---
title: 'Strickler: Doctrines Make Duties'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2025-10-04
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2025-strickler-doctrines-make-duties
---

# Strickler: Doctrines Make Duties

“The other reason why Presbyterians have always attached great importance to the preaching of doctrines is found in the relation that subsists between doctrines and duties. What is that relation? Plainly this: *the doctrines make the duties*. Why is it my duty to love God? In order to answer that question, must I not turn to certain doctrines of religion; and do I not say it is my duty to love Him because he made me and has preserved me, and because in Christ he offers to redeem me; because He has already, in the past, bestowed upon me many great temporal and spiritual mercies, and because He offers to bestow on me in the future blessings greater still? And do I not thus make the duty of loving Him depend upon a number of doctrines? And do not these doctrines make the duty of loving Him; and if it were not for these doctrines, and if these doctrines were not facts, would there rest upon me any obligation whatever to fix the supreme affections of my heart upon Him? Why is it my duty to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? In order to answer that question, must I not again go back to certain doctrines of religion, and do not I say it is my duty to believe on Him because I am a sinner, a great sinner, an inexcusable sinner, a condemned and lost sinner, because He is the Saviour of sinners; because He is able to save me and willing to save me; because he commands me to believe on Him; because only by believing on Him can I be brought into that state of mind and heart in which it will be possible for me to render to Him the love and service of which He is infinitely worthy? And do I not thus make this duty, also, depend on a number of doctrines; and do not these doctrines thus make the duty? And if it were not for these doctrines, and if these doctrines were not also facts, would there be any reason whatever why I should give to Christ the supreme confidence of my soul? *Thus doctrines make the duties*. There is not a duty enforced in all God’s Word that does not spring out of one or more doctrines there inculcated. This, then, is the other reason why our Church has always attached so much importance to doctrines, and for this reason, also, it insists that they shall be preached. Indeed, since doctrines make the duties, they *must* be preached in order that duties may be known.” — [**Givens B. Strickler**](/authors/givens-brown-strickler), *Presbyterian Doctrines* (1900), pp. 2-3