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In the February 15, 2022 issue of the magazine, Sword and Shield (hereafter S&S), an editor accused me of “teaching that man’s activity precedes God’s activity in salvation” because I teach that “repentance precedes remission of sins.” The charge, that one teaches that man’s activity precedes God’s activity in salvation, is, of course, damning, which is exactly what the editor unbrotherly and unkindly intended. In reality, the charge is absurd—as absurd as it would be to charge a Reformed scientist with denying the providence of God simply because he stated that the growth of plants follows the shining of the sun.

His reference was to my assertion that in a certain aspect of God’s work of salvation God works in such a way that He moves us to act in order that He may then act in the way He has determined. In that particular aspect of salvation, God works in such a way that our activity (which He accomplishes) precedes His activity. The precise reference was to His act of the forgiving of our sins. Our repenting precedes His remission of our sins. My statement was as follows: “It pleases God…to forgive in the way of the sinner’s repenting…Neither is repentance the cause of forgiveness…[As an aspect of faith it is] the (God-worked) means. It is not the cause…The PRC teach that repentance is the (God-given and God-worked) means unto the remission of sins. As means, repentance precedes remission of sins; as end, remission of sins follows repentance” (unpublished paper, “Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc?” Non!, or, “Don’t Kill the Rooster!”)

Everyone can see that my affirmation of repentance preceding remission is radically different from the description of this truth by the editor of S&S. My statement does not deny God’s being first in salvation. With regard to the issue at hand, repentance and forgiveness, I confessed that our repenting is the gracious work of God in us (II Timothy 2:25): God moves us to repent so that in the way of our repenting He forgives. The presentation of my statement by the editor of S&S leaves out that God moves the elect sinner to repent and that He does so by His efficacious call, “Repent!”

There are three possible explanations of this misrepresentation of my affirmation of the biblical doctrine that repentance precedes forgiveness, and is the way to receive forgiveness. One is that the editor is ignorant. Conceivably, one who does not apprehend the difference between my confession of the order of God’s work of salvation in “The Rooster” and his misrepresentation of it as teaching that man is first in salvation is ignorant.

But the editor of “S&S” is not ignorant. On the contrary, he is a bright theologian.

The second possibility is that he is lying—deliberately misrepresenting me so as to convince his adherents of the necessity of his abandoning the Protestant Reformed Churches and so as to gain more followers. This is a popular, if despicable, tactic on the part of theologians. To win their church battles, they deliberately misrepresent the doctrinal position of their adversary. This is sin, and sin of the most dishonorable sort. It is a falsifying of the truth and a blackening of the name of fellow Christians in the sphere of the church of Christ, where truth ought to rule, and with regard to the precious gospel. There, love of the brother ought to reign. And the motive for this kind of behavior is ignoble, unworthy of one who claims to be a servant of Jesus Christ: advance oneself.

I cannot believe this of the editor of S&S. Regardless that he has slandered me and my colleagues, with evident hatred of us, I persist in regarding him as a brother in Christ—a brother in serious error, but a brother nonetheless. I, therefore, reject this option as explanation of his misrepresentation of my explanation of the relation of repentance and forgiveness. He does not, I persist in believing, with malice aforethought misrepresent me so as to gain his own personal advantage and discredit me.

This leaves only the third option: he is honestly mistaken. Despite the efforts of myself and of the assemblies of the churches of which I am a member, he does not understand that God works this aspect of salvation in such a way that He (sovereignly) moves the elect sinner to repentance so that, following this repentance, He may forgive. This mistake is serious enough. It stands uncomprehending before the petition of the model prayer, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” To say nothing about the obvious relation between our forgiving each other and God’s forgiving us, the petition has the penitent sinner requesting forgiveness of God. The penitence that prompts the request for forgiveness precedes God’s forgiveness of the penitent sinner. How a believing member of the church, to say nothing of a minister, can fail to see the order of God’s work of forgiving sinners is a mystery to me. But so it is, evidently.

Add to this that a minister, by virtue of his office, often calls on members of the congregation who are walking in sin. Does he not urgently call them to repent so that they may be forgiven? Does he not call them to repent in so many words? Does he not utter the promise of the gospel that everyone who repents is (then, and in this way) forgiven? And when God blesses his pastoral call, does he not witness, as it were with his own eyes, that forgiveness follows repentance? Surely he does not declare to the sinning member, “You are forgiven, now repent.”

Plain as this is to me, apparently it is not plain to the editor of the “S&S.” For teaching this, the PRC are false and I am a heretic, and even worse, if the epithets hurled at me mean anything. Our difference over this relation of repentance and forgiveness seems to be the main doctrinal issue between us, or, at least, very close to the heart of the main issue.

I explain, therefore, to my mistaken brother, and beloved former student, yet once again, that our believing precedes God’s justifying us and that God’s remitting our sins follows our repenting, and that this order of God’s saving us does not compromise the truth of salvation by grace alone.

God saves. God is not only first in our salvation; He is exclusive in our salvation. That is, He alone saves; He saves in the entirety of salvation. Neither do we save ourselves in any respect, nor do we cooperate in our salvation, nor does salvation depend on us. God saves, and He saves in a certain, important order of this salvation, specifically in that aspect of salvation that consists of the forgiveness of sin. He is pleased to forgive in the way of moving us to repent of our sins. Therefore, He sovereignly causes us to repent. Following our repentance, and in the way of our repenting, He forgives. This is not only a “logical order,” whatever this may be, but the order is the sinner’s experience of forgiveness. When he repents, God forgives. If he refuses to repent, God does not forgive. When David repented of his sin with Bathsheba, God forgave, and for the first time in months David experienced forgiveness (II Samuel 11). David himself tells us that he was unforgiven so long as he did not repent, in Psalm 51. As a penitent sinner, he pleads there for forgiveness, the lack of which in his impenitent condition he experienced as the breaking of his bones by God. God’s work of bringing David to repentance preceded God’s work of forgiving David’s sin. Forgiveness followed repentance.

I confess to feeling foolish in belaboring this fundamental truth of the Christian faith, especially in the awareness that some of the Reformed churches are following the schism in the Protestant Reformed Churches and who are probably as mystified over the purported doctrinal difference as am I. This order of God’s work of salvation is not an arcane mystery for learned theologians to puzzle over, but the daily confession and experience of every believer. It confronts every believer daily in the petition of the model prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Leave out of consideration that forgiveness here follows the believer’s activity of forgiving his neighbor: “as we forgive our debtors.” The main thought of the petition is that the penitent sinner asks for forgiveness: forgiveness follows penitence; repentance precedes remission of sins.

Time and space would fail me to quote all the passages of Scripture and the creeds that teach that repentance precedes forgiveness, or, what is essentially the same truth, that believing precedes justification, and that repentance is required for forgiveness.

I continue to explain.

To deny that forgiveness follows repenting leads to the conclusion that repentance follows forgiveness, thus turning a basic biblical truth and Christian reality on its head: “be forgiven in order to repent.” In fact, the implication of the theology of the editor of “S&S” is that the sinner has forgiveness without repenting. This, apparently, is now the gospel-message of the Reformed Protestant Church. That this fear is not without its basis in the writing itself of the editor of “S&S” is evident in the same “Reply” to which I have referred earlier.

Repentance is not a means unto the remission of sins…God does not forgive our sins through repentance but only through faith…Repentance has no bearing whatsoever on [a] man’s remission of sins…Teaching that in some sense a man’s activity [deliberate refusal to state the truth as “God’s work of causing the sinner to repent”—DJE] of repenting precedes God’s activity of remitting his sins is so deadly and wretched…(emphasis added).

An aspect of the mistake concerning repentance on the part of the editor of “S&S” (which I mention in the hope that recognition of this mistake may incline him to recant his error that repentance does not precede remission as the God-ordained and God-worked way unto the remitting of sins) is that apparently the editor does not know that the Reformed tradition follows Calvin in regarding repentance as an aspect of faith. Repentance is not a “good work” of the sinner that is a “fruit” of faith produced by the sinner, but an element of faith itself (cf. his Institutes, 3.3.1: “Both repentance and forgiveness of sins…are conferred on us by Christ, and both are attained by us through faith…Repentance…is also born of faith”). The editor makes repentance a “good work” of the sinner, which greatly aids him in his (practically fatal; that is, fatal to Christian practice) denial that repentance is the way to forgiveness.

Forgiveness without repenting is not the Reformed faith. Having established that repentance is “an evangelical grace [not a ‘good work’ of the sinner—DJE],” and that it definitively consists of “grief for and hatred of sins, [not the ‘love of God,’” which is rather the source of repentance than the identity of it; cf. II Cor. 7:9–11—DJE] the reformed Westminster Confession of Faith states that repentance is “of such necessity to all sinners, [so] that none may expect pardon without it” (15.1–6).

Forgiveness without repenting is not Christianity: “Forgive us [penitent believers—DJE] our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12).

My Reformed Protestant (erring) brother ought to correct his mistake of misrepresenting me with regard to the order of God’s first bringing the sinner to repentance and God’s work of then forgiving the sinner.

I urge him also to open his eyes to the fundamental Christian truth that God works in such a way that our repenting precedes our receiving the gift of forgiveness, so that the necessary call of the gospel is, “repent that you may be forgiven” (cf. Mark 1:15; Mark 2:17; II Cor. 7:10; Luke 13:3, 5; Luke 15:11–32).