Christians & Their Vows
The series closes with the kingship of Christ, celebrated in Psalms 24 and 68, standing behind the gifts Christ gives his church in Ephesians 4. Dennison also considers Calvin’s own view of how church officers are chosen, tying it back to the vows those officers take.
The church’s order and offices are not mere organizational necessities, Dennison argues, but reflections of heavenly realities themselves. Surveying several New Testament passages, he calls for both respect toward church officers and humility from those who hold that office.
The modern church has largely abandoned sabbath worship and rest, Dennison laments, working out what it truly means to keep ‘the Day of the Lord.’ Believers as a ‘royal priesthood’ carry real vows concerning how that day is kept, he argues.
Recovering the seriousness with which the Puritans approached oath-taking, Dennison examines the doctrinal significance built into the OPC’s own marriage ceremony. Against today’s unhealthy state of marriage, he insists that marriages are made strong only through Christ.
Dennison grounds the value of the human body in the example of Christ’s own risen body before turning to what the Bible actually says about sexuality and marriage. The result is a careful accounting of what marriage is, and just as importantly, what it is not.
Lamenting a decline in Christian piety and a loose evangelical ecumenicism, Dennison walks carefully through the actual vows taken at church membership from a Reformed, Presbyterian perspective. As throughout the series, he returns to the comfort that Christ himself keeps these vows on our behalf.
Baptism’s passivity, which emphasizes God’s grace toward us, gets set against the active self-scrutiny called for at the Lord’s Table. Dennison surveys various views of the Supper along the way, drawing on the striking imagery of Psalm 74:12-14.
Dennison contrasts the world’s view of baptism with the biblical one, unpacking the cleansing symbolism of the baptismal water and the meaning behind the questions asked at the font. He closes by connecting earthly fathers to God the Father himself.
God himself is an oath-making God, Dennison argues, which means our whole reality is oath-bound from the start, a pattern he traces back to the striking covenant ritual of Genesis 15. He applies this directly to the Presbyterian understanding of baptism and the oaths taken there.
Death itself makes plain the oath-bound character of all human life, Dennison observes at the start of this series, rooted in the ramifications of God’s covenant with us. Baptism marks our entry into that oath, one which Christ himself ultimately keeps on our behalf.