Gerhard Visscher on James Coates & Romans 13

 

In a recent series of Facebook posts Gerhard Visscher (former professor at the Canadian Reformed seminary in Hamilton) offered a critique of James Coates’ recent sermon on Romans 13.  Visscher worries that Coates’ sermon is “causing confusion” in their church community.  I assume he means the Canadian Reformed churches.  He writes, “I am not posting the sermon itself here because I do not wish to promote its content, which I find wanting… please be careful how you share it.”   Those are strong words.  Not “be a Berean and search the Scriptures to see if these things are so” not “here’s how the passage should be understood” but “be careful how you share it” and don’t listen to it yourself.    

I won’t attempt here to respond to all that Visscher wrote.   Instead, I would like to address a couple significant problems with Visccher’s position as he articulated it.  

First, he claims that it is an exaggeration to say that “the government forbids worship.”  Visccher insists that actually they haven’t done that.  Instead, they have merely “forbidden gathering in large numbers” and “made health regulations about how it can happen.”  That’s an incredible claim from someone who just lived through a series of lockdowns.  Actually, we have twice been reduced to numbers so small it was unlawful to gather with even one other family.  The government didn’t ask churches of a 1000 to reduce their numbers to help slow the spread of a virus.  Instead, they made it unlawful for even two families to come together.  Gathering with other families for worship wasn’t allowed… and certainly gathering as a church was forbidden!  

Of course, as Visscher argues, we were permitted to worship online, but the church is defined in the Scripture as a physical (corporate) gathering.  To suggest that the government wasn’t forbidding worship because we were permitted to do so online is to deny the (a) nature of the church, the (b) regulative principle of worship and the (c) authority of Christ!  

The irony here is that reformed men like Visscher hold to the regulative principle of worship.   That principle comes from God’s law, and it tells us that worship is to be regulated.  

But who regulates it?  

Certainly not the government.  They don’t have the authority to regulate “how it can happen!”  Neither do they have the authority to forbid the saints from gathering!   Think about the regulative principle for a moment.  Reformed churches hold that nothing can be done in worship except what God has expressly commanded; and ordinarily we say that this applies specifically to the corporate gatherings of God’s people who gather in answer to the call of the elders.  It is understood that those elders have authority to call God’s people on the Lord’s Day because God himself is calling them.  So, when the saints gather to worship God on the Lord’s Day they aren’t there on a whim.  They aren’t there by accident; and they certainly aren’t there on the basis of any human authority.   They gather because God has called them to gather, and they do when gathered - in worship - only what God has commanded. 

Second, Visscher argues that saying “citizens don’t have to obey when evil is commanded by governments” isn’t qualified enough.  He says “qualification is needed as to what exactly constitutes “evil” and “bad” in each case.  The qualification is actually quite simple and it’s one James Coates clearly made!  It's God’s law.  Evil and bad are defined by God and summarized for us in the Ten Commandments.  Visscher ought to know that the first 4 commandments have to do particularly with worship.  Who we worship, how we worship, the manner of our worship and when we worship.  When the government interferes with worship, that is bad.  This was not a mystery to our forefathers.

Third, Visscher challenges Coates to “show exactly how” the government is demanding disobedience to God or restricting obedience to Him.  Easy.  Does God’s law say anything about worship?  Of course it does.  We are to love God with all our heart, mind and strength.  How do we do that?  By worshipping God and God alone, by worshipping Him only in the way that He has commanded, by worshipping Him in the manner  that He has commanded, and by worshipping Him when He has commanded.  When the government restricted gatherings to 5 or 10  people (for example) they were interfering with something that belongs to God.  Worship is His to regulate.   He decides who can and cannot enter the house of God.  He decides what happens when they gather.  When the government began restricting the size of gatherings they were telling the Church that they have authority to decide such things.  It became impossible to obey them and God.  The saints had to make a choice: honour the Sabbath and disobey the government or desecrate the Sabbath and obey the government.  Elders were forced to decide whether to regulate worship by God’s law or regulate worship by the State’s law.   Churches had to decide whether God decides who has access to the house of God or whether the government decides who has access to the house of God.  By interfering with the Sabbath, with God’s worship and Christ’s authority in the Church the government put the saints in a position where they had to decide whether to obey God or man.

Finally, Visscher repeatedly objects to the lack of exegesis on the part of James Coates.  Having heard the sermon I expect Visscher's objections have much more to do with Coates’ conclusions than anything else.  Exegesis probably has very little to do with it.  But in case it does I would like to offer my own sermon (on Romans 13) by way of response.  The following was preached in November of 2020 before we were charged for gathering.  A manuscript is available here.