Can Christians Take Oaths?

1. 0:00Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 37: But may we swear an oath in God's name, if we do it reverently?
2. 0:16Yes, when the government demands it, or when necessity requires it in order to maintain and promote truth and trustworthiness for God's glory and for our neighbor's good. Such oath-taking is grounded in God's
3. 0:30Word and was rightly used by the saints in the Old and New Testaments. May we also swear by saints or other created things No, a legitimate oath is calling upon God as the one who knows my heart to witness to
4. 0:46the truth and to punish me if I swear falsely. No created thing is worthy of such honor.
5. 0:55Lord’s Day 37 is unique in that we find that it is the Lord’s Day that deals with the same commandment. This is the only commandment of which this is true in the Heidelberg Catechism, that it dedicates, it devotes
6. 1:07two Lord's Days to it. And I believe partly because of what we said in Lord’s Day 36 of the importance of God's great name, that we don't blaspheme his name, but also that we take
7. 1:20his name upon our lips properly, so that first, but also because of the context of this very commandment in the day and age of the Reformation. And one of the things I found very helpful
8. 1:33is a commentary by Kevin DeYoung where he talks about that. He says, "For starters, the their pastoral council to ex-Catholics.
9. 1:43And you think of that, there were nuns, there were monks, there were priests who made these vows of celibacy before the Lord, a lifelong vow of celibacy, that now if they came to the Reformed faith,
10. 1:56that they would have to not only leave the Roman Catholic Church, but to bring break those vows that they had made.
11. 2:02So how do you minister to someone like that who's gonna be stricken in their conscience that this is wrong, I've made a vow?
12. 2:09And John Calvin even considered these vows and he considered them as being rash because they were all based upon the meritorious favor of God that by taking these vows,
13. 2:19These nuns, these priests, these monks had done so in order to gain God's favor.
14. 2:24So he mentioned that as well.
15. 2:26Not only were they to basically break those vows, but they were to repent that they had ever made them.
16. 2:32And then you take this and you go to the other extreme and you consider the Anabaptist who went all the way to the opposite extreme in the sense that they didn't allow oaths of any kind.
17. 2:43They went to Matthew chapter 5 where Jesus says, "Let your yes be yes and your no be no."
18. 2:48Well, that quote by Jesus came in the context of the people of his day, Pharisees and others who were taking oaths, but they were taking oaths by all types of things,
19. 2:59not by the name of God, but by other things, and they were doing so for a specific purpose.
20. 3:04Jesus said in Matthew 5, "But I say to you, do not swear at all, neither by heaven, for it is God's throne, nor by earth, for it is his footstool, nor by Jerusalem, for it is
21. 3:16the city of the great king, nor shall you swear by your head because you cannot make one hair white or black.
22. 3:24And also Matthew 23: "Therefore he who swears by the altar swears by it and all things on it; he who swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it; and he who
23. 3:35swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits on it."
24. 3:39So Jesus is addressing these oaths, what we would call, what the catechism would call, unnecessary oaths, because they were looking at the things around them, the temple,
25. 3:48even the hairs on their head, making oaths about those things and swearing by things, perhaps that they thought were sacred. And Jesus is correcting them that really, there's only one thing sacred, that's the Lord God.
26. 3:59God who is above all and in all and through all.
27. 4:02And the other thing, and commentators point this out as well, the reason most likely they were making oaths in the name of the temple or whatever it might be, was so that they could get out of that oath
28. 4:13or not suffer the judgment of God if they broke that oath.
29. 4:16But now I also want to share with you something else about oath taking that there is a precedent in God's word for faithful oath taking and for swearing by God's name.
30. 4:26And it's something of an unusual passage. It's found in Hebrews chapter 6 when God swears, God himself swears, and he does so by his own name.
31. 4:36Hebrews 6 verses 13 and following, when God made his promise, promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself,
32. 4:45saying, "I will surely bless you and give you many descendants." People swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to the argument.
33. 4:57Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath.
34. 5:06So God is the highest authority.
35. 5:08That's what that passage is saying in Hebrews.
36. 5:10So to swear by God's name, to take an oath in his name, is to say that he's the ultimate arbiter of truth.
37. 5:18He's the one that judges my heart.
38. 5:19And also he's the one who holds us to the truth.
39. 5:22A very practical application of this is in marriage, when husband and wife, they swear that mutual fidelity to each other.
40. 5:30They do so before the face of God and before many witnesses.
41. 5:33They take their vows, their marriage vows, and they can take them without fear, without worry.
42. 5:39I also think of the way we take vows as office bearers in the church.
43. 5:43As a pastor, I had to take a vow, an oath of office.
44. 5:47Elders and deacons do the same.
45. 5:49We swear that we'll uphold the truth of God's word, to be faithful to the calling of our office.
46. 5:54So we shouldn't hesitate to do that.
47. 5:57Also, I think when we make profession affairs, We make a vow of membership.
48. 6:01We do the same thing with parents as we bring our children to the baptismal font.
49. 6:05We take certain vows, certain promises that we make to raise up our children in the knowledge and fear of God's name.
50. 6:13And now here's an important thing.
51. 6:15The truth is, as sinners, we still break the vow.
52. 6:19those vows. We're not faithful. So that's why often what we'll find in our forms of our own church, what is the answer to those oaths? We say, we do so believe and promise
53. 6:32God helping me. Because we realize God isn't thinking that we're going to be perfect. God doesn't hold us to a state of absolute perfection where if we break any of these vows, then we'll be utterly condemned.
54. 6:44But God knows that we're sinners.
55. 6:47And so what's expected of us is that when we break our vows, be it vows of marriage, when we're not faithful, even in our emotions or our thoughts to our wives,
56. 6:55as parents, when we're not faithful to do all that we can to instruct our children, We repent of those sins, we recognize those failures, and we take them to the Lord and we ask for His forgiveness.
57. 7:06And then with all wholehearted desire and diligence, we try even more so the next day to be faithful to God, and to know that He's a God who's loving, and He's kind, and He's forgiving.
58. 7:19and that He, by His Word and Spirit, He will work within us to help us and to enable us to keep the vows which we've made.

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