Where is our humility? True humility is not the feigned humility of the soft voice and a downcast countenance that does not submit to the word of God and counts one’s own honor the most important thing. True humility submits to the word of God and confesses and lives out of the reality of one’s own spiritual wretchedness and labors thankfully for the wonder of grace that God realizes his promise in me. True humility submits to the will of God even if it kills me. Where is our humility as individuals and as churches? We are so prickly for our own righteousness and glory and to defend our own honor and reputation.

We have problems—doctrinal problems—as churches. We can all say to each other that we have not apostatized de jure by official ecclesiastical decisions at the synodical level, but what do we do with the truth? What place does vigorous doctrinal preaching have in our hearts? Where is the fiery offense at false and heretical theology? If we have no stomach for doctrinal preaching and would rather have the fluff of supposedly practical preaching; if we can listen to sermons that are Christless and not be bothered; if the truth is dishonored and we think that is unimportant, or we cannot even hear that it is happening; and if those who teach explicit false doctrine are excused; then where do we stand in relationship to the truth? Some can say, “Not in my church.” But as we look over the denomination and see the turmoil, what do we say? Is the solution to say that the problem is merely a pack of radicals, antinomians, and rabble-rousers, or must we examine where we stand as a denomination on the truth—the truth that was given to us by our fathers and that they defended at great cost to themselves and the churches?

I believe that we are being misled down a theological pathway that will lead us away from the pure doctrine of the unconditional covenant and salvation by faith alone—faith as God’s gift, by grace alone, because of God’s election alone. We are being misled by emphases on the practical, man’s activity and responsibility, man’s obedience, and warnings against a false species of antinomianism.

That was Herman Hoeksema’s warning to the Protestant Reformed Churches in the aftermath of the doctrinal turmoil of 1953. He gave the speech in 1954 in Hull, Iowa. At that time it could be said that the ecclesiastical assemblies had made all the right decisions. The split in the denomination had happened in the East. Yet he gave this warning:

In this connection [that “Christ is the entrance into the kingdom of God”] I cannot refrain from issuing to all of you a word of warning. I’ll do it. You know, we talk about so much in our day, and in our churches,—we talk about responsibility. We talk about the activity of faith. And similar things. I’ll warn you that on that basis and in that line we’re going to lose the gospel. We’re going to lose the gospel. We’re going to lose election. We’re going to lose reprobation. We’re going to lose the gospel, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. O yes, we must preach the activity of faith. But by the activity of faith I mean not something that you and I must do, except that first of all, by the activity of faith we cling to Christ, and embrace Him and all His benefits. That is the activity of faith. Responsibility? Don’t you ever forget that the accusation that Reformed people cannot maintain responsibility has always been brought against,—Reformed people have always been accused of denying responsibility by those that are Arminians and moderns. We do not deny responsibility. We do not deny the activity of faith. Of course not. But I warn you that with the emphasis that is laid upon these things, upon conditions, upon activity of faith, and upon responsibility, you’re going to lose the gospel. That’s my warning. (Herman Hoeksema, “Transcript of Address and Question Hour,” Standard Bearer 34, no. 21 [September 15, 1958]: 490; emphasis added)

I note that Hoeksema explicitly warned against the idea that the activity of faith is something that you and I must do. He taught that same thing in his sermon on Acts 16:30–31, preached in the midst of the denomination’s theological controversy over the conditional covenant. The Philippian jailor asked, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” Hoeksema explained as his considered answer that this means do nothing for your salvation. This is the theological truth of the gospel’s proclamation “believe!” The gospel in Paul’s answer proclaims do nothing; do absolutely nothing; rest and rely on Jesus Christ crucified alone for your salvation. Faith in its entirety is the gift of God. Teaching that faith is a doing threatens the unconditional character of salvation over against those who make faith a condition unto salvation and the blessedness of God’s covenant.

Further, Hoeksema did not reject faith as a condition by preaching against a caricature of that false position, but as it really was preached and as that false theology paraded and defended itself by appeals to faith’s activity and man’s responsibility. Hoeksema exposed the subtlety of that theology, which claimed to express scriptural and Reformed ideas but in fact rejected them and did so under the guise of emphasizing faith’s activity and man’s responsibility.

The burden of this article is that Herman Hoeksema’s warning is what the Protestant Reformed Churches must hear today. Recently, the churches faced a doctrinal issue similar to and as serious as that of 1953. I believe that the doctrinal issue faced recently is in fact an extension of the doctrinal issue of 1953. One might say that in 1953 the issue was the covenant itself and the question whether the promise of the covenant is conditional or unconditional. The issue is sharper today, and it concerns whether the promise in the daily conscious experience of covenant fellowship is conditional or unconditional. And I have witnessed how the false theology of conditional covenant experience was defended by appeals to conscious activity, explanations of the phrase “in the way of,” warnings about a false species of antinomianism, and similar arguments. What is deeply concerning is that we are claiming that the false theology has been rejected, and yet all the arguments that were used to defend it are back on the foreground. That is the emphasis in articles and in sermons.

I believe that if we as churches do not come to an agreement that the issue facing us is whether the promise in the daily conscious experience of covenant fellowship is conditional or unconditional, we will not be able to develop in this matter. I believe that if we now turn our focus to the perceived threat of a supposed doctrinal antinomianism, which is to be combated by emphasizing man’s activity and finding words and phrases to prompt godliness, we will not root out the real and serious threat of a conditional covenant experience.

I believe it matters very little whether we use the word condition or not. We may not use the word, but I do not stumble over a mere word. I am not demanding that this or that precise phrase be used. That is stifling. Rather, it is a matter of the presentation of fellowship with our God and the believer’s spiritual activity, whether of believing or repenting. When the presentation of the believer’s fellowship with God is that it is effectively hinged upon the believer’s activity; when it is so presented that God withholds his fellowship until the believer acts; when the teaching that God enables the sinner to believe or repent comes with the distinct impression that after all of God’s enabling it is still in the believer’s power to believe or not, repent or not; then I maintain that this is basically the teaching of conditions in the experience of God’s fellowship. Such presentations set man as another party alongside God within the covenant of grace. If the presentation either explicitly or by strong implication leaves the impression that a believer does not receive fellowship with God until he acts, or that the believer’s acts of believing and repenting are decisive, then the presentation teaches conditions in the believer’s experience of fellowship with God. It makes little difference at that point whether one uses the word condition or way. If the whole emphasis of the sermon is on the activity of faith, the activity of man, and the sermon is essentially Christless, the presentation is conditional, although the word is not used.

Here Hoeksema’s comments about DeWolf’s sermon on Matthew 18:1–4, in which he preached conditions, are applicable:

How, then, can our conversion, our act of conversion be something that God requires of us before we enter into the kingdom of God. That was his sermon. That was the sermon throughout. Let me say too: it was a preparatory sermon, supposed to be. There was no Christ and no cross in it. I emphasized that in my protest. I protested against that sermon…The cross is the entrance into the kingdom of God, the entrance through which we enter only as we are regenerated before. Christ is the entrance into the kingdom of God. (Hoeksema, “Transcript,” 489–90)

Even if DeWolf never made the heretical statement, his sermon emphasized man’s activity from beginning to end and was Christless.

Rather, we must have sermons that emphasize the same truth about faith that Herman Hoeksema taught and that emphasize that truth all the way through the believer’s experience of covenant fellowship with God and all the way into heaven. Christ is the entrance into the kingdom from beginning to end, from regeneration to glorification, in regeneration and every day of our lives. The believer’s whole life in the covenant is out of Christ. In the covenant for the regenerated and converted believer, the truth that must be preached is not only that he is enabled to do this or that and that Christ fills up his lack, but also that in the covenant the believer has only a small beginning of the new obedience and that he needs Christ’s righteousness daily and Christ’s forgiveness daily and Christ’s Spirit daily to conform him more and more to Christ’s image.

This is to say that the covenant—in its establishment and maintenance and perfection, in the believer’s entrance into it, and in his life in it—is absolutely without conditions. The gospel of the unconditional covenant of God must be so preached and the impression so left that the unconditionality of the covenant extends to the believer’s daily enjoyment of his salvation. All his activity in the covenant is the infallible fruit of the realization of God’s promise in the believer. The impression may not be left that God does his part and enables the believer to do his part, but after the believer is enabled it is still in his power whether to do it or not. The impression may not be left that because God enables the believer to do this or that, that now in his life in the covenant he becomes a party alongside Christ. This impression may not be left especially at the vital point of the believer’s experience and assurance of salvation.

The Arminians taught that entrance into the covenant was conditional. God worked in man in such a way that it was still in man’s power to believe and repent. Against this position the Canons say, “This is in no wise effected merely by…such a mode of operation that after God has performed His part it still remains in the power of man…to be converted or to continue unconverted” (Canons of Dordt 3–4.12, in Confessions and Church Order, 168–69). For the Arminians, man’s act was the decisive thing. Man’s response to grace received was the hinge on which all turned. That same Arminianism enters in when in the daily conscious experience of, enjoyment of, and joy in God’s fellowship, the matter is presented the same way. Then the impression is so left that God enables in the covenant, but it is still in man’s power whether he will act or not. Man’s act becomes decisive in the daily experience of the covenant. When the response of man to grace received is preached as the hinge on which his experience and assurance turn, I maintain that this is fundamentally Arminianism in the experience of salvation. When the preaching of the law ends with what man can do and does not begin with the exposure of what man still is with his sinful human nature and thus does not take us right back to Christ for forgiveness and for his Spirit to conform us more and more to God’s image, then I say in essence this is teaching conditions for the maintenance of the covenant. If this is true of the daily experience, then this is true of the believer’s ultimate entrance into the kingdom of God in heaven, which is the perfection of what the believer now enjoys in the covenant.

The truth is entirely different. When God works repentance in the believer, it is absolutely certain that he will repent. When God works faith in the believer, it is absolutely certain that he will believe. When God works daily conversion in the believer, it is absolutely certain that he shall be turned and joy in the God of his salvation and walk in good works. As the Canons say, “All in whose heart God works in this marvelous manner are certainly, infallibly, and effectually regenerated and do actually believe” (Canons of Dordt, 3–4.12, in Confessions and Church Order, 169). This is true of the believer’s entrance into the covenant, and it is true of his daily experience of fellowship in the covenant. 

When God works these things in the believer, God is realizing his unconditional promise not only in the believer’s initial entrance into the covenant by regeneration but also in his daily conversion and assurance of, consciousness of, and enjoyment of God as his God. The grace of God does not operate one way in the believer’s entrance into the covenant and then operate another way in his daily experience of salvation. The grace of God does not take the believer into the covenant wholly passively in regeneration, and then after God’s grace enables the man, grace waits on his acts and works. The believer receives all the gifts of the covenant—from regeneration, to faith, to conversion, to justification, to sanctification—as gifts, none of which are dependent on his activity. He enters into the covenant absolutely unconditionally, and all his righteous activities thereafter every day are the infallible consequences of God’s gracious realization of his promise. The preaching of the law to the regenerated believer may not be that he is enabled to do this or that, and Christ will fill up the believer’s lack. But the preaching of the law must be so sharp as to show the regenerated believer his sin and drive him to Christ for forgiveness of his sin and his sinful human nature and for Christ’s Spirit to conform the believer yet more to God’s image.

In this connection I want to remind the Protestant Reformed Churches of a very important decision in their history that they may not forget because it bears on their current doctrinal struggles. That is the decision of Classis East in May 1953. The April classis of that year had put into the hands of a committee protests against Reverend DeWolf’s now infamous statements. The first statement was “God promises every one of you that if you believe you shall be saved.” The second statement was “Our act of conversion is a prerequisite to enter into the kingdom.” The committee that came back was split. Two elders, R. Newhouse and P. Lubbers, wrote a simple minority report, little more than a page long, that declared both statements to be “literally heretical.” 

Three ministers, R. Veldman, G. Lubbers, and E. Knott, wrote the majority report. Long and convoluted, it sought to explain how DeWolf’s statements could be understood properly as being Reformed. What is of great interest and ought to be of great interest to the Protestant Reformed Churches at present is how the three ministers set about to do this. We should reckon with their report. Their emphasis was similar to what I hear today, their language was similar to what I hear, their distinctions were similar to what I hear, and appeals were made to the same articles in the Canons to prove that their explanation was Reformed. The majority report can be found in Appendix I in Herman Hanko, For Thy Truth’s Sake: A Doctrinal History of the Protestant Reformed Churches (Grandville, MI: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2000), 481–501. The report should be read carefully by every reader.

DeWolf’s first statement—“God promises every one of you that if you believe you shall be saved”—in a sermon on Luke 16:19–31 taught a general promise of God to everyone in the audience, contingent on their faith. The committee’s defense was that DeWolf was preaching to the elect, regenerated church of God, the living church as the body of Christ, and thus “God promises to every believing saint what he needs, the gift of faith, forgiveness of sins, hope of glory, and life everlasting. But to underscore the need of active trust he [DeWolf] says: if you believe” (489–90). Thus the statement was really only emphasizing the need for active trust. 

I understand this in relationship to our present doctrinal struggles that all the emphasis on man’s activity, man’s responsibility, and man’s doing will lead to and in essence is doing the same thing. God’s promise, now in the daily conscious experience, is contingent on man’s activity, which becomes the decisive thing. If God’s promises concerning conscious and daily fellowship with him are so preached that the distinct impression is left that the promises are contingent on man’s activity, that is preaching a general promise contingent on man’s activity, only in the covenant itself.

The majority committee wrote similarly concerning DeWolf’s second statement, made in a sermon on Matthew 18:1–4: “Our act of conversion is a prerequisite to enter into the kingdom.” DeWolf explained this statement by saying that calling conversion a condition or way makes little difference and that he referred to daily entering, always entering, and conscious activity. The committee’s solution was to deny that DeWolf spoke of the initial entering into the kingdom, but that “he has in mind the daily entering” (492). By means of a distinction between “entering the kingdom,” by which the committee meant regeneration, and “entering into the kingdom,” which the ministers equated with the second part of the covenant, they tried to not condemn DeWolf’s statement. They saw this distinction present in Canons 3–4.11–12, 14, where “the work of God is confessed in our conversion in which work of God man does not cooperate one iota. But our Fathers here also speak of the act of believing by virtue of this work…this ‘act of believing’ is entering into the Kingdom-life” (495). The committee described this in terms of the covenant as well: “a man is in the Kingdom. The ‘first part’ of the Covenant is our portion. But in the ‘second part’ wherein our obligation to a new obedience is set forth we are told, admonitioned [sic] to ‘enter into the Kingdom’” (496).

The committee explained: To say our act of conversion is prerequisite

does not mean that we perform a work in our native strength to enter the Kingdom. In this work of God whereby we are translated into the kingdom we are wholly passive. But the text [Matt.18:1–4]…speaks of our entering into the Kingdom. And the text teaches that we must have the act of humbling ourselves to thus enter into the Kingdom, that is, for the conscious tasting of being lifted up by God and set in a broad place. Then the act of humbling is prerequisite to the wonderful experience of being lifted up. That we are told to humble ourselves is not then the command of the law…but it is the precept of the Gospel whereby we are called, admonished, and exhorted unto the new obedience, unto the performance of our “part” in the Covenant…Compare Canons III, IV, Articles 16–17. (497)

I maintain that the way the committee sought to approve conditional language and a conditional presentation was to move the matter into the daily experience and make appeals to man’s being made active. In the believer’s initial entering, he is wholly passive; but once in the covenant, he becomes active. This activity must be present first and before God’s fellowship and friendship are experienced. This activity is decisive for fellowship with God. The committee reminded all the classical delegates, “Rev. DeWolf is not too insistent on the term ‘condition’…He is willing to call it a ‘way’ of entering too when speaking of ‘our turning’” (497).

It is true that he did not have to be too insistent on the word condition. The substance of the matter was presented conditionally because in the experience and enjoyment of salvation, the assurance of it, and the conscious enjoyment of it, man’s activity was made decisive. God enabled, but it still remained in man’s power to be converted or not, to believe or not, and to obey or not. Thus was the daily experience of God’s fellowship hinged on man’s activity, an activity unto which he was enabled by the grace of God, but which activity was not the infallible fruit of God’s grace and the realization of God’s promise in him by grace daily.

In the present doctrinal struggles in the Protestant Reformed Churches, we must remember that covenant and kingdom are essentially the same and that both deal with the elect’s relationship to God in Christ. DeWolf’s statement could easily be reworded as “Our act of conversion is a prerequisite to enter the covenant.” Then make the same sort of distinction between being in the covenant and experiencing covenant fellowship. To excuse his statement the committee made it a matter of the daily enjoyment of or the daily entering into God’s fellowship. The committee did that by means of a distinction between the initial entering of the kingdom in regeneration and the daily entering into the kingdom; or to put it another way, by means of a distinction between the covenant and the experience of fellowship with God in the covenant. The committee used the activity of the regenerated man as an excuse for conditions and was really arguing for a conditional experience of fellowship.

That issue, which the 1953 classis did not take up because it rejected the majority report, is now before us as churches and must be answered by us. The Lord himself will have us answer the question. Will we reject conditional daily fellowship with God as vigorously as we reject conditional entrance into the covenant? Will we reject that not merely by rejecting the use of the word condition, so that we reject as “literally heretical” the statement that there are conditions for fellowship, that is, conditions for daily fellowship with God? But will we also reject that by rejecting the emphases on man’s responsibility, man’s activity, and man’s obedience that so present the matter that God’s fellowship is effectively held in suspense until man acts? Will we reject the presentation of God’s promise and man’s obedient activity that is Christless, so that God’s promise comes into effect by man’s obedience, and Christ is hardly mentioned at all and so Christ is not the entrance into the kingdom initially and every day and into eternity? Will we emphasize clearly that the believer’s daily conscious enjoyment of and assurance of his salvation in the covenant—so explaining his believing and his daily repenting—are the infallible fruits and consequences of God’s realization of his promise in the believer daily for Christ’s sake? Will we make clear that the believer’s daily conscious enjoyment of God as his God is a gracious gift to the believer in faithfulness to God’s promise and by his own gracious realization of his promise in the believer? The covenant and the experience of the covenant, salvation and the daily enjoyment of salvation, are absolutely unconditional. God is always first. Man’s activity follows. God realizes his promise. Man becomes active according to the realization of the promise both initially and every single day and into eternity.

Along this same line I want to reiterate, both negatively and positively, what the issue is in the Protestant Reformed Churches. The controversy is not about antinomianism, a threat to the phrase “in the way of,” the necessity of good works, calling men to do good works, or man’s being a rational, moral creature and not a stock and block. The controversy is about access to God, and I would add daily! The issue is the truth that Christ is the only way to the Father and that the believer has access to the Father in no other way than by faith, which faith itself is a gift of God. Both the will to believe and the act of believing are also gifts, by consequence of which man himself is rightly said to repent and believe.

The issue is now the application of that truth to conscious fellowship with God or the realization of God’s covenant promise daily in our hearts and lives. The struggle is really in essence this: Is God’s covenant promise to be a God to you and to your children after you, to enter into fellowship with you and take you into his fellowship, to bless you with Christ and with all the blessings of his salvation hinged in some sense on your activity? Does God’s promise become contingent at the point of your experience? Does the realization of God’s covenant promise take place “in the way of works,” but by which phrase we really mean dependent on works or contingent on works, and in explaining that we leave Christ out of view? Once in the covenant unconditionally, is God’s promise realized in the end by Christ’s merits and our obedience? Do you sit at the table with your God and slide your works across the table, and God slides his fellowship to you in return? In the conscious enjoyment of salvation and fellowship with God, is your spiritual activity of believing, repenting, and so forth the decisive thing, so that God gives only after your activity? Is the grace of God in daily fellowship dependent first on your action of responding to that grace? Does the grace merely enable you to respond, but whether you get more grace is dependent on your responding?

This kind of thinking is not new. It was contained in the majority report that was before the Protestant Reformed Churches at Classis East in May 1953. The thinking was rejected. Now we must look into that thinking and see whether our presentation of the matter of fellowship with God—not just the word condition—is in fact the substance of that report. It was this kind of thinking, preaching, writing, and emphasis that Hoeksema warned against in the strongest language.

If the Protestant Reformed Churches go in this direction, then in principle we have given up on 1953 and the contention that the covenant is unconditional. Because teaching about the covenant of grace that so presents the relationship between the believer’s obedience and God’s promise and fellowship such that the believer’s obedience is decisive is a conditional covenant, all denials of the word condition to the contrary notwithstanding.

If we find that this is the case, then I am pleading with the churches to recognize the theological and ecclesiastical peril in which this theology puts our churches. If this is the case, then in my view we are doing nothing more and nothing less than engaging in the kind of theology that was written in the majority report in 1953. That report served the purpose of trying to make acceptable heretical statements that approved the worst part of common grace, namely the well-meant offer of salvation, and statements that were intent on importing into the Protestant Reformed Churches the conditional covenant theology of Klaas Schilder.

If we head in this direction, the Protestant Reformed Churches’ denial of the word condition in the covenant will be as empty as the federal vision’s denial of the word merit in justification. The substance of the conditional doctrine will be taught while the word is denied. Indeed, if we make the theological rationale of the majority report our thinking, we will essentially have federal vision covenant theology as well. For we do well to remember that the federal vision puts all of the children of believers in the covenant by baptism and unconditionally, but teaches that whether that position of covenant membership and union with Christ issues in a child’s salvation is contingent on his active faith and his active obedience: the promise is realized in the way of trusting and obeying. That is what the majority report in essence did, and it gave a way for the Protestant Reformed Churches to approve conditional, indeed, Schilderian conditional theology, which covenant theology became the covenant theology of the federal vision. We will have that if the covenant and covenant promise are presented solely as a matter of promise and obligation with no Christ and no election and reprobation. Then you have a Schilderian covenant presentation: God’s promise, but with man’s obligation that brings that promise into effect, taught, of course, as God’s promise realized in the way of obedience.

All I can do is warn the churches of what I see. I will continue to do so as long as God gives me a voice. I do not care about names or personalities. The truth is not about names or personalities. If I am in error doctrinally, then tell me. If I am not seeing the things that I am seeing and hearing, then tell me. I want nothing but the pure Reformed truth that gives all glory to God and debases man. I want nothing more than for the churches—which I love and in which I see a lack of love for that doctrine and great interest in the activity of man, in which I see little willingness to become fired up when conditions are preached and a great deal of fire when the activity and responsibility of man seem to be de-emphasized—to turn. It is not true that the pure Reformed doctrine of the gospel de-emphasizes the responsibility or activity of man, only so long as it is kept in its proper place and that all of the believer’s activity is the fruit and only the fruit of the gracious realization of God’s covenant promise in him.

I agree with what Rev. Woudenberg said about my churches, as sad as it is:

It’s quite a different church. But it’s quite a different world too. The whole culture has changed completely. What you had when I was a child and particularly in the environment in which I lived, was a constant preoccupation with doctrine. The folks would have visitors over, and they would talk doctrine all night. That is gone almost completely. You just don’t get into conversations about that. Even among the ministers, they don’t talk doctrine. I think that this is crucially missing. [Rev.] C. Hanko said somewhat the same thing in 1995 when he wrote in the anniversary book that you just don’t have the doctrinal preaching we used to have…Through 1953, we drifted out of this focus on doctrine into a focus on church polity. Now it’s preoccupation with what Classis and Synod says or does. They can say or do anything they want, but that doesn’t put it into the heart of the people. If it’s just what you are doing that preoccupies everybody, you’re back into works. You can say, theologically, we don’t believe in conditions, but if you get preoccupied about what things people have to do, you are preoccupied with the behavior of people. Look at the subjects they have for conferences and lectures. Again and again, it’s on marriage, raising children—all these practical subjects. If you go back to the late 1940s, when the whole controversy was building, that was when it came to the top. We have to have more practical preaching. We’re sick of this doctrine. That was the leading objection against HH in those days. That was the real point. In a very subtle way DeWolf played into it.¹

You know the aftermath.