West Port Experiment

During the recent COVID-19 crisis, many Christian churches have closed their doors, cancelling regular public worships services, though often utilizing telecommunications to facilitate God’s worship in private home contexts. What principles do confessionally Reformed and Presbyterian elders consider when making their decision? These are the ones that factored in to my mind.

1. Worship is priority number one. God’s honor comes before man’s honor, His being before ours. “Thy love is better than life.” We should sooner join the three Hebrew children and lay down our lives than surrender an inch of God’s worship. The First Table comes before the Second, and if there is an apparent conflict, the general rule is to surrender our own interests.

In an age where institutionalized religion gets a bad rap, where people vainly imagine they can take a pass on church, but still be “spiritual,” we must insist all the more firmly on the Lord’s rightful claim to all outward observances of public worship. “Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD” (Lev. 19:30). It is wickedness to neglect the courts of the Lord; for when the elders call, the King calls. Further, we do a gross disservice to our fellow man if we fail to stress just how vital public worship is in the economy of salvation. We must reject Rome’s sacerdotal church-olatry. But it is by the “foolishness of preaching” that we are are saved. Outside of the Church there is “no ordinary possibility of salvation” (WCF 25.2).

It also bespeaks a poor state of soul to be too ready to leave off the public worship of God. “One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple” (Psa. 27:4). Only with great reluctance before obvious providential hindrances should we withdraw ourselves from Zion’s courts. And elders, who should be calling the saints together, must be all the more careful to cancel services.

2. Human life is sacred and must be preserved. And so the Shorter Catechism puts it, “The sixth commandment requireth all lawful endeavors to preserve our own life and the life of others.” To be sure, caution can become excessive, even paralyzing. If we are unduly anxious about the remotest of threats, we will barricade ourselves in our homes. “There is a lion in the way!” Such flimsy excuses do not please God. Duty entails risk! But excessive risk is quite another thing. And then there is risk for others who are more vulnerable. Calculating these risks is not always easy, to be sure. But at some point, protecting life has the deciding word. A blizzard on the Lord’s day strikes us as an obvious reason to cancel services in the interests of safety. But a microscopic virus? The threat may seem remote, but history bears out the very lethal reality of epidemics.

We all have a responsibility to protect and safeguard life. But the civil magistrate has a unique responsibility. Private individuals and the Church in its spiritual capacity do not have the power to coerce. The state does (Gen. 9:6, Rom. 13:-4). And not only must it avenge lawless bloodshed, but it is authorized to enact and enforce just laws to prevent real threats to life and health (Exod. 21:33-36). More on this below.

Given the present situation, others have helpfully noted that Moses gave the Theocracy quarantine laws.[1] It seems clear that the power to quarantine was not just for ceremonial holiness, but also for the benefit of public health (Lev. 5:3, Num. 29:16). The whole camp of Israel had to stay put for a whole week while Miriam was quarantined “without the camp” for her leprosy. It would only make sense that the civil power would enforce such laws, lest the contagion break out in the general population. Arguably, a merciful provision regarding the Passover was also made for those ceremonially unclean for having touched a dead body (Num. 9:1-14). This all being said, how such laws should be made, implemented, and enforced in the modern day is certainly up for debate.

3. God resolves ‘conflicts’ and conditions His own priorities. To be sure, this seeming ‘clash’ of commandments can be unnerving. To us, it seems that it is this Commandment or that one, but not both. But this ‘clash’ is only apparent. Never are we allowed to sin; but in some cases, God qualifies His own commandments. Normally, we may not kill. But in a just war, we may. It is unlawful for a woman to be with another man while her husband lives; but if he dies, she is free to marry another. This is not bottom-up relativism. This is top-down duty, adjusted to circumstances in a fallen, sinful world by the Lawgiver Himself. The Mosaic “case laws” demonstrate this principle over and over.

This also applies to public worship. Under all normal circumstances, we must “not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is” (Heb. 12:25). Worship comes first! Our jobs, our pleasures, and certainly our comfort, must take back seat. But our Lord pointed out that even the Sabbath law had exceptions.[2] Our Master indicated that the priests “profane” the Sabbath and are “blameless” (Matt. 12:5; “profane” here obviously not literal). It is, says the Sabbath’s Lord, “lawful to do good on the sabbath days,” lawful “to save life,” for “the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mk. 2:27, 3:4). We Reformed folk, then, give doctors and nurses a pass to work on the Lord’s day. And if someone is too sick or too infectious to join the congregation, they are excused. God can “be to them a little sanctuary.” At no point, then, is the law really broken. At no point is there some internal contradiction between our duties to God and our duties to man. But sometimes the Lord of the Sabbath calls us to do things we normally wouldn’t do on the Sabbath. It would be conceivable, then, that given the right circumstances, a session might cancel services in the interests of public health. Why? Because the Judge adjudicates. He resolves the seeming ‘clash’ of worship and life as He sees fit. And O how merciful He is! He freely qualifies His own commandment, exempting us from worship to heal and save life. So, worship comes first, unless God says it doesn’t.

Now, great care must be exercised. Carnal men frequently hijack God’s own qualifications. They stretch His merciful, humane provisions to drive a semi-truck through them. The Pharisees were masters of such subtlety. The surest test is not the policy itself, but its spirit. What motivates us to abstain from church, or as elders to suspend public services? Is it to “save life” in such truly exceptional circumstances, or does it betray an inordinate, immoderate care for our life? “Skin for skin: all that a man hath will he give for his life.” Let us ever be mortifying all laziness and cowardice!

But at the same time, we must also beware of the subtle leaven of these same Pharisees’ devaluation of human life, ostensibly in the interests of worship. Our Lord’s adversaries had so lost all perspective on the heart of God – and the very spirit of the law itself. They boasted themselves to be keen students of the law, but had they never read that saying, “I will have mercy and not sacrifice?” God’s law-qualification is law.  To curtail God’s kind provision is to make a law above the law. We can easily fall into this fatal mistake, but it soon creates a slavish spirit that is wholly contrary to the Gospel and an overrating of even the best of men (who are, after all, men at best).

4. Let us obey the higher powers. Clearly, God comes first. He is King. “We ought to obey God rather than man.” But our King has told us to submit to “the higher powers,” and not to “resist the power” in all things lawful. We disobey only when we must disobey, and we certainly don’t do it flippantly. The NT epistles resonate with appeals to the early Christians to live moderate, honorable, and peace-loving lives, that they may commend the Gospel. The Apostles did not want the early Christians to be known as petulant rabble-rousers. Willing martyrs at the Lord’s clear call? Yes. Headstrong trouble-seekers?Most certainly not.

Is it, however, lawful for the civil authorities forcibly to close Christian churches? Only if those churches are engaged in illegal behavior that endangers the fabric of civil society. The state should be the patron of Christ’s Church, not its adversary. However, if certain churches act recklessly and threaten the life or limb of themselves or others, then absolutely, they should use their civil authority to bring such disorder to an end. (Note, this is not a blanket endorsement of particular states’ policies and actions.)

It is also important to underscore that our government has a legitimate authority in civil matters as well as around sacred matters, in civil things. Even though our nation is a covenant-breaking land, in rebellion against God and His Christ, we cannot conclude this absolves us from our duty to obey in civil things. “Infidelity, or difference in religion, doth not make void the magistrates’ just and legal authority, nor free the people from their due obedience to them: from which ecclesiastical persons are not exempted” (WCF 23.4). So, is the state intruding on the rightful province of the Church in the COVID-19 crisis? There is obviously a range of state actions, varying throughout the U.S. and Canada, ranging from ‘guidelines,’ to appeals, to unambiguous legal mandates. I think we can all agree, however, that no matter how reprobate any of our particular officials may be, the clear issue at hand is public health. Thankfully, they are not shoving SOGI laws down our throats … yet. They are not forbidding faithful ministers from preaching the unadulerated Word of God or the church from exercising biblical discipline … yet. (And may the Lord ever forbid it!) But I would argue that even the outright Ahabs and Jezebels out there are by God’s common, restraining favor seeking the interests of public health. Too much? Maybe, maybe not. But let’s give the benefit of the doubt and credit where credit is due (Rom. 13:7, Acts 28:2).

5. Let sessions be sessions & consciences be free. God makes the call; but He uses men in the process. Naturally, God has entrusted such practical decisions to the elders of the church. They are men of God. As a rule, confessionally Reformed elders love the Lord and yearn for God’s glory with genuine Spirit-wrought zeal. The courts of the Lord are their delight; they are the first there and the last to leave. They love the sheep, the flock over which the Holy Ghost has made them overseers. They should be courageous in their shepherding, not fleeing as the hireling. But if they discern that the sheep themselves – comprised of souls as well as bodies – are in some true danger, that coming to church for a season might entail greater risk to themselves or others, then they ought to make the call. That’s what they’re there for. On the other hand, if they believe the risk is either overblown or not as great as many might fear, and in their weighed, collective judgment, after study and advice from colleagues, they decide it is safe enough to expose themselves and their people to the risks claimed, then our default should be to trust and not judge them. And if they do so without wrongly contravening civil authorities in the proper exercise of their duty, then by all means let them lead the way. “I joy’d when to the house of God / go up, they said to me.”

Let’s just all remember that one size doesn’t always fit all. Each session knows its own congregation’s unique circumstances best. Many practical considerations factor in, such as church size, whether the church rents or owns, whether they are in an area of much greater outbreak or not, whether they have a greater number of the elderly and vulnerable or not, etc. They have to care for this flock, not others’. They shall give account to their Master. Let us give each other the benefit of the doubt. Let us recognize that good men often disagree … or just don’t understand everything at play over the fence. If you’ve kept your church doors open and can do so, God be praised. If you felt compelled to close the church doors, God be praised too – though we lament with you that it should be so and pray that they may very soon reopen. “My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God” (Psa. 84:2). But let us all be careful not to judge brethren rashly. To our own Lord we all stand or fall.

“Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another” (Rom. 14:19).

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[1] Special thanks to Rev. Michael Ericson for his contributions here. And Al Mohler recently suggested that Israel was the first to have documented quarantine laws.

[2] I use this term here very sparingly since it could smack of contemporary situation ethics. It should be noted, however, that our Lord employs it in treating ethical matters (Matt. 5:32, παρεκτὸς; cf. Acts 26:29) and is also employed in our subordinate standards (“except so much as it to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy,” S. Cat. 61, L. Cat. 117).