Introduction

A good theologian must rightly divide the word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15), that is, he must uncover the Spirit’s meaning in the text. The truth is from the God of truth concerning Jesus Christ, who is the truth, and the Spirit leads the church into all truth (John 16:13). A minister of the gospel rightly divides the word to give the true sense of the text. He opens up that word to uncover the deep mysteries of God. He cuts open that word to point out the truth of that word to his flock that they may eat the meat cut up for them. The faithful minister brings that meat to his congregation on Sunday when the gospel, which declares to them salvation in Jesus Christ, is preached. The faithful preaching makes man nothing and fills him with Christ. Emptied of himself, he is hungry for Christ.

What Rev. Martyn McGeown proposes in his recent Standard Bearer article is a novel idea of 2 Timothy 2:15 in service of the false doctrine that continues to ooze out of every pore of his being.¹ For him, to “rightly [divide] the word of truth” is to “make proper distinctions.” This is the primer for what he is about to do with the word of God and the confessions. He is not about to “rightly [divide]” the word. Instead, he is about to mangle that word, rend it into pieces, and then spoon-feed it to his audience, who will nod their heads in agreement, oohing and ahhing.

In his article Reverend McGeown does a really great job of finding man. He ranks among the top in this regard. He pays lip service to the doctrines of God’s sovereignty, election, and justification by faith alone. But those are just the terms he knows he needs to sprinkle in here and there to sound Reformed. His theology is a theology of endless distinctions regarding justification for the purpose of inserting man and his believing and confessing.

Reverend McGeown is not Reformed in his doctrine. I wonder in amazement that his audience actually believes what he writes. He would like his audience to believe—and the people mostly do—that the state of justification is different than the experience of justification and that justification is also different than the forgiveness of sins. It is true that there are different aspects of justification: justification in eternity, justification at the cross, the assurance of justification in Christ’s resurrection, and justification declared in the gospel; but none of the aspects of justification, including being imputed the righteousness of Christ, are given to us “when we believe.” We receive the righteousness of Christ by faith alone, not as a ground but as the means whereby we are ingrafted into him and become partakers of him and all his benefits.²

What Reverend McGeown has been laboring through his writings to prove is that faith and its activity of believing are the basis for justification instead of faith simply being the means. This was the work of the Arminians against the Reformed at the Synod of Dordt as well. It is the effort of Reverend McGeown to overthrow gracious salvation and the gracious preaching of salvation with the teaching that man receives justification when he believes. Man’s legal status changes when he believes. Justification becomes dependent on a man’s believing or not believing. Reverend McGeown never uses the word condition, but his theology is one of conditions. He has shown himself to be an enemy of gracious justification and of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And this was all written in an issue of the Standard Bearer that was supposed to be about justification by faith alone.

The theology of Reverend McGeown is lethal and poisonous. For Reverend McGeown you are not justified by faith alone, but you are justified when you believe. My question to Reverend McGeown is, why are you changing what the church has confessed since the Reformation, that is, sola fide, faith alone—that God justifies the ungodly by faith alone? The answer should be clear to the discerning reader holding the word of God. McGeown’s theology sends men and women to their working and specifically to their believing. It is the theology of Man.

Reverend McGeown’s article is a grief to me because of how weak he makes God, how weak he makes God’s sovereignty, and how weak he makes the preaching of the gospel and because of the great number of friends and loved ones who have been caused to stumble by this siren song. The burden of this article will be to strike at the doctrine of Reverend McGeown’s article, God upholding me by his grace and Spirit. It will be to rightly divide the word of truth in laying out the light of the truth of God’s word against the dark background of false doctrine.

Faith Is the Fruit of Election

Reverend McGeown begins his work by attempting to exegete Acts 13:38–39, 48. He attempts to prove with these verses that when the men of Antioch believed, they were justified. He writes, 

When the men of Antioch, who were “ordained to eternal life” according to verse 48, believed, they were justified. Their legal status changed. They had been under condemnation. Then they were justified.

This is the theology of Reverend McGeown: when they believed, then they were justified. First man does his believing, then man receives forgiveness of sins. But all Reverend McGeown does here is manufacture a condition for salvation out of his own mind and will. The men of Antioch had to do something, namely, believe; then they received justification.

By using the word “when,” Reverend McGeown is introducing an aspect of time into justification, which is a legal act of God whereby he declares the sinner righteous.³ When the men of Antioch believed, then they were justified. This is contrary to the Reformed faith and the doctrine taught by Rev. Herman Hoeksema: “The elect do not become righteous before God in time by faith, but they are righteous in the tribunal of God from before the foundation of the earth.”⁴

Reverend McGeown completely divorces God’s decree of election from God’s gift of faith. Acts 13:38–39, 48 do not teach man’s activity of believing or his working for justification. The important phrase in Acts 13:48 is “as many as were ordained to eternal life.” Reverend McGeown is fond of breaking down words for his audience, so let us do the same. The word “ordained” is in the perfect tense, quite remarkably. When a word is in the perfect tense, it refers to a past action that is being manifested in the present. This word “ordained” is also in the passive voice, meaning that those who were ordained were being acted upon by an outside agent or force. What then is the doctrine of this important word “ordained”? It is this: God is the agent. His decree of election is strictly his work alone. And the elect, “as many as were ordained,” are the objects of God’s gracious work. Their believing is the fruit of God’s election of them. Acts 13:48 is the outstanding text in the New Testament of sovereign predestination and of God’s election of some to eternal life.

How does God manifest his decree to the elect who were ordained to eternal life? When the gospel comes to them, as many as were ordained to eternal life infallibly and irresistibly believe because God is the almighty God, and nothing can so much as move without his willing it (Matt. 10:29).

Reverend McGeown disparages the preaching of eternal justification by saying, “Paul did not preach, ‘You were justified in eternity, and through faith you simply come to the conscious realization of that eternal reality.’” However, this is exactly the truth of Acts 13:48 in connection with Acts 13:38–39. “Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins” (v. 38). The preaching of Paul made known to God’s elect the forgiveness of sins that belonged to them in Jesus Christ. The preaching made known to them God’s sovereign election of them and that they were justified in eternity.

This is the teaching of question 19 of the Heidelberg Catechism: “Whence knowest thou this?,” that is, how do you come to the knowledge (consciousness) of Jesus Christ and all that he has accomplished as mediator of the covenant? The answer of the Catechism: “From the holy gospel” (Confessions and Church Order, 89). That is how you know and come to the consciousness of your salvation in Christ. That is how you know that your sins are forgiven and that you have the everlasting righteousness of Christ.

John Calvin taught the same truth:

For he doth not begin to choose us after that we believe; but he sealeth his adoption, which was hidden in our hearts, by the gift of faith, that it may be manifest and sure…Whence we do also gather what force the preaching of the gospel hath of itself. For it doth not find faith in men, save only because God doth call those inwardly whom he hath chosen, and because he draweth those who were his own before unto Christ, (John 6:37).⁵

God draws the elect, who from eternity belonged to Christ their head, by the preaching of the gospel. Paul preached the gospel to the multitude in Antioch. God’s decree of election was the controlling force that determined who believed. Their believing was the fruit of God’s election of those Gentiles. That the Gentiles believed (Acts 13:39, 48) refers to faith, God’s wonderful, gracious gift to his elect people, bestowed by the operation of the Holy Spirit. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). Canons 1.5 also teaches this: “Faith in Jesus Christ and salvation through Him is the free gift of God” (Confessions and Church Order, 155).

Faith is the bond by which we are engrafted into Christ; the means whereby we are justified; and a fruit, a gracious fruit, of election, apart from any working of man. Faith is

an assured confidence, which the Holy Ghost works by the gospel in my heart; that…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)

Faith is the connection of the elect sinner to Jesus Christ, and faith is the bond that appropriates Christ and all his benefits, including wisdom, justification, sanctification, and redemption. The elect child of God is justified by faith, not when he believes.

When election is placed above faith, there is no cause why men should challenge to themselves any thing in any part of their salvation. For if faith, wherein consisteth salvation, which is unto us a witness of the free adoption [justification] of God, which coupleth us to Christ, and maketh his life ours, whereby we possess God with his righteousness, and, finally, whereby we receive the grace of sanctification, be grounded without us in the eternal counsel of God; what good things so ever we have, we must needs acknowledge that we have received it of the grace of God, which doth prevent us of its own accord.⁶

Faith Is a Doing Nothing

Reverend McGeown turns his gaze next upon Acts 16:30, the well-known passage of the Philippian jailor, who cried out, “What must I do to be saved?” Reverend McGeown condemns eternal justification by writing, “The answer was not, ‘You are already saved from eternity and eternally justified, so that God does not see—and never has seen—any sin in you.’” He calls this preaching confusing to an unbeliever. However, to the elect child of God who has been given faith, this is not confusing! The Holy Spirit testifies in his heart by the preaching, “This promise is for me, and I have all these things in Christ—for free!”

Reverend McGeown’s condemnation of eternal justification brazenly contradicts scripture, which teaches, “He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel” (Num. 23:21). God looked down upon the elect of Israel and saw no sin. Israel was already justified in God’s eternal decree before Christ had even borne the curse of the cross. Reverend McGeown’s statement also contradicts the teaching of Ephesians 1:4: “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.” God chose his elect in Christ before the foundation of the world, and they are without blame in eternity. He gave his elect the spotless robes of Jesus Christ freely without believing as a work of man.

Reverend McGeown then continues and states,

Justification would happen after the jailor’s believing. Paul could not preach eternal justification to the Philippian jailor because, until the wretched man believed, neither he nor the apostle could know that he was an elect person.

The gospel must be preached promiscuously throughout the world. It is preached for the elect, and the promise is efficacious for them only, yet the gospel must be proclaimed to everyone. I will come back to this thought briefly in connection with Reverend McGeown’s understanding of preaching and missions.

This exegesis of the text by Reverend McGeown is the wholesale abandonment of the doctrine of Rev. Herman Hoeksema on this exact text. In a sermon on Acts 16:30–31, Reverend Hoeksema preached the following:

He cried out, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And that same Christ preached to him, “This you must do: believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.” That means, beloved, you must do nothing. Believe. Believe. Nothing. Do nothing but believe, believe, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.⁷

Why could Reverend Hoeksema say this? Because Reverend Hoeksema properly defined faith, which is nothing of man but all of God: “You must remember that all faith is faith in God. All faith is faith in God. Faith can never be faith in man. Faith must always be faith in God.”⁸

Later in his article Reverend McGeown makes plain that faith is something man does: “This act of faith, which is God’s gift (Phil. 1:29), is repeated throughout our lifetime, every time we consciously lay hold of Jesus Christ by faith, so that, having heard and received the gospel by faith we ‘[go] down to [our] house justified.’” This is sneaky and deceptive theology because he says some right things that strike the Reformed ear as true. Faith is God’s gift—this is true. We hear the gospel by faith—this is also true. But the doctrine of this statement is nothing but bare Arminianism. Man must consciously lay hold of Jesus Christ by man’s act of faith. Saying that faith is God’s gift does not save this statement. Neither does a passing mention of the gospel save his doctrine. Faith is something man is doing to receive something from God, namely justification.

Throughout his article Reverend McGeown searches high and low in the confessions to find support for his theology. He exerts himself in mental gymnastics to find Man in the confessions. Man must believe. Man must grasp or lay hold of. Man must embrace. If man does these things, then according to Reverend McGeown, “our sins are forgiven—or we are justified—repeatedly by believing the promise of the gospel” (emphasis added). But the point of faith is not man’s believing; the point of faith is Jesus Christ. No one denies that faith has activities. Faith believes, rests, clings, embraces, and relies on the promise of God. Faith looks to nothing else but Jesus Christ. However, faith is the means, not the basis, that appropriates Jesus Christ and all his righteousness. Reverend McGeown shows himself to be among the enemies of gracious justification, condemned by the Protestant Reformed Churches of old, who teach that “the activity of believing becomes the sinner’s righteousness with God, rather than the obedience of Christ that faith only embraces and receives.”⁹

Faith and its activity of believing are a doing nothing. This is in complete harmony with scripture and the confessions. Question and answer 21 of the Heidelberg Catechism explains what true faith is: “True faith is…a certain knowledge, whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in His Word” (Confessions and Church Order, 90). Belgic Confession 22: “The Holy Ghost kindleth in our hearts an upright faith, which embraces Jesus Christ with all His merits” (Confessions and Church Order, 49). Canons 1.4 on divine predestination: “Such as receive it [the gospel], and embrace Jesus the Savior by a true and living faith…” (Confessions and Church Order, 155). What must you do to saved? Do nothing, beloved. Believe! Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Rest in Jesus Christ. Embrace Jesus Christ. Hold to Jesus Christ. Trust in Jesus Christ. Faith is not man’s working, man’s obedience, or man’s believing.

Justified in Our Experience

Reverend McGeown in his mangling of the scripture writes, “Therefore, to be justified you must believe in Jesus.” We have heard this theology before in the Standard Bearer: “If a man would be saved, there is that which he must do.”¹⁰ Man must believe. Reverend McGeown is the new Reverend Koole and makes the theology of Reverend Koole his own. He makes believing man’s work in order to be justified or to experience justification.

I have spent much time explaining faith as a fruit of election and faith as a doing nothing. The resounding answer of scripture and the Reformed confessions is that a man is justified by faith alone without works. Justification is God’s act whereby he “without any merit of mine, but only of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ” (Heidelberg Catechism, A 60, in Confessions and Church Order, 106).

God’s act of justifying us also includes God’s act of giving us the experience of justification. The holy gospel, according to God’s sovereign decree, gathers the elect of God and declares to them remission of sins and everlasting righteousness. The gospel, worked by the Holy Spirit, testifies to the elect that they are justified not only objectively but subjectively in their conscious experience. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. An elect child of God experiences peace in his whole being. He knows and tastes that peace in his mind and will. Romans 5:11 says that we have joy in God. Being justified by faith, we have true happiness and bliss as members of the body of Christ. In Romans 8:32 the Spirit says that we are freely given all things. There is nothing man must do to have all of salvation, including the conscious experience of that salvation. Christ accomplished it all on the cross when he said, “It is finished” (John 19:30).

God’s decree of election makes all of the salvation we have in Christ so certain that it can never be taken away. As Professor Engelsma formerly taught,

It [election] is assuring as the fountain of justification. It lives in the believing sinner’s consciousness that he is righteous before God by faith, not because he performed the condition of believing and certainly not because he performs good works, but because God eternally chose him in love.¹¹

God’s decree of election is the sure foundation that can never be shaken.

Reverend McGeown steals away from the people of God all the comfort of the gospel. Lord’s Day 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism asks and answers,

What is thy only comfort in life and death? 

That I…belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ; who, with His precious blood, hath fully satisfied for all my sins…and therefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life. (Confessions and Church Order, 83–84; emphasis added)

The authors of the Catechism used the word “comfort.” Comfort is an experience word, just like the word “peace” in Romans 5:1 and “joy” in Romans 5:11. Reverend McGeown makes believing to be an activity of man that man must do so that his conscious enjoyment of justification does not “fluctuate” or “be lost if we walk impenitently in our sins.” He contradicts Lord’s Day 12, which teaches that Christ “defends and preserves us in (the enjoyment of) that salvation He has purchased for us” (Confessions and Church Order, 96). This is comfort, joy, happiness, and peace: Jesus Christ did it all, and you have him as your covenant head apart from your working or merits. An elect child of God is justified by faith alone.

The Gospel and Missions

Reverend McGeown then attacks the sovereignty of God by the well-worn tactic that

a preacher on the mission field may not declare to someone who does not yet believe, “God sees no sin in you; in fact, you have always been saved and all of your sins have been eternally forgiven without faith and without repentance.”

This is similar to his previous statement regarding the Philippian jailor: “The answer was not, ‘You are already saved from eternity and eternally justified, so that God does not see—and never has seen—any sin in you.’” His reasoning behind this is that if you cannot call those hearing the preaching to man’s work of believing, then how can a church do missions? Reverend McGeown hurls the same slander as the Remonstrants did against the Synod of Dordt. He completely unmoors the effectual gospel calling from God’s gracious decree of election.

In Matthew 28:19 Christ commanded his church to preach the gospel promiscuously: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” There is a serious calling to the church to do mission work. She must preach the gospel to all men and declare the call of the gospel to repent and believe. Canons 2.5 states,

The promise of the gospel is that whosoever believeth in Christ crucified shall not perish, but have everlasting life. This promise, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be declared and published to all nations, and to all persons promiscuously and without distinction, to whom God out of His good pleasure sends the gospel. (Confessions and Church Order, 163)

Reverend McGeown would like to make the call of the gospel conditioned on or dependent on man’s believing the promise. However, the call of the gospel is not an offer to man that is dependent or conditioned on believing or on an act of obedience to God. The gospel is a promise, and it is an effectual promise. The gospel promise was first revealed in Genesis 3:15. This promise is the promise of what God will do according to his sovereign good pleasure (Canons 1.7, in Confessions and Church Order, 156). God’s promise is his divine word. His word is the power to bring itself to pass. The promise is Christ.¹² By the gospel God infallibly and irresistibly manifests the elect and bestows upon them wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30). He effectually redeems those who were from eternity chosen to salvation and confers upon them faith (Canons 2.8, in Confessions and Church Order, 163–64). In the gospel is the calling of elect sinners to Jesus Christ, as Canons 3–4.8 teaches: “As many as are called by the gospel are unfeignedly called” (Confessions and Church Order, 168). Canons 3–4.10 states about the response to the call of the gospel: “It must be wholly ascribed to God, who as He has chosen His own from eternity in Christ, so He confers upon them faith and repentance” (Confessions and Church Order, 168). God calls his people in the gospel and confers upon them by the Holy Spirit faith and repentance, and they believe the promise.

God’s decree of election controls who believes the promise of God: “As many as the Lord our God shall call” (Acts 2:39). The elect who are called to eternal life believe. God calls his people to himself by the power of the gospel promise. They are infallibly called by God, and they believe the promise. Canons of Dordt 1, rejection 1 teaches that both faith and its activity of believing are controlled by election.

God will not only save those who will believe, but…He has also from eternity chosen certain particular persons to whom above others He in time will grant both faith in Christ and perseverance, as it is written: I manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world (John 17:6). And as many as were ordained to eternal life believed (Acts 13:48). (Confessions and Church Order, 159)

The Gospel and Repentance

Reverend McGeown, in concluding his ungodly work, states, “The impenitent one incurs a deadly guilt until he confesses and forsakes that sin of which he is guilty.” He uses Canons 5.5, 7 as his proof of this. Remember that in Canons 5 we are in the doctrine of the preservation of the saints. For Reverend McGeown we are dealing with the preservation of the saints in the realm of the experience of justification. For him preservation is by man’s confessing or repenting. Man is the one doing the confessing. And if man confesses his sin, then he will again have the enjoyment of justification. In Canons 5, error 1, the Synod rejects those “who teach that the perseverance of the true believers is not a fruit of election, or a gift of God gained by the death of Christ, but a condition of the new covenant” (Confessions and Church Order, 176). The truth of the preservation or perseverance of the believer is that it is a fruit of election and a gift of God, not a condition that man has to fulfill before his justification.

Reverend McGeown must view God as a weak God and the gospel as a weak gospel. One might say that he is afraid of the gospel. God sovereignly ordained the preaching of the gospel to turn his elect to himself. Canons 5.14: “As it hath pleased God, by the preaching of the gospel, to begin this work of grace in us, so He preserves, continues, and perfects it” (Confessions and Church Order, 176).

The sin of David with Bathsheba is oft pointed to as an example that one does not experience the forgiveness of sins until he confesses the sin he has committed against God, and then the enjoyment of his justification returns. But the gospel infallibly and irresistibly bestows faith and repentance upon the elect. In 2 Samuel 12:1 the Lord sent Nathan the prophet to David. And what do prophets do? They speak the word of the Lord that God has given them. They preach the gospel! And this is what Nathan did: he preached to David, and that effectual gospel conferred repentance to David by the Holy Spirit. This is the power of the gospel upon the elect. “David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die” (v. 13).

How did Rev. G. M. Ophoff exegete this text? Like this:

The word “also” has significance here. It points to David’s confession. That was God’s first work in him. The author of it was the Lord. Having done the former, the Lord did also the latter long before the confession had passed this penitent’s lips. For take notice of the tense: “The Lord hath forgiven thee.” Nathan knew; for God had told him. And therefore there was no need of the prophet adding: if thou truly repentest. For the Lord knows the heart. And He had instructed Nathan. And so the Lord still speaks to the contrite by His word as proclaimed by His prophets and applied to their hearts by Christ’s Spirit: “I forgive thee.” And here He puts the period. And so He cleansed David’s heart from its evil conscience and gave him peace.¹³

God powerfully preserves his elect by the preaching of Christ in his church. The preaching declares to the elect sinner, “The Lord hath forgiven thee.” And that is where God puts the period. And because God has put that period there, so also have the Reformed Protestant Churches in their confession of the truth, God upholding them.

God in Jesus Christ has justified his elect; he has given them remission of sins; they are forgiven on the basis of Jesus Christ alone by faith without man’s believing, confessing, works, or merits. God in his mercy sends his prophets to his church to declare this good news of the forgiveness of sins. What is the infallible fruit of the gospel’s being preached? God sovereignly and efficaciously returns his wayward, impenitent people to himself.

Let this be the end of the Protestant Reformed Churches’ claiming to hold the doctrine of Reverend Hoeksema and Reverend Ophoff. The Protestant Reformed Churches hate the doctrine of their forefathers, and by the doctrine that they teach today in their writings and off their pulpits, they show that they hate Jesus Christ. “Ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous…Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets” (Matt. 23:29–31).