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. 6, No. 5 Pastor: Rev. Garry Eriks Phone: (970) 667-9481

Homepage on Internet: http://www.prca.org

Content:

The Holiness of the Church
Conditional Promises? (2)
Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Psalms?

The Holiness of the Church

The holiness of the church is first the holiness it has as the body of Christ and in union with Christ. The church's holiness is in Christ. It has no holiness of its own (I Cor. 1:2, 3:16-17, I Pet. 2:9).

That holiness belongs to the church in principle, i.e., it belongs to the church and to every elect member of the body as something purchased by Christ's death. It will be and is given to every member of the body, therefore, as Christ brings them into union with Himself Christ through faith.

Thus, too, that holiness is something that we can see in the visible church and in her members. We see it in several different ways.

Remembering that holiness means "separateness," we see the holiness of the church in the separation of the visible church from the world. It is a separate kingdom with a different King, different laws and customs, and a different hope (I Pet. 2:9).

Indeed, holiness is the boundary of the church in the world. It has no political boundaries - no boundaries of race or language. Holiness is the line that divides the church from the world. Therefore, those who will not be holy must be put out and kept out of the visible church.

That holiness is also the cause of the continued conflict in which the church is involved. Always the church opposes that which is unholy, first of all in believers themselves. But it also condemns those who are hypocrites and carnal within the church, as well as all the wickedness of this sin-cursed world.

If the church and its members are striving to be holy there will always be that conflict (Jn. 15:18-20). That holiness is God's own shining in the church and its members (I Pet. 1:15-16). And the unholy hate the holiness of God (Jn. 3:19, Rom. 8:7).

We also see that holiness in the members of the church. They are "saints" because they by grace are given the gift of holiness and called to be holy. Their holiness becomes evident in their separation from the wicked and from wickedness (II Cor. 6:14-7:1).

That is not to say there is no sin in believers or in the visible church. In fact, there is much carnality in the church and much sin in the members of the church for which we grieve (Ps. 119:53, 136).

That is why the holiness of the church must be a matter of faith, not of sight. We believe that the church is holy, even the church in the world.

If we go only by what we see, we will surely despair of ourselves and of the church. Believing that it is a holy communion of saints, we can be sure that it will be presented to Christ "a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing" (Eph. 5:27).

Let us, then, in practice and in prayer, as members of the church, follow after holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. Rev. R. Hanko

Conditional Promises (2)

If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt: then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, for ever and ever. Jeremiah 7:6-7.

We are interested in only one aspect of this passage from Jeremiah: its conditional character. It is to this conditional structure of the verse that a question sent to us refers: "Are the promises of God always conditional? A brother I am in correspondence with recently wrote to me quoting Jer. 7:6-7 as proof that God makes conditional promises. . . . [This passage] calls to obedience with attached promises of blessing. The question is, are the promised blessings conditional on obedience?"

In the last article, we discussed what the promise of God is from a formal point of view; and, using Hebrews 6:13-18, we showed that God's promise is an oath which He swears by Himself.

Now we must ask the question: What is the promise of God from a material point of view, i.e., from the viewpoint of its content? What does God promise?

This is suggested already in the same passage in Hebrews 6 when we read that God swear by Himself "saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee (vs. 14)." In other words, God promised Abraham a seed which would be greater in number than the stars in the heavens.

But we must inquire more carefully into that question of Abraham's seed. Who constitute the seed of Abraham? How was this promise fulfilled?

The answer to that question is found basically in Gal. 3:16: "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ."

Now, although the text says in so many words that the promise of God was made to Christ, the idea very clearly is that the promise was in fact Christ Himself first of all. So it was that already in Paradise God promised Adam and Eve that He would give them the seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent and his seed (Gen. 3:15). Throughout all of the Old Testament and throughout our entire dispensation the promise is one grand and glorious promise which God makes: "I will give Christ to my Church." That is in fact still the promise today, a promise that will be fully realized when Christ comes again.

Yet Scripture uses the word "promise" in the plural in many instances and speaks of "promises." So Paul, after quoting one aspect of God's promise which is found in Zech. 8:8 and Jer. 31:1, 9 in his second letter to the Corinthians (6:16-18), he goes on to say in the next verse: "Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved . . . ."

Scripture uses the plural instead of the singular because the one promise of Christ is, after all, many, many promises; for the one promise of Christ is the promise of a full and perfect salvation which includes so many wonderful blessings that it is almost impossible to list them all. They are the blessings of forgiveness of sins, fellowship with God in His covenant, grace for every need in life, everlasting membership in the church which is Christ's body, to be a part of the wife of Christ, heaven forever and ever, regeneration, faith, calling, justification, sanctification, a new name which no one knows, food from the tree of life in the midst of the Paradise of God, etc., etc. Who can count all these blessings? They are all promised.

That is, God swears an oath that He will surely give them to us, as He has determined to do in His own immutable counsel. He swears that oath by His own divine being.

How can those promises be conditioned on our obedience. How is that possible? Can God swear by Himself as the one true God, the only living God, that He will give to Abraham (and to us) those promises, and then make them conditional on our obedience?

Anyone knows that the coming of Christ was not dependent in any sense on the obedience of Israel or Judah. In fact, quite the contrary was true. The nation was repeatedly disobedient until it was driven into captivity. If Christ's coming had been dependent on Israel's obedience, Christ would never have come at all. In fact, it sometimes seemed as if Israel did everything it could to prevent that coming. Christ came only because God is faithful to His promise and the oath He swore.

And so it is today. Still the promise is that God will give us Christ when Christ comes again. Is Christ's coming at the end of the world dependent upon our obedience? How can that be? He will come to save His own and bring them to heaven with Him. And His own are exactly those who are chosen by God from all eternity, given to Christ as His own possession; thus those for whom Christ died, and those who are sovereignty and efficaciously called to a new obedience.

No conditional promises there at all.Prof. H. Hanko

Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs?

We have two similar questions regarding Psalm singing for this issue. One asks: "Have you any strong evidence that the 'Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs of Colossians all refer to Psalms? I am sure they do as to my knowledge there were no hymns at that time." The other asks: "In the church I attend we use a hymn book. I believe that in your church only Psalms are sung. Do you not think that Ephesians 5:19 authorizes the singing of songs of worship other than just Psalms? Incidentally, I attend a ... church which uses the old Elim Redemption Hymnal - a Calvinistic Church with a largely Arminian hymn book."

The second question is interesting because it spotlights one of the problems with the singing of man-made hymns. Many of these hymns are Arminian or worse and thus heresy, as the saying goes, is sung into the church.

We would point out, too, that those who defend man-made hymns, while using the verses from Ephesians and Colossians to prove their point, really pay very little attention to these verses. One would expect, on the basis of those passages that approximately one third of the songs sung in their churches would be Psalms. In fact, this is almost never the case. With the exception of Psalms 23 and 100 these churches usually sing almost no Psalms at all. Indeed, it is difficult if not impossible to introduce the singing of even one Psalm per service in such churches.

Such, however, are not principle objections to hymns, since there are Calvinistic hymns - hymns that contain no doctrinal error. The case for Psalm singing rests on much stronger ground.

Let us note, first, that these words, "psalms, hymns, spiritual songs," all refer to the Psalms in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the OT and the version that is usually quoted in the NT. In it, 67 Psalms are called "psalms," 34 are called "songs," and 6 are called "hymns." Thirteen have the double title, "psalm and song," three have the double title, "psalm and hymn," and one (Ps. 76) has all three terms in its title.

Second, the other references to "hymns" in the NT (Matt. 26:30 and Mk. 14:26) do not refer to human compositions but to the so-called "hallel" or praise Psalms that were sung during and after the Passover (Psalms 113-118).

Third, Colossians 3:16 tells us that it by the singing of psalms, hymns and spiritual songs that we let the word of Christ dwell in us richly. It is difficult to see how this can refer to anything but the Scriptures themselves.

We would add that the Psalms are in a unique sense the word of Christ in that He Himself speaks in them (cf. especially but not exclusively Ps. 22, 40, 69, also I Pet. 1:10-11). Indeed, Christ often "borrowed" the words of the Psalms as His own. How much more profitable to sing the words of Christ than the words of men, however, beautiful they may be! Rev.Ronald Hanko