Dear Editor,

Thank you for your response to my letter in the February 15, 2022 Letters Edition of Sword & Shield. I found that every time I read your response, and the more I studied the explanation of the order of salvation that you set forth, I was impressed with the awe, beauty, harmony, grace, and most splendid and excellent glory of God’s work of salvation. I thoroughly appreciated the main objective of your response to direct us, especially in our consideration of the order of salvation, to see on the foreground the glory of God, who is the beginning and the end and the all in all in our salvation, and to see the emptiness of man, the most undeserving object of this glorious salvation. Undoubtedly, the main point of the order of salvation is not to explain man’s experience of his salvation but to make abundantly clear the sovereignty of God in the salvation of His elect people for His eternal glory. 

While I see the importance and beauty of viewing salvation organically as one interconnected work of God rather than a stack or a train of blessings, I do not yet understand how the organic nature of salvation means that there can be no temporal aspect to the application of that salvation to us in our hearts and lives. I agree that the decrees of God are outside of time because they are all eternal decrees, but when we are speaking, not about God’s eternal decrees, but about God’s application of salvation to us in time, how can we say that that application is entirely outside of time? We are creatures of time, and God applies salvation to us in time, yet there is no temporal aspect to that application? If there is no time element to the order of salvation, then I don’t understand why you are fine with saying that repentance precedes justification or justification precedes repentance. If there is no time element, then how can you say “As to time, I know and everyone knows and no one is denying that faith precedes justification, that repentance precedes forgiveness, and all the rest” (pg. 12, October 15, 2021 S&S)? On the one hand, you clearly deny that the order has any temporal aspect—“The order is not temporal at all” (pg. 25, Feb. 15, 2022 S&S). On the other hand, you acknowledge that one must have faith before he can repent—“Without faith no man can repent or be justified; so the logical order is faith, conversion, justification” (pg. 25). I am probably totally misunderstanding you, but I must admit that I am thoroughly confused on this point. Is it nothing but utter folly to speak of this before that in the order of salvation, or is it true that there is an actual order to God’s application of His salvation to us? 

As I understand it, God’s work of salvation is an organic whole, as is beautifully pictured in a fruitful vine (John 15). Christ is the seed, the root, and the vine, we are ingrafted as branches into the vine (by faith), being united to Christ the vine, we receive all nourishment, life, and blessings, which flow to us from Him (including the forgiveness of sins), and, receiving all life and blessings from Him, we bring forth fruit (repentance & good works). God as the sovereign husbandman plants the seed, ingrafts the branches of his choosing, feeds and nourishes them so that they bring forth fruit, and gathers up the fruits of His labors. On the foreground in the picture is the Husbandman, whose vine it is. Yet, when one looks closer at the handiwork of the husbandman to admire the beauty and glory of it, he sees the various parts—the vine, the branches, and the fruit—and understands that the life of the plant is in the roots and flows from the vine to the branches so that they produce fruit. In other words, he sees that the root and the vine come before the branches, which come before the fruit. The defining characteristic of fruit is that it is produced by the branch. So, what I mean by “Such an essential relationship demands a certain temporal relationship because one’s experience in time cannot be different than reality” is simply that the fruit must come after the branch and thus it is impossible to experience that the fruit comes before the branch. I believe you are right that we ought not get so caught up in looking at each individual part of the plant that we lose sight of the beauty of the plant as a whole as the glorious handiwork of the husbandman. Yet, if a scientist were to examine the plant and declare his findings to the world and instruct everyone that, in his study of the plant, he discovered that the fruit precedes the branch, then I would have to tell him that he does not understand the plant at all. So likewise, when I am instructed that repentance (the fruit) precedes the forgiveness of sins, which I am assured of by faith (the branch), then I must tell such a one that he doesn’t understand God’s work of salvation at all. Furthermore, if he insists that the fruit truly does come before the branch, then I must inform him that he has now taken the fruit and planted it, so that it is now changed into the seed which then brings forth the vine and branches and more fruit. But he must take note that now Christ is no longer the seed, root and vine of that plant, but rather the fruit is become the seed, root and vine of that plant. My point throughout the controversy in the PRC has been exactly this: By saying that the fruit (good works and repentance) precedes the branch (all the blessings of salvation including the forgiveness of sins that we have by faith), the PRC has changed the fruit into the root and thus has replaced Christ with our repentance and good works. The teaching of the PRC according to Synod 2020 is that “there is an activity of the believer that is prior to the experience of a particular blessing from God” (pg. 81, Acts of Synod 2020, Art. 51 C.2.c.). Which is to say that blessings of salvation, like the forgiveness of sins, flow out of activities of man, like his repentance. Which is to say that the root out of which blessings of salvation flow is man’s activities. There can only be one root; either Christ or man’s activities. The PRC has made man’s activities the root. Therefore, I would agree that the error of the PRC is much deeper than simply establishing a “wrong order.” But, their “wrong order” betrays their ignorance of the truth of God’s glorious work of salvation.

I maintain, therefore, that there is a definite, precise order of salvation because there is a definite, precise relationship between all the different works of God in our salvation. It is an organism. And, all the various members of an organism have a very definite relationship to each other. Furthermore, that precise relationship itself shows the glory and sovereignty of God in our salvation. I believe God reveals the order of His work of salvation to us for the very purpose of revealing His sovereignty in that work. Therefore, you are correct that I do believe that putting man’s activities (including repentance) at the very end of the order of salvation as nothing but the fruit of God’s labors does eliminate works of man preceding the works of God. As fruits, they are the end goal of our salvation. God’s purpose with us is that we bring forth fruits to His glory. Because their purpose is the glory of God alone, they are motivated by the love of God and thankfulness to Him alone. They are fruits and fruits only, and they are for God and God alone. They are not means unto more blessings, and they are not motivated by the prospect of receiving more the more fruitful we are. That our activities (including repentance) are not means unto further blessings is most clearly seen in the fact that they are at the very end of the order of salvation. Therefore, let us not throw out the order of salvation, but let us see how the definite, precise order of salvation shows the sovereignty of God in salvation and thus serves the glory of His name. As you pointed out, the order of salvation can be added to or taken away from depending on how finely one wants to parse the various works of salvation, but I do not agree that the order of salvation can be rearranged as anyone sees fit. If you could rearrange it, then we couldn’t really say that there is any order at all. For God’s work of salvation to be an organism rather than a heap of blessings there must be a very definite relationship between the various works of God in our salvation.

As you also pointed out, words can be used to refer to various things and can be used broadly or narrowly. Therefore, it is certainly important that we define our terms very clearly. I have defined repentance in terms of HC QA 89: “A sincere sorrow of heart that we have provoked God by our sins, and more and more to hate and flee from them” (pg.21, Feb. 15, 2022 S&S). In short, I have defined repentance as “an expression of our love for God and our hatred for sin” (pg. 21). As such, I have contended that repentance can be nothing other than the fruit of faith, that is, the fruit of experiencing forgiveness through faith (pg. 21). From the examples you give of the Phillipian jailor and Martin Luther, it seems that your definition of repentance is simply to know one’s sins and to stand fully exposed before God. If this is your definition of repentance, then I can see how you could conceive of repentance preceding the forgiveness of sins. Certainly, if we have no sin, then we need no forgiveness. Is this what you mean by “we are justified in the way of repentance” (October 15 S&S)? With what definition of repentance can you see the order of “repentance preceding justification” being correct, and where do you derive that definition of repentance from?

May God grant us all His Spirit to discern these things which can only be spiritually discerned.

I Corinthians 2:10-16: “But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? but we have the mind of Christ.”

Respectfully in Christ,

Sara Doezema

EDITOR’S NOTE

The doctrinal issues that our correspondent raises in her letter have been addressed in many pages of Sword and Shield. It is my judgment that the specific questions that our correspondent asks have already been sufficiently answered in the articles to which she refers. Therefore, Miss Doezema’s letter is published here without additional response. The interested reader who would like to pursue this further can consult the February 15, 2022, Letters Edition of Sword and Shield, as well as the many articles by the editors and other writers over the last year and a half that have addressed the relationship between repentance and forgiveness.