Dear Editor,

Again, thank you for your response to my letter in the January 15, 2021 Letters Edition of Sword and Shield. In this second letter, I would like to ask a few follow-up questions concerning the relationship between faith and repentance in the context of Psalm 32. As you point out, conditional theology has two different aspects to it and can be identified in one of two ways:

1. Conditional theology turns God’s work into man’s work (whether man’s work by God’s grace, regenerated man’s work of his own accord, or man’s work of his own free will makes no difference). Because God alone is the unchangeable, all-powerful, faithful and true I AM, while man is fickle, powerless, wholly corrupt, and deceitful beyond measure, when any aspect of salvation is turned from being wholly the work of God to being even one ounce of man’s work, all certainty and assurance is destroyed. Thus nothing can ever be both conditional and certain.

2. Conditional theology establishes a time relationship between good works and salvation, or the experience of salvation, such that good works are necessary before one will receive or experience some aspect of his/her salvation. Thus, conditional theology reverses the logical, orderly way God works in us as rational moral creatures, so that the good works of the child of God are turned into conditions necessary before one receives this or that rather than the organic fruits of thankfulness for all that one has been graciously given. In this way conditional theology always makes God’s dealings with His people contractual rather than organic.

I know I have wrestled with this concept myself, so I just want to be clear. The organic nature of the covenant does not deny the fact that there are consequences for sin. God is all-wise and He instructs us in the way of wisdom, which way is truly good for us. When we stray from His perfect way, we reap the consequences of our sin. Even unregenerate man has the glimmerings of natural light whereby he can discern good and evil and discerns that there are unwanted consequences to various actions. If he doesn’t follow the traffic laws, he will end up in an accident. If he lies to everyone, nobody will trust him with anything. If he does not treat his fellow-citizens well, he will not be respected and will not receive their business if he is a business owner. If he commits adultery, his family will be broken up and destroyed. Outwardly he may live a life that looks much like that of his Christian neighbor. Yet, it is a life of avoiding consequences and doing this to get that desired result or joy rather than a life of thankfulness that is rooted in the true joy of one’s gracious salvation in Christ. This is the essential difference between the unbeliever, including the one who supposes he is a member of a conditional covenant and supposes he has a contractual relationship with God, and the believer, who is a member of the unconditional covenant and has an organic relationship with God, being one organism with Christ so that His life flows through him. While all our actions have consequences, the believer’s actions are not governed by consequences, but rather proceed from faith, which is the work of the Holy Spirit uniting us to Christ and thus bending and governing our wills by applying the Word of God to our hearts, with the fruit that that Word truly lives within us and guides us in all our ways. Thus it is our spiritual condition (faith, which God graciously gives us) that influences our actions, rather than our actions that determine our spiritual condition. While there are consequences for our sins, spiritual blessings are never the consequences of our good works. There is no “doing this and then receiving that spiritual blessing” in God’s unconditional covenant of grace, but there is only receiving all spiritual blessings from Christ our Head and Mediator by faith.

Getting back to the two points you make in your response, that the covenant is unconditional means, first, that all of salvation is God’s work and, second, that there are no conditions at all. Not just that God fulfills all the conditions, so that there are no conditions we must fulfill, but that there are no conditions at all, which is to say that there is no time relationship between good works and spiritual blessings such that the latter is the consequence of the former. While you clearly emphasize these points, I would appreciate it if you could clarify the following: In explaining how the third exegesis of Psalm 32 (pg. 20 of September 15 S&S) is Reformed you state, “Although the third exegesis directly identifies a time relationship to support the use of the phrase ‘in the way of,’ it denies a relationship of dependence or conditionality, affirming instead, ‘It was all of grace by faith’” (bottom pg. 11 of January 15 S&S). I guess my question is, does it really matter in the end whether repentance is considered man’s work by God’s grace or God’s work, if a time relationship, such that repentance is performed before forgiveness is experienced, is maintained? Further, is it possible to maintain a time relationship such that repentance is prior to the experience of forgiveness on the one hand, while denying that one’s experience of forgiveness is conditioned on one’s repentance on the other hand, without contradicting oneself? In light of the above explanation of conditional theology, as long as you deny one aspect of conditional theology, does that mean you are now Reformed? Rome and the Arminians both insisted that man’s doing and the fulfilling of the “prerequisite” was all by God’s grace too, so could you further explain why a conditional covenant theologian would agree with the first exegesis of Psalm 32, but not the third?

I realize this all relates to the following decision of Synod 2020:

b. Rev. Overway did not militate against Synod 2018 when he preached “in the way of repentance we have the mercy of God.” Explanation:…

c. Rev. Overway did not militate against Synod 2018 when he preached that there is an activity of the believer that is prior to the experience of a particular blessing from God. Mr. Doezema’s objection to this reveals a misunderstanding and a misrepresentation of the decision of Synod 2018. 1) What Synod 2018 clearly rejected was any notion that characterizes what the regenerated believer does as a prerequisite or condition or instrument that earns, gains, or obtains a blessing from God. The fact that an activity of the believer may occur temporally prior to the experience of a blessing from God does not automatically make such activity a condition or prerequisite for earning, gaining, or meriting the blessing from God. Explanation:…

d. Rev. Overway’s preaching that we repent and in the way of repentance experience the mercy of God is the teaching of Scripture and the confessions. (Acts of Synod 2020, 80–82, Art. 51 C.2.b.–d.)

I appreciate the point you make that, “For the sake of true repentance, faith must first apprehend the mercy of God in Jesus Christ as a reason for coming to God in sorrow or shame” (bottom pg. 12). Certainly this must be true. The only other alternatives would be to make man himself capable of true repentance or to make man a stock and block in whom God simply works true repentance, with really no reason for repenting. As you state, God must first give one the experience of His mercy by faith in Christ before God works even the first good work of true repentance in one’s heart. However, I do not see how the explanation you give is compatible with the above decision of Synod 2020 of the PRC. If you would be willing to explain how they are compatible, I would appreciate it.

Again, thank you for your time and energy in addressing these important truths in distinction from the lie. We as God’s sheep are hungry for the meat of His Word, whereby we grow. May God continue to provide such spiritual nourishment through your labors.

Sincerely in Christ,

Sara Doezema

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REPLY

Dear Sara,

I heartily appreciate this second letter, because I am convinced that it leads straight to the heart of the entire controversy over the good actions we undertake and the blessings of God upon those good actions.

Good Works, Grace, and Blessings of God

When I say “good actions,” I refer to every good in which the believer engages—everything from repentance and faith, to all the good works of obedience done by the believer, to his perseverance through all hardships and persecutions until he enters into the fullness of God’s kingdom at Christ’s return. For those good actions to be truly good, several things must be true about them. They must be the fruit of the believer’s regeneration and of his gracious election. They must be worked by the Holy Spirit in the believer. They must be according to the will of God revealed in his word. And they must all be done to the glory of God, without respect to receiving anything from God in return for them, exclusive of all merit and reward. That is, their goodness is that they are done to the glory of God alone. All this is the truth of Ephesians 2:10 living in the hearts of God’s redeemed and renewed people. Their great delight is to be thoroughly and completely the workmanship of their God.

The fundamental truth of these good activities is that they are the working of the Holy Spirit of God, according to the will of God, and their complete ground is in the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. That is all their goodness, and therefore all the regard that God has to them. There is only one who is forever good: that is God.

In this light the shortest answer to your question is that there is no temporal order, no before and no after. This denial of a temporal order can best be stated with the phrase that has become so controversial: “In the way of obedience is God’s blessing.” All the emphasis of this phrase belongs not on the word “obedience” but on the phrase “in the way of.” To speak more to the point, obedience is but one blessing of God “in the way of,” and obedience certainly is not the most fundamental. The most fundamental blessing is to be in Christ, who is himself “the way” (John 14:6; Acts 9:2; 19:9). What makes all the difference is how obedience is understood. Understood as our obedience, the controversial statement is indeed heretical. If this obedience is what we do, and blessings are made contingent upon what we do, then we are immediately in a system of merit. However, if obedience is understood as the gracious gift of God in Christ, then the blessing is immediately attached to the gift. This explains the absence of a temporal order.

Your question, then, is immediately valid. It is contrary to the doctrine of salvation by grace alone to state that a temporal relationship applies this way: when and how we obey, then afterward we receive blessings from God. Further, it is contrary to the doctrine of salvation by grace alone to state that there is any kind of separation between us and God’s grace, so that God waits upon our obedience to effect something in him, namely, for him to bless us. To possess God’s grace through faith is to be blessed.

That false notion of separation is the distinction between the doctrine of the unconditional covenant and that of the conditional covenant. A conditional covenant theology demands that man (elect, regenerated, justified, adopted) still remains a party over against God. Thus there is a contractual obligation on the part of man to do something independently of God, something for man to do that in some respect is of himself. There is a condition of some kind to perform. It makes no difference that man fulfills that condition by God’s grace. Man is still a party over against God. In the conditional covenant, man’s actions, whatever they are, must be of him in order for them to have their proper significance as conditions. For the conditional covenant, then, a temporal relationship is absolutely necessary.

On the other hand, the relationship of friendship and fellowship that is the truth of the unconditional covenant means that God, as the covenant God, the friend-sovereign of his people, blesses them with all their salvation from beginning to end. Man is not blessed because he obeys or provides anything. He is blessed because God gives him all the blessings, including all his obedience.

Exactly here it is so important to understand the true nature of the obedience of the child of God and why that obedience is a blessing in itself. It is the obedience of Christ in the child of God and of him in Christ. That obedience is the fruit borne by the branch because the branch is in the true vine, Jesus Christ. That obedience is the life lived in the flesh by the child of God by Christ, who lives in him, to use the language of Galatians 2:20. His obedience is the blessedness of salvation.

However, scripture also teaches the importance of time and temporal relationships. Their importance is that they are the means that God is pleased to use to show the wonder of his grace in the salvation of his holy people.

There is a temporal relationship between these good actions and the good that follows them. But that temporal relationship—as before and after, as preceding and antecedent—is in no way under our control. That relationship is all of God and of his grace in Jesus Christ, the head of the covenant.

Two passages from the Bible make clear that grace—and grace alone—is responsible for this temporal order.

The first, most direct, passage is John 1:16–17: “Of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”

The second passage is Romans 11:6. To be perfectly clear, the truth of this text is the same truth of John 1:16–17, but I quote from Romans 11 for the sake of closing the case. “If by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.”

I include the Romans passage because it makes clear that grace and works must always be exclusive of each other. I also include this verse because it clearly shows that grace excludes works. The word “works” in Romans 11:6 is simple. There are no qualifications attached to it. “Works” are the same as the willing and the running of Romans 9:16. It is not that these works are presented in a system of merit. It is not that these good works are performed as of law, that is, to fulfill some imposed requirement conditioned on those works before obtaining what is promised. To be sure, this is the teaching of conditional theology and exactly that with which we must reckon. But the argument must still stand: Romans 11:6 simply addresses works—anything and everything that is done by the believer as his work.

Going back to the Spirit’s instruction in John 1:16, there are two points that answer your question.

The first point is “grace for grace.” The Greek of this verse can be translated more roughly as “grace upon grace.” The King James Version captures the proper nuance of the preposition. The Greek certainly allows the translation of the word “for.” In addition, what follows in verse 17 helps direct this translation choice. The contrast between grace and the law as carrying the principle of man’s works for benefits from God brings about the proper translation of “for” in verse 16. Would that we would agree heartily to the same—to the exclusion of all our works! But we must also be able to appreciate the flowing and overwhelming sense of grace proposed by the rougher translation “grace upon grace.” Indeed, grace alone without works is the mighty stream that carries us from the cross of Christ to eternal glory!

In these words of John 1:16, grace is magnified. Grace is upon grace. Grace is upon grace as we receive it. This is the teaching of article 24 of the Belgic Confession about the reward of grace. “We do not deny that God rewards our good gifts, but it is through His grace that He crowns His gifts” (Confessions and Church Order, 54). This is the truth in which the child of God humbly rejoices. Good works are not man’s works that God crowns. But those works are the gracious gifts of God that he graciously crowns.

To be in the midst of this outpouring of grace, of grace for grace and grace upon grace, is the blessing of the child of God.

This is, in effect, the significance of the article of the Canons of Dordt that addresses the eminence of God’s grace in the believer’s life. When the believer repents and trusts in God, the grace of God becomes eminent in the believer. When he walks in true conversion, putting off the old man of sin and putting on the new man in Christ, the grace of God becomes eminent in the believer. This is his motivation in his arduous fight against sin and in his pursuit of holiness. His aim is not to receive some kind of blessing or benefit. His aim is to make eminent the grace of God. This was the same objective of the apostle Paul when he sought to preach the gospel. This is also an incentive to good works on the part of the believer. Again, it is not so that he might obtain some blessing or benefit, but the incentive is that God’s grace might become eminent, not only in the good works but in the grace that follows after them. The believer desires to see God’s grace for grace. He has such a zeal for God’s glory that he rejoices to pursue the good, knowing that the grace of God alone crowns the divine gifts worked in him.

The second point in John 1:16–17 is Jesus Christ—Jesus Christ as the author and provider of all grace, who also stands over against Moses, the lawgiver. This second element is the real point of the Holy Spirit in this passage. The controlling contrast is between Jesus Christ and Moses. Truly, the temple has more glory than its builder! The entire point is the Son of God, not the man Moses. “Grace for grace” must be “grace for grace” because Christ is forever the fountain of that grace. This is a point, given in the introduction to the gospel of John, that the Spirit brings up over and over in the following chapters. When later the Spirit identifies Jesus Christ as the water of life; the bread of God from heaven; the door; the good shepherd; the resurrection and the life; and the way, the truth, and the life, all these identifications point back to John 1:16 and its “grace for grace.”

The driving force of another truth consistently presented by the Spirit in this gospel account brings this second point to bear on your question. That truth is presented clearly in John 3:16: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”; in John 20:31: “These are written, that ye might believe…and that believing ye might have life through his name”; and in John 15:5: “Without me ye can do nothing.” That truth is this: to believe on Jesus Christ is to possess him who is the way, the truth, and the life. To have Christ is to have life—that life in its beginning, in its end, and in every step and part of the way.

So there are, in this respect, two answers to your question.

The first answer is governing and controlling: to possess Christ by a true faith is to possess earth, heaven, and all things in them. It is to possess salvation in every part and aspect, including repentance and faith, including justification and sanctification, including obedience in all good works and all perseverance, and including heaven as home. In Christ are all the good works that the Christian will ever do. In Christ are all the rewards of those good works that the Christian will ever receive. To answer your question: in Christ there is no before or after; in Christ there is nothing dependent on the believer’s willing or running or acting or doing.

It must also be noted, contrary to the error refuted in Lord’s Day 24, that the gospel of “grace for grace” will make no true believer careless or profane. It will make no child of God indolent or lazy. Just the opposite: knowing the glory of Christ as his complete savior by faith alone will make the believer zealous of true conversion because it magnifies the glorious grace of his Lord, who loved him and gave himself for him (Gal. 2:20). There is no need to hold in abeyance certain blessings or rewards because too much certainty (that is, too much grace) will either make God’s children lazy or turn them into robots or puppets.

The second answer lies under and depends on the first. “Grace for grace” treats also the practical application of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. There is an order. But we must remember that this order does not exist for the sake of giving the believer’s works value and significance. That is why the second answer is second, not first. This order exists to give grace its value and significance. Temporal order magnifies the truth of “grace for grace.”

What makes the reward of grace the reward of grace?

It is not because grace somehow substitutes for merit. In other words, that the reward of grace must be the reward of grace because it is not of merit but of grace.

Why grace? Because, strictly speaking, it is impossible for God to reward the works of his believing children. Their best works are polluted with sin. God’s children are sinful. They are depraved. The lust of their flesh touches and pollutes all of their good works. Their good works are the product of mixed motives, aims, goals, and reasons. We dare not set our good works before the holy and righteous God. We must ask forgiveness for every one of them. How much less dare we say, “Look at what we have done, and deal with us accordingly!”

Whose works are rewarded? The works of our gracious Lord Jesus Christ. Those are the works that God rewards. The works of the Spirit of the Son in us, sanctifying us and making us holy. Those are the works that God rewards. It is the grace that God bestows upon grace. Grace alone through Christ alone.

Thus the second answer lies along these lines: Yes, a temporal relationship and order, to be sure. But that temporal relationship and order does not deal with our works as our works. Rather, that temporal relationship deals with God’s works in Christ.

Practical Considerations

There are also practical considerations that support the truth of a temporal relationship between grace and grace.

The first practical consideration is the promise of God and his faithfulness to perform what he has promised. So abundant and manifold are these promises of God that they fully embrace every aspect of our salvation. Because the promises are God’s, it is his glory to fulfill them all by himself, without the aid or help of his people. While much of the controversy swirling around in the Protestant Reformed Churches is about the promises of blessing and good works, there is a completely different category of these promises that involves rewards promised for the trials and persecutions of God’s people. In particular, those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake are promised a great reward in heaven. These promises identify and need a very clear temporal distinction. Those who are persecuted suffer now, but then they shall be glorified. Even though there is this clear temporal distinction in this promise, the ground is not their suffering (of which they are passive by definition) but the righteousness of God for which sake they suffer. At present, that righteousness is the reason for their suffering, but the fulfillment of the promise of future glorification is God’s holy vindication of that suffering for the sake of his righteousness.

What is especially powerful in the above is that the suffering of God’s people in persecution is fundamental to their position in the world. God’s people serve their Lord in a world that is hateful toward God. As they testify of the righteousness of God in Christ and demonstrate its power in their antithetical walk and life of good works, they bring down upon them the enmity of the world. That enmity manifests itself in persecution. In the persecutions God’s people endure, they do not consider themselves rewarded in this life. They do not prosper. The persecution of the world means their suffering and deprivation. They are outcasts from their homes and families. They are cast out of their society and economy. They are the objects of shame and reproach. Nevertheless, they have the promise of God. Their persecution shall be rewarded. They shall be great in the kingdom of heaven. That promise is for their comfort and peace presently in their sorrowful and desolate circumstances. They are called blessed by their savior. He commands them to rejoice and be glad, for great is their reward in heaven.

This leads to the second practical consideration. This consideration is the gifts of faith, hope, and patience, which are given by the Spirit. These gifts require the temporal distinction between promise made and promise fulfilled, all by the grace of God. Faith apprehends the promise of God’s word and rests in it. Hope looks specifically to those promises that are yet to be fulfilled and apprehends their certainty, though not seeing them yet fulfilled. Patience is the application of that hope to present circumstances, waiting upon God’s time, enduring all hardships for the sake of what God is certain to work because he has promised.

Also here, the consideration must not be human. Faith, hope, and patience are not mere human traits. Though their counterfeits might exist as psychological conditions in mankind, the difference is sovereign particular grace, grace obtained by the merits of Christ’s sacrifice and obedience alone. These gifts of the Spirit have their ground in the cross, are dispensed according to God’s eternal decree of election, and are thoroughly gifts wrought in the children of God by the Holy Spirit by himself. We must also note that every expression of these gifts in the children of God—as they interact with all the circumstances of their lives in which they exercise these particular gifts—is also the work of the Spirit in them. They manifest these works of God in their lives.

Exactly because these are the gracious gifts of God to his covenant people, they must be vindicated. Faith must become sight. Hope must be seen. Patience must be rewarded. These gifts must be brought to their proper end according to the time that God has established for them. He will fulfill by himself the promises he has given his children to believe and for which to hope and patiently wait. Their works and their suffering will be graciously rewarded because he is faithful who has promised. The time of that reward he has determined for the sake of his glory, so that not one of his gifts will miss its end, and so that not one of his works will be unfulfilled. All must be brought to its proper end, his everlasting glory alone.

The above is the significance of the prayer of Psalm 90. As the psalmist begins his prayer with praise of the eternal God, who is before the mountains were brought forth or ever the earth and the world were formed, so the psalmist ends the prayer with an acknowledgment that the works of the Lord are for his glory alone. His works, for his eternal glory, are the subject of the closing words of the psalm. “And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it” (v. 17). His glory is to beautify all his works, even those works that he works in us in and through his Son and Spirit, which works include all the good that we will and do (Phil. 2:13).

Your question thus touches on the heart of the controversy over the good works done by God’s people. If we foolishly pretend that what we do in time and history is significant because these works are done by us—even by us as elect, regenerated, believing persons—we must be powerfully rebuked by our own insignificance. So much more should we vainly suppose that the enormous, incomprehensible matter called time that the eternal God created should be for our significance, rather than for his alone. He is Lord of time. He is our Lord. Faithfully serving our redeemer, redeeming the time because the days are evil, let us wait upon him to glorify his grace in us to his eternal praise and glory alone.