seek Him. Being messed up, we may instinctively think that life would be better without God. Is that you? Do you think, secretly or openly, that life would be better without God? If so, there is a book in the Bible for you: Ecclesiastes. In it, Solomon says, “I tried to figure out life under the sun,” by which he means life without God. He said, in essence, “I tried wisdom, pleasure, laughter, building projects, wealth, music, sex. And I was the king, and richer than anyone else, so I could and did go further with each than anyone else could. But in the end, each was vanity. Nothing was gained. Everything was striving after wind.”

Why is that book in the Bible? It is deep enough for the Bible, but it is really dark.

The wise read it and believe it early on in life. Others remember it later, after many mistakes, and realize they are not the only ones to discover that life is empty without God. Fools never learn its message.

However, you cannot count on having a long enough life to learn from experience. Lives are sometimes cut short. It is best to believe from the beginning that life does not get better when you try to cut yourself off from the source of life. Life does not get freer when you ignore the one in whom you live and move and have your being. Life gets worse. It loses its meaning. It becomes vanity.

Those who take the vows of membership are responding to the voice of the one and only God, who rewards those who seek Him by saving them from a vain (meaningless) life.

But, you may think, how do you know God anyway? How do you know what God will do? If it were only up to us, we wouldn’t know. We can’t see God, or measure His effects. We can only know that He exists. But not only has God spoken, but He has made covenants.

Covenants are sacred agreements that people invented to create trust between parties by binding both to keep certain promises. The ancients used them quite often. And God said, “You have a mechanism by which you create trust. I will use it, and you will understand, and trust me.”

What a marvelous thing! By His covenants, God binds Himself. We can’t bind Him or control Him. But when God makes a covenant with us, He binds Himself. This is the wonder and power of God’s covenants: by them we know what God will do. He will do what He promised.

The Bible tells us not only what God’s covenants are, but also how God keeps them. He made a covenant with Noah to never again destroy the earth by a great flood. There hasn’t been such a flood since. He made a covenant with David that David’s sons would be king after him. For 400 years, they were.

A key covenant made with Abraham covers the whole Bible. God promised to make Abraham’s descendants a great nation, to give them the Promised Land, and to bless all the nations of the world through Abraham’s descendant. God went to great lengths to assure Abraham that His promises were true, and Abraham went to great lengths because he believed Him. The rest of the Bible explains how God kept His promise to Abraham: Genesis explains how Abraham’s family began to grow and how God protected them. Exodus explains how they became a mighty nation. Joshua explains how they conquered the Promised Land. First and Second Samuel explain how kings came from Abraham. Finally, the New Testament explains how all the families of the earth are blessed in Abraham’s most important descendant: Jesus.

If you want to understand what is happening in the world today, look at how God is keeping His covenant with Abraham. He is blessing all nations through his descendant Jesus Christ. There are people who believe in Jesus everywhere. You know this from the news. The news tells you, every so often, that there are Christians being persecuted in many places.

If you want to know what God will do, look at His covenant promises: that is what you know God will do. God will do many other things you and I cannot predict, but we do know He will keep those promises.

In Luke 22:20, when Jesus instituted the Lord’s supper, Jesus took a cup and said, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” Jesus made a new covenant, a new sacred promise centered on His blood. He called it a new covenant, but that was to make it clear that He was keeping a promise God had made hundreds of years before in Jeremiah 31:31-34.

As we said, people are a mess. God promised to make a new covenant and clean up the mess: “I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts.” He promised to create a relationship: “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” This relationship is possible because their past problems were removed: “I will remember their sins no more.”

When Jesus spoke about a new covenant in His blood, He was speaking about the cross, to which He would be nailed about 15 hours later. Jesus was saying that through His death God would forgive sin. He would be the sacrifice that ended sacrificing. He would substitute Himself for His people and suffer the penalty due to them for sin. God showed that He honors and accepts this sacrifice by raising Jesus from the dead—just as was promised and prophesied.

If the idea of Jesus suffering as our substitute bothers you, consider The Hunger Games. The key event that sets up the dystopian young adult trilogy is Katniss volunteering to take her sister’s place in an annual compulsory death match. Was she wrong to do it? Was her sister wrong to accept it? Her sister couldn’t undo it, and Katniss was better equipped to face the arena. You can think of Katniss as a Christ-figure. Jesus went to the Games for us.

In The Hunger Games, the tributes are innocent. We, however, are messed up. They faced unjust slaughter, but we are facing a just Judge. We can’t win our case, because the truth is that we are sinners. We need a better-equipped substitute to face our just penalty in our place. And that is what God has provided: Jesus Christ, who made a new covenant by His blood.

Through Jesus’ cross, God forgives our sins and does not make us pay a penalty that is beyond us. Through His resurrection and ascension, Jesus proves to be our God, and we His people. He creates a relationship in which we receive help. By sending the Holy Spirit, He gives us the ability and the desire to change. He cleans up the mess.

To those who repent of their sins and believe in Jesus, God promises forgiveness for our guilt, the removal of our shame, and a relationship with God that answers our loneliness, soothes our anxiety, and calms our fears. He gives power to change our lives in response to His direction. He gives joy in a life that has meaning, relationship, and hope. At death we have this assurance, that God will not abandon or condemn someone He has forgiven and adopted.

This is the new covenant Jesus made, “The wonderful exchange that he has made with us: by becoming Son of man with us, he has made us sons of God with him; by his descent to earth, he has prepared an ascent to heaven for us, by taking on our mortality he has conferred his immortality upon us; by accepting our weakness, he has strengthened us by his power; by receiving our poverty, he has transferred his wealth to us; by taking the weight of our iniquity upon himself (which oppressed us) he has clothed us with his righteousness” (Calvin, Institutes, IV:xvii:2-3).

This is what God promises to do for those who enter into covenant with Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. The Bible establishes for us that God has made these promises, and God keeps His promises.

The question therefore is not, why take vows and enter into covenant with God through Jesus? The question is, why not?

Author John Edgar is pastor of Elkins Park, Pa., RPC.