Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

In 1741 Puritan minister Jonathan Edwards preached the now-famous sermon titled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”¹ Whatever scholars have to say about the rest of Edwards’ theology, the sermon is dreadful. Meant to awaken the unregenerate and unconverted sinners in his audience to be born again and to obtain salvation, Edwards evoked ghastly images of sinners who were exposed to God’s wrath. He used phrases such as “God holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire” and “You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it.”

The problem is not the descriptions of God’s wrath and hell as such. Hell is a real place to where the reprobate will go when they die, and the scriptures describe it as everlasting punishment, the lake of fire, the place of torment, and where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched. And the reprobate live their entire lives on this earth under the crushing weight of the wrath and curse of God. In the preaching, reprobation should serve election, as the preaching is God’s word of comfort to his elect church.

Edwards’ emphasis throughout the sermon was that it is the sovereignty of God that holds a sinner in such a place and that the sinner can do nothing to induce God to spare him. Yet somehow the sinner in the audience “had an opportunity to obtain salvation,” for “God stands ready to pity” him, and “Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open.” For Edwards the way for a sinner to be saved from the wrath of God was to believe. Edwards said, “Till he [man] believes in Christ, God is under no manner of obligation to keep him a moment from eternal destruction” and “Let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come.” Man’s act of faith was made to be the hinge upon which the favor of God turned.

The text for Edwards’ sermon was Deuteronomy 32:35, along with multiple other scripture passages that he used to support his points. But had Edwards been a Reformed minister in a Reformed church in this day and age, he would have belonged to the pack of wolves who twist Lord’s Day 31 to serve their purposes. Lord’s Day 31 question and answer 84 reads as follows:

Q. 84. How is the kingdom of heaven opened and shut by the preaching of the holy gospel?

A. Thus: when according to the command of Christ it is declared and publicly testified to all and every believer, that, whenever they receive the promise of the gospel by a true faith, all their sins are really forgiven them of God, for the sake of Christ’s merits; and on the contrary, when it is declared and testified to all unbelievers, and such as do not sincerely repent, that they stand exposed to the wrath of God and eternal condemnation, so long as they are unconverted; according to which testimony of the gospel God will judge them, both in this and in the life to come. (Confessions and Church Order, 118)

Reading question and answer 84 and comparing it to Edwards’ sermon, it is not hard to see how a minister could corrupt this Lord’s Day to attempt to coerce by fear men and women to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is exactly what a Reformed minister in a Reformed church did.

In 2023 Protestant Reformed minister Rev. Clayton Spronk preached a sermon to his congregation in Faith Protestant Reformed Church. The sermon was titled “Preaching, One Key of the Kingdom,” and it was based on Lord’s Day 31 question and answer 84.² I do not remember how or why I first listened to this sermon over three years ago, but I know this: I did not forget it. The sermon is representative of the false doctrine that has arisen and taken hold in the Protestant Reformed Churches.

What do Jonathan Edwards’ fire-and-brimstone tirade and Reverend Spronk’s homily have in common? It is essentially this: There is that which man must do to be saved, and—contrary to prevailing Protestant Reformed theology—man is compelled to do it not by grace but out of fear of damnation. Both sermons teach a wrong view of how the sovereignty of God is exercised in the church and in the salvation of sinners.

I note at the outset that something is severely lacking in Spronk’s sermon, and that is God. The sermon is not theocentric. Oh, Spronk mentioned the word God a handful of times throughout the sermon, but God is never the subject of any actions. God is only mentioned in phrases such as “we thank God” and “God forbid” and “Son of God.” While Spronk spoke of Jesus Christ throughout the sermon—as the one who holds the keys of the kingdom and who is prophet, priest, and king in the church—he needed to ascend higher. The preacher must be a theologian because all doctrine falls under the one heading of theology. All things are of God, through God, and to God (Rom. 11:36). It is true that Christ is the chief officebearer in his church and that he holds the keys of the kingdom. Christ is the mediator of the covenant. He is the elect one. But that can be true only if there is first God. Without God in a sermon, there cannot be the decree; and without the decree there cannot be Christ; and without Christ there cannot be free and gracious salvation for ungodly sinners. In his decree God elected Christ, and in Christ God chose a body for Christ. In God’s one decree of predestination, there are election and reprobation; there are those who are members of his kingdom and those who are not. His decree he unfolds in time, and according to that decree, he manifests the citizens of his kingdom. The lack of God in Spronk’s sermon explains everything that is wrong about his sermon. And where there is a lack of God, something undoubtedly will fill that void, and that is man.

I note too that there are many true statements of fact throughout Spronk’s sermon. There are even true statements regarding the gospel. No one ever accused a Protestant Reformed minister of not saying some true things. Sermons by Protestant Reformed ministers often are dogmatically correct. But the problem comes in when Protestant Reformed ministers cloak their false gospel in those true statements in order to deceive the hearts of the simple. They deceitfully use those true statements in the service of the lie to bring their hearers into the bondage of salvation by the willing and working of man.

Spronk formatted his sermon in the classic Reformed style of an art homily, making it easy to determine what the main point of his sermon was and what point he wanted to drive home. After Spronk gave his sermon divisions, anyone with a pair of Reformed antennae should have sensed the direction that the sermon was going. The three points of the sermon were “Christ and the Key,” “The Preacher and the Key,” and “The Hearer and the Key.” And along with the third point, Spronk very carefully emphasized, “Take heed how you hear.” By the end of the sermon, it became very clear that his message culminated in how man hears the preaching of the gospel. Everything in the sermon revolved around and served that point.

Throughout the sermon Spronk set forth a pressing question to his congregation:

You need to think about this personally…What is Christ doing with his key to me this morning? Is he opening, and no man can shut? Or is he shutting, and no man can open?

When Jesus, through the preaching, says it [the kingdom] is open or it is closed, beloved, you understand it’s not just words. It’s happening. He does what he says. Jesus Christ has real power, and you and I face the ultimate question of our lives under the preaching of the word. Right now, I have to have an answer to this question: Where am I in relation to the kingdom of heaven? Am I in, or am I out? Do you understand, beloved, the reality of this as the fundamental question that you must answer this morning?

The question for you this morning is, how do I stand in relation to King Jesus? And am I with him in his kingdom? Or am I apart from him and shut out of his kingdom?

Spronk never said this explicitly in his sermon, but to be in the kingdom is a matter of justification. The Catechism points this out when it connects the opening and shutting of the kingdom of heaven with the forgiveness of sins. The question Spronk set before his congregation is really this: Are my sins forgiven? Am I justified? It is a fair question. The believer struggles the whole week long against his threefold enemy—the devil, the world, and his own sinful flesh—and his sins rise up against him, and his conscience accuses him, “You have no part in the kingdom of God. You are too big of a sinner. You did not do enough good works. You were not sorry enough for your sins.”

And the child of God comes to church on Sunday to hear the answer to that question, to be assured of his salvation and his justification, to hear Christ say to him, “Fear not. I have redeemed you, and I call you by your name. There is nothing left for you to do, for I have accomplished all your salvation and have forgiven all your sins. Rest in my finished and completed work.”

So the question is fair. I do need an answer to that ultimate and fundamental question! But I do not go to church to hear that question asked of me, over and over again. I am not the one who provides the answer to the question. Christ does. Christ is the one who, through the preaching of the gospel, answers that question. He comes in the power of the Spirit and declares to his people that all their sins are really forgiven them of God for the sake of Christ’s merits, and his people receive that promise by a true faith. That is what I love about Reformed Protestant preaching. Reformed Protestant preaching is actually the most practical preaching in the entire world. And “practical” does not mean that the preaching tells God’s people all the things that they need to do or how they need to order their lives, but the preaching gives them the comfort and assurance that they need to live out of day to day. True gospel preaching tells God’s people that they are ungodly sinners and assures them that they have been redeemed by the blood of Christ and that they belong to him in both body and soul, both in life and in death. There is nothing more practical and personal than that.

But Spronk never answered the question for his congregation or told the members whether they were in the kingdom or not. Instead, he told them how to find the answer. And because the sermon was God-less, decree-less, and election-less, only one way remained: by man’s activity. Sure, there was a lot of “Jesus this” and “Jesus that,” but man’s act of believing and man’s hearing were made to be the hinges on which the door to the kingdom of heaven swings.

In the sermon there was no mention of faith as it is union with Jesus Christ. In the sermon faith was man’s act of believing and man’s act of hearing. This became apparent when Spronk explained the different soils in the parable of the sower. About the soils Spronk said, with emphasis:

There are three different kinds of bad soils, three different kinds of people who don’t listen. They don’t listen…The good soil, the people who hear, they are those who believe.

You and I must be careful how we hear the preaching of the gospel.

The four different soils, or hearers, in the parable really represent only two different soils: good soil and bad soil, which is split into three different sub-types. Our Reformed church fathers explained the differences between the good soil and the bad soil in the following way:

Christ…notes…a…difference between those who believe only for a time and true believers, when He declares…that the former are without root, but that the latter have a firm root. (Canons of Dordt 5 rejection 7, Confessions and Church Order, 178)

The fathers call attention to a…distinction between those represented by these two kinds of soil…There is a difference of root: temporary faith is without root, and true faith is characterized by a firm root.

The seed of the Word is sown and sprouts and takes root, firm root, in the heart, from which are the issues of life. And that heart is a heart which is already in abiding connection with Christ and His life. Thus the true believer is firmly rooted in Christ.³

The difference is a root. The root is faith as it is union with Christ. The child of God who hears and receives the preaching of the gospel by faith and thus enters into the kingdom of heaven does so because he is united to Jesus Christ, not because he listened and carefully heard the preaching.

Later in the sermon, Spronk continued to accentuate the importance of man’s hearing:

The admonition to take heed how you hear is very important.

Do you see how serious this is? Christ, the sovereign Lord, not only says this, but he’s doing it. He’s saying, “You who don’t take heed how you hear, you won’t hear. I’m shutting the gate and I’m turning the key and I’m locking you out.” Take heed how you hear.

Normally when Protestant Reformed ministers preach about salvation and about how man obtains and experiences that salvation, they insist that by grace man performs all the activities that are required. God is sovereign, but man still has responsibility. God is sovereign, but man is not a stock and a block. God is sovereign, but man must still believe or repent or obey. And man’s believing or repenting or obeying is done by grace. This grace is the Holy Spirit’s empowering and enabling man to do these things, but man must do them. Spronk gave a nod to God’s sovereign rule of grace in the hearts of his people by saying,

Christ is sovereign in saving sinners and in damning the impenitent wicked. The key belongs to him. He opens and shuts, so we must not ever make this mistake: That woman believes; therefore she opened the kingdom…No. The whole point of this is to confess and find comfort in the sovereignty of Christ as king. And it comes down to this then, that when a man or a woman or a child believes, that person not only heard the testimony of the preaching “Believe in Jesus Christ, and you will be forgiven,” but that person has also received the Holy Spirit of Christ.

But God’s sovereign rule of grace by his Spirit in the hearts of his elect was not enough for Spronk. Does he not trust that God by his Spirit will accomplish through the preaching exactly what he has determined? Is Spronk afraid of the promise of the gospel that whosoever believes in the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved? Does he not believe Lord’s Day 21, that by his Spirit and word, Jesus Christ gathers, defends, and preserves to himself a church chosen to everlasting life? Spronk is in fact afraid of the gospel, and so he beat the old antinomian drum in order to strike fear into the hearts of his listeners too. He became very strident:

You and I must be careful how we hear the preaching of the gospel. If anyone here this morning is saying, “Wait a minute. Christ holds the key. He’s sovereign. He opens the kingdom, and he sovereignly brings people into the kingdom. He shuts the kingdom, and he sovereignly keeps people out of the kingdom. That means this has nothing to do with me, and this has nothing to do with how I hear. He’s sovereign.” Beloved, that’s exactly backwards. It is so deadly serious how we hear exactly because he is the powerful, sovereign king.

To illustrate his point Spronk made an analogy comparing an earthly king to Jesus Christ:

Can you imagine anyone saying, “There’s a great, sovereign king; he is mighty in power; he is full of riches and wisdom and honor; and he has soldiers who can carry out his threats. Well, because that king is so sovereign and powerful, I’m not going to listen to him. It doesn’t really matter if I listen to him.” No one would ever say that, would they? They would say that it’s exactly because of his sovereignty, his power, that I better be careful to heed this king. Because when he says “I can do good to you and bless you,” he can do it, and he will. And when he says “I can also curse you and I can chop off your head,” he can do it.

Jesus is the sovereign, powerful king who means what he says. “You don’t believe in me? You better take this seriously. I will shut you out of my Father’s house, and I will send you to the place of outer darkness where there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth forever. But believe in me, and I will open my Father’s house to you and give you eternal life.”

What Spronk said begs the question regarding to whom he is preaching. Like Jonathan Edwards, is Spronk preaching to a pack of unregenerates over whom the Lord Jesus Christ rules with a rod of iron and by his sheer power? Or is Spronk preaching to the blood-bought church of Christ? God is never angry with and never does he threaten his people like Spronk and Edwards did.⁴ Oh, there is a serious command to all men to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And there is a word to the hypocrites in the church: Those who do not believe will perish in everlasting damnation. But to his people God promises! And in that promise he actually accomplishes all that he has promised. All those who believe in him will not perish but have eternal life.

The reason God’s people believe in Jesus Christ and enter into the kingdom is not because Christ is so powerful and they are scared of what he will do to them if they do not believe and so they believe. The reason God’s people believe is because in eternity God elected them and joined them by faith to Jesus Christ, the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, and in time God brings them to the consciousness of that faith by the preaching of the gospel, so that they actually do believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and experience by faith the salvation that is theirs eternally. The elect are appointed to the belief of the truth (2 Thess. 2:13). As many as God ordained to eternal life believe, and as many as God did not ordain to eternal life believe not (Acts 13:48).

But Spronk tried to frighten the members of his congregation into believing. Believe in Jesus Christ, or else! You had better believe in Christ for fear of damnation. You do not want to go to hell, so you had better listen to Christ. It is not unlike Jonathan Edwards’ tirade that God is dangling men like spiders over the pit of hell and is ready to burn them everlastingly lest they believe. In both sermons God’s sovereignty was only a cudgel to intimidate men to believe.

What about the phrase in the Catechism “they stand exposed to the wrath of God and eternal condemnation, so long as they are unconverted”? That phrase forms what Spronk thinks is the basis for his threatenings, and Edwards too, had he been a Reformed minister preaching from the Catechism. It is not that a person sitting in the pew is not sure whether he is in the kingdom or out of the kingdom, and then the minister says, “If you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved. But if you do not believe, I will shut you out of my kingdom.” Rather, that phrase is part of the twofold, antithetical testimony of the gospel. When the gospel comes to an elect child of God, he hears the good news of salvation that his sins are forgiven and that he has been brought into the kingdom of heaven. And when the gospel comes to the unconverted and unbelieving man, he hears the testimony that God is judging him, that his sins are bound to him, and that he is now perishing under the wrath of God. It is not that if a man is unbelieving, he had better take the preaching seriously, for Christ will throw him into hell if he does not believe; but it is a real testimony to the unbeliever that he is now being judged outside of Christ and is outside the kingdom of heaven.

This shows how salvation is completely out of the hands of man and how it rests solely in the sovereignty of God in his decree of election and reprobation. Question and answer 84 have to do with the call of the gospel. The question asks how the kingdom of heaven is opened and shut by the preaching of the gospel, and the answer describes the call of the gospel: Receive the promise of the gospel by a true faith, and your sins are really forgiven for the sake of Christ’s merits. That makes salvation by man impossible because faith is not something that is in man’s power.

Salvation, therefore, in Jesus Christ is dependent on God. The heart of the gospel is election. When God says, “All who believe and repent in Jesus Christ shall be saved,” he has just said, “I will save who I will save. I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy. And whom I will, I harden. And according to that testimony of the gospel, God judges.⁵

And so when Spronk concluded his sermon with the way for his congregation to determine the answer to that ultimate and fundamental question, all that can come from his call is damnation. There is no power to save in his call because there is no Christ. There is no power in his call because throughout the sermon the call to believe became what man had to do.

If you are a sinner that can say this morning, “But I believe in Christ and I hear Christ,” then this is the comfort for you this morning—and I’m not saying it, but Christ commands me to say it on his behalf—“You believe? My kingdom is open to you.”

Over against this kind of dreadful preaching is the decretal gospel-preaching of the Reformed Protestant Churches, where every Sunday Christ comes to throw open wide the doors of the kingdom of heaven and to bring his people into that kingdom by faith, so that they consciously experience the blessedness of the forgiveness of their sins and know that everlasting righteousness and eternal life are theirs. In that preaching man is nothing and God’s sovereignty is everything in the salvation of sinners. By means of this preaching, God’s people know that they are ungodly sinners, and they are comforted by the truth that they and their salvation are in the hands of a sovereign and gracious God.

3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:

4. According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

5. Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

6. To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.

7. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;

8. Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence;

9. Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself:

10. That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in him:

11. In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:

12. That we should be to the praise of his glory. (Eph. 1:3–12)