Shallow As a Mud Puddle

Professor Ronald Cammenga of the Protestant Reformed Theological Seminary began a series in the Standard Bearer titled “Antinomian? Without a Doubt.”¹ The series is long-winded. Cammenga says that he intends to write “a few articles,” which notice, no doubt, was received with a sigh of relief by the readership. Instead, he now writes on and on. He still is not finished.

Besides being long-winded, the articles are shallow, if they are nothing else. What is the gist of the whole series? What is the profound doctrine and deep truth for which Professor Cammenga contends? Repentance is before forgiveness! “See,” says he, “scripture teaches that repentance is before forgiveness, and the creeds teach that repentance is before forgiveness. And John Calvin and the Reformed tradition and the Protestant Reformed fathers taught that repentance is before forgiveness.” If the problem with the articles were only their shallowness, one would be tempted to dismiss him. Many have.

But the articles are also as false as they are shallow and long-winded. The question for Professor Cammenga is—and really it is the only question for him—why is the concept that repentance temporally precedes forgiveness so significant? Why is it so important for Professor Cammenga to contend that repentance is before forgiveness? Instead of belaboring the point that scripture and the creeds teach, and that Calvin and apparently the whole Reformed and Protestant Reformed tradition taught, that repentance is before forgiveness, he must sharply and clearly answer the question, why is this order so important to him? He leaks out the answer, but let him write on it as a theologian should and not come at the answer by fits and starts. If scripture and the creeds teach, and Calvin and the whole Reformed and Protestant Reformed tradition taught, that repentance precedes forgiveness, then Professor Cammenga also does not show why that order is so important in scripture and the creeds and why it was so important for Calvin and the rest.

I do not for a minute believe that the authorities that Professor Cammenga cites teach and taught what he is teaching. Scripture and the creeds do not contend, and Calvin and the rest did not contend, for the mere order of repentance then forgiveness. By merely stating that we must repent and that God will forgive our sins and then quoting from all his supposed authorities, Cammenga is being deceptive. He intends to teach that all these authorities agree with him and with all the baggage that he freights in on his supposed order of repentance and then forgiveness.

However, I believe that I have an answer to the question of why it is so important for Professor Cammenga that repentance precedes forgiveness. The reason is that because for him there are activities of man that precede the blessings of God; there is a certain and vital sense in which man is first; God cannot and may not forgive man without man’s repenting first. Professor Cammenga is a man-first theologian. For him it is not enough that God elected you, and it is not enough that Christ died for you, but you must also do something; something vital on the part of man is necessary in the application and experience of salvation and without which all God’s promises are never fulfilled. In other words, Professor Cammenga should stop playing around that he is contending for the fact that repentance precedes forgiveness because he is contending for conditions in the experience of salvation, which he cleverly disguises as a mere concern about what comes first and second.

This fact comes out in his deceitful handling of scripture and the creeds, in which all he can find are first repentance and then forgiveness.

Besides being labored, shallow, and false, his articles are just plain monotonous. I pity the congregation that would have to eat these stones for bread and scorpions for meat.

In this article I will examine Cammenga’s exegesis of several scripture passages to determine if, in fact, the passages teach first repentance and then forgiveness and that too along the lines of what Cammenga is after: that God cannot and will not forgive apart from man’s act of repentance.

Everyone must remember what Professor Cammenga is contending against. He is contending against the idea that there is forgiveness from God apart from repentance. Thus Cammenga is contending against the idea that there is forgiveness in eternity. He is contending against the idea that there is forgiveness at the cross. He is contending against the idea that the forgiveness of the sinner comes into the sinner’s possession by faith alone without respect to repentance, that is, that God forgives the sinner wholly through faith alone. Cammenga is contending that forgiveness is strictly if and when man repents.

Cammenga also lies against the position against which he contends by saying that the Reformed Protestants teach that repentance is not necessary. This is wholly false. Repentance is a good gift of God, and we call all men everywhere to repent.

However, this is a different matter than the discussion of how God forgives sinners. He forgives them by faith alone. Leave repentance out of that discussion. Professor Cammenga’s position is that man must first repent, and then and only then can and will and may God forgive that man. A shorthand way to express this is repentance first and then forgiveness, and without repentance there is no forgiveness in any sense. Cammenga seeks to prove this from scripture and the creeds.

Professor Cammenga writes, “The Bible clearly teaches that God’s forgiveness follows God-worked repentance.”² It really does not matter that Cammenga adds to his sentence, “God-worked.” This is no different than saying that faith is a God-worked condition unto salvation. When conditional theologians talked about conditions, then they always added that there is grace by which man fulfills the condition. The point of conditional theology is that there is that which man must perform—whether by grace or not—upon which an activity of God waits. Professor Cammenga’s doctrine is that God’s forgiveness follows man’s repentance, and without repentance there is no forgiveness.

Solomon’s Prayer

For proof Professor Cammenga turns first to 1 Kings 8:

I Kings 8 contains Solomon’s prayer to God on behalf of Israel at the time of the dedication of the temple. Included in his prayer is his supplication that, “If they sin against thee, (for there is no man that sinneth not,) and thou be angry with them, and deliver them to the enemy” (v. 46) and in the land of captivity they “repent, and make supplication unto thee” (v. 47), “Then hear thou their prayer” and “forgive thy people that have sinned against thee” (vv. 49-50). Clearly, God’s forgiveness of Israel’s sin follows their repentance. (421)

The question is whether, in Solomon’s mind and in the thought of the Holy Spirit, the point of 1 Kings 8 is that God’s forgiveness follows his people’s repentance. Is the whole emphasis of the passage what man must do to receive God’s forgiveness? Was Solomon teaching what Cammenga teaches, that there is no forgiveness before Israel repents?

By his teaching Cammenga corrupts Solomon’s prayer from beginning to end. What is this prayer? Is it the bare statement that man’s act of repentance precedes God’s act of forgiveness? Solomon’s prayer extolled the unmerited grace and the unfailing mercy of God, whereby he keeps covenant with a sinful, undeserving, and needy people; and throughout the prayer Solomon was teaching the people to trust in this free grace of God for all their blessedness and for eternal life itself.

Solomon opened his prayer praising God.

23. And he said, Lord God of Israel, there is no God like thee, in heaven above, or on earth beneath, who keepest covenant and mercy with thy servants that walk before thee with all their heart:

24. Who hast kept with thy servant David my father that thou promisedst him: thou spakest also with thy mouth, and hast fulfilled it with thine hand, as it is this day.

25. Therefore now, Lord God of Israel, keep with thy servant David my father that thou promisedst him, saying, There shall not fail thee a man in my sight to sit on the throne of Israel; so that thy children take heed to their way, that they walk before me as thou hast walked before me. (1 Kings 8:23–25)

The last phrase is important: “So that thy children take heed to their way, that they walk before me as thou hast walked before me.” Inexplicably, the King James Version translates a Hebrew phrase that means except only or save only or only if by the words “so that.” When Jehovah spoke these words, he was not talking about the result of his promise to David, namely, that as a result of his promise the house of David would be faithful. Then the promise of God would be a failure, for the house of David was not faithful. She was unfaithful on a monumental scale, and her unfaithfulness brought about the destruction of the ten tribes and ultimately of the temple and Jerusalem and nearly the whole nation of Judah.

Rather, Jehovah added these words that make the promise sure only in Christ and on the basis of his righteousness. Jehovah’s ending words spelled the end of the royal line exactly because a mere man could not bear that burden in God’s kingdom to be perfectly faithful. Christ alone of all David’s sons was that faithful man, and David in his love and zeal for God was a dim earthly type. The promise of God is sure in Christ alone and on the ground of his righteousness. In Christ God forgives all the sins of his people, and in Christ God keeps covenant with them. Solomon prayed not that God would do something if his people did something. But Solomon prayed that God would keep his covenant with an unfaithful people for Christ’s sake, for the sake of God’s promise, and for his name’s sake, since “there is no man that sinneth not” (1 Kings 8:46).

This fact that Solomon prayed on the basis of God’s promise and grace is made plain right after the passage that Professor Cammenga cites to attempt to teach that man repents first, and then God forgives.

Solomon prayed,

51. For they be thy people, and thine inheritance, which thou broughtest forth out of Egypt, from the midst of the furnace of iron:

52. That thine eyes may be open unto the supplication of thy servant, and unto the supplication of thy people Israel, to hearken unto them in all that they call for unto thee.

53. For thou didst separate them from among all the people of the earth, to be thine inheritance, as thou spakest by the hand of Moses thy servant, when thou broughtest our fathers out of Egypt, O Lord God.

Cammenga’s doctrine is that there is no forgiveness apart from repentance and that unless repentance precedes forgiveness, God cannot and may not forgive.

But Solomon gave the reason that God forgives. Solomon in effect said that God had forgiven: God forgives because God had forgiven. This prior forgiveness of God lies behind the reference in these verses to Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, which was a type of our deliverance at the cross of Christ. God delivered his people Israel from the bondage and tyranny of Pharaoh, which is a type of our bondage to sin. There is no deliverance from the bondage of sin apart from the forgiveness of sins. God saved and delivered his people Israel because he had forgiven them in the blood of the passover lamb. God washed them in the Red Sea and consecrated them to himself because he had forgiven them. And someone might say, “Oh yes, but that applied to the Israelites at the time of Moses and Aaron.” However, that is not what Solomon says. He gives the ground for God’s future forgiveness of Israel when Israel would repent. And Solomon prayed to God that God would forgive his people. He will forgive because he had forgiven!

What is repentance in the 1 Kings 8 passage that Cammenga cites? Repentance is the mark of God’s people. This Solomon also pointed out when he said about those who repent and regarding the ground of God’s forgiveness of them: “For they be thy people” (v. 51). This is what repentance brings out: they be God’s people. Repentance is the mark of God’s elect.

Cammenga says that repentance is “God-worked,” but he does not explain why repentance is God-worked. It is God-worked because God elected his people. Repentance is God-worked because God forgave them. The sinner has no right to repent. He has the right only to perish. Because God forgave—at the cross—he also forgives and works repentance in his people, so that they call on him in truth. They pray for forgiveness not because they repent, but they pray for forgiveness on the basis of God’s promise, which they believe by a true faith. Repentance rests on the knowledge of the mercy of God, who justifies the ungodly. Cammenga’s order of repentance for forgiveness demands this kind of thought: we have repented, and so let us pray for forgiveness. His motive is mercenary: we have repented, and God says that he forgives those who repent, so Lord, forgive! The order of Solomon is the order of grace, so that we say, “In his profound mercy God has promised to forgive the ungodly sinner. Lord, forgive!”

Cammenga’s exegesis of the part of Solomon’s prayer to which Cammenga refers is this: repentance clearly precedes forgiveness, and repentance precedes in such a way that God does not forgive unless and until man repents. There is no forgiveness in eternity. There is no forgiveness at the cross. There is only forgiveness if man repents.

I say that Cammenga’s exegesis is shallow. He is up to no good, but his exegesis is at the very least a silly and shallow way to handle scripture. That is all he can get out of Solomon’s moving prayer. Cammenga does disservice to Solomon and to the Holy Ghost, who inspired Solomon’s prayer and who searches the deep things of God and set down in scripture such deep things for our instruction.

Solomon’s prayer has seven petitions, and Cammenga mangled the seventh petition. But use Cammenga’s method with Solomon’s other six petitions, and what does Cammenga’s method mean for the other six?

Solomon prayed, “If any man trespass against his neighbour, and an oath be laid upon him to cause him to swear, and the oath come before thine altar…then hear…and do, and judge thy servants” (1 Kings 8:31–32). So applying Cammenga’s method, we arrive at this profound point: clearly, an oath must first be laid upon a man, that oath must first come to the altar, and only then will God judge his servants. Profound! Cammenga would miss the whole point that Solomon makes later that God is a good and righteous judge, who always curses the wicked and blesses the righteous, a fact on which the remainder of the prayer rests.

Solomon prayed, “When thy people Israel be smitten down before the enemy…and shall turn again to thee, and confess thy name, and pray, and make supplication unto thee in this house: then hear…and forgive the sin of thy people Israel” (vv. 33–34). Applying Cammenga’s method, again clearly, we have the idea that turning from sin, confessing God’s name, and prayer are first before God hears and forgives. But now not only repentance is first but also confession of God’s name, which is really faith. So now faith and repentance clearly precede God’s forgiveness. Cammenga would miss the whole point that God had chastised Israel with the enemy only when the people deserved to be annihilated and that God calls them his people throughout. Now, why is it that God chastised them and did not annihilate them? Because in God’s eyes they had already been forgiven, and he must bring them to see their sins by the hands of an enemy. God did not chastise them so that they could be forgiven but because he will not have his people live in their sins and be destroyed.

Solomon prayed, “When heaven is shut…because they have sinned against thee; if they pray toward this place, and confess thy name, and turn from their sin…then…forgive the sin of thy servants” (vv. 35–36). Applying Cammenga’s method, we again clearly have the idea that not only repentance and confession of the truth but also praying toward the proper place precede God’s forgiveness. Cammenga would miss the whole point that God’s people had an inheritance that came to them through the death of the one who promised it and by whose death they were forgiven and had the right to that inheritance: “Thy land, which thou hast given to thy people for an inheritance” (v. 36). God gave the land to them, and it was theirs because he had forgiven their sins. Otherwise, they had no right to the land.

Solomon prayed, “If there be in the land famine…pestilence, blasting, mildew, locust…caterpiller; if their enemy besiege them…what prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man the plague of his own heart, and spread forth his hands toward this house: then hear thou…and forgive” (vv. 37–39). Applying Cammenga’s method, we again clearly have the idea that knowing the plague of one’s own heart precedes God’s forgiveness. God will not forgive until a man knows the plague of his own heart. Cammenga would miss the fact that Solomon prayed that God “give to every man according to his ways, whose heart thou knowest.” Not that God would give to every man according to the works of his hands because then the man who knows the plague of his own heart knows also that he will surely be condemned for that plague. But “according to his ways”! Out of man’s heart are the issues of his life. In that heart is faith, faith by which the man is justified without works, and out of which heart he seeks God for the forgiveness of sins and the healing of all the plagues of his heart. That faith is manifested by the man’s calling on God for forgiveness and in the man’s deep sorrow for sin and his fear of the God who justifies freely such an ungodly sinner. But this would pass Cammenga by in his quest for what is first and what is second.

Solomon also made a request for the strangers: “Moreover concerning a stranger that…cometh out of a far country for thy name’s sake…when he shall come and pray toward this house…hear thou in heaven” (vv. 41–43). Applying Cammenga’s method, we again clearly have the idea that first one must be a stranger and come from a far country and pray, and only then will God hear. And it would pass Cammenga by that God, the gracious and merciful God, is a God of strangers too, and he draws them to himself by his great name. Cammenga’s sermon on these verses would probably be a recounting of all the great things that a stranger did and how he crossed hill and dale to come to God, and Cammenga would miss the whole point of the text: “For they shall hear of thy great name, and of thy strong hand, and of thy stretched out arm” (v. 42).

Solomon prayed, “If thy people go out to battle against their enemy…and shall pray unto the Lord…then hear thou in heaven” (vv. 44–45). Applying Cammenga’s method, we again clearly have the idea that the people must first go out to battle against an enemy, and then God will hear them when they pray. Clearly. And Cammenga would miss the whole point that the cause of God’s people wherever he sends them is God’s cause that he alone maintains and that by prayer his people cast that cause back to God as the one and only one who can maintain it.

Professor Cammenga does the same silly sort of thing with the 1 Kings 8 passage that he holds aloft against us, when he writes, “Clearly, God’s forgiveness of Israel’s sin follows their repentance.” That clearly is not the point. It is not the point simply that forgiveness follows repentance, and I do not believe that is what Cammenga is after either. He means not simply that forgiveness follows, but he means that God cannot and God will not forgive unless man repents first and that there is no forgiveness of God apart from man’s repentance. Cammenga means that in a certain, vital sense man is first in the matter of repentance, and apart from his repentance, he is completely unforgiven.

But the Holy Ghost and Solomon ground all of Solomon’s petitions in the fact that there is forgiveness already before God’s people offer a word of prayer, since God delivered his people Israel from Egypt. Because he has forgiven, he also forgives. Similarly, he delivered his elect church at the cross and forgave us all our sins before we shed one tear. So also God forgives because he has forgiven.

David’s Psalm

Cammenga turns next in his proof-texting to Psalm 32:

Psalm 32 records the experience of David when he fell into his sins of adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah. In verse 5 we read, “I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.” God forgave David’s sin only after he repented of and confessed his sin. In the way of repentance, God forgave David’s sin. (421)

Now Professor Cammenga advances his argument. Previously, he was arguing about what is before and what is after: repentance clearly is before forgiveness, and forgiveness clearly follows repentance. But regarding Psalm 32 Cammenga tells us that his before and after are equivalent to saying “in the way of repentance, God forgave David’s sin.”

I am quite certain that I know why Cammenga does that. He is trying to give his doctrine a pedigree back to Herman Hoeksema, who coined the term in the way of in the middle of the conditional covenant controversy in the Protestant Reformed Churches in the 1940s and 1950s. Whatever one thinks of the phrase in the way of—I for one do not need it and do not like it—and whatever one thinks Hoeksema meant by the term, what it does not mean is before or after. You can say that when Hoeksema coined the term, he specifically rejected that sense when he gave the phrase as a substitute for the word condition. He did not want conditions.

A condition is very simply expressed as A is before B and in such a way that without A then B does not come. It does not matter if A is God-worked, God-wrought, fulfilled by grace and the Holy Spirit or not. A in that sense is a condition.

Cammenga needs to stick to his before and after: repentance before forgiveness and in such a way that without repentance forgiveness does not come. Before and after even at the most basic level are not equivalent to in the way of. Hoeksema never would have needed to coin that phrase if he could have expressed his theology with a simple before and after.

But does Psalm 32 teach that God forgave David’s sin only after David repented? Is the psalm teaching that repentance comes before forgiveness and that without David’s repentance he was unforgiven? This means that there is no forgiveness at the cross, and there is no forgiveness in eternity. There is and only may be forgiveness when and if a man repents. This is Cammenga’s gospel. This gospel he finds in Psalm 32:5.

In his eagerness to proof-text against us, what Cammenga fails to do is compare scripture with scripture in his interpretation of Psalm 32:5. Either scripture contradicts scripture, which is blasphemous, or Cammenga is wrong and corrupts the truth. There is a historical account of what is recorded in Psalm 32. In 2 Samuel 12:13 we read, “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.”

This is the gospel.

To understand what Nathan said, note first the word “also.” The word “also” does not mean that David repented, and then God also forgave. The word “also” must be interpreted in light of the other significant words: “hath put away thy sin.” The specific form of the words “hath put away thy sin” indicates a past event with present significance. In the past, before Nathan said a word and before David shed a tear, Jehovah had forgiven David his sin.

Since the cross was not yet, except in the decree, the meaning is that Jehovah by an unchanging and eternal word forgave David his sin. So real and sure was that word that David had been forgiven before the cross happened. It is because of that unchanging and eternal word of God that the cross happened, to fulfill that word and carry it out and unfold it. In the cross we see God’s eternal word of forgiveness displayed before us. God manifested his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

And that unchanging and eternal word of forgiveness explains the word “also.” The meaning is that Jehovah, according to his unchanging and eternal word of forgiveness, gave to David his repentance too. Nathan’s meaning is that God gave to David his repentance, and God also forgave. Jehovah did not do that so that he might be able to forgive David. God already had forgiven David. Rather, God gave to David his whole salvation, repentance, and forgiveness. It was not God’s will that David continue in his sin, so God granted to David repentance. It was not God’s will that David flounder in doubt, so God justified David—an ungodly man—without works and by faith only.

David’s relief, joy, and blessedness was not that God justified a repentant person but that God justified an ungodly person. He justified David when God caused David to understand that God had forgiven him and that David was the apple of God’s eye and the delight of his heart. Eternally, God willed that for David, so God worked it. Nathan said that there is an eternal and unchanging forgiveness that explains everything about what happened to David as he describes it in Psalm 32. Because David had been forgiven, Jehovah broke David’s bones instead of killing him. Because David had been forgiven, God gave to David repentance. Because David had been forgiven, God also spoke to David through Nathan to preach the gospel to David that God “also hath put away” David’s sin.

There is no forgiveness after repentance in 2 Samuel 12:13. There are two benefits that Jehovah gave to David—or a twofold grace—the one, repentance and the other, forgiveness. Both proceeded from God’s eternal good pleasure for David’s salvation. The one is not dependent on the other. That one is never present without the other is not because they are dependent on each other, but both are dependent on the mercy of God alone, who saves his people from their sins completely. Nathan said, “The Lord also hath put away thy sin.” David was forgiven on the word of promise, which word is sure as God is sure and eternal as God is eternal.

According to Titus 1:2, that word of promise God spoke before the world began: “In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began.” Eternal life comes by righteousness (or forgiveness of sins). If God promised eternal life, he promised (or spoke) the word of remission too. Faith by which alone we are justified understands and knows this promise as that was fulfilled at the cross of Christ.

The Wisdom of Solomon

Cammenga turns next in his proof-texting to what he, no doubt, regards, and what many Protestant Reformed ministers regard, as one of the bulwarks of their false doctrine of repentance before forgiveness. He writes,

In Proverbs 28:13 we read, “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.” They who confess their sins shall have mercy—God’s mercy, the mercy of forgiveness. They enjoy the mercy of forgiveness who confess and forsake, that is, repent of their sins. (421)

Professor Cammenga makes another shift. Previously, before and after came to mean in the way of, and now, the unrepentant sinner does not even have the mercy of God. A man is cast adrift of the mercy of God when he understands that he is sinner, and the man can claw his way back to mercy by his repentance. Is that what Proverbs 28:13 teaches?

Sins are transgressions of the law of God, and sins reveal the inner hatred against God that lives in man, and those sins deserve temporal and eternal punishment. There is no remedy within man for man in his sins. There is no payment that a man can make for his sins. One sin is so terrible an offense against the holy, righteous, and glorious God that it deserves a lifetime of misery now and for the sinner to be cast into outer darkness after that. That is why God in mercy provided a remedy in Jesus Christ. God will not have our sins go unpunished, so he punished the same in Jesus Christ. This is the gospel of the text. This is the kernel of heavenly wisdom. Always in all the wisdom of Proverbs is hid the Wisdom of God, Jesus Christ. Cammenga can only find man in the text and what man must do. Thus his wisdom too is earthly, sensual, and devilish. God calls to foolish men to get wisdom; and to man as he is a sinner, God calls him to confess and to forsake his sins and not to cover them.

Wonder of wonders, from among all the sinful sons of Adam, who would otherwise naturally cover their sins and perish in those sins, God in his mercy appointed some of those sinful sons of Adam to salvation in Jesus Christ. Then in order to accomplish his will for their salvation, God in his mercy sent Jesus Christ into the world to be the head and mediator of that elect people. God came in the flesh and was made in the likeness of sinful men. To Jesus Christ God imputed all the sins of his elect people. God poured out all of his divine and just wrath against the sins of his people on Jesus Christ, so that all the temporal and eternal punishment that their sins deserved was taken by Jesus Christ. And because he is God and man, God in the flesh sustained the burden of that wrath of God and made satisfaction for those sins at his cross. God covered all the sins of all his elect people at the cross of Jesus Christ. That covering is the only covering of sin that there is. It is the only covering that God accepts because that covering takes away sin. And God raised Jesus from the dead as the testimony that God justified and forgave all his elect people at the cross. And God sent the gospel into the world to declare to his people that he had reconciled them to himself in his Son, Jesus Christ. They must be reconciled because they are reconciled. They must shout that being forgiven by faith through their Lord Jesus Christ they have peace with God. And confession of sin and forsaking that sin are the fruits of faith in Christ. A sinner does not hide his sins, because he believes that God hid those sins in the cross of Christ. A sinner does not cover his sins, because he believes that God covered those sins by the only covering that takes away sins, the blood of Jesus Christ. Do not hide your sins! Do not cover your sins! Confess your sins to God because of the only covering in the blood of Jesus Christ.

So over against man’s foolish and unbelieving treatment of his sins, there is a sure word of God. He who covers his sins shall not prosper. One who covers his sins congratulates himself on how he has deceived and duped men and how they think that he is really sorry. And he is so hard that he thinks in his wicked heart that he has succeeded in covering his sins before God. But God knows all our hearts and the secrets within. That man shall not prosper. To prosper means to bring to a successful end or to arrive at a set goal. I suppose we can apply it in a certain sense in this life. The sinner who covers his sins shall not prosper in this life. If he is reprobate and unregenerated, he exists under the wrath of God, and that man goes from hardness to hardness. Whereas at first there was a slight twinge of his conscience, soon his conscience is seared with a hot iron. Whereas he was at first satisfied with a little of his sin, soon his sin devours him. He may appear to have a fine and successful life, but he is a total failure. If he is God’s own who has fallen into so terrible a state, then God’s hand will be heavy until that man confesses his sins. God never lets his people prosper in their sins. God will dismantle their lives to bring them to confess.

But surely to prosper means more. All creation must pass through a great process to arrive at God’s appointed goal in the perfect kingdom of Jesus Christ in the new heavens and new earth. Then all the elect church and all the creation with all the angels and all the creatures will be to the praise of God’s glory in Jesus Christ, through whom God will rule all things forever. The sinner who covers his sin shall not prosper. He will never arrive there. Oh, he will go to God, for it is appointed unto men once to die and afterward the judgment. But that sinner will not prosper there in the judgment, but he will hear the words of God, “Depart from me, you wicked evildoer.” And he will not prosper everlastingly in hell.

There is also a promise of God to the one who confesses his sins: he shall receive mercy.

Mercy is the tender pity of Jehovah God toward his elect people in their misery and his powerful will to deliver them from that misery. In his mercy God elected his people. In his mercy God sent Christ to die for them. In his mercy God forgave all their sins at the cross. In his mercy God comes to them with the gospel of Christ. In his mercy God calls them to stop covering their sins and to confess and forsake those sins. In his mercy God works the knowledge of sin. In his mercy God turns his people, and they are turned. And heaping mercy upon mercy, when they confess and forsake their sins, he causes them to taste his mercy yet still more. He receives the repentant sinner in mercy.

To receive mercy means that God testifies to you of the pardon of all your sins for Christ’s sake; it means that God will not turn away the confessing sinner. God will not spurn the confessing sinner but will receive him into his everlasting arms and bless the sinner with peace. This is the promise of the gospel to all who repent and believe. The promise is that you will receive mercy. It is not that you must first repent, and then and only then God can and will forgive. Your repentance is simply one small part of the mercy that has embraced you from all eternity and that will continue to embrace you until it presents you without spot or wrinkle in the assembly of the elect in life eternal.

Peter’s Sermon

Cammenga also writes,

Acts 2 records Peter’s Pentecost sermon. In verse 38 Peter calls those in his audience to repentance: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.” They are to “repent…for the remission of sins.” Once more, forgiveness (“the remission of sins”) follows repentance. Repentance is the God-ordained way to forgiveness. (421)

Professor Cammenga makes a total hash of Acts 2:38. I note that yet again his doctrine takes on a new form. Earlier he contended that repentance is before forgiveness, so that God may not and cannot forgive without repentance. Now Cammenga quotes a text that is translated as “repent…for the remission of sins,” and he interprets that as “repentance is the God-ordained way to forgiveness.” So now before and after and in the way of and God-ordained way to are all synonymous, and this all is supposed to be an interpretation of the words of Peter: “Repent…for the remission of sins.” Really, Cammenga is shying away from the full import of Peter’s words. For Peter said, “Repent…into the remission of sins,” and Peter annexed to that the promise: “And you shall receive the promise of the Holy Ghost.” If Cammenga is right, then he must take Peter at his word: repentance is not only the God-ordained way, but repentance is also that which brings the sinner into the forgiveness of sins, which, of course, is rankly heretical.

First, the passage does not read as Professor Cammenga says. The passage reads, “Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the promise of the Holy Ghost.”

I can be brief in establishing the falsity of Cammenga’s interpretation. If the meaning is repent for the forgiveness of sins, and this means repentance is the God-ordained way to remission, then Cammenga must add baptism to the thought. So the full thought would be repent and be baptized for the remission of sins. And if we take the passage in light of his previous doctrine, then the meaning is that God will not forgive you until you repent and until you are baptized. But that interpretation is nonsense and Roman Catholic. Baptism itself is the seal of the forgiveness of sins received by faith only and not by faith and repentance. Then Cammenga also leaves out of view that Peter speaks not only about the gift of forgiveness but also adds the promise of the Holy Spirit. So if Cammenga’s meaning is right that it is repentance—and baptism—first and then remission, then one has to add that the promise of the Holy Spirit is contingent on repentance and baptism. So the full thought on Cammenga’s interpretation is that it is first repentance and baptism, and then God will give forgiveness and the promise of the Holy Ghost. With that interpretation Cammenga also has the promise conditioned on man’s repentance. If Cammenga’s interpretation of Acts 2:38 is correct, then he must necessarily espouse a conditional covenant, a covenant conditioned on man’s repentance. But then you do not have a promise but an offer or a possibility.

Peter was saying to the crowds, “Repent and be baptized in the name of Christ into the remission of sins or unto the remission of sins.” The repentance is the evidence of faith whereby they are justified without works. And baptism is the seal and confirmation of the righteousness they receive by faith without works. When Peter said to the people “for the remission” of sins, then he was not indicating the end or terminus of their repentance or that into which repentance would bring them, but he was preaching the promise of the gospel that remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit are given to believers, believers who are made manifest in repentance and who are sealed with baptism. The words “into the remission of sins” must be closely tied with “be baptized.” We are very really baptized into the remission of sins because that is what baptism seals to us and to our children, and the Holy Spirit is who is promised to those who are forgiven by faith without works.

The promise is what Cammenga leaves out. He is constantly missing God and Christ in all his interpretations. He leaves out what Peter and the other apostles did preach, which was the promise rooted in election. Peter grounded his call to repentance in the free, eternal, and unmerited grace of God in election and in God’s fulfillment of the promise at the cross of Christ: “For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call” (Acts 2:39). The promise is given in election. The promise is fulfilled by God without the work or activity of man. And the promise is likewise freely given and bestowed by the grace of God. Because the promise is surely and infallibly bestowed on those whom God ordained to eternal life, then I call to faith, repentance, and the rest, certain that God will make his own manifest in the world. God does not need their repentance to forgive them. He already did forgive, and he makes that known to his elect in the gospel to bring them to repentance.

John’s Message

Cammenga says,

The teaching of the apostle in I John 1:9 is: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” If we confess our sins, and we will as the elect children of God, then God is just to forgive our sins. Since confession of sin is the fruit of repentance over sin, the apostle teaches clearly in I John 1:9 that repentance precedes forgiveness. (421)

What do you do with this kind of exegesis? Look what Cammenga does with election. He does the same thing with election that the Arminians did. The Arminians would speak about election but only after the fact of what man did. So the Arminians went about preaching the offer of salvation and that there is that which man must do to be saved. And when their man supposedly arrived in heaven, then they would speak about election. Election simply became an explanation after the fact and thus was emptied of all force. Cammenga does the same thing here: “If we confess our sins, and we will as the elect children of God.” Election here is a dead letter. Cammenga lets the statement of John stand as a fully conditional statement: “If you do this, then God will do this.” And the condition is fulfilled by God’s grace: “And we will as the elect children of God.”

In the context John’s message was “that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (v. 5). To that light you must come, and in that light you must walk. In that light you have fellowship with God, and your joy is full. If we say that we have fellowship with God and walk in the darkness, then we are liars, and the truth is not in us, and we do not do the truth. But walking in the light, we have fellowship with God and with one another. And so the exhortation is urgent: “Walk in the light! Do not walk in darkness!”

And that exhortation comes to us now in this life: “Walk in the light now in all that you do and with all that you are. Also with your sins!” Can we walk in the light in this life any other way? You cannot escape the reality that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. And you are a sinner! You are a sinner in Adam, and you are a sinner in your actual deeds. The only way that you can walk in the world is as a sinner.

Yes, I understand that you are a saint. And as a saint you will say that for all your obedience and all your good works, you remain a sinner, and you perform those things as a sinner. And so the exhortation is, “Sinner, walk in the light and do not walk in darkness!” On account of that message, John comes to the church with comfort. The point of the text is the comfort to the guilt-stricken sinner. The point is not what the sinner must do. The point is the comfort to the guilt-stricken sinner in whom God is. How shall the sinner walk in the light of God in whom is no darkness at all? He cannot as a sinner walk in the light with his sin in any other way than to confess that he is a sinner.

A confession means that you speak together with someone else. Is it that you say with the neighbor who has accused you that you are a sinner and agree with his assessment of you? Yes, but it is also that you say with God that you are a sinner. Do you not understand that this is the only way that you can confess sin? You must walk in the light. You must be in the light. And you must have fellowship with the light. And in that light as a sinner, you see your sins, and you hear God’s evaluation of your sins, and you confess that. The confessing sinner, the one who truly confesses, is of God’s covenant in the world. And so standing in God’s covenant and being of God’s party and walking in the light, we see our sins, know our sins, and we say of our sins what God says of them.

That confession is the wonderful power of the truth that is in you. If one says that he has no sin, the truth is not in him, but the lie is in him. And under the power of that lie, he says that he has no sin. And having no sin, he hates the gospel. Those are the two realities about mankind. Either man is under the power of the truth, or he is under the power of the lie. Either under the power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ or under the power of the devil. And it is under the power of the truth—because the truth is in you and the light shines in your heart and you walk in that light—that you say, “I have sin!” And so that confession is the manifestation, the evidence, that you walk in the light and that the truth is in you. John’s “if” is not an if in the conditional sense of the word but an if by which the children of light are distinguished from the children of darkness. John did not say, “If you do this, and you will by grace, then God is faithful to forgive.” But John gave the clear mark of God’s children, who walk in light, and it is that mark by which they are distinguished from the children of the devil, who walk in darkness and have no sin.

John traces all this back to the purpose of God. The point of the text is not if you do this—by God’s grace, of course—then God will do this other thing. The text is a statement of God’s purpose. The text is in the form of a purpose clause: he is faithful and righteous in order to forgive your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. It is only because God is faithful and righteous that he does forgive the confessor and cleanses him from unrighteousness. That God is faithful means that he does what he says, gives what he promises, maintains his covenant, and fulfills his eternal word! His faithfulness points to his immutability, that he is the same from eternity to eternity, and so also that faithfulness points to his eternal purpose to deliver his elect people. That God is righteous means that his will is always in harmony with his righteous being and that all his work is in harmony with his righteous will. His eternal word is, “I forgive you, my child, your sins.” And his righteousness is that in the blood of the cross he has blotted out your sins. He has already forgiven you. According to his eternal word and according to the eternal cross and at the cross of Calvary, he has forgiven. A one-word summary for his faithfulness and his righteousness is Jesus. To prove to you that he is faithful and righteous and has blotted out your sins, God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. If you do not believe that, then the truth is not in you, and you will never say, “I have sin.” It is not the terror of punishment; it is not the desire to obtain with God; it not the sinner thus reasoning—if I confess, then he will forgive—that leads to confession. It is the fear and knowledge of God that moves the sinner to confess his sin. Wonderful power of the truth. If you confess, God has given the truth to you, and he works in you that confession.

But Cammenga leaves us with a condition fulfilled by grace. He leaves us with man and what man must do.

Christ’s Exhortation

Cammenga also writes,

In Luke 17:3, Jesus exhorts that “If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.” Here God’s behavior with respect to us is the model of our calling with respect to each other. If our brother sins against us and repents of that sin, we are called to forgive him. Why are we called to forgive our repentant brother? Because this is God’s way with us: when we repent, He forgives us. Of course He does. He is the One who has worked repentance over sin in us. He has brought us to confess our sin. Since our repentance is the fruit of His work of grace, He will certainly receive us and forgive us. (421)

Professor Cammenga asks a good question: “Why are we called to forgive our repentant brother?” He gives a bad answer: “Because this is God’s way with us: when we repent, He forgives us.” Cammenga’s application is that God tells us to forgive the brother if he repents. So that must mean that God forgives us if we repent. Then the opposite also holds: if the brother does not repent, he remains unforgiven; and if we do not repent, we remain unforgiven of God. I find in this the excuse for the conditional love of the members of Protestant Reformed Churches. Their practice follows their doctrine. And they treat each other with brutality, because after all, the brother did not repent. Or he did repent and you did not accept it, so you are the bad guy.

Is that why we forgive the brother who is repentant? What even does it mean to forgive the brother who is repentant? What does scripture say about this? There are three important passages in this regard that show Cammenga’s application to be false.

Colossians 3:12–13 says,

12. Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering;

13. Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.

Ephesians 4:31–32 says,

31. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:

32. And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.

And Colossians 2:13–14 says,

13. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;

14. Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.

The first question is, what does it mean that “God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” and that “Christ forgave you”? On Cammenga’s understanding of God’s forgiveness, it means that when or if you repent, then God forgives you. Otherwise, God does not forgive. But scripture tells us what it means that “God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” and that “Christ forgave you.” According to Colossians 2:13–14, God forgave us at the cross, where he has quickened us with Christ, “having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us…nailing it to his cross.” The verb form in Colossians 3 and in Ephesians 4 is the exact same verb form as is used in Colossians 2:13–14. It is a verb form that emphasizes a completed action with lasting effect. The idea is that God forgave at the cross all your sins once and for all; he forgave that you are a sinner by nature; he forgave all the sins that you have committed, are committing, and will commit. You are once-and-for-all-time forgiven in the cross. You are forgiven freely, graciously, and without any act or restitution on your part. Repentance does not come into it. God justified the ungodly at the cross, and he justified the same ungodly in their consciences by faith, having shown them by his law that they are sinners. Repentance is not what man does in the way of which God forgives that man. Repentance is what God causes man to see and to admit, and seeing and admitting that, then the gospel of justification by faith alone is sweet and glorious to him.

Now, in that way forgive too. You seek the sinner’s repentance not so that you can forgive him. It is not about you. Seeking a sinner’s repentance is about the sinner. He will not admit that he is a sinner, and in that he shows that he is deceived and under the power of the lie. And you seek to show him that he is a sinner. In a sense you have already forgiven him. When you seek his repentance, it is because you know that God already has forgiven all his people’s sins and that he justifies the ungodly. If this man is a child of God, then his sin has been blotted out. But he will not admit that he is a sinner. And as a sinner yourself, you seek to show him that he is a sinner.

And it is precisely this gospel that you bring to the sinner when you forgive him. It is not your forgiveness that matters. It is God’s forgiveness that matters. When you forgive the sinner, you submit to the fact that God has forgiven the man who hurt you, and you bring that fact to him. This is what the apostle teaches in 2 Corinthians 2:7: “So that contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive him, and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow.” In this passage forgiving him is comforting him. And you comfort with the only comfort that there is for sinners, and that is Jesus Christ, the righteous, at whose cross all the sins of the elect sinners were blotted out.

So is repentance necessary? Yes! Is repentance the reason you forgive a man? No. You forgive him because God already forgave him at the cross, and you want that man to know that. You forgive him as God forgave you!

Cammenga does similar things like the above with the creeds. I could answer him as I have with his scriptural explanations, but I feel it is a waste of time. I have already answered his most blatant twisting of the creeds in the previous article. The rest of his use of the creeds follows that line.

And from all this we see that Professor Cammenga is not Reformed at all. He is Arminian.

Now, the pressing question is, why is it so important for Cammenga that repentance, as he says, is before forgiveness? Cammenga asks some questions in his articles that shed light on how far he is from the Reformed faith when he says that repentance is before forgiveness.

He asks,

Why ought the sinner to repent if his sin is already forgiven? Why ought the church member under discipline repent of sin on account of which he is going to be excommunicated if his sin is already forgiven by God? Why ought there be any call to repentance in the preaching of the gospel if forgiveness has already been granted by God? Why ought there be any warning that, if the sinner does not repent, he will perish if God has from eternity forgiven the sinner? Why should the child of God at day’s end humble himself before God and plead for the forgiveness of the sins committed against His Most High Majesty if he already enjoys the blessing of God’s forgiveness of his sin? (420)

Then as the very last sentence an article, he asks, “For if forgiveness takes place in eternity, what need is there for repentance in the lifetime of the Christian?”³

Oh?

What is that?

I will deal with that next time.