Theopedia

Preaching

“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

— Romans 10:17

Definition

Preaching is the authoritative, public proclamation of God’s word, one of the ordinary means of grace through which the Holy Spirit communicates the benefits of salvation.1 Charles Hodge calls it “not only necessary to salvation, but… also divinely efficacious to the accomplishment of that end,” resting the claim on Christ’s own commission to the apostles: “teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:20).2 Preaching differs from ordinary teaching in that it carries the authority of a herald delivering another’s message rather than an expert offering his own opinion.

Confessional Witness

The wider Reformed confessional family names preaching, in near identical language, as an ordinary part of corporate worship. The Westminster Confession lists “the sound preaching, and conscionable hearing of the Word, in obedience unto God with understanding, faith, and reverence,” alongside prayer, singing, and the sacraments, as parts of religious worship.3 The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession states the same conviction in nearly the same words: “The reading of the Scriptures, Preaching, and hearing the word of God… are all parts of Religious worship of God, to be performed in obedience to him, with understanding, faith, reverence, and godly fear.”4

The Belgic Confession goes further, making preaching a defining mark of a true church: a church is recognized “if the pure doctrine of the gospel is preached therein.”5 On this confessional account, preaching is not one optional activity among others a church might choose to emphasize; its absence is evidence the church itself has failed to be what it claims to be.

Biblical Basis

Paul grounds saving faith directly in the act of preaching: “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17), and he was “not ashamed of the gospel of Christ” because “it is the power of God unto salvation” (Rom. 1:16).2 To the church at Corinth he wrote that “it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe” (1 Cor. 1:21), and summarized his own ministry among them: “I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2).2 The risen Christ’s own commission to his disciples, “teach all nations… teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20), and its parallel in Mark, “preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15), make preaching the means by which the commission itself is carried out.2

Within the church, preaching falls to those specially called to it. Paul instructs Timothy that “the elders that rule well” are “worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine” (1 Tim. 5:17), naming preaching and teaching as the particular labor some elders are set apart to do.6 Paul’s own farewell charge to the Ephesian elders shows what that labor involves: he had not “shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God” (Acts 20:27), and charges them to “feed the church of God” in the same way (Acts 20:28).6

Doctrinal Significance

Reformed theology has consistently treated preaching as more than a human explanation of a text. Martin Luther put the claim starkly: “To preach Christ is to feed the soul, to justify it, to set it free, and to save it, if it believes the preaching. For faith alone and the efficacious Word of God bring salvation.”7 Calvin made the same point about the ordinance itself: “Every time the Gospel is preached, it is as if God himself came in person solemnly to summon us.”7 J. I. Packer states the same conviction for a modern audience: “A true sermon is an act of God, and not a mere performance by man. In real preaching the speaker is the servant of the Word and God speaks and works by the Word through his servant’s lips.”8

Historical Development

English Puritan divinity gave detailed, practical attention to how often and how a minister ought to preach. Edward Leigh’s 1654 A Systeme or Body of Divinity lays down that no one may preach “except he be sent” and approved by the church, and that a minister’s “duty is to labour in the Word and Doctrine, that is, to take great pains in it,” expected to “preach Sabbath after Sabbath,” following the pattern of Christ’s own custom of teaching in the synagogue “every Sabbath-day.”9 Leigh also warns against two corrupt styles of preaching then current, one that presses “resemblances and similitudes too farre” and one, which he calls “Jesuitical,” that “declaim[s] much against Hereticks” rather than expounding the text.9

That emphasis traces to the Reformation’s own re-centering of the church on the pulpit. Heiko Oberman described the Reformation’s genius as “the rediscovery of the Holy Spirit” at work specifically “under the veil of the preached word,” recovering a role for proclamation that had receded in the medieval church’s practice.7

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Charles Hodge, “Chapter XX. The Means of Grace,” in Systematic Theology, Volume III (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 463. ↩

  2. Hodge, “Chapter XX. The Means of Grace,” 463-464. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 21, “Of Religious Worship, and the Sabbath Day,” para. 5. ↩

  4. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 22, “Of Religious Worship, and of the Sabbath Day,” para. 5, text as reproduced by CCEL, ccel.org/creeds/bcf/bcfc22.htm. ↩

  5. The Belgic Confession (1561), art. 29, “Of the Marks of the True Church, and Wherein She Differs from the False Church.” ↩

  6. Alexander Strauch, Biblical Eldership: Restoring the Eldership to Its Rightful Place in the Local Church, 4th ed. (Littleton, CO: Lewis and Roth Publishers, 2017), chap. 17, “1 Timothy 5:17-18: Worthy of Double Honor: Elders Who Labor in Preaching and Teaching,” 177-186. ↩ ↩2

  7. John Thomas English III, “Theological and Pastoral Implications of a Trinitarian Account of Biblical Authority,” in “Thus Says the Lord: A Trinitarian Account of the Authority of Scripture” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2014), 199. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  8. English, “Theological and Pastoral Implications of a Trinitarian Account of Biblical Authority,” 200. ↩

  9. Edward Leigh, A Systeme or Body of Divinity (London: A. M. for William Lee, 1654), book 6, 463-464. ↩ ↩2