God’s word to his church in the Bible was inspired and written by the Holy Spirit through men of faith. The words of scripture were Spirit-driven then and still are today. The Spirit is the powerful, unchanging, and eternal God, whose word has the unchanging and powerful effect that he eternally intended it to have. Because of this, scripture never can be read without a divine effect on its readers. Whether scripture is read by men whom God created to be eternally righteous in Christ or by men whom God created to be eternally wicked outside of Christ, scripture always will do what God has ordained it to do. Wicked, apostate men who hate God’s sovereignty over them reject the true God of scripture and form to themselves (using God’s own word!) a god of their own imaginations. In pride they reject God, twist his inspired word, and with it form a god that pleases their flesh. Like the heathen, who know from the creation that there is a God, these wicked and apostate men make and then worship a god they want to serve instead of worshiping the only true God who reveals himself in scripture. In doing this men become gods to themselves, but the God of scripture will condemn them. These are men who follow the one who lied to Eve, saying, “Ye shall not surely die” if she ate of the tree. They do this by teaching men that the regenerated man is no longer totally depraved. But Adam and Eve did die, as God had said. They immediately died spiritually, so that their natures became totally depraved. Eventually they died physically too. All men died spiritually in their father Adam and inherited from him a totally depraved nature. All men will remain spiritually dead unless God gives to them Christ’s own resurrection life by putting Christ’s Spirit in their hearts, renewing them by regeneration. But this new spiritual life does not change the totally depraved nature that they have received from their father Adam.
Only those to whom God gives spiritual life have in themselves the light of the knowledge of God unto salvation. Only in this light can they understand spiritual things spiritually, so that they know the true God as their creator and as their savior. This life-gift may never be taken for granted by God’s people. Only with the mind of Christ (faith’s mind) dwelling in them can they read scripture and know God as their sovereign friend and heavenly Father. Christ’s Spirit dwelling in them is what causes God’s elect people to read and understand his word in the light and life of the knowledge of God, so that they are able to know who God is, who they are, and receive the comfort of salvation found in scripture. Without Christ they are spiritually dead. Spiritually dead people cannot know God savingly.
“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” (1 Cor. 2:14).
It is true that sometimes God sees fit to blind his elect people for a time, so that they live in sin and fall into spiritual slumber. He does this when he sends them strong delusions and causes them to be deceived by false teachers or to fall deeply into personal sins. Then sin so intoxicates them that they stagger through life for a while; they even may be convinced by their own lies that what they are doing is right and good. Sin is horrifying to see in fellow saints and in oneself when God suddenly exposes it. It is comforting to know that God always rescues his elect children! You can read about this in the fifth head of the Canons of Dordt.
This happened to members of the Reformed Protestant Churches during the years before the reformation of 2021. Protestant Reformed preachers began to teach that salvation is in the way of man’s obedience. A foundation for this lie had been laid by many years of so-called practical preaching and teaching that focused on man’s responsibility instead of on God’s sovereignty in salvation. With this foundation laid it was easy for the devil to get men to teach and to believe that grace merely enables man to walk in the way of obedience, so that he can have the assurance of salvation. Little by little, God’s people were brought to the point where they no longer could understand God’s word correctly. They became distressed and could not find comfort in the preaching, but they did not understand why. Little by little, and without even realizing it was happening, their faith was being weakened by a poison from Satan himself. They became spiritually drunk, and they staggered in unbelief. In their carnality they could no longer understand spiritual things spiritually when they read God’s word.
Then the Lord roared in the hearts of his people through the reformation of 2021: “I am a sovereign God!” This roar awakened them to all the lies they had been sitting under for so long. They studied, read writings of their forefathers, and listened to sermons. Christ’s Spirit in their hearts confirmed that what their spiritual fathers had taught them in the past is certainly true. Christ’s Spirit is a sovereign, powerful, irresistible, and efficacious force in his elect people! Grace is not something that men, by nature in Adam, have the ability to take hold of in order to help them to repent and obey! Man does not reach up to God. Oh, no! God comes down in his mercy and love to rescue his elect. Grace is God’s irresistible power given to them by the gift of faith (Christ’s indwelling Spirit). God’s grace is not a mere enabling power. God will not share any of his glory. Any man who teaches or believes that Christ’s Spirit is a mere enabling power shows that either God has caused him to fall into a damning doctrinal error for a time or that Christ’s Spirit is not in him. Like full-blown Arminianism, this error subtly roots out Christ from salvation and puts man in control of it. The Spirit will not remain in a church that teaches this. When the Spirit of truth leaves a church, she becomes a false church.
God heard our sighing. He mercifully opened our eyes and turned us from the wicked doctrine that made us think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. The deceivers in the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) are like the deceivers of Isaiah’s day, about whom God spoke in Isaiah 28. God’s people who were led astray by evil men in the years before the reformation of 2021 were like the deceived remnant in Isaiah’s day referred to in Isaiah 29:1–3. For the sake of Christ and in love and mercy, God saw the distress and heard the sighing of his people then and of us when we were still in the PRC. He heard them and he heard us as his “Ariel” (his Lion of the tribe of Judah). He heard them as his “Ariel” for the sake of his promise because Christ was in their loins. He hears us today as his “Ariel” because Christ’s Spirit dwells in our hearts, and he will keep his people in his truth. Is it not amazing that the eternal God of heaven and earth hears our sinful sighing as the sighs of his beloved Son and his Spirit in us and through us? This is of God’s mercy! It makes the hearts of his people spontaneously swell in thankfulness, for they know they are not worthy!
For Christ’s sake, God sends judgments on both the deceived and the deceivers. But his judgments are always loving chastisement toward his “Jacob,” so that in love for his people he turns them, opens their eyes and ears to the truth, and causes them to fear him from the heart. The fifth head of the Canons of Dordt teaches that God will always deliver his people from the dominion and slavery of sin, so long as they continue on this earth. This is because the Spirit of Christ in them is stronger than their sinful flesh. Sometimes by the righteous permission of God, saints fall into sin, for example the lamentable falls of David, Peter, and other saints in scripture (article 4).
By such enormous sins…they very highly offend God, incur a deadly guilt, grieve the Holy Spirit, interrupt the exercise of faith, very grievously wound their consciences, and sometimes lose the sense of God’s favor for a time, until, on their returning into the right way of serious repentance, the light of God’s fatherly countenance again shines upon them. (article 5)
But God, who is rich in mercy…does not wholly withdraw the Holy Spirit from His own people, even in their melancholy falls; nor suffers them to proceed so far as to lose the grace of adoption and forfeit the state of justification, or to commit the sin unto death; nor does He permit them to be totally deserted, and to plunge themselves into everlasting destruction. (article 6)
Article 7 tells us this is because God
preserves in them the incorruptible seed of regeneration from perishing…and…by His Word and Spirit certainly and effectually renews them to repentance, to a sincere and godly sorrow for their sins, that they may seek and obtain remission in the blood of the Mediator, may again experience the favor of a reconciled God, through faith adore his mercies, and henceforward more diligently work out their own salvation with fear and trembling. (Confessions and Church Order, 174)
About his “Jacob” God says,
22. Jacob shall not now be ashamed, neither shall his face now wax pale.
23. But when he seeth his children, the work of mine hands, in the midst of him, they shall sanctify my name, and sanctify the Holy One of Jacob, and shall fear the God of Israel.
24. They also that erred in spirit shall come to understanding, and they that murmured shall learn doctrine. (Isa. 29:22–24)
These beautiful, comforting words of mercy and grace were not God’s words only to the deceivers of Isaiah’s day; nor are they his words only to the deceivers in the PRC today. God’s judgment of wrath fell on both of them. Israel was taken captive by Assyria, and God’s righteous judgment is now falling on the PRC. Gradually, the PRC tried to destroy God’s beloved with lies. Now God is using her own deceptions to unite her with the kingdom of antichrist, who will sit in the temple of God and claim to be God. God’s judgments are always fitting and just—and sometimes ironic.
These two different outcomes between the wheat and the chaff are not without cause. They are the result of God’s sovereignty over man’s eternal destiny. He gives his Spirit (grace) to his elect people in order to draw them into his covenantal life. He does not give his Spirit (grace) to the reprobate so that their own lies bring them to eternal destruction with Satan in hell.
Faith is God’s gift of the Spirit of Christ who dwells in the hearts of his people. Romans 14:23 says, “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” Without Christ’s indwelling Spirit, no man has faith. Even the activity of reading the scriptures is sin and works condemnation in faithless people. They cannot discern God’s truths in a way that causes them to fall down before him in humble adoration. God is a Spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in (Christ’s) Spirit and in (Christ’s) truth. No matter how much biblical knowledge men acquire, God’s salvation cannot be experienced without Christ’s life in them. They cannot know him in love, and they cannot worship a God whom they do not know. They can see him in creation and know that he exists, but unless God joins them to Christ and savingly reveals himself to them by his Spirit and Word, they cannot worship him. They are not only outside God’s covenant by God’s eternal decree, but by this same decree they are also used by God and then destroyed as chaff after serving his purposes.
“What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction?” (Rom. 9:22).
There are only two kinds of men who have ever lived in this world: those who are united to Christ by faith and are righteous in God’s eyes, and those who are not united to Christ by faith and are unrighteous in God’s eyes. Because there are only two kinds of men on earth, there are only two ways in which men can read God’s word. The righteous read scripture with the mind of Christ dwelling in them. With Christ’s mind they see Christ’s work of salvation for them in every passage they read. The unrighteous read scripture with their own carnal understanding, and then they claim their own activities of repenting and believing as coverings for their sins. In their carnality they read a passage of scripture and see only what they must do for salvation. About these men God says, “Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin” (Isa. 30:1).
God’s word has its intended effect on these two kinds of readers. Christ draws the one into blessed spiritual fellowship with himself, lifting their souls into heavenly places. The other is left on earth in himself and outside of Christ.
Reading scripture with the understanding that Christ’s indwelling Spirit gives feeds a soul with the spiritual, life-giving body and blood of Christ and unites a man more and more to his Lord. Reading with man’s own understanding feeds a soul with poison and brings him deeper into the bondage of sin, farther and farther away from his maker.
Let us examine Psalm 1 with these two kinds of readers in mind.
1. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
2. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
3. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
4. The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
5. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
6. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.
The psalmist states facts about a righteous man and an ungodly (unrighteous) man. Because of God’s eternal decree of election and reprobation, it is true that God will always bless the righteous and will always curse the ungodly. The righteous man in this text is Christ and all who have been united eternally to him by the gift of true faith. The ungodly are those whom God eternally ordained to be outside of Christ.
How can God say that his elect people are righteous? God is the Holy One who hates sin. Even the righteous on earth are terrible sinners, ungodly in their human natures. Is it really true that these righteous men never walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scornful? Do they always delight in the law of the Lord and meditate day and night on that law? These people are still totally depraved in their fleshly bodies; therefore sin still clings to everything they do. By nature they certainly do walk in the counsel of the ungodly, stand in the way of sinners, and sit in the seat of the scornful. And they do not meditate day and night on God’s law.
How can the God of truth say these lovely things about the righteous in this psalm? The elect child of God answers these questions in the joy and confidence of faith. He reads these verses and understands that he is a member of Christ’s body and says to himself, “The righteous in this psalm is first and foremost Christ and then me, only because I am united to Christ. I belong to him. I am a part of him. Because he is the righteous man of the psalm, I am also righteous. Because I have been given a new spiritual life in Christ, my true identity is in him, not in the sinful human nature I inherited from my father Adam. Only as I am found by God in Christ am I righteous and blessed.”
God’s people remember their doctrine when they read a psalm like this. They know that God sees his chosen, elect people as righteous because he imputed Christ’s own righteousness to them. He calls them righteous because they are in Christ. They know that God only sees Christ when he looks at them, and he never looks at them apart from Christ. Because of this, God will always and only bless them. Their sins and sinful natures cannot change God’s thoughts toward them. They were so perfectly united to their savior, even before they were born, that already at his cross the debt for all their sins was paid and his righteousness became theirs. They are so thoroughly united to their savior that God sees them as bone of Christ’s bone and flesh of Christ’s flesh. He is their head, and they are members of his blessed body.
Besides this, Christ’s Spirit powerfully makes their carnal and stubborn wills subject to his good and perfect will. God does this by putting Christ’s Spirit in their hearts, thereby writing his law in their inmost beings. He causes them to hate their own fleshly desires and to conform to his perfect will. Even though they sin in everything they do, God sees his own work in and through them and blesses them for the sake of his own work.
The truth of total depravity causes God’s people humbly to admit that by nature they cannot and do not keep God’s law as the Lord demands. They trust that God will chastise them when necessary and that their sins cannot hinder God’s love for them. They know that because of the gift of faith, Christ’s perfect righteousness belongs to them. This is the only reason they prosper. This is why they are like trees planted by the riverside. Christ’s Spirit in them is like a well of living water giving heavenly life and eternal prosperity, so that out of their bellies flow rivers of living water (John 7:38–39). This is the only kind of prosperity that matters to them. Knowing that their lives are hidden in Christ, they give all praise and honor to God for the good works God gave them to do in this life, taking nothing for themselves. What peace they have while living as pilgrims and strangers on life’s journey!
The doctrine of election teaches God’s people that apart from Christ they would be the chaff that the wind blows away. The wind here is the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit uses and tolerates chaff in his church for a time. He tolerates the chaff for the sake of his elect kernel and the advancement of his truth. When his purpose with these men is fulfilled, he blows them out of the church so that his church can go forward in truth, unburdened by their hypocritical presence. The righteous rest comfortably in faith’s knowledge that they are not chaff because they are united to the elect kernel, Jesus Christ. Even though they know that they sin in everything they do, they know God has already mercifully punished Christ for their sins and imputed Christ’s perfect righteousness to them. Jesus perfectly kept the law for them, so that they are free from the bondage of keeping the law in order to have God’s approval. God’s law is the delight of their hearts; in thankfulness the desire of their hearts is to serve and praise the God of their salvation.
Believers rest in God’s sovereignty as the potter over the clay. They do not question God’s justice in this. They shut their mouths before him, honoring the potter. Neither do they judge the eternal destinies of other men when they see them walking in unbelief, for that is not their business; it is God’s. Rather, believers fall down in humble adoration and worship, adoring the Lord’s abundant mercy toward them, giving all honor and glory to Christ in whom they dwell. God is now not only their maker but also their Father for Christ’s sake. Because of this union, God knows them and their way in Christ as the way ordained from eternity. What comfort is theirs!
Now let us consider how a man with a false faith necessarily will read scripture—that is, with his own understanding instead of with the mind of Christ dwelling in him. This is of the Lord, who purposely did not give to that man the Spirit of illumination, so that when he reads the Bible, he is driven even deeper into the sin of his doctrinal error. When this man reads Psalm 1, he also remembers the doctrine that came off his pulpit; thus he reads it with himself in view. He thinks of his own activities of believing and repenting and the good things he has done for his church, his god, and for other men. And he says to himself, “That is me. I am the righteous person of whom God speaks. I am righteous because by grace I try to do what God’s word says so that God will bless me. I try not to walk in the counsel of the ungodly. I try not to stand in the way of sinners nor to sit in the seat of the scornful. I try to delight in the law of the Lord. I meditate on his law every morning and evening, sometimes even more often so that I am able to serve God better. I try to do all these things by the grace that enables me. Because of this, I am like a tree planted by the rivers of water. I prosper because I take hold of grace, and by that grace I am strong to do what is necessary to get the blessing of the assurance of salvation from God. By that grace I am a member in good standing in my church, and I am determined to work diligently in God’s kingdom the best way that I can. I am not someone who causes others to sin. I do not cause trouble or burden anyone in church by sinning against them. I go to church every Sunday, support my family, and try to do what is good and right every day. By grace I want to be like a fruitful tree in God’s kingdom. I am not now and do not ever want to be like the chaff that God does not need. Yes, with God’s helping grace, I am able to do good. And when I do sin, I repent and try to do better. Because I do these things by grace, God shows that he loves me by blessing me with the assurance of salvation.”
This is how some read scripture because it is how the preaching they receive teaches them to think. Some believers still may be subconsciously reading scripture this way and do not see the horror of it. Some may completely deny that they do this. My prayer is that this article will make them think about the effect of man-centered preaching on their hearts and on the hearts of their children who sit with them in the pews. But even if they say that they do not read scripture this way, by their church membership they are responsible for what comes off their pulpits and for what their ministers are teaching to their children and grandchildren. People who read scripture this way do not know who they are by nature. They do not think about faith as union with Christ and Christ’s righteousness imputed to them as their own righteousness because those truths are not impressed upon their hearts by the preaching they receive. Instead, they are taught about the necessity of their own obedience for righteousness. They are taught to believe that they are righteous because Jesus paid for all their sins; but only in the way of their repentance, believing, and walking in the way of obedience (by grace, of course) will they receive the assurance of salvation. They are not taught about their assurance coming by the power of gospel preaching and Christ’s indwelling Spirit! They know that they sin, but God forgives the sins of those who repent and believe in Jesus, and they did that, so all is well with their souls. Subconsciously they might worry about repenting enough, but the thought is easily brushed aside if what they hear on Sunday rarely focuses on God’s holiness and hatred of sin and dwells on what man is able to do by grace. It seems that they have a god who is like a good man who will pay them for the good that they do.
Do these people really think that they perfectly have kept God’s law? What if their activities of repenting and believing are not good enough? Do they really believe that union with Christ is through their activities? If it is through their activities, how do they receive the new spiritual life necessary to even know about God’s grace, so that they are able to believe? God’s grace is a spiritual thing; it takes the spiritual life of Christ even to know about grace and to see it. What makes them think that grace is something men are able to reach up and grab, instead of a power that is sovereignly and irresistibly conferred on those of God’s choosing? A grace that is available and that enables men to believe, so that they can experience salvation, sounds eerily similar to the grace that was taught before the reformations of 1924 and 1953. What righteousness will these men cling to when they stand before God in judgment? Will they have the audacity to claim their own activities of believing before the thrice-holy God who made them? Unless these men are brought to repentance, they live in a terrible delusion. They will be horrified in the day of Christ’s return.
Why do people read the Bible? What is their goal in doing this? What draws them?
Reading scripture in order to learn the way of obedience in order to experience salvation is to read scripture with your own understanding instead of the mind of Christ. Reading scripture this way causes men to commit spiritual adultery. This is why the PRC’s teachings that faith is both union to Christ and man’s activity (not God’s) and that assurance of salvation is in the way of obedience are teachings that make her the whore of Babylon. These teachings take men out of the spiritual marriage bed with Christ and put them into a bed with a god of man’s imagination, instead of the God of scripture. These Protestant Reformed doctrines cause Protestant Reformed members to read scripture in a way that makes them look to themselves for righteousness unto salvation instead of to Christ’s perfect righteousness imputed to them by faith’s union.
God’s people read scripture because Christ’s Spirit in them draws them. He makes them yearn for fellowship with their Lord and savior. Absorbed in the word they find a quietness that cannot be found on earth. They are brought into sweet communion with their savior, Jesus Christ, where they find rest for their weary souls; comfort in the sorrows of life; strength to fight against their sin, Satan, and the wicked world around them; and to experience the joy and hope of their salvation. They read scripture to hear Christ’s word to them and to experience fellowship with Jesus Christ, the one who is wisdom, beauty, and mercy and the one who saved them by grace alone.
Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly. Vindicate thyself and thy people against all the ungodliness of men.
1. In sweet communion, Lord, with Thee
I constantly abide;
My hand Thou holdest in Thy own
To keep me near Thy side.2. Thy counsel through my earthly way
Shall guide me and control,
And then to glory afterward
Thou wilt receive my soul.3. Whom have I, Lord, in heaven but Thee,
To Whom my thoughts aspire?
And, having Thee, on earth is nought
That I can yet desire.4. Though flesh and heart should faint and fail,
The Lord will ever be
The strength and portion of my heart,
My God eternally.5. To live apart from God is death,
‘Tis good His face to seek;
My refuge is the living God,
His praise I long to speak.1
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