Hudsonville Protestant Reformed Church
5101 Beechtree
Hudsonville, Michigan 49426
Services: 9:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.
Homepage on Internet: http://www.prca.org
Vol. 8, No. 4
Contents:
The Necessity of Our Resurrection
God's Covenantal Promise (2)
What Is a False
Profession?
The Necessity of Our Resurrection
In our last article we established the fact that there is only one bodily resurrection, both of the saved and the unsaved, at the end of the world, not several as Premillennialism and Dispensationalism teach. For us as believers, that one resurrection is the focus of all our hopes, as the Word of God reminds us in I Corinthians 15:12-19. It is that resurrection of believers in the last day that is the subject of this article.
I Corinthians 15:14, 16 teach us that if there is no resurrection of the dead for us, then Christ is not raised either. There is such a close relationship between the two, that one cannot take place without the other. It is not only a serious error to deny Christ's resurrection, but also that of believers.
There have always been those who have denied Christ's resurrection. Very often such a denial accompanies a denial of Christ's divinity, His virgin birth, His miracles, and His atoning blood-sacrifice. But there have also been those who have denied the resurrection of believers. There were such in the early church (II Tim. 2:17-18; I Cor. 15:12) and there are such around again today.
Some, found especially among those who of the Christian Reconstruction movement, who, taking a preterist view of prophecy, have resurrected the errors of Hymanaeus and Philetus. These people, believing that much, if not all, prophecy is already fulfilled (preterist means "past"), have begun to say that the resurrection also is past.
Paul, however, tells us that to deny the future resurrection of the bodies of believers is to deny Christ's resurrection and to make faith vain, leaving us in our sins. It is, therefore, a most serious error. Why is that?
First, the denial of a future bodily resurrection is a denial of Christ's resurrection, because the resurrection of believers is part of Christ's resurrection. They belong to the body of Christ, the Church, and have the resurrection life of Christ in them. The result must be that they also are raised from the dead with Christ. If they are not, then the only possible explanation is that the resurrection life of Christ does not exist, -- that Christ did not rise and conquer death. The power and victory of Christ over death are proved not only by his resurrection but also by ours!
Such a denial of the resurrection also leaves us in our sins because Christ's resurrection is the proof of our justification before God. When He made atonement for sin, He said, "It is finished." When God raised Him from the dead, then God Himself as Judge said the same, so that the resurrection was a declaration of our justification before God. That is what Romans 4:25 means: "Who was raised again for our justification."
Also, since our hope is of heaven, and "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, we wait and long for the resurrection. That hope is vain, however, if the dead rise not and our bodies are not changed in the resurrection. We must, therefore, believe not only in Christ's resurrection on the third day, but also in our own resurrection with Christ, when our vile bodies shall be changed into the likeness of His most glorious body. Rev. Ronald Hanko
God's Covenantal Promise (2)
Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. - Acts 2:38-39.
In the last issue I pointed out that this passage was Peter's application of his Pentecostal sermon to a people in whose heart God had worked sorrow for sin.
I pointed out further that, because these people were Jews and proselytes, they were a covenant-conscious people, trained from infancy to think in terms of believers and their seed. Peter's language was not foreign language to them.
And finally I discussed how that Peter tells them that repentance is the way to forgiveness of sins - even the sin of crucifying the Christ.
We must proceed with our discussion.
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Along with the command to repent, Peter also told them that they had to be baptized. This too calls for a few remarks.
In the first place, these Jews were not unacquainted with baptism. Various washings in the OT times had accustomed the people to thinking in terms of washing as symbolic of cleansing from sin. And John the Baptist had made not only repentance the heart of his ministry, but had also baptized.
I can add in something of a parenthesis that, while the Jews questioned John's authority to preach, they never gave any indication of surprise or lack of understanding that he baptized. It was almost as if it was to be expected that he would also baptize. Baptism was, in other words, nothing foreign to these Jews.
In the second place, we must observe that these repentant Jews had to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. This must have come as something of a shock. They had to be baptized in the name of the very One Whom they had killed on the gibbet.
But the meaning was obvious - as Peter explained in His sermon. The One Whom they had crucified had actually accomplished the mighty work of crushing the serpent's head, destroying the power of sin by His own suffering, and accomplishing the salvation so long spoken of in the old dispensation.
To be baptized, therefore, in the name of Jesus Christ was to be forgiven, i.e., to have one's sins washed away in Christ' blood.
And finally, these Jews were to be baptized themselves, but were also to have their children baptized - right then! So they also understood him.
Baptists will, of course, dispute this. But the text is clear enough. The reason why baptism was necessary was because the promise belonged to them and their children. It would be utter nonsense for Peter to say: "The promise is for you and your children, and this is the reason why you alone, but not your children, must be baptized." The only way in which the promise for them and their children could be a reason for baptism is that baptism was also for them and their children.
I say again: this was not strange thinking to these Jews. The promise in the OT was for them and their children (see Gen. 17:7). Because the promise was for them and their children in the OT, they and their children had to be circumcised. Now too the promise is to them and their children. And so now, as then in ages gone by, they and their children had to be baptized.
The words of Peter were incapable of being understood by these Jews in any other way.
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Hence the reason for repentance and baptism is the fact that God's promise is to believers and their seed.
And to this beautiful idea we must now turn.
We ought to ask, first of all, what is God's promise?
I can think of no better and clearer discussion of God's promise than that found in Heb. 6:13-20. I cannot quote the entire passage here, nor enter into the text in detail. But a few points are worth noting.
In the first place, the text in Hebrews discusses the promise of God from a formal point of view.
In doing this, the text identifies the promise with an oath. Men swear oaths too. When they swear an oath, such an oath is the end of all dispute (vs. 16). It is the end of dispute because a man who swears an oath calls on God, One higher than himself, to witness what he says and to verify the truth of what he says. A man says, in essence, let God strike me dead if I lie.
God swears an oath as well. But He cannot swear by anyone higher than Himself, for He is the highest. And so He swears by Himself, saying in effect that the truth of what He says is rooted in His own eternal existence. It is as certain as He is God. If what He says is not true, then there is no God; atheism is the only other alternative.
But again, our space is taken up. Please keep this issue in a handy place so that you may consult it after receiving our next issues. Prof. H. Hanko
We offer a free pamphlet to our readers: "Pentecostalism: Spirit-filled Blessing…or dangerous heresy?" In three messages, the writers point out the history and influence of Pentecostalism, the "special gifts" of Pentecostalism, and its view of Christian life. Write to the address at the heading of this leaflet.
What Is a False Profession?
The title of this article is the question for this issue, submitted by one of our correspondents. It is an important question, for there are always false professors in the best of churches.
First of all, then, let us notice that there are different kinds of false professors:
(1) There is on the one hand the person whose profession is false because its content is false. A person who denies the Trinity or that Jesus is God cannot possibly be making a true profession. Such people, found in the cults, as leaders in the Charismatic movement and in liberal churches, and sometimes, sadly, in evangelical churches, claim to be Christians, but cannot be for they deny the heart of the Christian faith.
(2) There is also the person who professes the truths of Scripture more or less soundly, but who in fact is a hypocrite and unbeliever. Soundness of doctrine, as enormously important as it is, is no guarantee that a person's heart is right with God. It is possible that such a person for a time even lives a life that is outwardly above reproach. In spite of that, his profession is false because his heart is false.
Why are there such persons? The answer is, finally, that consciously or unconsciously, they are Satan's agents in the church and among God's people. They are the people warned against in Jude 4-13. Creeping in unawares they arise "even from among your own selves" (Acts 20:30). They are wolves in sheep's clothing, tares among the wheat, whom Satan plants in order to corrupt and destroy, if possible, God's church and people.
God also has His purpose with them, however, for they are very often the ones who, when they are revealed as false professors, are the immediate cause of the church's development in the truth. Over against their errors and hypocrisy, when it is revealed, the church is forced to set out the truth of Scripture and fight the battle of faith.
What is our calling toward such? In the case of those who profess gross errors, the church's calling is to put them out through church discipline. It may be that some of those who are put out are in fact not false professors, but Christians who have been improperly taught or who have fallen into error. In that case, however, the church must trust that the discipline will be used for their spirit's salvation, as God promises (I Cor. 5:5).
In the second case, that of hypocrites, the church can do nothing except preach the gospel. It is impossible to detect a person as a hypocrite. The fact that he is a hypocrite means that his true face is hidden from us. We must trust, therefore, that though these false professors are agents of Satan whom we cannot detect or find them out, that the gospel itself will do so. I do not mean that the minister must spend all sorts of time and effort suggesting that people are false professors or questioning their professions, but that the gospel, purely preached, will uncover hypocrisy and unbelief in due course - that the hypocritical and hidden false professors will be revealed by the Word of God which is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Heb. 4:12-13).
Personally we must, in respect to others, do two things. We must judge a person by their profession and in so doing judge them as charitably as possible in the hope and with the prayer that they are erring brethren, though their profession may not entirely measure up to what it should be. And when we point out or condemn their errors we must do so without making judgment of their hearts, for that belongs to God. Rev. Ronald Hanko