God’s Work of Reformation (1)

Opening Remarks

Good evening. On behalf of the evangelism committee of First Reformed Protestant Church, we thank you for joining us tonight, whether that be those who are in attendance or those who may be listening online.¹ We are thankful to God that we are able to celebrate the five-year anniversary of God’s reformation of his church here in this place. Our prayer is that God will use tonight to further the gospel and to draw his people out of the false church and into the true church of God.

All must confess that the reformation of the church is not the work of any man or group of men. It is God’s work. Five years ago, God did a wonder. He pulled his people out of the false church to start a new church and also a new denomination. A new church where the pure gospel is preached in all of its glory and power, where the unconditional covenant was reclaimed, and where the full, free, and complete salvation accomplished by Jesus Christ alone is proclaimed each and every Sabbath day.

As we think back on the last five years, we may think of all the losses that we suffered for Christ’s sake: the loss of family, the loss of friends and loved ones. But with all those losses, we gained Christ and his truth. We gained the comfort of the gospel that all our sins have been forgiven in eternity and that we stand righteous before God. We are thankful to God for his truth that he has given to us. Our prayer is that God will preserve us in this truth.

Our speaker tonight is Rev. Tyler Ophoff. He was a faithful officebearer at Byron Center Protestant Reformed Church when the Act of Separation was adopted and signed on January 19, 2021. He studied in the Reformed Protestant seminary, and he is currently serving in his first pastorate at First Reformed Protestant Church in Hudsonville, Michigan.

Scripture Reading from Judges 2:6–23

Opening Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven, we come to thee this evening in praise and thankfulness—praise and thankfulness for who thou art and what thou hast done for us. We praise thee, for thou art our king, and thou hast made us citizens of thy kingdom. Thou art our king who dost lead and protect us. Thou dost lead us in truth and in righteousness. Thou dost protect us from all our enemies. We praise thee and are thankful unto thee for what thou hast done here in this place. Thou in thy infinite wisdom and love for thy people hast reformed thy church. Thou hast pulled us out of the false doctrine where man is king and set us in the truth where thou art king. Thou hast convicted us, and we confess that our salvation has been accomplished by our savior, Jesus Christ, and we have nothing left to accomplish of ourselves, nor could we. We stand righteous before thee and have an inheritance in thy kingdom. What a glorious gift thou hast given to thy church, a gift that is given in thy love and all by thy grace.

We are thankful for the opportunity this evening to reflect on the great wonder that thou hast worked, a wonder that we actually experienced here in this place, a wonder where thou didst form a new church, a new denomination of churches, and new schools. Thou hast given us faithful ministers, and Sabbath after Sabbath they bring us thy truth. We confess, Lord, except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchmen waketh but in vain. We pray, O Lord, that thou will be pleased to preserve us in thy truth and that the good news of Jesus Christ may be proclaimed from our pulpit with all its power and glory week after week.

Be with us now tonight, and we beseech thee that according to thy will thou wilt use this night to draw thy people out of the darkness into thy marvelous light. Thou, O God, hath built the walls of Zion as a sure defense against our enemies. Preserve us by those walls and the watchmen that thou hast set on those walls. Bow down thy ear and hear our prayer in mercy and forgive us of our sins for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

— Jim Geerlings

Introduction

Judges 2:6–23 is a kind of summary of the entire three-hundred-fifty-year period of the judges. The people of Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua and the elders who had seen all God’s mighty works in Israel. Then Joshua and the elders died, and “there arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel” (v. 10). A new generation of Israelites arose who forsook the Lord God of their fathers. The Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord and followed after and served the idol. According to Judges 21:25  the history of the nation of Israel before each judge was characterized by this: “Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” We could say it this way: “Every man believed that which was right in his own eyes and therefore did what his wretched heart desired.” Man’s actions are the fruit of his wicked and depraved heart. That every man did that which was right in his own eyes was the fruit of hearts that had turned away from the truth. The Israelites had forgotten the mighty works of the Lord that he had demonstrated in leading them out of Egypt and into the land of promise. Central to all those works was the gospel of Israel’s salvation. Thus the central significance is that the Israelites had forgotten the gospel and went and served the idol.

The nations that surrounded Israel became a thorn to the nation. The gods of the heathen nations were a snare to Israel. Then the Lord raised up judges to deliver the Israelites out of the hands of those who spoiled them. The right of the deliverance of the Israelites was God’s gracious justification of elect Israel. The Israelites’ deliverance was not because of, on the ground of, or in the way of their repentance and turning to God. They deserved only to be destroyed and oppressed by their enemies. But God raised up judges to deliver Israel and came upon the judges in the Spirit. We read that the Lord was with the judges (2:18). And he delivered the Israelites out of the hand of their enemies all the days of each judge.

The work of the judges was typical of the work of Christ. Each judge brought out some aspect of Christ’s work. The heart of the work of the judges was justice and righteousness. The judges came as deliverers, and their work pointed to Christ, the redeemer and savior of chosen Israel. The Old Testament types were shadowy revelations of Jesus Christ and his salvation.

For a time, while each judge lived, the Israelites served the Lord; but when the judge died, again a generation arose that knew not the Lord, and men did that which was right in their own eyes. And so the cycle continued again and again. There was a period where the Israelites served the Lord, a period of apostasy from the truth, and a period of reformation in Israel.

The gospel is the good news of Christ in his person, natures, words, and works. The gospel is the finished work of Christ. The gospel is that salvation is finished in him! 

The cycle of events during the time of the judges brings out this point: The faithfulness of God to his covenant. God is constantly and unchangeably faithful to his covenant. He never goes back on his word but immutably wills to take his people into his own covenant life. That God did not utterly destroy Israel at that point in her history is astounding. God’s notice of the sin of Israel was that “this people hath transgressed my covenant which I commanded their fathers, and have not hearkened unto my voice” (Judges 2:20). The people possessed the land of promise. Each tribe had gone in to possess the land God had given to them. And they forgot the Lord and the works he had wrought whereby he delivered them with an outstretched arm and a mighty hand. It is nothing less than God’s grace, his eternal attitude of favor toward his elect people in Christ, that God will not and did not go back on his promise. Those in his covenant are of themselves treacherous and unfaithful to his covenant, yet God in his eternal favor delivers and saves an ungrateful and rebellious people.

Why bring up the history of the judges in connection with a lecture on God’s work of reformation? The reason is that the history of this sad and terrible period of the judges is repeated in the new dispensation. Throughout church history there has been the ever-repeating cycle of serving the Lord in truth, apostasy from the truth, and God’s work of reformation. The history of the judges powerfully illustrates for us that truth. Take any period of the church in the new dispensation, and you can fit it perfectly into the book of Judges. During the Reformation of Martin Luther and the great Synod of Dordt, the Roman Catholic Church no longer served the Lord, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes. God raised up men through whom Christ operated by his Spirit to reform his church from the gross apostasy of Rome. During that period of reformation, God not only returned his church to the truth, but he also gave an advance in the understanding of the truth. Then a new generation arose that knew not the Lord; and two hundred years after 1618–19, God reformed his church again in 1834 with the Afscheiding. Then God reformed his church in 1857, when the Christian Reformed Church separated from the Reformed Church of America; in 1924 with the Protestant Reformed Churches; and finally in 2021.

God’s work of reformation in the year 2021 was no new phenomenon in the church. What happened in 2021 and the years leading up to it was precisely the fulfillment of the teaching of the Holy Spirit in Judges. In the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC), a generation arose that knew not the gospel and the mighty works of the Lord. That was me. That was you. We were that generation. We believed and did that which was right in our own eyes. It was not that the generations after us would go lost, but we were the generation that had already gone lost. We forgot the gospel of Jesus Christ. We forgot the mighty works of the Lord God. The greatest wonder of the Lord to which all the wonders of God in the Old Testament pointed was Jesus Christ and his person, natures, words, and works. The great wonder of God was the incarnation, suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ. And in the PRC we had forgotten that mighty wonder of God in leading us out of bondage and into the land of promise through Jesus Christ, the captain of our salvation. 

No church or denomination is immune from apostasy. The PRC is not immune. The Reformed Protestant Churches (RPC) are not immune. For forty years or more in the PRC, men believed and did what was right in their own eyes. Men forgot what had made the PRC so beautiful and lovely: God was in the midst of her by his Spirit and Word. God gave to the PRC the gospel! The gospel is not what man must do, following Christ or living a good life for Christ. But the gospel is the good news of the promise. The gospel is the good news of Christ in his person, natures, words, and works. The gospel is the finished work of Christ. The gospel is that salvation is finished in him! The gospel is that Christ fulfilled perfectly all the obedience to the law and love for God that he requires of you. The gospel is that God justifies ungodly sinners by faith alone and not by their works of obedience. By that gospel God himself delivers his people. He pulls them out of the teeth of their oppressor. God cuts a hole in the net that they might escape from the terrible, soul-crushing doctrine of salvation by the works of man.

Its Necessity

God’s work of reformation was necessary. Every necessity finds its answer ultimately in the eternal being and counsel of God. Throughout Judges 2 the name that God reveals to Israel is Jehovah, the I AM THAT I AM. He is the eternal and unchanging God of his covenant. His creatures exist from moment to moment, but God is. He never wanes in power. He never changes his mind. He never grows old or tires. He is eternal and infinite activity. He loves and is loved. He glories and is glorified in himself. As the I AM, he is never without his eternal counsel. From the view of God, the events of 2021 were the unfolding of his perfect and all-wise plan for the glory of his name. He determined, purposed, and carried out all the details. Nothing great or small stood apart from his eternal will. Nothing took him by surprise. He prepared all the world for the wonder he was about to perform. He sent a germ that brought the world to its knees to serve his church in 2020. He formed a magazine that would serve as the midwife for the birth of a denomination. All the sin, opposition, and ungodly actions of men, he too determined as that which he hates but which would serve a good purpose, the glory of his name and the salvation of his church.

I do not exaggerate when I say that the reformation of 2021 belongs to that category of wonders and works that God did for Israel in the Old Testament. We do not often think that way. God struck down Pharaoh and Egypt with the ten plagues for you. God parted the Red Sea for you. God fed you in the wilderness. God took you into heaven. What he did in 2021 was no less a wonder because grace always works wonders and does the impossible. The power of God operating in 2021 and beyond was God’s grace. That is why I say that 2021 was a wonder. It was a wonder that God saved any of us alive at all. Of that generation that arose that knew not the works of the Lord, he had some whom he was determined to save. These would not perish in their sin and unbelief. God gave to them the gospel.

That the gospel might have free course, on Tuesday, January 19, 2021, God carried out his work of reforming his church anew. Five officebearers from Byron Center Protestant Reformed Church drafted and signed a three-page document that was distributed throughout the Protestant Reformed denomination, calling members of the PRC to flee from the coming destruction by departing from that unfaithful and apostate denomination. On Thursday, January 21, 2021, was the official organization of what became First Reformed Protestant Church. January 21, 2026, marked the five-year anniversary of that mighty work of God’s hands. The document that marked the beginning of the reformation of 2021 was called the Act of Separation.² This document has endured the test of time as only the word of God rightly explained and applied is able. The Act stands as a constant rebuke and testimony against the PRC for her departure from the word of God. The document stands as a witness against the PRC’s ministers, elders, deacons, and members.

The most important part of the entire document is found in the first paragraph. All the other reasons given in the document for separation fall squarely under this one point—the PRC had become apostate and departed from the truth according to Belgic Confession article 29. That was the damning indictment of the Act: The PRC is a false church. The word of God there was no longer central and controlling, but the words and wisdom of men were. Does the word of God rule in the church? Or do the words and wills of men rule? All the marks of the true church stand or fall on that one central idea. Is the word of God preached faithfully, the sacraments administered according to the word, and Christian discipline applied in harmony with that word? Or is the word of man preached, administered, and is that according to which discipline is applied? The Act boldly and rightly declared that the PRC had departed from the word of God and is an apostate church, no different in principle than Rome. For any church that departs from the word of God, our evaluation and judgment is no different: That church has become Rome. The true church and the false church are “easily known and distinguished from each other” (Belgic Confession 29, in Confessions and Church Order, 64). Here is the beginning of the Act:

“And that this may be the more effectually observed, it is the duty of all believers, according to the Word of God, to separate themselves from all those who do not belong to the church, and to join themselves to this congregation wheresoever God hath established it, even though the magistrates and edicts of princes be against it, yea, though they should suffer death or any other corporal punishment. Therefore, all those who separate themselves from the same, or do not join themselves to it, act contrary to the ordinance of God.”—Confession of Faith, Article 28

“We believe that we ought diligently and circumspectly to discern from the Word of God which is the true church, since all sects which are in the world assume to themselves the name of the church.”—Confession of Faith, Article 29

With astonishment and grief, we have observed the apostatizing of the Protestant Reformed Churches by the denomination’s corrupting the marks of the true church and manifesting the marks of the false church, as those marks are set forth in our Confession of Faith, Article 29. The glorious gospel of salvation by God’s grace alone has not been preached purely but has been polluted with the filth of conditional theology, while the defense of the pure gospel of sovereign grace has been declared to be schismatic and sinful. False doctrines and errors multiply exceedingly through heretical writings. Church discipline has not been exercised faithfully, especially in the punishment of false doctrine. Teachers and defenders of error are exonerated and protected by the church, while discipline is wrongly applied against faithful watchmen. The denomination zealously guards the empty honor of men but allows the majesty of Jehovah and his truth to be trampled underfoot by the idolatry, false worship, and blasphemy of false doctrine in God’s house. The sacraments cannot be administered purely as Christ has appointed in his Word but have been stolen away from Christ’s sheep who cannot affirm their unity with an apostatizing congregation and denomination. The Word of God as the rule according to which all things are to be managed in the church has been ignored and disdained, and the will of men prevails. The Church Order and the biblical principles of Reformed church government have not been applied faithfully or righteously but have been ignored, applied only selectively and unevenly, and twisted by the earthly wisdom of men. The church ascribes more power and authority to the ordinances of her ecclesiastical decisions than to the Word of God. She turns to man for wisdom and relies more upon him than upon Christ. She will not submit herself to the yoke of Christ in the reproofs and rebukes of his Word. She slanders and reviles those who love the truth and confess it, hate the lie and repudiate it, rebuke her for her errors, and live holily according to the Word of God. “And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey. And the Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment” (Isa. 59:14–15). 

The denomination shrewdly retains the name of the church and a certain form of the church, deceiving the unwary. Nevertheless, she departs from the pure Word of God in her teaching and her government. Though she yet confesses Jesus Christ in name, by her deeds she does not acknowledge him to be the only Head of the church (Isa. 29:13).³

God put the entire Protestant Reformed denomination on trial in late 2020. He was not going to allow men to hide behind Synod 2018. The question put to Byron Center Protestant Reformed Church and to the entire denomination was, “What are you going to do with the truth?” At Byron Center anytime justification by faith alone was preached off the pulpit, members of the congregation would issue out a collective groan: “We have to hear about justification again?” Mind you, this is the heart of the gospel. This is the doctrine that the Belgic Confession in article 23 calls the “happiness of man” (Confessions and Church Order, 51). Men and women did not want that preaching because it was controversial. It went directly against the teaching of ministers in the PRC at that time who were teaching and continued to teach justification by faith and in the way of man’s activities. Unity Protestant Reformed Church separated from Byron Center over the preaching of justification by faith alone. That split was the first act of a whole series of rebellions against the word of God.

There were two sounds coming out of the denomination. The controversy was over justification by faith alone and covenant fellowship in the realm of man’s experience. Either Christ was decisive in the realm of man’s experience of salvation or man was decisive in the realm of man’s experience. Either Christ is the way to the Father or Christ plus something is the way to the Father. Both doctrines could not stand together. Both doctrines could not remain in the PRC. The majority of the members of Byron Center wanted justification by faith and in the way of obedience. Most of the members of the denomination wanted the same thing. This came out in sermons and writings during that time. This came out in the clamor for practical preaching at Byron Center. The people wanted to hear what man had to do and of man’s responsibility and not of God’s sovereignty in the salvation of the sinner. The word of God stood at the center of the controversy. The controversy was not about tone, manner, and personalities but about the truth of God’s word. What will men do with the truth? What will you do with Christ? By the end of 2020, Byron Center deceitfully and craftily kicked the truth out and not long after, so did the denomination. They did so by suspending and deposing a minister of the gospel who had preached the truth and applied that truth in the PRC. A few months later, the denomination suspended another minister in another slight against Christ, as if God in heaven does not see or know. The PRC kicked Christ out of his own church and would not bow under the yoke of Jesus Christ.

You do not hear anyone in the PRC saying anymore, “You have not proved anything.” It was never about proof. Unbelief does not need more instruction and evidence. Unbelieving man can be shown piles of proof, and he will never believe the truth. 

After the Act was signed and distributed, an outcry of opposition began to form. One objection was that the Act did not prove its contentions. This objection by some in the PRC was incredulous and dubious. Sermons had been preached against the false doctrine of the PRC. Articles and responses were penned in The Standard Bearer. The PRC could not buy a big enough rug to bury everything that had been coming to her classical and synodical meetings. Protests had been batted away, many on legality. Many of those protests still sit unanswered today at the feet of Byron Center’s consistory. Let the men who sit in that consistory room stand condemned by each unanswered protest. Eleven issues of Sword and Shield had been mailed to members of the PRC and others by the time the Act was signed, and many consistories told the members of their churches not to read the magazine. And members and ministers of the PRC actually had the gall to say, “You did not prove anything in the Act.”

Now, five years later, after hundreds of sermons and hundreds of articles and numerous speeches, instead of saying “there is no proof,” the denomination simply outright has rejected the truth and teaches a lie. You do not hear anyone in the PRC saying anymore, “You have not proved anything.” It was never about proof. Unbelief does not need more instruction and evidence. Unbelieving man can be shown piles of proof, and he will never believe the truth. Man loves himself, and he does what is right in his own eyes. His heart is evil. He hates the Lord, and he hates God’s word. The PRC has been shown her errors. The Act in its declarations has been shown to be true. The PRC has departed from the word of God and the faith of the church.

The Protestant Reformed Churches are apostate, and God’s work of reformation was necessary. Shortly after the reformation in 2021, work was begun on a document called the Annotations to the Act of Separation, which was never completed. The value of the document is the pages of quotations that were gathered from sermons and writings throughout the denomination. Without having those quotations documented, they would fade away into obscurity. Every one of the quotations corrupts God’s work alone in the salvation of sinners. I am going to quote some of the statements from Protestant Reformed ministers in their sermons and articles—some of the statements are well known and some lesser known—thereby demonstrating that the lie of salvation by man has cemented itself in the PRC.

Reverend Koole:

In order to live in accordance with God’s word, beloved, we must seek the grace that is available to us. I don’t know how that strikes your ears. Grace available to us? Aren’t we saved by grace? Yeah, you’re saved by grace. But you and I better be seeking the grace that is available to us.⁴

This sermon, which was preached on nearly every—if not every—pulpit in the denomination, is a complete rejection of the doctrine of grace. I do not know of a grace that is available by my seeking it. That is an Arminian idea of grace. The grace of God is irresistible, efficacious, and particular. It is the grace that justifies ungodly sinners.

Professor Dykstra:

He [God] takes them to the cross of Jesus Christ and causes them to behold what Christ has done and causes them to see the absolute need for confession of sin. In this way, this is the way the child will experience the favor of the Father, and this is the way he will experience the favor of his heavenly Father, the way of repentance, turning from sin, confessing sin.⁵

For Professor Dykstra the “way” of experiencing the Father’s favor is not Jesus Christ, the way, the truth, and the life, but the “way” of repentance. God takes his people to the cross of Christ and causes them to see the need for…confession of sin? This is strange. God takes his people to the cross and shows them their beautiful savior and his perfect and complete work of salvation for them.

The now-defrocked Ronald Van Overloop:

God’s sovereignty. Man’s responsibility. God’s gifts and Christ’s merits does not exclude God’s use of means. Does not exclude God’s gift of the use of the means of our obedience…And yet, God commanded. I performed a duty. Two rails. They go side by side. In the wisdom of God: His sovereignty, our responsibility. And it’s all grace. And nothing but grace.⁶

Van Overloop preached this sermon at Grace Protestant Reformed Church. God and man enabled by grace, working together side by side in the covenant. God in his sovereignty plus man enabled to obey. Christ’s merits and works plus man’s obedience. God engraved this false doctrine in the PRC through the events that transpired surrounding the then-Reverend Van Overloop.

Reverend Slopsema:

In fact, the more faithful the saints are to God’s law in the grace of Jesus Christ, the more they prosper in the great blessings of the covenant. They prosper in their marriages, in their family life, and in their church life. Above all, they prosper in the enjoyment of God’s covenant fellowship.⁷

Reverend Slopsema makes obedience to the law the way in which you have a good marriage, family, and church life. He never uses the word condition, but the message is clear. He gives the law a place and function that it does not have in the life of the child of God. The law only kills man. The law killed Israel in the Old Testament. The law pursued the Israelites all throughout Old Testament history until God simply wiped them out. The law completely destroyed national Israel. The law will do that for the PRC too. All her ministers’ admonitions, exhortations, and law-preaching as the gospel will only ever destroy the people in the PRC. That is all the law can ever do! It condemns, curses, and pursues man down into hell. The law when it is strictly preached is not grace to the hearer, but it enrages the old man of sin. Still more, what a hopeless and comfortless doctrine to a struggling covenant family and a struggling church! The word of Reverend Slopsema is, “You had better get busy working if you want a better life.” I cannot imagine coming to the home of a father and mother who has a wayward son or daughter and saying to them, “Well it wouldn’t have happened if you had obeyed the law more.”

Professor Cammenga:

Although God works the assurance of faith under the preaching of his word, we are active in this whole matter of the assurance of faith. God does not drop assurance out of the sky on us and now we have it forever and it can never be taken away from us and we have nothing to worry about as regards this matter of the assurance of our faith…That’s how we make our calling and election sure…What he [the apostle] is describing is a life lived in obedience to God’s ten commandments. God uses that in order to confirm in us the assurance of our election and salvation.⁸

This is a complete rejection of faith as assurance. That faith is assurance is the teaching of Lord’s Day 7. For Professor Cammenga, if you obey the law, you will gain the assurance of salvation. God uses a life of obedience to the ten commandments to confirm in the child of God his election and salvation. But in 2 Peter 1:10 “calling” is the calling of God in the gospel. That calling of God proceeds from election. In the pure preaching of the gospel, God speaks to his elect child and confirms in him his eternal election and the certainty of his salvation. God works faith in the elect child’s heart, which is assurance. The child of God knows himself as elect and saved. God does not leave that up to you in any sense. If that were true, your calling, election, and salvation could never be sure. But assurance comes when God comes and speaks.

Professor Cammenga again:

This [that the Catechism calls Jesus the only savior] is what makes Jesus a controversial savior. The Catechism is not teaching here that Jesus accomplishes, himself personally, every aspect of the work of our salvation. He does not. There are other works alongside the work of Jesus. And those other works, on behalf of our salvation, are the works of the Holy Spirit. The work of sanctification.⁹

Professor Cammenga divides Christ and his Spirit. Christ did most of the work, but there are other works alongside the work of Jesus, and those belong to the Spirit. What Professor Cammenga misses entirely is that the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, became the Spirit of the man, Jesus Christ, at his ascension. At that point Christ and his Spirit simply became synonymous. This is the importance of Acts 2:38–39: “Ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, for the promise is unto you…” How could the apostle say that the reception of the Holy Ghost is the reception of the promise? All throughout scripture the promise and promises are Jesus Christ. The apostle could say that because the Spirit brings only the perfect work of Christ. The PRC looks at the Holy Spirit as the enabler of man to gain something. But the apostle says that when you receive the Spirit, you have received the promise and all of salvation in your heart and life. The work of the Spirit of Christ is the application of the salvation of Christ in the heart and life of the elect child of God. The Spirit is the agent or worker of salvation. The Spirit brings Jesus Christ and all his riches and gifts to the elect child of God.

Professor Kuiper:

Seeking the remission of sin and righteousness of Christ implies prayer, and then that becomes more explicit: “that we constantly endeavor and pray to God for the grace of the Holy Spirit.” Now, I need more than the righteousness of Christ imputed to me—I need that, but I need more. I need grace, I need power, to begin anew to live according to the law of God. Don’t be afraid at this point that if you seek grace to begin to obey God’s law you will come to think that your obedience to God’s law helped get you saved, helped you enter the kingdom. I say to you today, don’t be afraid of that because even before praying for grace to obey the law of God, we saw the depth of the depravity of our nature, and we saw the remission of sins in Christ, and this comes third—not an unimportant third…but it came in the right order. Out of gratitude to God, I want to keep his law, and I pray for grace to do so.¹⁰

This quote has not received much attention. But Professor Cammenga is not the only one who teaches explicitly that Christ is not enough. Kuiper is an active professor in the Protestant Reformed seminary who is teaching a whole new generation of ministers this rotten filth. You need more than the righteousness of Christ. You need that, but you also need the grace of the Holy Spirit to live a life of obedience. Jesus Christ is not a complete savior. His death was not effectual to save. He might have redeemed you, but your renewal is by your Spirit-enabled works. God gives you grace and power to live according to the law. That is not the work of the Spirit! The Spirit is not the great enabler of man. The Spirit is the power of God to bring Christ to you in all his perfect work.

Reverend Bruinsma:

Here is the truth: The regenerated believer is no longer totally depraved. Scripture reveals it…It is not Christ who does the good in us. We do good; we live in obedience to God’s law because we are no longer totally depraved.¹¹

There is the complete rejection of total depravity. Bruinsma tears down the bulwark of total depravity in the Reformed faith. Total depravity is a wall that stops man from trying to claim a part in salvation. If man is totally depraved, salvation stands absolutely outside his willing and running. If a man tears this bulwark down, he is up to no good. Bruinsma tears down the doctrine of total depravity in order to give man a place in salvation. If regenerated man is not totally depraved, he is able to do some good; and if he can do something good, then he can also do something for God. The believer always remains totally depraved even after regeneration. The “except” clause in Lord’s Day 3 does not negate what it teaches about total depravity. The nature of the elect believer is not regenerated. His soul and body remain totally depraved. But in regeneration there is more to that child of God. His heart, the spiritual-ethical center of a man as he stands in relationship to God, is regenerated. But his nature always hates God and the neighbor. God in regeneration gives him a new heart, not an improved nature.

Reverend Bruinsma again:

Jesus does teach us that by means of, by our words, by means of our words we will be justified. That is, by means of the words that we speak we will be declared righteous in that day of judgment.¹²

This is justification by works in the final judgment. For Reverend Bruinsma when you come into the judgment, your words will matter in God’s declaring you righteous. This is a terrifying doctrine. The final judgment is not about what you say or what you have done, but it is about what God says about you, and that is that you are righteous for Christ’s sake alone. It is a judgment according to works not by means of works. It is a judgment in harmony with works. That means that God is going to bring up your works to demonstrate your faith before the entire rational, moral world. The believer will not bring up his works because he knows they are polluted and rotten. The believer will stand before his judge and savior in his glorified resurrection body and hear the verdict he has known all his life.

Reverend Spronk:

The more you live a life of conversion, the more that you walk in good works, the more you will experience God’s love and fellowship, the more you will experience the blessing of salvation.¹³

Repent more, work more, obey more; and you will experience more love and fellowship. 

Reverend Spriensma:

In the way of their repentance, and faith, and obedience, there will be showers of blessing on his covenant people…You see, essential for this rain to fall was that repentance of Israel and the turning away from her idols and a returning to Jehovah before they received that rain.¹⁴

Again, repentance is set out to be the way to experience the blessing of Jehovah. There will be showers of blessing on you if and when you repent—not by faith alone in Jesus Christ but by man’s working and doing.

I could keep going. I could pick out sermons from every single minister in the denomination, and they all would teach some variant of this. Christ and his work on one side, and man enabled to do something by the Holy Spirit on the other side. The young ministers in the PRC were all taught by some of these men who were or are professors in the seminary. The young ministers will only take all that they have heard and run even further down into idolatry. All these examples and more characterize Protestant Reformed preaching and writing. This is the rotten sound that exudes out of that denomination still today. The emphasis of every sermon is not Christ and what he has done but man and what he must do. Every man does that which is right in his own eyes. That is true in the doctrine and also in the life of the members of the PRC. You see and hear of things from time to time in the denomination. God simply has given them over to the service of sin. They have forgotten the works of the Lord and instead prostrate themselves before the idol. All their false doctrine is idolatry. They do not worship the God who has revealed himself in his word. They worship a god after their own hearts and do what is right in their own eyes. Our calling to the members in the PRC is the same as it has been since the beginning: Flee from the coming destruction!

Having laid out the necessity of the reformation that God worked in 2021, having shown how the ministers and professors of the PRC have completely corrupted the cardinal doctrines of justification by faith alone and the unconditional covenant, and having laid before the members of the PRC what their calling is in light of all this, I end the article here for now. Next time, the Lord willing, I will conclude by publishing the second half of the lecture and explain the idea, purpose, and continuation of God’s work of reforming his church, especially as that pertains to the Reformed Protestant Churches and God’s people therein. I also intend to include the question-and-answer section that took place at the end of the lecture.