Left with Deception and Deceivers
This word of Christ came to the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) for five years. It came in sermons, blog posts, protests, appeals, private meetings, conversations, and other ways that I do not know, but God does. Jesus Christ diligently came to the Protestant Reformed Churches with the word “You are lukewarm.” These churches were not refreshing like a cold beer on a hot day. And they were not soothing like a warm cup of chicken soup on a cold day. They were disgustingly lukewarm like the coffee that sits on your desk all day, and the smell of it allures you to take a sip; and when you do, you spew it out of your mouth as unpleasant and gross. With their doctrine of man, the Protestant Reformed Churches were gross to God.
The Protestant Reformed Churches became lukewarm over a period of decades, and that lukewarmness culminated in a doctrinal controversy over justification by faith alone and the unconditional covenant. What made them lukewarm was the same doctrine as Laodicea’s. The Laodiceans thought they were something; and being something in their own eyes, they did not buy of the Lord his riches to be justified before God. Everything that is not Christ is disgusting to God, and Laodicea did not have Christ and thus was disgusting to God. The Laodiceans did not have Christ because their justification was found in something other than in Christ alone.
Everyone must remember that where justification by faith alone is taught, there the unconditional covenant must be taught. And wherever the unconditional covenant is taught, there justification by faith alone must be taught. To corrupt one or the other is to corrupt both. The Protestant Reformed Churches trumpet the fact that they teach the unconditional covenant. They tell everyone who will listen and even those who will not that the PRC, of all churches and peoples and nations and tongues upon the earth, teach the unconditional covenant. But the PRC have corrupted the truth of justification by faith alone. They have corrupted that truth by a man-first, repentance-first, obedience-first doctrine. Thus they have also corrupted the unconditional covenant. This doctrine is a dead letter in those churches.
The leading theologian in the Protestant Reformed Churches—and he may have one foot in the grave, but he is still head and shoulders above the rest—teaches the doctrine of Rev. Hubert De Wolf that in a certain sense in God’s drawing near to man, man is first. De Wolf was rejected in 1953, but his doctrine stayed, and it is now the doctrine of the PRC. Man must first draw near to God. Before God forgives man that man must first repent for his forgiveness. The leading theologian of the PRC supposes that he saves himself and his doctrine from the charge of corrupting justification by faith alone by saying that the things that man must do first he does by the grace of God, but that has been the refuge of heretics and false teachers down through the ages, and it is the refuge of Protestant Reformed heretics and false teachers too. The Protestant Reformed Churches shout and cheer whenever their champion comes forward to blaspheme, so they are one with him in his doctrine. He with the rest in the PRC suppose that they save themselves from the charge of Arminianism by saying that this doctrine of theirs is true for the experience of salvation. But over against this I say that at the vital point of the elect child of God’s experience, knowledge, and assurance of his salvation, and thus also at the vital point of his enjoyment of that salvation in time and in eternity, his salvation has prerequisites and conditions and is dependent and contingent on and in the way of what he does, however that doing may be described.
This doctrine of man first has affected the Protestant Reformed explanation of every other area of the truth of salvation: a man is assured by his obedience; total depravity in its vital application to the regenerated believer is denied; good works are conditions to experience God’s favor and fellowship; a holy life of obedience is necessary to fellowship with God; men approach the Lord’s table and thus approach unto fellowship with their God with a righteousness of true obedience to the law. I have detailed and enumerated these departures in my previous article.1 None of these false doctrines have been repudiated, but all are received and trumpeted as the gospel, indeed, as the purest form of the gospel.
All of these corruptions touch the vital doctrine of justification by faith alone. That doctrine teaches me that without any works, deeds, activities, or obedience, I am declared by God to be righteous, that I am an heir to all the promises of God, that I receive the Spirit of grace and reconciliation, that I have peace with God, that I stand in his presence in grace, that I am received of God in mercy whenever I go to him and despite all of my sins and wickedness, and that without any doubt I will go to heaven. The elect child of God’s peace, joy, happiness, liberty, comfort, fellowship with God, and entrance into eternal life are sealed with his justification. He is justified by faith and not by works. He is justified by doing nothing because he is justified by Christ alone. Christ is his righteousness, obedience, holiness, and acceptance before God. The child of God can no more be condemned than Christ can be condemned, and he can no more be rejected of God or cast out of his presence than Christ could be. The child of God is righteous by faith in Christ because by faith he is one with Christ, a member of his corporation, and thus a partaker of Christ and of all his riches and gifts. The child of God is righteous and justified in his conscience and experience daily without works of obedience, and he will be justified in the same way in heaven.
The Protestant Reformed Churches have corrupted the truth of justification by faith alone. They teach justification by faith and works done by grace, or just plainly they teach justification by faith and works. They move seamlessly between describing obedience as necessary to enjoy fellowship with God and describing that a man must first repent before God justifies him. Both of these errors are the same. They both deny justification by faith alone and teach justification by faith and works. Teaching this, the Protestant Reformed Churches also teach a conditional covenant, whatever protests they might make to the contrary and regardless of their deception of using the words unconditional and gracious. Unconditional—wink, wink—in the Protestant Reformed Churches and on the lips of their ministers means condition, contingency, and prerequisite because under the guise of that word unconditional they teach that before God justifies a man, that man must first repent; and thus in order to enjoy God as his God, to enjoy the favor of God, and to enjoy the knowledge of his forgiveness, a man must first do something. That is a prerequisite, a contingency, and a condition—first before God does one thing, man must do another—no matter how many times one mentions grace, and no matter how many God-workeds and God-givens are added to the formulation, and no matter how many appeals are made to the orderly way. That is all subterfuge to deceive the simple and to keep men in bondage to error and in the power of the false teacher.
Thus it is true of the Protestant Reformed Churches that they were lukewarm, as it was true of Laodicea, because the PRC did not know who they were. Protestant Reformed ministers routinely denied who they were, and they taught the people to deny who they were too. The ministers taught the people that they were not totally depraved, and they taught them on that basis to reject every word brought to them about who they were and every rebuke that included a description of who they were. As in Laodicea the PRC forgot that they were wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. Only to the sinner who has nothing and is in his own eyes an ungodly person is the doctrine of justification by faith alone the sweetest heavenly music. To those who are something and suppose that they are rich, increased with goods, and have need of nothing, the doctrine of justification by faith alone is like nails on a chalkboard because that doctrine takes away all of their self-righteous works and deeds, of which they are very proud and by which they distinguish themselves from others and in which they suppose that they approach unto God.
The Lord warned the Protestant Reformed Churches of this reality, but she did not buy of the Lord his treasures:
I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see.
The Lord warned because there were still those in the PRC whom he loved. And we heard his call and came out to him. The Lord was not going into those churches because they had displaced him and cast him out. And so we went out to him to eat with him and to fellowship with him in the truth of the gospel of the free and gracious pardon of sins without works and by faith alone. And the Protestant Reformed Churches are rushing as fast as they can down the road to Rome. If there are any left whom the Lord loves, who have ears to hear, come out too. Perhaps you have slept through the whole controversy. Perhaps you were blinded until now. Perhaps you believed the deceptions and lies and fake narratives that were fed to you. Whatever the reason, if you are stirred to recognize the error and false doctrine of the PRC, then come out. The Lord stands outside and knocks. Go out to him! In part, the reason I write is that perhaps, the Lord being gracious, there may be some yet in the PRC who hear.
Casting out Christ, the Protestant Reformed Churches are left with their deception that they are rich, increased with goods, and have need of nothing. They are deaf and blind to all of the Lord’s terrible judgments. They lament vainly for their troubles, as though the Lord is chastising them, and they do not understand that he is destroying them. None of the Protestant Reformed prophets will tell the church members of the judgment that is upon them. The prophets only prophesy of peace and use smooth words. Denying justification by faith alone is the mark of a dead church, the false church, and the church under the wrath and judgment of God. The Protestant Reformed Churches deny justification by faith alone. They deny that they did this in their synodical decisions and in their writings. But now it is evermore increasingly clear that this is the heart of their doctrinal error: they will not be justified by faith in Christ alone, but they will add to Christ some deed, work, or activity of man. They won’t have Christ’s white raiment, but they put on the deeds of man.
Cementing in the consciousness of the members of the PRC the deception that all is well are the writings of the ministers, among which Rev. Martyn McGeown’s are to be included. If we were not dealing with so many serious issues involving so many souls, but more importantly involving the great name of God and the honor of Jesus Christ, one would be tempted to laugh at the transparent stupidity, the triteness, and the patent falsehood of the writings. A people must be blind indeed to read and nod their heads in agreement. I think many people do not read these writings though. I think many people do not read the Standard Bearer. That has been true for years in the PRC. The Reformed Free Publishing Association (RFPA) would publish figures about how many subscriptions it had to the Standard Bearer, but never once did the RFPA ask the simple and obvious question, who actually reads the Standard Bearer? For many the magazine was a coffee-table decoration for the benefit of the elders who came for family visitation. And the same holds true for the blog of the RFPA: a great deal of effort goes into producing it, but what it produces is not worth the effort. It is not worth the effort because, as the Standard Bearer, it is not the gospel. The RFPA has as its purpose the denial of the gospel and the promotion of the lie. I think that in order to stay in the PRC many have simply stopped reading altogether. Maybe by the providence of God, something will find its way before their eyes to wake them, and they will hear the Lord say, “Tolle lege!”
Terrified of the Decree
In his blog series “Preaching Repentance and Forgiveness,” with which I am concerned, Reverend McGeown tells us that he is going to teach about repentance and faith.2 You can go read it on the RFPA blog, if you can find it underneath the pile of dung that has come after it. To point out all of Reverend McGeown’s false doctrine would be a full-time job. So let it suffice that if he is proven to be a false teacher on justification, then all the rest that he writes is worthless and merely serves the confirmation of his false gospel.
His doctrine of justification is that in a man’s mind and conscience he is not justified until he repents. McGeown’s doctrine is the same as Professor Engelsma’s doctrine. It is a repentance-first-and-then-remission doctrine; or it is a repentance-first-and-then-justification doctrine. Or, better, McGeown’s doctrine is justification by faith and by repentance. I will prove that in time. For him man must first repent, and then and only then will God forgive him. God may not and God does not forgive unless man repents. This doctrine of repentance first and then remission is a corruption of the doctrine of justification by faith alone and is the teaching of justification by faith and works.
Reverend McGeown’s doctrine that he teaches the churches, that he teaches his church, and that he promotes on the blog of the RFPA is a doctrine of justification that is the same in essence as Rome’s doctrine. The Christian Reformed Church in 1924 by the doctrine of common grace broke down the antithesis between the church and the world and so became the world. The Protestant Reformed Churches by their doctrine of repentance first and then remission have broken down the antithesis between the Reformation and Rome, and the PRC have become Rome.
True to nature, Reverend McGeown is slippery in his teaching of justification by faith and works. He makes statements of the truth and then casts doubt on them. Yea, hath God said! He introduces so many distinctions in this series that it is hard to keep them all straight. There is a distinction between faith and repentance, between repentance and conversion, between repentance and works, and between justification and forgiveness. Then when he should make a distinction—between faith and repentance—he mashes them together into a single entity. There may be more distinctions in his blog series, but I lost count. He also is adept at quoting—but not explaining—scriptural passages that he uses, as though they so obviously support his position that he is not obligated or will not condescend to explain the passages to the reader and to show how they support his doctrine or his distinctions.
In his series he is supposedly explaining Christ’s words in Luke 24:44–49. I quote the passage in its entirety:
44. And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.
45. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,
46. And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day:
47. And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
48. And ye are witnesses of these things.
49. And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.
In light of what Reverend McGeown writes later, it is important to note his brief analysis of this passage. He writes,
The content of the message that the apostles were called to preach was this: repentance and remission of sins. “Preach,” says Jesus “the necessity of my sufferings, death, and resurrection; and preach repentance and the remission of sins.”3
What is utterly lacking in this brief analysis of the passage is the source of Christ’s coming, his suffering, his death, and his resurrection, as well as the source of the message of repentance and remission that goes to every nation; and that source is God’s decree. Reverend McGeown could perhaps be excused for this on account of the brevity of his summary. But this lack manifested in his summary carries through his entire series. He does not trace all of his theology back to the decree of God. He does not do decretal theology.
Decretal theology is theology that traces all back to God’s decree and explains all out of that decree. Decretal theology is God-first theology. The necessity of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection was not so that repentance and remission could be preached; the necessity of his suffering and death was not even primarily sin. The necessity of Christ’s coming and death was the eternal decree and will of God. In that decree God appointed some to salvation and others to damnation. Indeed, even more specifically, the source of Christ’s suffering and death and the necessity of those events was that God appointed Christ to glory and his church to salvation through death and resurrection, sin and grace, the fall and redemption. The must of the passage is God and his eternal will for the glory of Christ and the salvation of his church. For that reason God spoke by Moses and the prophets and revealed what had been hidden, what eye had not seen, and all that the wisdom of man could not conceive concerning God’s will in Christ. And that must of the decree of God carries through all of history, all of salvation, and all of the application of salvation. Christ must die because God willed it. The elect must repent and believe and must be forgiven because God willed it. Thus also the gospel must go out into the world that God’s people be brought according to his decree to the knowledge of their salvation by the remission of their sins and that they be manifested as God’s children in the world by repentance. Starting with his summary of the passage and following through the entire series, Reverend McGeown does not do decretal—that is to say, Reformed—theology. It is inconceivable that a truly Reformed man, or a man who claims Herman Hoeksema as his supporter, would say the things that Reverend McGeown says about the decree, repentance, faith, and justification.
Understand that it is not that he does not say election or elect or decree, and he even managed in the 7,500 words about preaching repentance and remission to make a single reference to the reprobate. But he simply does not do theology from the viewpoint of predestination and the decree. The decree is there. He must acknowledge it, but it plays no controlling role in his development of repentance and remission. This is because the decree leaves no room for a man-first, repentance-first, obedience-first theology. And Reverend McGeown, if he makes anything clear in this series at all, makes clear that he is very much about man, man’s works, man’s repentance, and man’s deeds. He is skittish about the decree, and he wants his readers to be too.
Beware Eternal Justification
Already generally skittish about the decree, in the case of eternal justification Reverend McGeown is as nervous as a cat in a room with a rocking chair. Of course, in a series of articles on remission of sins, he must mention eternal justification. And he does mention it. Yet he mentions it, as he does other important truths about salvation, in order to cast doubt on it and ultimately to have eternal justification regarded as a dangerous doctrine.
When he mentions eternal justification, he is in the process of distinguishing between justification and forgiveness, and he must then speak of eternal justification, “which is the teaching that because God eternally views his people in Christ they are eternally righteous before him.”4
The reality of eternal justification means that in the counsel of election God eternally beheld his people in Christ and thus that God knew them in Christ as justified from all eternity. Or you can say that eternal justification means that there is an eternal decree of God justifying his people for Christ’s sake, since Christ’s cross is also eternal. They are justified from all eternity, and God never beholds iniquity in Jacob.
One could be forgiven for thinking that in exegeting the passage from Luke 24 about preaching repentance and remission (justification) in the whole world, one would trumpet the doctrine of eternal justification as the eternal reality of what takes place through the preaching of the gospel. Reverend McGeown does not. He warns with emphasis that the doctrine has no “explicit biblical support” and that it is not mentioned in the creeds. He weakens the doctrine by a quotation from the Westminster Confession 11.4:
God did, from all eternity, decree to justify all the elect; and Christ did, in the fullness of time, die for their sins, and rise against for their justification: nevertheless they are not justified, until the Holy Spirit doth in due time actually apply Christ unto them.
Reverend McGeown emphasizes the word until because it reflects his own doubt about the doctrine. For him justification in eternity is not a reality for the elect sinner. The real justification is the forgiveness of the sinner’s sin by faith and repentance. But I might as well note also that what the Westminster says is most definitely not what is meant by eternal justification. In fact, the whole article of the Westminster in this regard is weak. There were men at the Westminster Assembly who were scared of the decree too, and they were worried about emphasizing it too much. And over against the Westminster, we say that God did not merely decree to justify at some point, but he justified his people eternally.
In his raising doubts about the doctrine of eternal justification, Reverend McGeown also puts a quote in the mouth of Rev. Herman Hoeksema, as though Hoeksema was skittish about the doctrine and held the same viewpoint of it as does Reverend McGeown:
It must be maintained with equal firmness [as we maintain that Christ eternally took our guilt on himself, and you can say eternally justified us as the Lamb slain] that we personally become partakers of this benefit only by a sincere faith.
He makes it seem as though Hoeksema said that, but what McGeown quotes as from Hoeksema is in fact not from Hoeksema but from the Conclusions of Utrecht, in which the synod acknowledged that eternal justification is taught in scripture. Reverend Hoeksema in his explanation and defense of the doctrine was stronger than the Conclusions of Utrecht and the Westminster Confession. And he disagreed with both in their insistence that we are not justified until we have faith. Reverend Hoeksema was not skittish about the doctrine of eternal justification, and he said in connection with the doctrine,
Evidently afraid to over-emphasize the counsel of God, some maintained that one could speak only of justification by faith. They denied eternal justification. But it is very clear that this is not correct…
The elect do not become righteous before God in time by faith, but they are righteous in the tribunal of God from before the foundation of the earth. God beholds them in eternity not as sinners, but as perfectly righteous, as redeemed, as justified in Christ.5
If those in the PRC could conjure Hoeksema from the grave, then he would say to them, “The elect do not become righteous before God in time by faith,” and the whole lot of them would choke and scream, “Antinomian? Without a doubt!” Professor Engelsma would blast off another email about the damnable doctrine of the Reformed Protestant Churches that denies the Reformed faith and is contrary to the creeds, if not to all of Christianity. Professor Engelsma would write about the doctrine of the Reformed Protestant Churches because the only place in the world that Hoeksema’s statement could be made without his being stoned to death or suspended or deposed would be a Reformed Protestant pulpit. Professor Cammenga would run to his study and furiously attack his keyboard to pound out yet another series of articles in the Standard Bearer to add to his already large collection of writings against antinomianism. Reverend McGeown would slither back to the RFPA blog to hiss out a blog post about the distinction between forgiveness and justification and to warn everyone about the dangers of emphasizing the decree too much. Undoubtedly, he would twist a scripture passage or two in the service of his warning. Perhaps Professor Gritters would even get in on the game and write another lying lament about how far those schismatics that left the PRC have fallen from the truth. Professor Griess surely would join in and write an article saying that now, having denied the very doctrine of justification, the Reformed Protestant Churches are surely fools who are not to be answered.
Protestant Reformed writers are very fond of sprinkling Hoeksema quotations in their writings in a similar way that the Pharisees garnished the tombs of the prophets, while offering prayers of thanksgiving that they were dead. And on this point about eternal justification, Hoeksema had nothing in common with Reverend McGeown. Hoeksema loved eternal justification and taught it repeatedly and often, and he did not see that it conflicted at all with justification in man’s conscience any more than God’s decree ever conflicts with the explanation of salvation in time. Rather, Hoeksema understood that eternity is the reality, source, explanation, and necessity of what occurs in time. Time is but the unfolding and revelation of what was with God eternally as the way he would glorify himself in Christ and in the perfection of his covenant in Christ.
Hoeksema taught that the elect are justified in eternity and do not become righteous in time by faith. He grounded that statement on what—contrary to Reverend McGeown—is explicit biblical proof of the doctrine of eternal justification: “He [God] hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel (Num. 23:21).”6 God had his people always before him, graven on the very palms of his hands; and always he beheld them as righteous, and never did he see iniquity in them. As Hoeksema so provocatively wrote, “The elect do not become righteous before God in time…but they are righteous…from before the foundation of the earth.”
It is this very thought that McGeown rejects when, having mentioned eternal justification, he wants to destroy any confidence in the doctrine in the mind of the reader:
One of the problems with an emphasis upon eternal justification is that justification by faith becomes simply a realization that we were always justified, not an actual point in time when our legal status changed and we were declared righteous. This leads to the extreme view that we were always saved, never lost. (The emphasis is McGeown’s.)
Making Us Aware of Our Eternal Salvation
What does the decree mean if it does not mean that we were always saved? What is the gospel except the declaration of the truth that we were always saved? That sentiment of Reverend McGeown sells out Reformed theology in its entirety and really is in principle a rejection of the whole idea of the decree of God and of God himself. What else did God mean when he stated in Luke 1:77 that the task of John the Baptist, and thus the task of every preacher of the gospel, was “to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins”? The Herald of the Dawn was to preach Christ, or, if you want, to preach repentance and remission. That preaching gave to God’s people the knowledge of their salvation. They sat far from God in their darkness, sin, and guilt. But they were God’s people. They were always his people and were ever before him in their righteousness in Christ. God said that explicitly “unto his people.” They were always and eternally his people. They did not know it, but in actual fact they were. Through the preaching of Christ—or repentance and remission—John was to give the knowledge of their salvation. God did not say that John was to save them by his preaching but to give them the knowledge of their salvation. That was to become aware of the eternal and objective fact of their salvation and to rejoice in that fact and reality. Salvation is to have God as your God and to be the people of the Lord. That is an eternal reality. We become aware of that eternal fact and reality with the knowledge of our salvation. It is exactly that point—that we become aware of this—that is the point of the passage. We become aware—receive the knowledge—that God is and ever was our God and that we are and ever were the people of the Lord. And you can also include in that knowledge the experience of salvation. Knowledge is always intimate knowledge and experiential knowledge. John was to preach Christ—or repentance and remission—so that those who sat in darkness would taste, enjoy, be assured of, experience, and be comforted in their salvation, that God was their God eternally!
The passage also says how God gives the knowledge, experience, and enjoyment of their salvation. He gives them the knowledge of their salvation by giving them the knowledge of the forgiveness of their sins, or what Luke 1:77 calls “remission.” That is, God makes them aware of their salvation, causes them to know that salvation, and thus also makes them to rejoice and be glad in that salvation—to experience that salvation—by justifying them. That is because salvation consists in the remission of sins. God causes his people to know, experience, rejoice, and be glad in their salvation without any works and in spite of their sins and ungodliness, for it is exactly the sinner, the ungodly, the unrighteous, and the wicked whom God saves. God gives them the knowledge of their salvation by their doing nothing! God gives the knowledge of their salvation by giving them the knowledge of Christ and his remission. God gives them the knowledge of their salvation as sinners and as those who have no works. The specific awareness that John was to give them, the specific piece of knowledge and the specific experience that they were to receive, which gave to them the knowledge of their salvation, was the forgiveness of their sins.
And I want to add that John was to preach remission to the people and make them aware before Christ ever died. They already had their sins remitted. They had that eternally as God’s people, and they had that by a promise that is sure because it was made by the unchanging God. So the emphasis of the passage is exactly what Reverend McGeown warns against as a problem. He says that it is a real and terrible danger that we make the preaching of forgiveness merely to be God’s making us aware that we are always saved. It is not a problem for God, the Holy Ghost, Zacharias, or John. God said that he sends the gospel of Jesus Christ—preaching repentance and remission—into the world for that very purpose. It is not a problem either for every child of God, but he rejoices in knowing—becoming aware—of his salvation.
Reverend McGeown simply makes up problems with decretal theology because he does not do theology that way and he is afraid of decretal theology. He is interested in man and what man must do—especially is McGeown interested in man’s repentance preceding his justification, so that repentance becomes a condition unto justification. The decree has no real and controlling place in his explanation of the preaching of repentance and remission. And because the decree does not have any controlling place in his theology, he careens off the Reformed path and goes crashing into an Arminian thorn bush.
I will examine his theology of the decree more next time. It goes a long way to explaining his doctrine of justification by faith and repentance. Then I will examine his doctrine of justification by faith and repentance and all of the distinctions that he must make to teach that abominable doctrine.
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