Our only hope in life is that we belong to our faithful savior, Jesus Christ. Faith is our union to him. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Jesus Christ is in heaven and cannot be seen with our earthly eyes. How do we know Christ so that we can hope in him, and what gives us the evidence that he is real? How do we attain faith and the experience of faith? These questions recently caused reformation in God’s church. Salvation is by faith alone. If you go wrong about how man experiences faith, then you also go wrong about God and his salvation.
The Heidelberg Catechism in Lord’s Day 7 teaches us that
true faith is not only a certain knowledge, whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in His Word, but also an assured confidence, which the Holy Ghost works by the gospel in my heart; that not only to others, but to me also, remission of sin, everlasting righteousness, and salvation are, freely given by God, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merits. (Confessions and Church Order, 90–91)
The knowledge of God and confidence in him is to love him as children. So I will explain how we experience faith as I would explain that to a little child. We know that we sin in everything we do. Yet we know and are sure that God loves us because he tells us this on Sunday in church. He loves us so much that he sent his own Son to obey God’s law perfectly for us and to pay for all our sins so that we can be with him when we die. God makes us to know about his love for us by putting Jesus’ Spirit into our hearts. By the preaching God makes us believe that he loves us and also makes us love him! To experience this in our hearts is faith in Christ. The Holy Spirit gives us a little taste of life with our heavenly Father as we sit in church. By this experience of faith, God turns our hard hearts into soft hearts that are ruled by Christ’s Spirit.
Canons of Dordt 3–4.11 explains precisely how this knowledge and assurance are worked in us by Christ’s Spirit:
When God accomplishes His good pleasure in the elect, or works in them true conversion, He not only causes the gospel to be externally preached to them, and powerfully illuminates their minds by his Holy Spirit, that they may rightly understand and discern the things of the Spirit of God; but by the efficacy of the same regenerating Spirit pervades the inmost recesses of the man; He opens the closed and softens the hardened heart, and circumcises that which was uncircumcised, infuses new qualities into the will, which, though heretofore dead, He quickens; from being evil, disobedient, and refractory, He renders it good, obedient, and pliable; actuates and strengthens it, that like a good tree it may bring forth the fruits of good actions. (Confessions and Church Order, 168)
Canons of Dordt 3–4.12 continues to teach the sovereignty of Christ’s Spirit in us:
All in whose heart God works in this marvelous manner are certainly, infallibly, and effectually regenerated and do actually believe. Whereupon the will thus renewed is not only actuated and influenced by God, but in consequence of this influence becomes itself active. Wherefore also, man is himself rightly said to believe and repent by virtue of that grace received. (Confessions and Church Order, 169)
Canons of Dordt 3–4.14 leaves no doubt that the Holy Spirit sovereignly dictates man’s repenting and believing when it teaches that “faith is therefore to be considered as the gift of God…because it is in reality conferred, breathed, and infused into him.” Negatively, this article teaches that faith is not
being offered by God to man, to be accepted or rejected at his pleasure…or even because God bestows the power or ability to believe, and then expects that man should by the exercise of his own free will consent to the terms of salvation and actually believe in Christ.
The article goes on to teach that “He who works in man both to will and to do, and indeed all things in all, produces both the will to believe and the act of believing also” (Confessions and Church Order, 169, emphasis added).
Notice that the Canons and the Heidelberg Catechism teach repentance and belief in Christ to be activities produced in us and through us by the Spirit and the Word and that every good work that comes forth from the believer is fruit and only ever fruit of Christ, who continually bends the believer’s will into conformity with God’s will. We do not produce our own believing; Christ’s Spirit does. The believer recognizes this, and his heart spontaneously cries, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
The truth of faith humbles man and exalts God. John 15:1–5 depicts faith as the bond between branches and the vine:
1. I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.
2. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
3. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.
4. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
5. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
God, the master gardener, grafts us into Christ by giving us the Spirit of Christ to continually dwell in us. This bond to Christ is God’s gift to us. What an awesome gift it is! Through this bond flow all the blessings of salvation from Christ into us. All of salvation, including the activity of believing, is a fruit and only a fruit of Christ’s work in us and through us. Christ’s Spirit is like the sap that flows from the vine into the branch to give it life. The Spirit is the blood coursing through us and giving to us Christ’s own life, so that we are bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, and we know God to be our heavenly Father. He is the light of life in our dead bodies, which life we never can lose. This new life is only a beginning, but it is our real life. While we remain in our sin-cursed bodies, we are safely hidden in Christ, so that even our own sins cannot touch that new life. This is why the assurance of our faith is belonging to Christ.
Herman Hoeksema taught this to my parents’ generation, and this is what my parents taught me. Election theology makes God to be everything in salvation and man to be nothing. All men are born into this world spiritually dead in Adam. God decreed that he would give life to some of these men, even while they are in a body of sin. God’s decree does not depend on anything that men do, but the decree is God’s own eternal good pleasure for them as the potter over the clay. He puts this gift of life into their hearts but not into their flesh for a very good reason—to humble them and make them look only to Christ for salvation. God’s people recognize this new life in themselves when they hear Jesus’ voice call to them in gospel preaching—testifying to their spirits that they belong to Jesus and that his righteousness is theirs. God’s people know God as their heavenly Father. By faith they now possess a life that makes them pilgrims and strangers on earth and puts them in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. This new life is a life that causes them to live out of the mind of Christ while dwelling in a body full of sinful desires. Ephesians 2:4–7 expresses this beautifully:
4. God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
5. Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)
6. And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
7. That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
It is important to note that the Spirit and Word give the assurance of this life to the elect. The elect do not receive this assurance by repenting and believing. They have already received assurance, which causes them to repent and believe. The Spirit works this activity in them, as Canons of Dordt 3–4.14 tells us: “He who works in man both to will and to do, and indeed all things in all, produces both the will to believe and the act of believing also” so that “in the ages to come [God] might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.” Even repenting and believing are God’s gifts to his people.
Faith is not a mystery for the believer. The believer experiences faith every time he sits in church with his fellow saints under gospel preaching. There in the sanctuary faith’s certain knowledge and assured confidence, the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, become real in him. He rests comfortably in Christ like a newborn babe in the arms of his mother. The idea of having to do something for salvation is completely foreign to him. The believer will always denounce his own works and give to Christ all the glory for faith.
Faith is simple enough for a young child to experience and understand, yet faith is so profound that Canons of Dordt 3–4.13 tells us that
the manner of this operation [Christ’s Spirit] cannot be fully comprehended by believers in this life. Notwithstanding which, they rest satisfied with knowing and experiencing that by this grace of God they are enabled to believe with the heart, and love their Savior. (Confessions and Church Order, 169)
Homer Hoeksema taught that the word “enabled” in this translation does not convey the meaning of the original text. Protestant Reformed scholars should know this, but they love to use enabled to support their position about the Spirit. Homer Hoeksema gave a better translation of this article:
The manner of this operation believers are not able in this life fully to comprehend; meanwhile they rest satisfied in this, that they know and experience that by the grace of God they believe with the heart and love their Savior.1
Then Homer Hoeksema commented about his translation:
The reader will observe in this translation that we make one more, rather important, correction when we eliminate the expression “are enabled.” The…expression does not belong in the translation according to either the language or the intent of the fathers.2
Deception came into the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) by means of many years of ministers’ preaching sermons that emphasized good morals, law keeping, and man’s responsibility instead of God’s wonderful works and ways in salvation. The devil used this to prepare men to teach and the laity to tolerate the lie that salvation is in the way of obedience. Obedience was presented as an activity that man must do for salvation rather than the fruit of union to Christ, or faith. This lie led to the errors that faith is the activity of man, not Christ’s Spirit in and through a man, and that the Spirit in man is merely an enabler, not the actuating cause of faith.
That lie also led the PRC to the error that the regenerated man is no longer totally depraved in his flesh. Rev. Martyn McGeown wrote an article that denies what Homer Hoeksema taught in The Voice of Our Fathers. McGeown’s article now stands as dogma in the PRC.3 According to McGeown faith is both a bond that God made and man’s activity; the Spirit merely helps man to repent and believe, but man does it, not God; and man does this activity so that he can receive from God the assurance of salvation.
That teaching is Arminian to the core and is essentially the same thing that Rev. Hubert De Wolf preached in 1952 when he said, “Our act of conversion is a prerequisite to enter into the kingdom.” The devil is not stupid; he has raised that same ugly lie in the PRC once again. But this time he has put the lie in faith’s assurance of salvation.
Homer Hoeksema explained how the Arminians at the time of the Synod of Dordt explained away faith as God’s gift. Reverend McGeown essentially did the same thing in his article. Homer Hoeksema called it “hocus-pocus” because like magic, their words deceived many. Hoeksema wrote,
The Arminian will grant this [that faith is a gift] only in the sense that the gift is the power to attain to this faith. Hence, the Arminian position is that faith is a gift of God, but faith is also not a gift of God. You object that this is absurd and contradictory. And this is certainly true. But remember that the intent and also the end result of this Arminian hocus–pocus is the denial that faith is the gift of God. They choose devious and deceptive ways to reach that end, but they reach it nevertheless. Faith is the act of man; such is the Arminian position.4
The PRC cannot teach faith to be both man’s activity and God’s gift and maintain the sovereignty of God in salvation. The truth is that if the Holy Spirit dwells in one’s heart, that man or woman cannot not repent under gospel preaching. The Spirit of Christ will always cause that man or woman to repent. This is the must of repenting and believing. The must of repenting and believing is not to gain the assurance of salvation or anything else from God, which would make salvation conditional. Believers’ assurance of salvation is their salvation. The PRC displaced Christ by making faith into something man decides to do instead of what Christ’s Spirit does in a man. Then, like the Arminians at the time of Dordt, Protestant Reformed preachers began to teach that regeneration changes men, so that they are no longer totally depraved because they have the Spirit. They have to teach that men are no longer totally depraved to support their teaching that the Spirit merely enables men to believe.
Homer Hoeksema explained Arminian reasoning. Protestant Reformed preachers reason that way too when they add the phrase “you do this by grace, beloved” when referring to believing. Hoeksema wrote,
The Arminian also believes that the power to believe is from God.
Here however, is some more hocus–pocus or Arminianism. The Arminian does not believe this at all in the sense in which the Reformed man believes it. We frequently make a perfectly proper distinction between the power of faith and the act of faith…When the Holy Spirit operates in such a man through the preaching of the gospel, then that power of faith goes into action also, and he believes, as the living, spiritual knowledge of God which is life eternal, and puts his trust in God through Christ for all his salvation. That, I say, is a perfectly correct distinction to make. But this is not what the Arminian believes. For he teaches, remember, that the will of man in itself has never been corrupted. That will in itself is therefore still capable of believing. There is, however, the darkness of the understanding and the irregularity of the affections; and these constitute a hindrance for the will. And to the Arminian the gift of faith may mean that God will assist him to believe, in that He will remove those hindrances. But then it is still left to man’s will to believe or not to believe.
Hence, once more, according to the Arminian conception, it all comes down to the proposition that faith is a deed of man, never anything else.5
What did Homer Hoeksema mean by the phrase “when the Holy Spirit operates in a man through the preaching, then that power of faith goes into action also, and he believes as the living, spiritual knowledge of God which is life eternal”? Hoeksema wrote that because Christ’s Spirit in a man is the only power and life whereby a man is able to go into action and believe and because faith’s knowledge of God is the eternal life that puts man into action.
Protestant Reformed preachers now teach, as the Arminians do, that man must take hold of the Spirit as a grace that is available to man so that he is able to believe.6 By this they teach that God’s grace-gift of the Spirit is dependent on man’s will to harness this grace of the Spirit. What a terribly deceitful lie this is. Once the lie is recognized, God’s people cannot continue to sit under it.
30. Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:
31. That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. (1 Cor. 1:30–31)
Hebrews 11:4–5, 7–8 teach that “by faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” “By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death.” “By faith…Noah prepared an ark.” “By faith Abraham, when he was called…obeyed.” Without doing injustice to these texts, the words “by faith” could be “by the Spirit.” Abel, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham did what they did “by the Spirit.”
Think of what these verses would teach if we plugged in Reverend McGeown’s formula: With God’s help, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. Who was the power behind Abel’s sacrifice, Enoch’s translation, Noah’s preparing the ark, and Abraham’s obedience? Scripture as a whole tells us that it certainly could not be those men! God’s people are not fooled by this false teacher. All of salvation is in Christ and flows to us through the bond of faith, which is the Spirit in us. By faith’s union Christ’s power flows into us and comes out of us. Without Christ we can do nothing. In Christ we are strong to do humanly impossible things. This is the comforting word of scripture; this is the teaching of the Reformed creeds.
Faith’s bond grows under gospel preaching when Christ’s Spirit witnesses to our spirits that God loves us and forgives us for Christ’s sake. This is the importance of pure, God-centered gospel preaching every week. Our knowledge of and confidence in God do not grow by hearing about what we need to do. They grow by hearing what God has done for us in Christ. Preaching that focuses on the law, morals, and obedience cannot strengthen faith nor make us more holy. We do not grow holier by what we do. We are holy in principle in Christ, but in our flesh we remain totally depraved until we die. Our activity of believing does not grow or get better and cannot be our faith. Faith’s knowledge of and confidence in Christ are what grow.
When we were born and raised by our parents, they loved us unconditionally. As children, we did not need to do anything to have the assurance of their love. They simply loved us because we were their children. This is how God also loves his people. They are his adopted children because in eternity he decided to unite them to his only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ. This union is such that our sins were Christ’s from eternity, and Christ’s righteousness was ours from eternity. Jesus came to earth as a man laden with the sins of his people so that God’s great exchange could take place. Christ not only took and paid for their sins but also imputed to them his perfect righteousness through his Spirit in the bond of faith. What a wonder! God’s justice and his mercy kissed each other in that exchange. This is our rest in salvation. Nothing else is required. God provided everything in Jesus Christ.
Why would anyone want to take away the sovereignty of Christ’s Spirit in one’s heart when teaching about faith? Why would men not want to preach God’s eternal, electing love as the reason for faith? Why would someone want to put man into salvation? We can only conclude that those who do this experience a so-called faith by what they do, not by the work of Christ’s Spirit and Word in their hearts. If Christ’s Spirit is not in them, men would want to teach their own repenting and believing as faith in order to assure themselves of salvation. But this is not the faith of scripture and the Reformed creeds; it is an illusion. Unbelieving men’s joy and assurance are not from Christ’s Spirit but from their own activity with help from their imaginary little spirit-god. They observe lying vanities and forsake their own mercy (Jonah 2:8). They are like the fairytale emperor without clothes, whose folly was exposed by a little child. They are blind and naked but strutting around as if they are wearing the clean, white robes of Christ’s righteousness. The Lord despises them and will cast them from him if they do not turn. God hates any lie that denies his sovereignty and that gives to men a role in salvation. The creeds that these unbelieving men profess to believe say that the Spirit produces “the act of believing also”; and “true faith is…an assured confidence, which the Holy Ghost works by the gospel in my heart.” Faith and its confidence are Christ’s own saving activities in us and through us. Protestant Reformed preachers who teach an enabling Spirit have broken their ministerial vows. People who sit under Protestant Reformed preaching would do well to read The Voice of Our Fathers and compare it to what they are hearing, so that they do not break their own vows to God of their confessions of faith in Christ.
In Galatians 3:1 Paul asked the Galatians, “Who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth?” We ask members of the PRC similar questions. Do you think faith’s experience is a cooperative effort between you and God? Is Christ’s Spirit your Lord and master, or is he merely your helper? Does not your believing come from Christ’s Spirit in you, as your creeds teach? Do you by so-called available grace complete the bond that God started? Is grace not an irresistible power in you? Are you holy in principle because of faith’s bond to Christ, or do your activities of faith make you progressively holy? How do you receive the Spirit of Christ? Did the gift of the Spirit give Christ’s life to you, or did it make you into a good person who is not totally depraved and who is able to harness the Spirit’s help to repent and believe? Is your sinful nature not still with you? Are your works not filthy rags before God? If they are, how can your activities give you the assurance of salvation? Does God just ignore the sin that cleaves to your activities of repenting and believing, so that he can give you the experience of salvation, or does he see them as Christ’s own work in you and through you as our fathers taught? Will you give all glory to God for the gift of faith, or will you take some glory for yourself? These are all very important questions that divide truth from lies. The answers to these questions either maintain God’s sovereignty in salvation or give man a part in it. The contrast is stark, and God’s glory is at stake.
After Paul asked the Galatians who had bewitched them, he wrote,
19. My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,
20. I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you. (Gal. 4:19–20)
We also stand in doubt of those who remain in churches that teach a Spirit who merely enables them and teach that they must be obedient for God to be able to save them. Their membership shows that they believe that Christ is not sovereign but dependent on them. How is it that they do not understand that because of man’s sinful nature, even those who are regenerated must be brought to believe by the Spirit? When the gospel comes to a man, it teaches him the ugly truth about himself, along with God’s only way of salvation. Truly, the very first work that the Spirit of Christ does in a man is to make him know his depravity and to confess that he is a hopelessly lost sinner in a body that corrupts everything he does. Christ also assures him that by his union to Christ (faith), salvation is full and free and that in Christ he is free from the bondage of the law. Faith’s bond puts the law in a believer’s heart, making him sincerely desire to keep it. Christ’s indwelling Spirit is the only reason any totally depraved person hears and believes the gospel, confesses sin, and lives thankfully.
The pure preaching of the gospel is a distinguishing mark of God’s true church and the spiritual food for God’s people. This food cannot be laced with the poison of lies without doing much harm. History has proven this to be true. Everyone who reads this should remember that there is only one God and that he has only one truth. Do the Reformed Protestant Churches declare God’s truth, or do the Protestant Reformed Churches? Was the split of 2021 a reformation or a sinful schism, as Protestant Reformed leaders label it? Did God work a reformation in his church, or was he exposing a sect that needed to be removed from his church? If a church continually preaches lies without repentance, she is a false church. When sermons focus on what man must do for salvation instead of what God does, God is not glorified, and there is no salvation by those sermons. In that church proud and carnal men walk away with their egos stroked, and the saints leave spiritually empty. God’s people come to worship God and to receive the heavenly rest they need to fight their spiritual battles. They need to hear Christ’s reassuring words: “I am your savior; do not fear.” Instead, they hear a lot of true statements in good, Reformed language from wolves in sheep’s clothing telling them what they must do to be saved. God is not glorified in such sermons; man is glorified. True believers know God as their faithful, heavenly Father, who always has loved them in Christ and will save them unconditionally. They recognize lies and will forsake all to be where Christ’s word comes to them in all its purity. Christ’s word is their pearl of great price.
8. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,
9. And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. (Phil. 3:8–9)
Believers always can talk freely, candidly, and without guile to one another about God’s truth because they have the mind of Christ that unites them in truth. Love for Christ and his truth and concern for the spiritual well-being of loved ones make us want to talk about God’s truth to those who remain in the PRC. True love always seeks the eternal good of others and will instruct, admonish, and rebuke when necessary. Those who claim to love us but believe that we are man-following schismatics should want to talk to us about the truth in order to do for us what love requires of them. Their refusal exposes their true feelings about us and about God’s truth. When apostasy comes, the antithesis that God created between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent becomes evident in a church. Truth always unites, and lies always separate. God brings reformation into a church to purify her and to preserve his truth. Malachi 3:16–18 says the following about the faithful remnant in Israel when apostasy was rampant:
16. They that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name.
17. And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.
18. Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.
The actions of those who live through times of apostasy show whom they serve. Those who fear the Lord know they need gospel-truth, love it, and want it purely preached. When the preaching is not right, the people who fear the Lord will discuss the doctrines involved and the ecclesiastical decisions that were made about that truth, and by faith they always will go where the truth of God is proclaimed, no matter what it costs them. We would love to talk with Protestant Reformed people about these things, but our experiences have been that they either flatly refuse without explaining why, employ circumlocutions regarding the issues, or end the conversation with angry accusations. In their refusals to study and to discern “whether these things are so,” they certainly are not like the Bereans of Acts 17:11. Instead, they act like a misbehaving child who does not want to answer the questions his parents ask because he knows that he is doing something wrong. If they truly love God and his truth as they claim, what hinders them from talking to us about these things? We do not judge their hearts, as many have accused us of doing, but we judge their preaching and doctrine as we are called to do. So in love we warn them and leave the outcome to the Lord. He alone controls the hearts of every man, woman, and child, and God always will break the hard hearts of his elect and leave the reprobate in their sins. He will do this for the sake of his own glory, for the good of his church, and the coming of his kingdom.
4. I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.
5. The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.
6. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God.
7. When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.
8. They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.
9. But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord. (Jonah 2:4–9)
“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8–9).
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