Are the Confessions Authoritative?
The following article is an excerpt from a sermon preached on October 26, 2025 at Redeeming Grace Church in Morehead, KY. You may listen to the entire sermon here.
Deuteronomy 4:1-2
1 “Now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the judgments which I am teaching you to perform, so that you may live and go in and take possession of the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you.
2 “You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.
Next, we look at verse 2 and I desire to seize this opportunity to provide timely pastoral guidance for our congregation. Verse 2 says, “You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.” Moses’ words are quite clear: do not add or take away from God’s word. Why? God does not want us to 1) ignore commands he has given us, or 2) worry about keeping commands he hasn’t given us. Now lately, within our church, there have been several group and individual discussions about the role of creeds and confessions within the life of the church. For example, does the Apostle’s or Nicene Creed have any weight or authority in the church? Does the Second London Baptist Confession have any weight or authority in the church? Or what about when Pastor Steven and I quote men like Charles Spurgeon, John Calvin, or John MacArthur? Do their words have any weight or authority in this church?
Here is what I say – to those who feel strongly that they don’t, I take your motive to be a clear, strong desire for obedience to Deuteronomy 4:2. You are zealous that we do not add or take away from the word of God and I also share this sentiment. Those who feel strongly that creeds, confessions, and quotations do carry weight, I also share that sentiment and here is why. When a man stands to preach the word, he does it with authority. We know this because Paul told Titus, “These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you.” (Titus 2:15). When his teaching is in the Spirit, coinciding with sound doctrine, and reflecting the intention of the authors of Scripture – his preaching is with authority. The authority does not rest in the preacher but in the subject matter the preacher explains, illustrates, and applies. The police officer is an authority figure not because he is the law but because of the law he enforces. Romans 13:1-3 acknowledges this truth. Faithful creeds, confessions, and quotes are doing the same work a preacher does; they are explaining, illustrating, and applying the authoritative Word of God. The difference in Scripture and the preacher, the creed, the confession, Charles Spurgeon, John Calvin, John MacArthur, Steven Stanley, and John Fry is that we can err, and the Scripture does not. Therefore, we certainly distinguish between Scripture, creeds, confessions, and quotes but we do not place faithful creeds, confessions, quotes, and preachers against Scripture when they rightly explain, illustrate, and apply Scripture.
For this reason, I often say that a confession is only as good as it accurately synthesizes Scripture. We do not add nor take away from the word of God and by God’s design, he did ordain teachers and pastors to teach us the word of God. At various times in history those teachers and pastors wrote down their teachings to form creeds, confessions, and quotations that are helpful expressions of what the Bible contains. So long as a creed, confession, quotation, and preacher accurately teach the word of God, they do it with authority, not because of their form or office but because of their right representation of God’s word. God’s word is authoritative because it comes from God. Period.
The Second London Baptist Confession acknowledges this very truth, saying, “The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, depends not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the author thereof; therefore it is to be received because it is the Word of God (1.4, Of the Holy Scriptures). And finally, those who wrote the confession said of their document, “our earnest desire is that all into whose hands this may come would follow that example of the noble Bereans, who searched the Scriptures daily that they might find out whether the things preached to them were so or not.” And so, I say today, that a creed, confession, or quotation is not the source of authority but can be used authoritatively so long as it coincides with Holy Scripture.
