Alongside the recovery of the pure preaching of the gospel in the Reformed Protestant Churches has been a recovery of the doctrine of the antithesis. The two go together and cannot be separated. To lose the gospel is also to lose the antithesis. It is a horrible thing as a child of God to languish in a church where the pure doctrine of the gospel is not preached and the lie of the willing and working of man takes over. It becomes even more painful when surrounded by fellow church members who are doctrinally indifferent, where proper church discipline becomes almost nonexistent or turned against the righteous, and when the members do not lose their lives for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s, but they “gain the whole world” (Mark 8:36).

Article 29 of the Belgic Confession establishes the connection between the marks of the true church and the antithesis. States article 29:

The marks by which the true church is known are these: if the pure doctrine of the gospel is preached therein; if she maintains the pure administration of the sacraments as instituted by Christ; if church discipline is exercised in punishing of sin. (Confessions and Church Order, 62)

While the word antithesis does not appear in article 29 and neither is the word found in the scriptures or the Reformed confessions, the doctrine of the antithesis shouts in article 29. There is the yes of the three marks that “all things are managed according to the pure Word of God,” and the no of the yes “that all things contrary thereto [are] rejected.” With respect to the members of the church, there is the yes of faith in Jesus Christ as the only savior: following after righteousness and loving the true God and their neighbors. And there is the no of the yes: avoiding sin, not turning aside to the right or the left, and crucifying the flesh with the works thereof. The antithesis becomes the sharpest at the time of church reformation when the false church, “[relying] more upon men than upon Christ,” persecutes the antithetical witness of “those who live holily according to the Word of God, and rebuke her for her errors, covetousness, and idolatry” (Confessions and Church Order, 62–64).

Prof. Homer Hoeksema (HCH), a longtime editor of the Standard Bearer, wrote frequently on the topic of the antithesis. HCH became a pastor in the Protestant Reformed Churches while the covenant controversy of the late 1940s and early 1950s was coming to a head. He had a front-row seat to the corruption of the gospel by those who maintained a conditional covenant, and he witnessed a breakdown of the antithesis as pastor in Doon, Iowa, as one who attended the church assemblies, and as a frequent contributor to the Standard Bearer. His understanding of the antithesis and his explanation of it were forged in the fires of doctrinal controversy and unethical behavior on the part of the enemies of the gospel.

The December 1, 1985, issue of the Standard Bearer was a special issue devoted to the topic “The Antithesis.” HCH, who by then was nearly sixty-two years old and nearing the end of his life, penned the editorial “Thesis and Antithesis.” It is a thoroughly doctrinal explanation of the antithesis, summarizing his mature development of the doctrine. Interested readers are encouraged to read his editorial on the subject, as well as Standard Bearer articles by Herman Hoeksema and Marinus Schipper on the topic.

Wrote HCH,

There are three terms which are related and which commonly enter into any discussion of the idea of the antithesis. They are: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. As you will readily see, the terms antithesis and synthesis have in them the term thesis. The terms are clearly related, therefore. We may begin with the term thesis. Thesis means “that which is put, established, asserted to be the truth.” It is a positive affirmation. It is the Yes. The term antithesis is formed by prefixing the term anti- and very simply it signifies “that which is opposed, a denial.” It is the No. The term synthesis is formed by prefixing the term syn-, which means “together with,” so that the word denotes a “putting together, that which is put together, a combination.” It is an attempt at a Yes-No, or a No-Yes.¹

First, it must be understood that “the thesis is the Word of God concerning Himself.”² God reveals himself as “eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, immutable, infinite, almighty, perfectly wise, just, good, and the overflowing fountain of all good” (Belgic Confession 1, in Confessions and Church Order, 23). In God there is light and no darkness. He is the God of truth and not the lie. He is the God of righteousness, not unrighteousness. About himself God says yes!

Further, we must understand the thesis in light of the people to whom God reveals himself: his elect, chosen children, those with whom he establishes his covenant. They are the people in this sinful world who have been called out. They are “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that [they] should show forth the praises of him who hath called [them] out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9). They represent God’s cause in this world by their confessions of his truth, by their church membership, by the education of their children, in their employment and employing, in their marriages and rearing of their children, and in their relation to all authority. Every aspect of their lives testifies to the fact that they know God, love him, and confess him as the only good. They say yes of God and his will.

The antithesis comes to expression because God’s people dwell in a world of darkness and sin. This is not by accident. God willed this sin and darkness as the background against which he might reveal himself as the only light and as opposed to all darkness. He says yes to himself and no to all that opposes his light, truth, and righteousness. And God has placed his people in the middle of this wicked world so that they might say yes to God and no to all the darkness that opposes God. This hostility of God’s people to all the darkness of sin and the lie is established by God. Immediately after the fall of Adam, when Adam did not say no to the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God declared to Satan, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15).

It is spiritually impossible for the child of God to say yes to the truth while at the same time remaining silent about the lie. For example, a believer cannot maintain the synthesis that all of salvation, which includes the experience of salvation, can at one and the same time be the result of both Christ’s full and free gift and man’s repentance upon which God is waiting. The antithesis demands that the believer condemn in no uncertain terms man’s working for the experience of the remission of sins and salvation.

The yes of the child of God is God’s work in us and through us. “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). So also the no of the yes. It is an inevitable no. In fact, the yes is proven to be a counterfeit unless it is accompanied by an equally vehement no! There is no neutrality in the life of the child of God. Neutrality reveals that one is carnal and has no part with God but is a citizen of the kingdom of this world. The yes of the child of God is always accompanied by the no of the yes!

So-called Reformed churches, where there is no gospel preached and where there has been radical departure from the Reformed confessions, are packed with people who make a big show of their counterfeit yeses. Yes, they love God. Yes, they love their neighbors. Yes, they love marriage. Yes, God saves by grace alone. Yes, yes, yes. But, when you examine their lives, they are lives of synthesis with the wicked world and false church in every respect. The people do not lose their lives for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s, but they gain the whole world under the guise of being Reformed Christians. Absent is the no of the yes.

A few examples will demonstrate.

How many of us have not heard a sermon preached by a Protestant Reformed minister on the doctrine of marriage? We heard that marriage is a lifelong bond. Only the death of one spouse breaks that bond. God hates putting away. Marriage is a picture of the relation between Christ and his church. All of these are clear expressions of the truth of God’s word, a yes to the truth of God as he has revealed it in his word. And then you find out that the very man who preached the sermon keeps company with his divorced and remarried brother at family gatherings, in direct violation of the clear teaching of 1 Corinthians 5:11: “I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator…with such an one no not to eat.” Certainly, God would not require of that minister that he lose the fellowship of his brother. And the members of the congregation who sat under the sermon, and evidently agreed with it, attend the weddings of those unbiblically remarrying, have very cozy relationships with fornicating children and with the divorced and remarried, and refuse to put them out of their fellowship. The yeses of the minister and the members are proven to be shams because there are no nos to their yeses. Their professed beliefs in God’s will for marriage are exposed as empty by their delight in fellowship with adulterous God-haters. They refuse to rebuke their impenitent friends and relatives. Their delight is not in fellowship with God and his people but in hobnobbing with the impenitent. If you rebuke them and ask them why they refuse to say no, they become furiously angry with you. They set themselves as your enemies and condemn you as being arrogant and unloving. No antithesis.

How many of us have not attended a Protestant Reformed meeting of classis or synod, read a transcript of a meeting, or heard a recording of one? Gross false doctrine has appeared many times on the agendas, with that false doctrine standing in stark opposition to the truth of God as he has revealed himself in his word. When is the last time you heard a resounding yes to God and his absolute sovereignty in salvation and an equally vehement no to man trying to insert his good works as the basis for experiencing that salvation? Have you witnessed the antithesis or synthesis? When have you heard or seen a man lose his life for Christ’s sake on the floor of Classis East, defending not the honor and reputation of man but the glory of God in Jesus Christ in the complete work of salvation? When have you ever heard a delegate become indignant with the attacks upon the work of Christ and the sycophantic protection of man’s honor and reputation and vehemently condemn the lie and put man in his proper place? Have you ever heard the no of the yes? No antithesis.

One is reminded of a sermon preached in many Protestant Reformed churches in the early 1990s by Prof. Herman Hanko titled “Men for the Times” and based on 1 Chronicles 12:32–33. Some of his observations in that sermon were prophetic of what would become of Protestant Reformed ecclesiastical assemblies in the future. Perhaps the “they” Hanko referred to were men that he had been observing at the ecclesiastical assemblies of the Protestant Reformed Churches back in the early 1990s. He preached that when

one man has the courage to stand up [in an ecclesiastical assembly] and say, “This is the truth; this is where we must stand!” they on the sidelines wring their hands and say, “Oh, don’t rock the boat, don’t rock the boat. What are you trying to do, bring trouble? What are you trying to do, bring unrest and confusion into the church? Don’t be so sharp. Don’t be so critical. Don’t be so condemnatory. We have to…we have to live in peace. We have to live in quietness.” And there they stand, carping and criticizing and making a big fuss about it, because someone has the spiritual courage to stand up and be counted in the cause of the truth!³

No longer do men lose their lives for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s. There is the world to gain. And that takes the form of prestigious titles, comfortable housing and housing allowances, and the respect of a religious community. Do not rock the boat, stay in line, be a good lemming, and the money will keep coming your way. Follow the path of least resistance. No antithesis.

Finally, how many of us have not experienced the blatant disregard for the sword of Christ in families? We read in Matthew 10:34–39:

34. Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

35. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

36. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.

37. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

38. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.

39. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.

Would a Protestant Reformed minister dare to preach on this text? Would his elders tolerate it? Could the minister who preached a sermon faithfully on this text (which is no longer possible in the Protestant Reformed Churches) expect to make it across the church parking lot without being accosted and rebuked by church members for being so unloving and arrogant? There are election and reprobation in this text and God’s decree of predestination as it cuts through families. There is in this text the absolute antithesis between the true church and the false church, members of each who are in the same family. The Christ in this text is the Christ who sovereignly wields a sword that cuts asunder the most intimate family ties. This text destroys the false notion that it is a Christian virtue to live synthetically and not antithetically.

To lose the gospel and the antithesis is a terrible thing. It is to become one with the false church and the world. God’s word to his church is “Israel then shall dwell in safety alone” (Deut. 33:28). HCH, in a 1951 article in the Standard Bearer, referred to this as the “principle of Christian isolation.”⁴ In the New Testament the apostle Paul spoke to the believers in Christ in 2 Corinthians 6:14–18:

14. Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?

15. And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?

16. And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

17. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,

18. And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

To be sure, God causes his true church to dwell in safety alone. He calls his people out of darkness and brings them into the light. God puts in their hearts a love for his truth and a contempt for the lie. He puts in their hearts a delight to fellowship with God’s saints and to detest the company of those who love and speak lies. God works in their hearts so that they are willing to lose all things for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s. And God causes them to dwell in peace, not with this world but with the Lord Jesus Christ as pilgrims and strangers in this evil world.

It is a glorious privilege to live the antithesis. Will all men speak well of you? No. Will you gain the world? No. But you have Christ. And if you have Christ, you have everything.