THE BELGIC CONFESSION OF FAITH – A Commentary – By Dr.
Chuck Baynard
The Belgic Confession of Faith, Article I
There Is Only One God
We all believe with the heart and confess with the mouth that there is
one only simple and spiritual Being, which we call God; and that He is eternal,
incomprehensible, invisible, immutable, infinite, almighty, perfectly wise,
just, good, and the overflowing fountain of all good.
And God spoke all these words, saying:
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of bondage. "You
shall have no other gods before Me. You
shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything
that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is
in the water under the earth; you
shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a
jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third
and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to
thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. (Exodus 20:1-6)
You are My witnesses," says
the LORD, "And My servant whom I have chosen, That you may know and believe
Me, And understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, Nor shall
there be after Me. (Isa. 43:10)
In the first commandment God
says there shall be no other gods before me. This does not mean there is another
God that we may choose. There is no clash of the Titans as one god seeks to
wrest control from another. Isaiah 43:10 is very clear about this. In Isaiah we
also notice another great truth, all that we can know about God is what God has
revealed about Himself. All mankind
does not equally understand the Bible. It takes the supernatural revelation of
God the Holy Spirit for man to see this truth about God. Speaking of man in
general, man has recognized that he is not the superior force in the universe
and man has sought to create images of these perceived powers and to worship
these images. (Romans 1) When
another person or event revealed a God to the natural man, this natural man
added this new god to his collection of gods. Among the ancient peoples only
Israel was monotheistic, that is, had only one God. The incident concerning the
Ark of the Covenant reveals the attempt of that pagan people to simply add the
living God to their system of gods whom they served. (1 Sam. 5)
The Belgic confession at this
point continues with the names of some of the attributes of God. First, God has
only revealed Himself in His attributes or personality as they have been reveled
both by name and by God’s interaction with mankind. The conclusion then that
God is the only God and from God alone comes all good is a reasonable and
logical conclusion.
John Calvin in the Institutes
of the Christian Religion begins book one with a treatment of the knowledge
of God and concludes that natural man when he considers the world around him
will decide there is a God from the complexity yet simplicity of order in
nature. Calvin also concludes that as man turns inward and examines himself,
man’s eyes will be drawn upward toward God and man will come to the same
conclusion from his own being that there is a created order and this order
demands a God of creation. Thus the statement that man cannot know himself until
he knows God because man is created in the image of God. This is in agreement
with Paul in Romans one and leaves all of mankind guilty before God, conceived
and born in sin, condemned already by their own hand.
The rallying cry of Israel,
“Hear O’Israel, the LORD your GOD is one GOD,” is the battle cry of the
church today in a sea of humanity seeking peace with a world at war with God.
The body of Christ (The church) has only one head, even Jesus Christ and cannot
embrace other so-called world religions as another alternative. Christianity is
not an inclusive religion, but is explicitly exclusive of all but the worship of
the only living God who created all things for His own glory alone.
