Loveland Protestant Reformed Church
709 East 57th
Street; Loveland, CO 80538
Services: 9:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. (7:00 p.m. June through
August)
Vol. 5, No. 12 Pastor: Rev. G. Van Baren Phone: (970) 667-9481
Homepage on Internet: http://www.prca.org
CONTENTS:
Justification
and Atonement
The
Address of the Gospel (2)
Is the
Westminster Infralapsarian?
As we saw in the last issue, justification may not be divorced either from election or
from the cross. It is grounded in the atoning work of Jesus on the cross and harks back to
eternity.
This is of the utmost importance. What is not decreed by God cannot possibly come to pass in time, i.e., the justification of the non-elect. And what is not purchased and obtained for all by the death of Christ on the cross is not available to all.
There is, therefore, no justification (righteousness or forgiveness) to "offer" to those who are non-elect. The gospel must be preached to all - the righteousness of God in Christ must be declared (Rom. 3:25, 26). All who hear must be called to faith, with the sure promise that those who believe will be justified before God.
But that promise, as becomes evident in time, is only for those whom God has chosen and for whom Christ died on the cross. The promise of justification, therefore, is only for the elect, and it is surely fulfilled for them in that God graciously gives them the faith by which they are justified (Eph. 2:8-10).
That Christ died only for the elect is the doctrine of particular redemption (limited atonement), a subject we have dealt with in previous issues. It is the clear teaching of Scripture.
Christ's work, and especially His death on the cross, secures the justification of God's elect (Is. 53:11, Rom. 3:24, 5:9, 19). It does this because Christ by His suffering and death substituted His perfect obedience for their disobedience and endured the punishment of their crimes.
In this way He earned for them a perfect righteousness (innocence) that is acceptable to God, the Judge. That righteousness become theirs through faith, whereby their guilt is removed and they received once again into God's favor and presence. Christ's work, then, is the ground of their justification.
It is even possible to speak of Christ's death as the justification of God's people, in an objective sense (Rom. 5:19). By His death everything that separated them from God is taken out of the way and a righteousness is earned by Him for them that God accepts and approves (Is. 53:11).
It is, therefore, not a general righteousness that Christ earned, but a righteousness decreed and purchased for particular persons. It is a righteousness that belongs to them by the price paid by Christ on the cross. Nor is there any other righteousness but this (Rom. 10:1-4).
Sovereign, gracious, particular election and particular atonement, guarantee the actual justification through faith of all those whom God loved from eternity and whom He has given to Christ. A justification that is available to all conditionally, is a justification divorced from election and the cross - a justification that justifies no one in the end. Rev. Ronald Hanko
As I mentioned in my last article, I am going to be spending some time on the question of the address of the gospel. This is a subject often misunderstood, or, perhaps I should say, often not sufficiently understood and appreciated. Many of the questions that have been sent in for answering quite obviously involve some aspect or other of the general subject: The Address Of the Gospel.
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First of all, we must say something about the contents of the gospel. What is it that is preached in the gospel? What does a minister say when he brings the gospel of Jesus Christ?
In general, of course, the contents of the gospel are the sacred Scriptures. God has given the church His own infallibly inspired Word. That Word, as it is contained in the Scriptures is, in its totality, the revelation of Jehovah God as the God of salvation in His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.
Or, in short, the Scriptures reveal Christ in Whom is made known God as the God Who saves.
All preaching must be limited entirely and exclusively to Scripture. No man may bring his own word, his own ideas, his own thoughts on matters, his own notions about things, when he preaches. He must limit himself rigidly and totally to what Scripture says so that he is able, in his preaching, to say: Thus saith the Lord.
When a minister or preacher preaches, he comes with the Word of God!
That Word of God is Christ.
When the apostle Paul in I Corinthians 1:23 says: "But we preach Christ crucified...," he means exactly that the gospel which he brings is limited to that one subject only: Christ crucified. That that is what he means is evident from what he writes in the very next chapter: "For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (vs. 2).
In the cross of Christ is revealed the salvation worked by Jehovah God.
Now all of this is obvious and fundamental to any Reformed man.
But it must also be understood that the Scriptures contain much, much more than direct references to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
The Scriptures contain a great deal of doctrine. In fact, Scripture is fundamentally interested in doctrine; i.e., in the truth as it is in God. Many, many doctrines are found in God's Word; doctrines of creation, providence, election and reprobation, justification, heaven, etc. They are the doctrines contained in the creeds of the church.
These doctrines must be preached. Every one of them must be preached. This is what Paul meant when he reminded the elders from Ephesus that he had been faithful in his ministry and that he is pure of the blood of all men because he "had not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God" (Acts 20:26, 27).
How many ministers today can say the same thing?
But the Scriptures also contain many other kinds of material than doctrine. The Scriptures contain stories (in both the Old and New Testaments); they contain poetry, prophecy, wise sayings; but they also contain many, many exhortations and admonitions covering every aspect of life and requiring of men obedience to God in all they do. There are uncounted demands placed upon men, requirements coming from God, callings which cannot be ignored. These too are part of the gospel.
And, in addition to all these things, the Scriptures also contain many dire threats and warnings, attached to Scripture's demands, which threaten those who disobey with the most terrible of judgments in this life and in the life to come.
And the Scriptures contain many sweet and blessed promises of untold riches, marvelous treasures, blessings indescribably great, of inestimable value and worth - which are also made in connection with Scripture's demands, exhortations, admonitions, callings.
One point must be emphatically remembered, however. And that is this: Whatever may be
the content of preaching, whether history, poetry exhortations, demands, threatenings, or
promises, -- it must be Christ and Him crucified. That is, it must proclaim Christ
as the revelation of Jehovah God, the God of all salvation.
Prof. H. Hanko
Is Westminster Infralapsarian?
We have received a follow-on question concerning the articles on supra- and infralapsarianism published earlier. The question is: "I know it is often said that Dort and Westminster were infralapsarian. This may be so in the Canons (of Dort), Art. 7 (chapter 1), but Westminster seems much stronger on this point (Confession, III, sec. I, ii, iii). Can it be proved from any statement in the Westminster Standards that they were definitely infra?"
Remember that infralapsarianism is the teaching that God first decreed the fall (lapsus means "fall") and then decreed to save some, i.e., the order of God's plan is the same as the order of history. Supralapsarianism teaches that God first chose some in Christ to be His own, and then decreed the fall as part of the way in which He would make them His own, i.e., the order of God's plan is the opposite of the historical order.
The statement from the Canons is: "Election is the unchangeable purpose of God, whereby, before the foundation of the world, he hath out of mere grace, according to the sovereign good pleasure of his own will, chosen, from the whole human race, which had fallen through their own fault, from their primitive state of rectitude, into sin and destruction, a certain number of persons to redemption in Christ." According to the Canons, when God chose some, He chose them as those who had already (in His decree) fallen into sin. That is infralapsarianism.
The Westminster Confession is also, though perhaps less clearly, infralapsarian in III,vii, "The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy, as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures to pass by; and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice." The words emphasized say that when God elected some and rejected others, He had already seen them as fallen.
The Canons say much the same in Chapter I, Article 15: "What peculiarly tends to illustrate and recommend to us the eternal and unmerited grace of election, is the express testimony of sacred Scripture, that not all, but some only are elected, while others are passed by in the eternal election of God"; whom God, out of his sovereign, most just, irreprehensible and unchangeable good pleasure, that decreed to leave in the common misery into which they have willfully plunged themselves, and not to bestow upon them saving faith and the grace of conversion." That, too, is infralapsarianism.
We include these lengthy quotes to show that both creeds, though infralapsarian, are clearly teaching sovereign, eternal, double predestination, including both election and reprobation. Infralapsarianism is not, as some suggest, a compromise of that doctrine.
We would emphasize again, however, that these matters are in large measure only inferences from the teaching of God's Word, that insofar as they do contain Biblical truth, there is something to be said for each view, and that they ought not, therefore, be made matters of division among God's people. Let us not make them such. Rev. Ronald Hanko
"Men are to be taught, indeed, that the Divine benignity is free to all who seek it, without any exception; but since none begin to seek it, but those who have been inspired by heavenly grace, not even this diminutive portion ought to be taken from his praise. This is the privilege of the elect, that being regenerated by the Spirit of God, they are led and governed by his direction. Wherefore Augustine as justly ridicules those who arrogate to themselves any part of a good volition, as he reprehends others, who suppose that to be given promiscuously to all, which is the special evidence of gratuitous election. "Nature," says he, "is common to all men, but not grace." He calls it "a transparent subtlety, which shines merely with vanity, when that is extended generally to all, which God confers on whom he chooses." Calvin's Institutes, Book II, Section 10