Professor Dykstra and God’s “Unreal” Promises

There is a maxim in the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC): “If a man would be saved, there is that which he must do.”¹ Some in these churches have disillusioned themselves into believing that they have condemned this maxim. Others demand that it be preached, and it is. Made infamous by the writings of Rev. Kenneth Koole, this maxim perfectly encapsulates the escalating drumbeat of dogma that is sounding off the pulpits in the Protestant Reformed Churches and that defines the PRC. Protestant Reformed preachers often are careful not to raise any Reformed antennas by the direct use of the phrase, lest they excite any righteous indignation. But the theology is the same: Jesus Christ is not enough for salvation. Prof. Russell Dykstra’s theology is the maxim.

On April 28, 2024, Professor Dykstra preached a weighty sermon.² It was not weighty in the sense that he brought the unburdening gospel to the broken sinner and told him that everything needed for his salvation was accomplished in Jesus Christ at the cross, but the sermon was weighty with the crushing force of the maxim. The experience of your salvation is unfinished. The suffering of Christ at the cross was a mere potentiality or “basis.” Left for the hearer is that which man must do. The professor’s theology is easily grasped: Christ’s work as the “basis” plus your confession and forsaking of sin, which is repentance, is the way to salvation.

The occasion of the sermon was preparatory for the Lord’s supper, and the text that the professor chose was Proverbs 28:13: “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.” It is a beautiful text, and I will give the reader an orthodox interpretation. Proverbs 28 juxtaposes the believer and the unbeliever. Verse 13 says that those who cover their sins shall not prosper because they are not believers who know that the only covering for their sins is the blood of Jesus Christ. Confession and the forsaking of sins (repentance) are identifying marks or fruits of a believer who has God’s mercy, and a life characterized by true repentance will inevitably flow out of the believer.

The professor does much evil with Proverbs 28:13. I will demonstrate the professor’s theology with the words he preached. In the introduction to the sermon, the professor makes a subtle change to the wording of the text:

You have on the one hand a man who covers his sin, and he does not prosper; and a man who confesses on the other hand and forsakes his sin. He shall obtain mercy. (emphasis added)

The professor interprets the text as causal, and his change to the word “obtain” is purposeful. He has a man who confesses and forsakes sin in order to “obtain” something he does not possess, God’s mercy. The professor does not preach the sure promise of God that he is merciful to his people and that his people really have that mercy. The professor teaches conditional theology in the vein of his spiritual father, Rev. Hubert De Wolf. First this, then that. Man is first, then God may give. First confession and forsaking of sin, then God’s mercy and not before; or as Hubert put it, “Our act of conversion is a prerequisite to enter into the kingdom.”

The professor goes further yet in the introduction:

This is spiritual wisdom. It’s the wisdom of God. And the wisdom of God is confess your sins and turn from them. Confess your sins and forsake them. This is the way of wisdom. This is the way of Christ. This is the way of salvation. How a saved person lives.

To the professor the way of Christ, the way of salvation, is to confess and forsake your sins. John 14:6 gives the true way: “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” But Christ alone is not the way for the professor. His way is Christ’s work as a “basis” plus your work to “confess your sins and turn from them.” The professor teaches his congregants to enter the kingdom another way than by Christ.

Throughout the body of the sermon, the professor does not mention Christ. Although the professor mentions Christ a few times in the introduction and the conclusion, the sermon is entirely Christless. 

Throughout the body of the sermon, the professor does not mention Christ. Although the professor mentions Christ a few times in the introduction and the conclusion, the sermon is entirely Christless. Even in the few mentions of Christ in the introduction and conclusion, the professor disparages Christ and displaces his perfect work, or, in the words of Belgic Confession article 22, the professor asserts that Christ is not sufficient, but that something more is required besides him, which is “too gross a blasphemy” (Confessions and Church Order, 50). The main of the sermon is the “how-to” of repentance. The professor gives scriptural examples of sins that are covered up and many different ways of how man covers his sins and what that looks like and emphasizes what are the necessary parts of genuine repentance. He also demonstrates that confession and the forsaking of sins are repentance.

In the center of the message, he comes with this:

When a man by the grace of God repents and confesses his sins, the next step is asking God for grace to forsake it. And God gives that grace, but if a man is not sorry for his sin and then piously goes before God and says, “O God, forgive me and deliver me from my sin,” but he really isn’t repentant…God is not mocked. God does not give the grace to forsake sin. If there is not genuine repentance, there will not be that grace given.

With this quotation the professor continues adding to what the believer does not have until he repents. You want grace? God only gives grace after you repent and confess. Reverend Koole preached a sermon in various Protestant Reformed churches in which he admonished the congregations to “seek the grace that is available.”³ What happened to irresistible grace? Professor Dykstra’s theology is the same as his counterpart’s. No grace without genuine repentance. When you confess, then God will give you more grace to forsake sin, but not before. Koole and Dykstra are two peas in a pod. God’s grace is not irresistible for Reverend Koole or for the professor. Grace is obtained. Their theology is man-first, conditional theology.

Let us continue with the professor’s teachings.

People of God, there is some of this in us too. When we do not confess and forsake sin, if we cover sins and continue in them, the heavy hand of God’s wrath comes upon us. Psalm 32:3–4: “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer.” It wasn’t until he [David] acknowledged his sin, confessed his guilt, that he received mercy. Failure to confess, failure to forsake, not only brings God’s heavy hand upon us, but it says to you and me as we read in the form tonight, “Do not come to the table of the Lord.” You will not receive in the Lord’s supper God’s assurance of love and mercy toward you. You will not experience that if you do not confess, if you do not forsake your sins. You will experience God’s judgment. His judgment.

When we do not confess and forsake our sins, if we cover our sins and continue in them, the heavy hand of God’s wrath comes upon us. Is that right, Professor? This was a preparatory sermon. Does not the Reformed Form for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper state that Christ “bore for us the wrath of God (under which we should have perished everlastingly) from the beginning of His incarnation to the end of His life upon earth”? (Confessions and Church Order, 270). To the professor, Jesus Christ’s bearing of God’s wrath does not quite cover that wrath, for there is wrath that man also must bear. Does not the professor know that no mere man can bear the wrath of God even for a moment? What terror the professor brings to his hearers.

We cannot pass over the end of the quotation: “You will experience God’s judgment. His judgment.” Notice the repetition. The professor teaches that if you do not confess and forsake your sins, you will experience God’s judgment. Judgment has to do with the doctrine of justification. So the professor brings his hearers into the very tribunal of God in the judgment seat. This means that they stand as unrighteous before God and as the proper objects of God’s wrath. The professor teaches his hearers to stand before God, the righteous judge, holding their confessions and their forsaking of sins. What utter wickedness!

Who would dare to come to the Lord’s table?

Where is Christ in the professor’s theology?

The Lord’s supper form states

that every one examine his own heart, whether he doth believe this faithful promise of God that all his sins are forgiven him only for the sake of the passion and death of Jesus Christ, and that the perfect righteousness of Christ is imputed and freely given him as his own, yea, so perfectly as if he had satisfied in his own person for all his sins and fulfilled all righteousness. (Confessions and Church Order, 268)

According to the professor, the amount of blessings of salvation that can be obtained by one’s repentance continues to grow:

You will not receive in the Lord’s supper God’s assurance of love and mercy towards you. You will not experience that if you do not confess, if you do not forsake your sins.

Earlier in the sermon, the professor used Proverbs 28:13, which text he sought out for his theology, to teach that God’s mercy is something one can “obtain,” and then he added, as something that is unlocked with one’s genuine repentance, that God gives grace to forsake sins. Now the professor adds that by one’s confessing and forsaking of sins, one receives the assurance of God’s love and mercy. This is some sort of repentance. Do we not receive these blessings by faith alone without works? “If by grace, then it is no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace: otherwise work is no more work” (Rom. 11:6).

But what of David?

With the PRC’s standard interpretation of Psalm 32, the professor alludes to David’s experience and says that David was missing the experience of his salvation—that is, David was missing God’s love and mercy, the assurance of salvation, and the forgiveness of sins. Then David repented. After he repented he received God’s mercy and the comforting assurance of the forgiveness of his sins. Never of merit. By grace, of course. 

Is that an accurate representation of the common teaching in the PRC? It is.

Concerning Abraham’s justification by faith alone and David as he describes his blessedness in Psalm 32, the apostle Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit wrote in Romans 4:1–8:

1. What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found?

2. For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God.

3. For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.

4. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.

5. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

6. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works,

7. Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.

8. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.

The blessedness of David was that he was justified. David’s righteousness was imputed to him without works.

The professor is yet culminating in the sermon, and there is more to come. The following portion of quotations are connected to each other in every breath and compose the conclusion of the sermon.

The text says that those who confess and forsake shall have mercy. Shall have mercy. What does it mean that we shall have mercy? Surely it does not mean that we merit it by confessing our sins, and that’s very obvious from two things immediately that shows that. We don’t merit it because even when we come confessing our sins, we’re still rebels. We still deserve to be cast out of his presence. There isn’t anything in us that ever merits any mercy from God. And the second thing that makes it obvious that we didn’t merit is God has eternally been merciful to us within his own mind and his own counsel. God says, “I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy.” And who is that? Romans 9, it’s his elect people. Jacob, who has never done good or evil—yet God said, “Jacob have I loved. I will have mercy on him.” It’s his elect people. He reveals that mercy by sending his Son. And the death of Jesus on the cross becomes the very basis for why he may show mercy to us. Because we are forgiven in Jesus Christ. We never earn that mercy. (emphasis added)

The professor tries to sound Reformed here by checking some Reformed boxes. He mentions God’s eternality and counsel, check. Election, check. Never earn or merit, check. Eternal mercy, check. The professor says all these things, but they mean nothing to him. Christ is only the “basis” to the professor. Christ “may” show mercy. God’s promises are not realities to the professor. He gives Christ for a moment—kind of—and he can hardly wait to rip Christ away. There is always a “but” in Protestant Reformed dogma. In this case there are an “and yet…” and a “but.” For the professor believes in the maxim: If a man is to be saved, there is that which he must do. The professor continues:

And yet the text is saying that the one who confesses and forsaketh them shall have mercy, and the sense almost is if, well, he didn’t really have it in a certain sense before, but after confessing and forsaking now he has it. (emphasis added)

The professor is really trying to stand up in his canoe at this point, and it is difficult to listen to him fumbling around in this section of the sermon. He is trying to fit the doctrines of election and God’s eternal counsel with his doctrine of prerequisite repentance and justification by works. The doctrines do not fit together, and he knows it. His theology necessarily denies a God who is eternally merciful to the elect. The professor pays lip service to election and the sovereignty of God in salvation and then denies them to be realities. I will have him show the reader with his own words.

Now again, eternally God has been merciful. I know that; you know that. But this is the reality, that God shows mercy in the way of God leading us to confession and forgiveness and then showing us his mercy. In the way of. In the Old Testament, the man putting his hand upon the animal, confessing his sins—those sins went away; they were taken away from him. So do we know that all our sins are imputed to Jesus Christ. Every time we confess them, they’re taken off from our account; they’re put on Jesus. And God says once again, I forgive you. I forgive you. He shows us mercy. I forgive you for Jesus’ sake. (emphasis added)

And finally the professor is fully ensconced in the seat of Rome. He sounds more like a Catholic priest trying to explain the decisions of the Council of Trent to his parishioners than a man who takes to himself the name Reformed. Rome’s Council of Trent denied the Protestant Reformation’s core doctrine of justification by faith alone, and the professor also denies that truth. The professor’s teaching about repentance—or penance, if I may—and all that it “obtains” would make the Pope blush. Your confession takes sin off your account and places it on Christ’s account? That is what the professor teaches. He really preached that. Go listen for yourself. Sin is taken off one’s account and imputed to Christ’s account by one’s confession. The professor teaches simply justification by works, not even justification by faith and works. This is evidenced by the fact that he never says the word faith in the entire sermon! He overthrows the Reformation of 1517 and the core doctrine of sola fide. He teaches another gospel, which is no gospel.

Let us see the truth in Lord’s Day 23:

Q. 60. How art thou righteous before God?

A. Only by a true faith in Jesus Christ; so that, though my conscience accuse me that I have grossly transgressed all the commandments of God, and kept none of them, and am still inclined to all evil; notwithstanding, God, without any merit of mine, but only of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ; even so, as if I never had had nor committed any sin: yea, as if I had fully accomplished all that obedience which Christ has accomplished for me; inasmuch as I embrace such benefit with a believing heart. (Confessions and Church Order, 106–107)

The professor ends the sermon with the following remarks:

That’s the only way we should ever dare to come to the table of the Lord. Do that this week. Do that every day of your life. Confess with grief, forsake the sins by the power of God’s grace, and you shall have mercy. This is God’s beautiful promise to sinners. Amen.

“Beautiful”? This so-called promise that depends upon the filth of man’s doing is no promise at all and is devoid of any comfort. All the professor can see is what man must do to “obtain” from God, and the professor searches the scriptures to press his theology into them.

The only way that believers “dare” to come to the Lord’s table is by believing in the finished work of Jesus Christ as their complete savior, of which the sacrament testifies. The beautiful promise of the gospel is what Christ has done for his people through his work. Lord’s Day 25 states that the sacraments seal to us “the promise of the gospel, namely, that [Christ] grants us freely the remission of sin and life eternal, for the sake of that one sacrifice of Christ accomplished on the cross” (Confessions and Church Order, 108).

Now that is beautiful!

That is comforting!

God’s promises are yea and amen in Christ, and we have a perfect savior who told his Father at the cross, “It is finished.” Hearing that news, we have everlasting comfort and assurance that our God will only ever show mercy to us poor sinners.