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. 6 Pastor: Rev. Garry Eriks Phone: (970) 667-9481

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

Content:
The Catholicity of the Church
Conditional Promises (3)
Are Circumcision and Baptism the Same?

The Catholicity of the Church

The word "catholic" means "universal" and is a proper description of the true church of Christ. We ought not abandon the word to Romanism.

That the church is universal is clear from many passages of Scripture. Revelation is describing the catholic church in 7:9. There we read of a multitude that no man could number, of all nations and kindreds, and people and tongues standing before the throne.

Properly interpreted, Galatians 3:28 is also speaking of that catholicity. It is not denying the headship of the man over the woman (I Cor. 11 and Eph. 5) or differences of gifts given to Christians. Instead it is saying that all are equal as Christians by virtue of the fact that they are in Christ Jesus. They are all Abraham's children.

Let there be, therefore, no prejudice or bigotry in the church of Christ - no rejection of others because of their skin color, language, nationality, or customs. These things make NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL.

The idea that one language is better suited to express the Christian faith than another, or that people of some races do not make very good Christians, denies the catholicity of the church. So is the notion that one country or people represent in some special sense the kingdom of God, as Dispensationalism and British Israelitism teach.

But the catholicity of the church does not only mean that people from every nation are gathered into the church by the power of God's sovereign grace (for it is grace alone that makes a difference). It also means that God gathers His church through all ages.

The catholicity of the church, therefore, assures us that we shall be with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in God's heavenly kingdom (Matt. 8:11). It allows believers now living to be referred to in Revelation 6:11 as the fellow-servants and brethren of the martyrs.

Lastly, the catholicity of the church means that all kinds of people belong to the church. Rich and poor, great and small, young and old, master and servant, male and female - the church has room for them all.

This is what the Word is thinking of in I Timothy 2 when it commands us to pray for "all" men. The word "all" does not mean "all without exception." It would be impossible anyway to pray for all in that sense. Rather the word refers to "all kinds" as the reference to rulers shows. We are to pray for "all kinds" of men because God wills to save "all kinds" and Christ has died for "all kinds" (not all without exception).

James has this same aspect of the catholicity of the church in mind when he blames Christians for showing favor to the rich and despising the poor (2:1-9). We do similarly when we despise other Christians for their outward condition.

Believing in the catholicity of the church, then, we believe "that the same Lord is rich unto all that call upon Him" (Rom. 10:12-13).

Rev. Ronald Hanko

Conditional Promises (3)

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 two articles we talked about the character of the promise: what God's promise is; and what is the content of that promise. And we showed that it is impossible to say of that promise that it is conditional when we understand what it truly is.

It is interesting that the Arminians, who troubled the churches in the Netherlands in the latter part of the 15th and early part of the 16th centuries, wanted to make all of salvation conditional. They wanted a conditional promise not only, but they wanted salvation itself, which is, after all, the content of the promise, to be conditional. This was the way in which the Arminians chose to defend their free will doctrine which made salvation dependent upon man's choice.

In the Canons of Dort the fathers at the Synod of Dort condemned any such conditional view of salvation. To quote a few pertinent parts will illustrate this clearly.

The Canons refuse to make election, upon which salvation is founded, conditional: "This election was not founded upon foreseen faith, and the obedience of faith, holiness, or any other good quality or disposition in man, as the pre-requisite, cause or condition on which it depended. . ." (I, 10).

The fathers at Dort condemn the errors of those who teach that "The good pleasure and purpose of God, of which Scripture makes mention in the doctrine of election . . . consists in this that he chose out of all possible conditions . . . the act of faith . . . as well as its incomplete obedience as a condition of salvation, and that he would graciously consider this in itself as a complete obedience and count it worthy of the reward of eternal life..." (I, B, 3).

Speaking of the atonement of Christ which the Canons affirm was only for Christ's sheep, the Canons reject the errors of those who teach that "Christ by his satisfaction merited neither salvation itself for anyone, nor faith, whereby this satisfaction of Christ unto salvation is effectually appropriated; but that he merited for the Father only the authority of the perfect will to deal again with man, and to prescribe new conditions that he might desire, obedience to which, however, depended on the free will of man, so that it therefore might have come to pass that either none or all should fulfill these conditions..." (II, B. 3).

Other articles could be quoted, but these are sufficient for our purposes.

The fathers at Dort were frightened at the thought of a conditional salvation in any sense of the word. The simple fact is that the word "condition" is not found in our Reformed creeds at all as part of the positive confession of the truth. It is only found in the negative section of the Canons where the errors of the Arminians are condemned.

This ought to give us pause. The Arminians were the ones who spoke so glibly of conditions. They insisted on the term and, indeed, had to insist on it because it was completely bound up in their theology which made all salvation depend on man's choice of the will. But such error is condemned severely by the fathers of Dort who do not hesitate to say that salvation dependent upon the will of man is the old Pelagian heresy resurrected out of hell.

If there is no room for this term in our confessions, why ought we to insist on using it? At the very least, it is an unconfessional term; and at worst, it carries with it all the connotations of Arminian free-willism. Prof. H. Hanko

Are Circumcision and Baptism the Same?

Our question for this issue concerns a matter raised in previous issues, the whole matter of NT baptism. A reader asks: "Whilst most of the articles seem clear I can't quite see the connection between the Jewish 'circumcision' and New Testament 'baptism' which I understand from the Greek means 'submerse.' Isn't believer's baptism part of the 'new covenant'?"

Obviously, there are quite a few issues raised here. We will address them one by one, and first the matter of circumcision and baptism. Those who believe in family baptism (preferable to "infant baptism") say that circumcision and baptism are essentially the same. Those who hold to so-called "believers'" baptism insist that they are very different. Who is right?

Let us notice, first, that baptism is not merely confined to the NT, nor circumcision to the OT. There was baptism in the OT and there is circumcision in the NT! Hebrews 9:10 calls the various washings of the OT "baptisms" using in Greek the ordinary NT word for baptism. Baptism, therefore, was not something new to the Jews when John came baptizing, but something to which they were very much accustomed. Colossians 2:11 and Philippians 3:3 also refer to NT believers as having been circumcised. Both passages are from letters written to churches that were primarily Gentile churches.

Now it might be objected that in the two latter passages the Word of God is referring to inward, not outward circumcision, and that is true. Nevertheless, that only reinforces our point.

Inward circumcision (of the heart and without hands) is the reality of which outward circumcision is only a sign, just as water baptism is only the outward sign of the real baptism that unites us to Christ's death and resurrection (Rom. 6:3-6). NT believers, those who "worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh," have the reality of circumcision, though they may not have the outward sign.

It is from this perspective, too, that one sees the essential unity of the two. Outwardly, the signs are very different, so different that it is difficult to see that they might be the same. Inwardly and really there is no difference and to have one is to have the other.

The inward reality of baptism is the washing away or removal of our sins by the blood of Christ (Tit. 3:5, Rev 1:5). The inward reality of circumcision is the cutting away or removal of sin through the shedding of the blood of Christ pictured in the blood shed in that rite (Rom. 2:28, 29, Col. 2:11). They are the same!

Colossians 2:11, 12 confirms this in that it tells us that when we are circumcised with the baptism made without hands, we are also buried and risen with him in baptism. They are one and the same. Rev. Ronald Hanko

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