Statement on Bill C-9
From the Boniface Presbytery of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC):
In light of the House of Commons passing third reading and adoption of Bill C-9, Boniface Presbytery of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches makes the following statement.
Until Bill C-9, the Criminal Code of Canada recognized a good-faith religious-speech defence, which protected religious leaders who, in the course of their duties, taught from Scripture on matters of morality. That protection has now been stripped away. Under this bill, a pastor who reads Romans 1 from the pulpit and applies it to his congregation could, in principle, face criminal prosecution. Religious leaders across the country have raised the alarm, and they are right to do so.
The Bible is not hate literature. It is a love letter. The movement of Scripture, from creation to fall to redemption to consummation, is the story of a God who refuses to abandon the creatures he has made. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16–17). That is the point of the entire Bible. God made the world. God loves the world. God entered the world to rescue it. If that is hatred, then the word has lost all meaning.
Yes, the Bible identifies a problem. The problem is sin. God created the earth as a home for man, a place of beauty, order, worship, and communion. He placed Adam in the garden, gave him a mission, gave him a bride, and walked with him in the cool of the day. And man rebelled. We hated God. We sought to remove him from his throne and seat ourselves upon it. We wanted autonomy, self-rule, the right to define good and evil on our own terms. The consequence of that rebellion is death. “The wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). This is not the language of hatred. It is a diagnosis. A doctor who tells you that you have cancer is not expressing hostility toward you. He is telling you the truth so that you might seek treatment.
But God. Those two words are the hinge of all history. We rebelled, but God did not leave us in our rebellion. He sent his Son into the world to rescue us from ourselves. Christ took on human flesh, lived the life we could not live, died the death we deserved to die, and rose again so that we might live in communion with the Father forever. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph 2:4–5). The gospel is the announcement that the God we hated has loved us anyway, and that he offers life to everyone who will receive it. And that means repentance.
The gospel calls men, women, and children to turn from their sin and trust in Christ. This is where the accusation of hatred always lands, because repentance requires that we name sin as sin. The modern world can tolerate a God who affirms and validates sin. It cannot tolerate a God who says, “You are wrong, you must turn around and forsake your sin.” But a God who never corrects is a God who does not love. “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (Heb 12:6). The call to repentance is the most loving thing the church can speak to a dying and dead world, because it is the only message that leads to life.
Herod understood this, and he hated it. John the Baptist told Herod plainly, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife” (Mark 6:18). John was not promoting hatred against Herod. He was expressing the love of God to Herod, telling the king the truth about his sin so that the king might repent and live. Herod had a choice: receive the word and repent, or silence the messenger. He silenced the messenger. He had John arrested and beheaded because he preferred his sin over God. He preferred death over life. He preferred hatred over love. But the world called John the hater and Herod the victim.
The pattern has repeated itself across the centuries. The church speaks, the world rages, and the church is accused of hatred. The real haters, of course, are those who love their sin more than they love God, who prefer the darkness to the light, suppress the lovers of life, and congratulate themselves for their tolerance. Jeremiah was thrown into a pit. Jesus was crucified. Stephen was stoned. Paul was beaten, imprisoned, and beheaded. In every generation, the messengers of life are accused of hatred by the enemies of life. The accusation is not new.
People can and do misread the Bible. Every heresy in the history of the church has claimed biblical warrant. Men have twisted Scripture to justify tyranny, hatred, and every kind of evil. We grant all of this freely. But the problem of misinterpretation lies with the reader, not with the text. A man who reads the Bible and concludes that it authorizes him to hate his neighbour has not understood the Bible. He has contradicted it. “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt 22:39) is not ambiguous. You do not ban the book because some readers are fools. You do not criminalize the message because some messengers are frauds.
Let me state the obvious: the church rejects hatred, intimidation, and violence against any person, as those terms have been traditionally and rightly defined. Every human being is made in the image of God (Gen 1:27), and that fact confers a dignity that no parliament can grant and no parliament may rescind. We affirm without reservation that all people are to be treated with the dignity that belongs to them as God’s image-bearers. The preaching of repentance does not contradict this affirmation. It flows from it. Precisely because every human being bears the image of God, the church owes him the truth about his sin and the remedy God has provided for it. To withhold that truth is not love, but hatred.
The Bible is not hate literature. It is the only book in the world that tells you the truth about your condition and offers you a remedy in the same breath. “You are a sinner,” and “God loves you and sent his Son to save you from your sin.” That is not hatred. That is grace. The real hatred is the spirit that suppresses this message, that would rather let men perish in their sins than permit someone to call them to repentance. The real hatred calls love a crime and calls repentance an offence. Should Bill C-9 ever be used against a Christian who loves his neighbour enough to tell him the truth, the state will not have punished hatred. It will have committed it.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees freedom of conscience and religion, freedom of thought, belief, opinion, and expression (s. 2). These are not privileges the state extends at its discretion. They are fundamental freedoms, recognized as belonging to every Canadian. Bill C-9 contravenes both the word and the spirit of the Charter. A law that exposes faithful Christian teaching to criminal sanction does not protect anyone. It suppresses the free exercise of religion in precisely the manner the Charter was written to prevent.
The church that preaches God’s Word must receive the state’s protection, as the Belgic Confession (1561) rightly declares:
Their task of restraining and sustaining is not limited to the public order but includes the protection of the church and its ministry in order that all idolatry and false worship may be removed and prevented; that the kingdom of antichrist may be destroyed and the kingdom of Christ promoted. They must, therefore, countenance the preaching of the word of the Gospel everywhere, that God may be honoured and worshipped by everyone, as he commands in his Word.
Consequently, Boniface Presbytery calls upon all leaders in Canada, whether elected or appointed, whether legislative, judicial, or executive, whether local or national, to defend the preaching of the Word of God everywhere. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Rev. Garry Vanderveen
Presiding Minister, Boniface Presbytery
