Oppression

The relationship between hierarchy and implicit faith was manifested in the miracle of Jesus’ healing of the man who had been born blind (John 9). The Holy Spirit carefully related the manifestation of that relationship to the wonder of Jesus as the light of the world. In the chapter the Spirit set the bond of light between the Lord and the man born blind against two very different entities. The first, clearly on the foreground, was the company of the Pharisees. Their hierarchy was a hierarchy of darkness. Their power, both ecclesiastical and spiritual, they used in two ways to oppose Jesus, the light of the world. They contradicted Christ’s teaching and sought to destroy the gospel by means of the law, specifically by their erroneous interpretation of the law for self-justification. They also used their spiritual and ecclesiastical authority to threaten the people. John 9:22 records the judgment of the Pharisees: if anyone should confess that Jesus was Christ, he was to be cast out of the synagogue.

The entire purpose of the Pharisees in their judgment was to oppose Christ by the abuse of their spiritual and ecclesiastical authority over the people. The Pharisees’ determination, by every means at their disposal, was to keep the people from turning to Christ and following the light.

Why were the Pharisees so opposed to Christ? What threat did he represent to them?

The threat was the Light of the World against the darkness of the world. The darkness cannot comprehend the light. The darkness must seek to destroy the light because the light threatens to show the evil deeds of the darkness. The light condemns the darkness. Not only does the light manifest the evil deeds hidden in the darkness; but also the light must condemn the darkness itself as sinful, the sinful refusal of darkness to come to the light. That darkness is unbelief and impenitence.

Thus the darkness itself is the power that threatens. It bullies and intimidates. The darkness itself is oppression. The darkness employed by the Pharisees had both perpetrators and victims. The perpetrators were those who held authority in the hierarchy. The victims were those who were under that hierarchy and were oppressed because of their implicit faith in that hierarchy.

So there is another entity that scripture places over against Jesus and the man born blind: the man’s parents. The blind man’s parents sided with the darkness over against Jesus and their very own son. Indeed, the parents were of a very different kind than the Pharisees, who carried the authority over the Jews. But the parents sided with the darkness. They allowed the darkness to dictate their speech. In their speech they enabled the continued opposition of the darkness against the light. The parents stood with the darkness, and they would see the darkness cast their own son out of the synagogue.

The blind man’s parents thought and spoke as they did because of their fear of the Jews. When the Pharisees requested the parents to present their testimony concerning their son, they testified that, indeed, he was their son. They testified also that he had been born blind and that after being healed he could see. But at the very point that truly mattered, they failed. Though they understood so clearly that it was Jesus who had given their son sight—glorious wonder of light—they refused to testify. They declared only their ignorance: “By what means he now seeth, we know not; or who hath opened his eyes, we know not: he is of age; ask him: he shall speak for himself” (v. 21). The Spirit of light gave the reason for their proclaimed ignorance concerning Jesus: they feared the Jews. The Jews had issued their threat, the threat of their use of the keys of the kingdom. They had made it clear to all the people: if anyone confessed that Jesus was the Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue (v. 22).

That was no empty threat. The Pharisees carried out their threat against the man born blind. He refused to follow his parents’ example. He refused to bow to the threatened pressure. He confessed that Jesus had healed him of his blindness. He went even further to confess that Jesus had to be from God. Upon the man’s confession the result followed. Reproached and reviled by the Pharisees, he was cast out of the synagogue (v. 34). Officially shunned and cast out of the fellowship for the sake of the light, he was cut off from his people and from salvation. He was declared an enemy of God and of God’s word for confessing Christ as the light that came from God.

The weapon chosen and used by the darkness against the light was taken from the light. Hierarchy abuses the light and presses it into the service of darkness in order to suppress the light. The fellowship of salvation held, maintained, and promoted by the church institution was so twisted and distorted to become the tool of oppression. What had been given by the word of God to be an instrument of peace and health was turned into a device of cruelty and division, breaking bonds to God and his truth.

The parents’ fear centered on their place in the synagogue. The Pharisees had complete control over membership in the synagogue. That control they exercised not in service of the truth but in service of their hierarchical authority. It mattered not whether Jesus was the Christ, the light of the world. It mattered not that Jesus, the light of the world, healed the man of the blindness with which he had been born. What mattered was what the Pharisees wanted. What mattered was that the Pharisees ruled. Membership in the synagogue was their wicked means of enforcing their rule, a rule that derived from the word of God but which they used against the Word become flesh. Therefore, the parents’ fear was the dreadful consequence of their implicit faith in the Pharisees. The word of their spiritual leaders determined their place among the covenant people of God.

The word of God in John 9 requires that attention also be paid to another element that comes to the foreground. This element is the necessity of that oppression. The darkness that must oppress and persecute the light is the darkness of hierarchy. Hierarchy will not and cannot submit to the light, Jesus Christ. Hierarchy is the rule of men who refuse to serve in behalf of Christ. Claiming his authority by ruling in his name, hierarchical men rebel against Christ and use his authority to destroy his light. Hierarchy cannot rest content to oppose Christ, who is the light, but hierarchy must work to destroy the manifestation of the light and stamp out every expression of that light. Hierarchy must not only cast Christ out of its synagogue but also everyone who confesses Jesus to be the Christ.

The character of the oppression of the darkness against the light is doctrinal. The darkness opposes the light by imposing a doctrinal determination. A doctrinal statement was at the heart of that oppressive force exercised by the Jews with the requirement of synagogue membership. Continuing membership in the synagogue depended on whether one would confess Jesus as the Christ. The parents could continue in the synagogue as members in good standing as long as they stood together with the hierarchy and its darkness. The parents did not need to deny that Jesus was the Christ. The hierarchy was content with the parents’ silent acquiescence, which was all that was necessary for the hierarchy to maintain its darkness. In the parents’ silence they would witness their son being cast out of the synagogue exactly for his confession of the truth that Jesus was sent by God.

What is the necessity of that oppression, which is doctrinal in character and is the action of church hierarchy against the light? It is the necessity of unbelief, unbelief that must drive out all truth while pretending to work in behalf of the truth. It is the necessity of unbelief that refuses trust in the light in every respect. Hierarchy must serve men instead of Christ, darkness instead of light. Hierarchy must serve the doctrines and teachings of men instead of the truth that leads only to Christ and the true freedom that he alone brings and gives. Simply put, hierarchy cannot abide the freedom of Christians to serve the Lord from their hearts. That freedom always spells the doom of all hierarchy. So also must be understood the fierce response of the Roman Catholic papacy to the gospel freedom trumpeted by the Protestant Reformation.

John 9 powerfully demonstrates the difference between the darkness and the light, between the darkness of hierarchy and implicit faith, on one side, and the light of Christ and faith in him alone, on the other side. Together on one side were the Pharisees and the parents of the blind man. Together on the other side were Jesus and the man born blind. One side was the darkness, and the other was the light.

Deliverance

But the true glory of John 9 is the light that overcame the darkness. John 9 also demonstrates the only deliverance from the darkness of hierarchy and implicit faith: the light of the world and the truth that alone sets men free and that gives light to the blind, Jesus Christ.

What was the power of that oppressive force of the Pharisees’ hierarchy? What was that power to which the blind man’s parents succumbed when they refused to testify how their son had received his sight? What was that power before the light? Could that power destroy the work of Christ? Could that power turn the light into darkness? Could that power reclaim the man whose sight Jesus had restored? Could that power still oppress the man who had confessed that Jesus was sent by God?

How blessed and tender is the record of scripture in John 9:35! “Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him…” The Light of the World heard. The Light of the World sought and found. The Light of the World gave freely all peace and comfort to him whom the hierarchy had cast out. The testimony regarding the Light of the World was made by him to whom that Light had given sight. The man born blind confessed and worshiped.

No matter the tyrannical oppression of the Pharisees. No matter the fear that they imposed on the people. No matter the fearful refusal of his parents to testify. The man born blind was truly set free by the Light of the World.

The Light of the World is the only power that can truly break the grip of hierarchical tyranny. Only the freedom of the Son of God makes the people of God truly free, breaking the blindness of darkness caused by the fear of men. Only the freedom of the Son of God living in the hearts of God’s people by faith is the power to rescue them from implicit faith. That freedom alone can break the grip of fear instilled by the authoritarian hierarchy, by which the hierarchy binds the conscience.

What exactly is it about the light of the world, Jesus Christ, that brings this glorious deliverance from both hierarchical tyranny and the implicit faith that rests in that tyranny? It is that Jesus Christ alone is the fullness of the grace and favor of God that fills the heart of the child of God with true, everlasting peace and joy. The fullness of that peace and joy brings about two important results for the sake of deliverance from hierarchical tyranny.

The first result is that all the authority of man becomes vain and empty, a mere exercise of show that carries no true meaning and significance. What before caused such fear and trembling now becomes laughable. In the light of God’s favor, the disapproval of men means nothing. Let men judge. Let the Pharisees cast out of the synagogue. Let ecclesiastical power hurl its anathemas. Let the sentences of suspension, deposition, and excommunication pour out. If Christ has justified, who can possibly condemn?

The second result is that the child of God is free to enjoy and treasure new bonds that truly help him in his freedom from hierarchy and tyranny. He is free to join the company of those who together maintain the freedom they have in the gospel of the Son of God that makes them free and keeps them in the freedom faithfully to serve their Lord. Together they are free to place themselves under the yoke of Christ as truly easy and to take upon their shoulders his burden as truly light. Together they are free to be members of a church institute that clearly manifests itself as an instrument of Christ alone, the only head and king of his church.

The man born blind, whom the Light of the World delivered from his blindness, was wondrously bound to his Lord by that deliverance. He was healed of his blindness not only to be a powerful rebuke of the Pharisees but also to confess Jesus as the Son of God and to worship him. But the blind man and his restoration to the light were also indicative of the manner in which the Light of the World gathers all those given to him by his Father in heaven. So the church is the company of those who are conceived and born in the blindness and darkness of sin and who are delivered into the light by the only Light of the whole world.

The freedom of the church of Jesus Christ is to have over it only one rule. Only one rule is to guard and keep her from the rule of men. Only one rule may be maintained to keep her from descending into the darkness of the hierarchy of men and implicit faith: the spiritual rule of the Son of God by his word and Holy Spirit.

In the service of this freedom—freedom from the hierarchy of the doctrines and commandments of men—was one of the chief principles of the Protestant Reformation. In the service of this freedom was the doctrine of justification by faith alone without works. This central doctrine of the Reformation was promoted over against the hierarchy of Rome not just because the Roman Catholic hierarchy taught the false doctrine of justification by faith and works. But the doctrine of justification by faith alone without works was also fundamental to the freedom of the Protestant Reformation because Rome’s doctrine was the doctrine of men. That doctrine spelled only the dark bondage of enslavement to men. This false doctrine of Rome in particular makes the church the arbiter of salvation. Which works, what kind, and how many were to bring a man into God’s favor is the doctrine that makes men slaves of other men and is the power of Rome’s hierarchy. Then as well as now the doctrines and commandments of men enslave, but the gospel of salvation by grace alone brings true freedom.

Certainly, it is true that the Church Order of Dordt has been so badly abused as an instrument of hierarchy. It is true that the Church Order has been so perversely abused for the sake of demanding implicit faith. One need only see how the phrase “shall be considered settled and binding” in article 31 has been twisted to demand implicit faith to bind the consciences of God’s people.

However, the Church Order of Dordt is in harmony with the truth of the Protestant Reformation. In fact, the very purpose of the Church Order, in the language of Belgic Confession 32, is “to keep all men in obedience to God” (Confessions and Church Order, 66).

One of the chief ways the Church Order of Dordt is meant to preserve the church of Christ in its freedom is its articles that deal with the relationship among officebearers and ecclesiastical assemblies. Article 2 declares that there is to be no other office in the church than that which the word of God in Christ requires. Following articles establish by the word of God and insist on the regulation of these offices according to the men selected to occupy them, the manner of that selection, and the particular duties of their offices. Article 30 carefully limits the kinds of issues that the assemblies are to take up and also identifies the way they are to treat those issues: “in an ecclesiastical manner” (Confessions and Church Order, 389). At the end of the Church Order is the strict prohibition of article 84, directed strictly against all hierarchy: “No church shall in any way lord it over other churches, no minister over other ministers, no elder or deacon over other elders or deacons” (Confessions and Church Order, 403).

Another chief way the Church Order of Dordt is meant to preserve the freedom of the church of Christ from hierarchy is article 31. Article 31 has two distinct points that together serve this freedom. The first is at the beginning, where “anyone” is declared to “have the right to appeal” (Confessions and Church Order, 390). Recognized in this connection must be the shameful attempt to limit this term “anyone.” Indeed, persons and assemblies have taken it upon themselves tyrannically to limit or prohibit. Only men and not women. Only those whose appeals show just cause why they think they have been wronged. Only those who are members, in spite of the fact that the very decisions they are appealing caused their removal from membership in the church. Only those whose protests and appeals are an acceptable length. Only those whose appeals have an acceptable tone. Only those whose appeals show sufficient deference to assemblies’ authority. In spite of all these limitations imposed by men, the word “anyone” has a powerful significance for the priesthood of every believer, which I will explore later.

The second distinct point of article 31 that stands against all hierarchy is the phrase “unless it be proved to conflict with the Word of God.” Just as with the first point, the second point has been attacked and distorted. Without going very far into the matter, it must be observed that the distortion and attack subject the word of God to church assemblies. The distortion is that the only way that what is agreed upon by majority vote would not “be considered settled and binding” is if the assemblies decide so. No believer in the church can so decide. No member is free to consider in the light of God’s word that a decision is in conflict with the word of God. However, the point in the Church Order is clear: no decision may be in conflict with the word of God. The believer in the church must be absolutely free to decide to follow only his Lord, who has redeemed him with his blood, rather than follow the decisions of men.