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. 9, No. 2
Contents:
The New
Covenant (2)
The
Mysteries of the Kingdom (5)
Is
Universal Atonement True? (7)
In the previous article we
have shown from Hebrews 8:6-13 that the old and new covenants are not two separate and
different covenants. At all essentials points
they are the same.
The differences between them are only in administrative details. It is only in respect to these details that one is
"old" and the other "new" and that the old perishes and passes away.
How, then, are they different? According
to Hebrews 8, in three ways:
(1) There is a change of mediator (vs.
6). Christ replaces Moses. This is not an essential difference, however,
because Moses was a type of Christ. In
chapter 3:5 he is even called "a testimony of those things which were to be spoken
after." Also in Deuteronomy 18:15 he
himself speaks of Christ as one "like unto me."
This difference, therefore, is only administrative.
A new prime minister is a change of administration, and a new government in
that sense, but not in the sense of a change in the type of government or of the
constitution.
(2) There is also a change in the way
the law is written (vs. 10). As we pointed
out in the last article, the law itself is not taken away, only rewritten on fleshly
tables of the heart instead of tables of stone.
But this, too, is only an administrative change, though it has great significance
for the NT believer. Something rewritten
is not something different and separate from what went before.
This second point is especially important because the giving of the law is called
the "giving" of the covenant both in Deuteronomy 4:13 and in Hebrews 8:10. One cannot, then, argue that though the law was
the same the covenants are different. They
are identified in Deuteronomy and in Hebrews.
(3) Finally, the new covenant also
brings a fuller and more complete revelation. This
is what verse 11 is talking about. That
fuller revelation is of such a kind that all God's people know Him directly, and
not any longer through the intervention of earthly mediators. There is not under the new covenant the need of
teachers like the priests and Levites of the Old Testament (cf. Mal. 2:6, 7 for proof that
they especially were the teachers of the OT).
This is also an administrative change. The
new covenant does not bring a new (different and separate) revelation of God, but a better
revelation (Heb. 8:6), that is, one that is completed and which reveals the realities
which were only prophesied under the old covenant.
There is only one, everlasting, covenant of God. Rev. Ron Hanko
The
Mysteries of the Kingdom (5)
And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not hear (Luke 8:10).
In answer to the question, "Is this election and reprobation, or just acknowledging that some just will not turn and believe (as some commentaries maintain)?" we have explained that Luke 8:10 and its parallel passages in Matthew 13 and Mark 4 do indeed teach election and reprobation.
Augustine (354-430), Gottschalk (c.805-869), all the reformers, the great divines at Dordt and Westminster, and innumerable saints and theologians through the ages have insisted on these doctrines, yet very few in our day of doctrinal indifference and decline accept the truth of election, much less reprobation. And many of those who do believe that there is such a thing as election and reprobation have an erroneous conception of it. These doctrines are almost universally repudiated because these truths—more than any other—teach the absolute sovereignty of God. Thus election and reprobation have been the object of scorn, mockery, misrepresentation, and vicious slander.
Briefly, the doctrine of election means that God, from all eternity, chose unto himself a people in Christ to constitute His church upon whom He would bestow all the blessings of salvation earned in the cross. Election is God's sovereign good pleasure and in no way based on works; election is of particular individuals, specifically chosen by God; election is the fountain and cause of salvation and all its blessings, including the gift of faith and the spiritual ability to do good works.
Reprobation is the dark side of election, though part of the same decree of God. The following must be said about it.
1) Reprobation is necessarily implied in election, as Calvin already pointed out in a letter he wrote to the other reformers in Switzerland. If God chooses some, he rejects others. The first is election; the second is reprobation.
2) Reprobation is not conditional. That is, reprobation is not on the basis of unbelief. God does not reprobate because some do not believe in Christ. That God reprobated on the ground of unbelief was the position of Calvin's opponents, chiefly Jerome Bolsec and Castellio. It was the position of the Arminians against whom the Canons of Dordt were written. And it was the position of the Amyrauldians, who have had such great influence in the British Isles.
3) There is a judicial aspect to reprobation. That is, God, in His just and righteous fury against sin, punishes sin with more sin, and ultimately sends the sinner to hell. This is part of what is taught in the text we considered in recent articles. Parables were an instrument of instruction which our Lord used so that the unbelieving in Israel would be hardened in their sin and become ripe for judgment. This is the force, in part, of the quotations of Isaiah 6:9-10. Yet, even though reprobation is manifested in God's righteous judgment according to which he punishes sin with sin, yet the hardening is the sovereign operation of God, as it was in the case of Pharaoh (Rom. 9:17-18).
4) Reprobation is sovereign. And it is sovereign because behind sin stands a sovereign God. God did not helplessly witness the fall of Adam and Eve in Paradise; He willed it. So it remains with all sin. The classic passages teaching this truth are those describing the awful sin of the crucifixion of Christ: Acts 2:23 and Acts 4:27-28. But God's sovereign control of sin is carried out in such a way that the sinner always remains a willing sinner, and, therefore, responsible for his sin.
5) Reprobation is God's decree to reveal Himself as just and righteous through vessels of wrath, fitted by God for everlasting destruction (Rom. 9:22). Thus, reprobation always must be related to the sin of man. However, man’s sin is not the cause of reprobation. Nor is it true that reprobation is the cause of sin, for this would make God the author of sin. The wicked do not go to hell on account of their reprobation, but they suffer everlasting damnation on account of their sins.
Election is indeed the fountain and cause of faith. But reprobation is not the fountain and cause of unbelief.
Reformed and Presbyterian theologians have rightly formulated it this way: God eternally and sovereignly reprobates the wicked to hell in the way of their sin and as just punishment for it.
The issue is, after all, the question of the relation between a sovereign God and man's accountability for his own sin. God's will is always carried out. Man's will to sin is his own choice to sin, an activity of his will. God is just in His anger against sin, and just and righteous in His punishment of the sinner.
6) Finally, in God's all-wise purpose, the reprobate in the world serve the elect. They serve the building of the temple of the church as scaffolding serves the erection of a cathedral. They serve the grains of wheat gathered into God's granary as straw and chaff serve the growing crop. They are the stem, the husks, the cobs, the tassels of the corn plant, necessary for a time, but destroyed when the corn is ripe and harvested.
The believer can never show one ounce of
pride when he considers all this, for he is elect only by God's sovereign choice and
eternal good pleasure. There is never any room for boasting. God receives all the glory,
always! He is sovereign. He does as it pleases Him. It is for us only to bow in worship
and adoration. Prof. Herman Hanko
Is Universal
Atonement True? (7)
(16) Another argument
against unlimited atonement flows from the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The Father chose
to save the elect alone and not the reprobate, the Spirit applies redemption to the elect
alone and not the reprobate, but the Son (allegedly) died for the elect and the
reprobate. Thus there is a radical disjuncture between the extent of the saving work
of the Father and the Spirit (elect but not reprobate) and the extent of the saving
work of the Son (elect and reprobate). Where then is the unity between the three
Persons of the Godhead? They are not all of "one mind" and they do not all have
one purpose. In fact, one Person of the Trinity (the Son) is working for a goal (the
salvation of the reprobate) not shared by the other two Persons (the Father and the
Spirit). The Father elects His people to be redeemed, the Spirit applies this redemption
to the same elect people, but the Son (allegedly) dies to redeem some whom the Father
chose not to redeem and some to whom the Spirit wills not to apply redemption. The
teaching of a death of Christ for all men head for head is forbidden by the Christian
doctrine of the Holy Trinity and runs counter to Scriptural statements regarding the unity
of the extent of the saving work of the Father and the Son (John 10:15-17; Rom. 3:25-26;
II Cor. 5:18-19; Eph. 1:4-7), the Son and the Spirit (Gal. 4:4-6; Heb. 9:14), and the
Father, the Son and the Spirit (II Thess. 2:13-14; Titus 3:4-6; Rev. 1:4-6).
(17) Universal atonement is
contradicted by the Biblical presentation of Christ’s atonement as a work which actually
saves. Christ delivered us from the kingdom of the devil (Heb. 2:14-15). He propitiated
God’s wrath against us by bearing God’s righteous indignation against our sins
(I John 4:10). He reconciled us (Rom. 5:10) and redeemed (Gal. 3:13) and ransomed
us (Matt. 20:28). Scripture does not teach that Christ makes salvation possible
by His death. Nowhere does it say that. The Bible teaches that Jesus actually delivered,
reconciled, redeemed and ransomed us by His cross. He did not merely make it possible for
all men to be delivered, reconciled, redeemed and ransomed. On the cross, He turned away
God’s punitive wrath against us forever. It is not true that Jehovah’s wrath is
only potentially turned away from all men so that all can be saved if they, by an
act of their "free will," choose Jesus. Furthermore, this view would make
entrance into God’s kingdom depend on man’s decision and not on God’s
election.
If
Jesus paid the price for all men yet some men perish in Hell, then Christ’s atonement
does not save all for whom it was made. Then too it is not substitutionary, for if
He bore the punishment of the reprobate —in their stead!—why do they perish? If
some end up in Hell for whom Christ died, then God punished their sins twice, once
on Christ and once on them. How can the infinitely just God require payment for sins
twice? How can He demand punishment of the sinner in Hell when satisfaction has already
been made for his sins? And how can some whom Christ delivered, reconciled, redeemed and
ransomed dwell forever as God’s enemies in the prison of Hell? Remember there is no
condemnation for those for whom Christ died (Rom. 8:34). Rev. Angus Stewart