Introduction

The topic that you have assigned me to speak on is a most important topic, and I could not think of a more important topic that you could have given me to speak on this morning.¹ You may not forget the absolute importance of this doctrine. This doctrine of justification and forgiveness explains why you exist in the world as a separate church. This doctrine explains why you could not remain in the CERC (Covenant Evangelical Reformed Church), and why you had to be reconstituted as Berean Reformed Protestant Church here in Singapore.

When we talk about the doctrine of justification and forgiveness, we are dealing with the heart of the gospel. If a man or if a church corrupts this doctrine, they lose their understanding of scripture. When this truth is taken away by false doctrine, the key to understanding God’s word is lost and thrown away; and a man cannot understand, and a church will not understand, God’s gospel. You might as well preach out of the Bhagavad Gita, for there is no word of truth that can be expounded in the church if the church does not hold to and believe this truth of justification and forgiveness by faith alone.

So important is this doctrine that a man who would teach otherwise and deny the truth of justification and forgiveness and embrace another doctrine is no true teacher. He has not been sent by God, and he is a false prophet used by Satan to draw away from Jesus Christ and into the false church and the whore, which is essentially Babylon. A church that does not teach or confess the truth of justification and forgiveness is not a true church of Jesus Christ; she is a false church. And so important is this doctrine that if a man believes otherwise, he will not be saved. That is the importance of what we consider this morning.

There is no more glorious doctrine either. Blessed is the man, happy is the man, unspeakably blessed is the man, to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity and whose sin is freely forgiven.

You must not forget this importance because as a church that stands for this doctrine in the world, you will lose much. You have already lost much. And a church that holds to and contends for this truth in the world may even lose her own life and forfeit her place in this world. But you have to understand that the church that loses all things in this world for the sake of this truth loses absolutely nothing. When a man has the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ, he has absolutely everything. That man has the right to eternal life; he has a place in the everlasting kingdom; and he will dwell with God forever and stand in God’s presence. And a man may have absolutely everything in this world, every coin of gold and silver—he may possess the whole world—but if he has not the righteousness of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of sins, he has absolutely nothing.

Thus we consider this important doctrine of justification and forgiveness. I do so especially in the light of a doctrine class that was given a couple of months ago.² The speech at that class was not the wisdom of God. The speech was full of the cunning and craftiness of Satan. It was full of damnable heresies, which begin and end in hell. And Reverend Tan singlehandedly did much to overthrow the truth of justification and forgiveness, and he did much to confuse that doctrine in the minds of those who heard him. And if CERC believes Reverend Tan’s doctrine and loves that doctrine and embraces that doctrine, her end will be in hell. So serious are the lies that Reverend Tan taught. And he did much to slander the doctrine of those who left CERC. I will stand with those who left CERC and defend that doctrine, the truth of justification and forgiveness—and now repentance too—over against all that Reverend Tan said.

If there are any who heard Reverend Tan’s doctrine who will also hear this speech, let them give heed. And let them judge the words that I say in light of the creeds and of scripture. And if they find what I teach to be the truth—and it is the truth—then let them repent and join themselves to the church where God proclaims that truth.

Let us consider the topic “The Reformed Doctrine of Justification, Forgiveness, and Repentance.”

I would like to begin by giving us the proper starting point. When we deal with doctrinal controversy like this, there is a proper starting point. You will end up with only a bunch of confusion if you do not have this proper starting point. This was the proper starting point of the sixteenth-century reformers. This was the proper starting point of our fathers at the Synod of Dordt. And this was the proper starting point of our fathers in the PRC (Protestant Reformed Churches), who were contending with common grace and the well-meant offer and later the conditional covenant. I will begin by talking about what the proper starting point is. Secondly, the Reformed doctrine of justification, forgiveness, and repentance as such. And then, finally, I will conclude with the importance of this doctrine.

The Proper Starting Point

I am no mighty theologian. I am not a dogmatics professor, and I am no well-read scholar. There are a host of men who could fill up an entire semester’s worth of study in this particular topic. They could review what Augustine said and what Calvin said and what Luther said and what Hoeksema said and what the church has said throughout history and in light of controversies. I say that they could fill up a whole semester’s worth of study in this particular topic. And in light of such men, I am a little child.

But there is one starting point where a child begins. And in this starting point, he has the wisdom of heaven and is wiser than all the sages of the world. This is the starting point that we teach our children time and time again. And the child who is taught this, when he grows old and has to battle against lies, has a good beginning.

The starting point is God is God. That is the essential starting point for all of our doctrine. That is the only starting point for our doctrine. That is always the starting point for our doctrine. And that is the Reformed starting point.

God is God.

And that stands over against what is the common starting point in the theology of today. The common starting point in the theology of today is man’s experience: man’s experience of the covenant, man’s experience of covenant life in his own family and in his own relationships. That was Reverend Tan’s starting point, and I would say that it is the starting point for CERC’s sister, the PRC, as well.

At the end of Reverend Tan’s doctrine class on forgiveness and repentance, there was a confused man, a man who had a genuine question. After listening to Reverend Tan’s speech, I do not blame that man for his confusion. Reverend Tan threw his congregation out to sea and tossed them with every wind of doctrine. But that man was confused at the point of reconciling who God is as an eternal God—who has determined the end from the beginning—and how in time God works all things after the counsel of his own will. The man was confused about how God is absolutely determinative of all things and how that squares up with what Reverend Tan had taught about forgiveness and repentance. The man was troubled and tried to reconcile this: “God, who is an eternal God, and our election, which is in eternity…”

And I stop here.

This man had a good starting point. This man was starting with who God is,

with God, who is an eternal God, and our election, which is in eternity, and then reconciling it with how in time God comes, shines his favor, doesn’t shine his favor, forgives us, doesn’t forgive us, not depending but in the way of our repentance. And it’s just a bit hard for me to wrap my head around that.

Well, no doubt. When someone is confused about how God in one respect forgives, and in another respect he does not forgive; in one respect he does not depend, and in another respect it is in the way of—he is confused in his mind. He does not understand.

Then that confused man went on to say, “Christ’s death on the cross was sufficient.” Amen. “We believe that his death was enough to cover all of our sins.” Amen. “But then each time we repent, do we obtain remission? How does this work in time vis-à-vis the death of Christ on the cross?”

And he was confused here exactly because of what Reverend Tan had taught. Let there be no doubt about that. Where there is confusion, there is the devil. And where there is not an understanding of the heart of the gospel, of God’s freely forgiving the sinner for the sake of Christ’s merits alone, there is the work of the devil.

Where did Reverend Tan begin? Did he let God be God? And did he start with the truth that God is God?

He said this: “Let me try to explain it to the best of my ability with regards to my personal experience.” If a man begins there, he has lost his way, and he will never come to an understanding of the truth.

Our proper starting point is that God is God.

God is God.

If I told you that a horse is a horsey thing, I have said absolutely nothing about what a horse really is. I must elaborate: a horse is a mammal that has a mane, a long nose, a tail, and four legs. And then I begin to describe to you what a horse really is.

But to God belongs no genus, and God cannot be defined by any definition exactly because God is God. He is a one, pure being. And you can begin to list all of the things that God is—God is mercy; God is truth; God is grace; God is love—and you can go on and on and list all those things, or you could simply say this: “God is. I am.” And when you say that, you say all that God is in all of his perfections because he is the implication of all of his perfections, all at once. He is altogether the incomparable one. “To whom will ye liken me, and make me equal, and compare me, that we may be like” (Isa. 46:5)? God is simply God, high and lifted up, elevated above the creature.

And you are composed of parts. I could cut off an arm, and you would still be you. But you cannot do that to God because God is God. He is all of his infinite perfections at once and not composed of parts. If you deny God’s mercy or you deny God’s justice, then you deny God. You deny him as he truly is. And if you worship something other than what God really is, you worship no God but the imagination of your own mind.

God is God.

Belonging to the idea that God is God—yeah, a fundamental idea of the Godhead—is God’s aseity. Perhaps, we have not heard that term very often or maybe not even at all. God’s aseity. Certainly, you have heard of God’s immutability and sovereignty. What stands behind these things is the aseity of God. Aseity is a Latin term that comes from the combination of the preposition a and the pronoun se: a se [ah say]. God is a se. He is from himself, literally, or of himself. Another word that we commonly use is this: God is absolute. God is absolutely independent. He is not caused by or influenced by or determined by any other creature. He is God.

Belonging to the idea of aseity is who God is in himself. God as God possesses his being in himself. No man gave God his being. No man gave God his knowledge. No man counseled God or taught God what God ought to do. No man influenced God’s will. God possesses himself of himself in eternity. Christ said, “For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself” (John 5:26). God has life in himself.

The creature is just that: a creature. A creature is created. Yesterday you were, tomorrow you will be, and there will be a difference between what you were yesterday and what you will be tomorrow. But God is. He is not determined by anything. He possesses himself in his eternal present, and no one upholds him.

Belonging to the idea of aseity is also how God lives his blessed triune life. God is a se in the intimate, covenant relationship between the Father and the Son in the Spirit. In God’s life, because God is a se and God is not determined or caused by anything, God’s blessed triune life is not a life of cause and effect. God’s blessed triune life is a life that he freely lives. It is a life that is without contingency, a life that is without condition, a life that is without hesitation, a life that has no potential but pure action, a life that has no prerequisite, and a life that is not even in the way of. God is. And he gives of himself freely: Father to Son in the Spirit, and Son to Father in the Spirit.

To elaborate on this further, you would say this: the experience of the Son in his relationship with the Father is that the Son does not experience the Father as potential, as conditional, or as in the way of. There is nothing that the Son has to do in order to know and to enjoy and to experience the embrace in the bosom of the Father. The Father gives of himself freely, and the Son does not have to do anything for that. There is not something that waits upon the Son in order for him to feel the embrace of the Father. There is not some prerequisite that the Son must do in order to know and to enjoy the embrace of the Father. The embrace of the Father is not even in the way of the Son’s doing something, exactly because God is a se.

This is important because when we are talking about God’s triune life, we are talking about the covenant and what the covenant is. We are describing what the nature of the covenant is. And God will show forth his covenant. God delights in his covenant. All that God has decreed in this world from the beginning to the end—all people, all nations, every single living thing, and all the things in the world that are not living—he uses to show forth his covenant. And he will cause his people—his covenant people, those people whom he has loved with an eternal love—to know and to enjoy that covenant and to know what is the nature of that covenant. They will know that the covenant is without condition. They will know that the covenant is without contingency, without hesitation. They will know that God gives of himself freely, that God does not give of himself in the way of. They will know that God gives the covenant and every blessing of the covenant freely, that there is no potential in that covenant life. They will know that there is no hesitation in God’s giving of himself to man because God delights in his covenant, and he will show man his covenant.

Then too because God is a se in himself, he is a se in all of his works outside of himself. God manifests his name in all of his works. He manifests that he is absolutely independent and not caused by or influenced by any other thing in his works outside of himself and all that he works in this world. And you know that, and you can understand that, for you live and you move and you have your being because God gives being to you freely. There is not something, there is not some activity, that you must do to possess the next moment of your activity. God gives it. And God can take it away freely too. I breathe and I speak right now because God wills that I breathe and I speak. And he could take my life away at any moment because I am absolutely dependent upon him. But my life does not influence him at all because he is absolutely independent of me. In all that God works in the world, he is a se—not caused by or influenced by anything.

That holds true now for the life of the covenant. That is what we are interested in with this topic of justification and forgiveness and repentance. When we are talking about these things—justification and forgiveness and repentance—we are talking about blessings of the covenant. And we must do covenant theology.

That is another issue and problem with Reverend Tan’s speech. He simply did not do covenant theology. He did not work from the truth that God is God, and he did not work from God’s unconditional covenant. To teach the covenant is simply to be Reformed. Reformed theology is covenant theology. And if a man will not teach the unconditional covenant and will not use that as the template for all of his instruction about blessings of the covenant, he simply departs from the Reformed tradition.

We are dealing with the covenant: God’s covenant of grace, the covenant that he has willed in his good counsel, that he will show unto man. And the nature of that covenant of grace that God has with man differs not one whit from the nature of God’s blessed triune life. As God lives with himself, God will also live with man. God will show himself to man freely, and he will give of himself freely in every benefit without contingency, without condition, without prerequisite, without hesitation, and without in the way of. There is no potential and dependency in that covenant life.

And it is a remarkable thing if you look back through history in times of controversy and times when the church was wrestling with salvation and with the doctrine of justification that she appealed to God’s independence, and she appealed to the fact that God is a se. That was the appeal of the sixteenth-century reformers. That was the appeal of the fathers at Dordt over against the Remonstrants. That was the appeal of our Protestant Reformed fathers in 1924, when they were dealing with common grace and the well-meant offer, and then again in 1953, when they were dealing with a conditional covenant.

And a while ago I came across a quote that I wrote down, and I came across it again as I was preparing for this speech. I do not know where it is in the Standard Bearer, but it is in the Standard Bearer. And this is the quote: “All the disputes between us and the Arminians may be reduced to these two thoughts: (1) Is God dependent on man, or is man dependent on God? (2) Is man a debtor to God, or is God a debtor to man?”³ That is simple, but that is profound. And that confronts you with the question, where are you going to start now with your theology? Are you going to start with the fact that God is absolutely independent and that God is a debtor to no man? Then you have the Reformed understanding, and that will guide you in your understanding of justification and forgiveness and repentance. Or if you are going to start now with man’s experience, you are inevitably going to end up with this—whether you teach it explicitly or not, you at least give an implicit idea that is left in the minds of those who hear you—that God is in some sense a debtor to man, and God is in some way dependent upon man.

And it was the Arminian who made a distinction in God’s will and who loved to think of things in terms of God’s doing something, and then man’s doing something, and then God’s doing something, and then man’s doing something. All that transpires in this world is just a long series of causes and effects where God has willed something, and man did what God has willed, and God then willed something subsequent, and man does what God willed. Indeed, they traced back this idea to God’s immutable will, and they created a distinction in God’s immutable will.

And the Arminian taught this: there is in God an antecedent will by which God has willed something to the rational creature before every or any act of that creature. And then the Arminian taught that there is a consequential will of God—we are speaking about the same will now—by which God wills something to man after some act of man.⁴ Or to make it more explicit: God wills that man do something in order to know and to enjoy the experience of his justification, to know that he is forgiven, and man does whatever God’s antecedent will requires. And, consequently, God then wills that man enjoy and experience his justification. But they thought in terms of that: God’s willing, man’s doing, and then God’s willing the next thing. For them the interaction between God and man was a one-for-one exchange. And that is how they conceived of salvation: a long chain of causes and effects.

This idea denies the aseity of God, that because he is a se God freely gives all of the blessings of salvation to the members of his covenant—those whom he has elected in Jesus Christ—without contingency, without condition, without prerequisite, without dependency, without in the way of, and without potential.

This aseity of God is absolutely fundamental. It must govern our interpretation of passages of scripture that come up time and time again in controversies related to this topic. For example, the passage of Professor Engelsma: “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.” How will you begin? Will you begin with man’s experience? Will you take your starting point in the realm of man? Or will you start from the truth that God is God, that God is a se, and that it is exactly because God wills that his people know him and enjoy him that he promises and assures and then by that promise effectually draws them to himself to know his covenant? It is the truth that God is a se that must govern your understanding of such passages of scripture that have come up time and again on this topic.

God is God.

Reformed Doctrine of Justification, Forgiveness, and Repentance

With that proper starting point, that essential starting point, we consider the truth of justification and forgiveness and repentance—the Reformed doctrine. Let me begin by simply saying that there is not a shred of difference between justification and forgiveness.

It has been the great work of the devil to confuse the two, to strive to create a large disjunction between the two in the minds of the people of the church, to make justification this abstract thing that you put away in the closet and separate from forgiveness. But there is absolutely no difference between the two. And the devil is having a field day with the formation of this large disjunction between the two. He had a whole controversy at the time of the sixteenth-century Reformation over the doctrine of justification by faith alone. He had many lies that subverted that doctrine. And now he can take all those same lies and just use them again against the truth of forgiveness. He does not even have to come up with new lies. He can simply change the terms—change the term from justification to the term forgiveness—and he can ship in all this false doctrine from before. But there is no difference between the two.

What is justification?

Justification is that act of God’s grace—that glorious act of God’s grace—whereby he imputes to the sinner—the sinner who is in himself condemned and worthy of all damnation, but that sinner who is elect in Jesus Christ—the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ and acquits him of all guilt and punishment on the basis of Christ’s merits alone and gives to that elect sinner the right to eternal life. That is the doctrine of justification, the truth of justification.

Important then is the idea of whom God justifies. God does not justify a good person. God does not justify a repentant person. God does not justify somebody who has anything to boast in himself. God justifies the ungodly, the one who is in himself—in his own mind and consciousness—guilty and condemned and worthy of hell, worthy of that fearsome and astoundingly terrible wrath of God. The sinner—the sinner who is absolutely nothing but ungodly in his own mind and consciousness—that is the one whom God justifies.

And justification is legal. Justification changes that man’s state. That man, whereas he stood before God, even in his own mind and consciousness, as condemned, God declares about that man, “He is innocent.” And God does not impute to that man any of his sins. He imputes to that man perfect righteousness that conforms with God’s own holy being and measures up to God in every respect, so that that man is not condemned, but he is at peace with the judge and unspeakably blessed.

And forgiveness is justification. To be more explicit, forgiveness is a part of justification. Justification is the imputation to the sinner, but the one who is elect in Jesus Christ, the righteousness of Jesus Christ and the acquittal of punishment and guilt. And that acquittal of punishment and guilt is forgiveness. So forgiveness is justification; forgiveness is a part of justification.

To use an analogy, you can speak of a hired hand, and you are referring to a worker on a farm. And you are not just simply referring to the hand of that worker, but you are referring to the whole worker. You are referring to the part to which you wish to draw emphasis, to the part of the worker that does a lot of the work, which is his hand. So too when you speak of forgiveness, you speak of justification. And when scripture speaks of the remission of sins and it speaks of forgiveness, it is speaking of justification. It is speaking of forgiveness as a part of the whole. So these two are interchangeable. There is no significant difference between the two, but the two are the same.

And that stands over against what Reverend Tan taught. He made a great deal of difference between forgiveness and justification. He wanted, in the minds of those who hear, to make that difference as large as possible. This is what he said:

It’s very important to distinguish between the state of justification and ongoing forgiveness for our sins. We must distinguish the state of justification and ongoing forgiveness for our sins.

Let me emphasize that. “We must distinguish the state of justification and ongoing forgiveness of our sins.” For Reverend Tan you would go awry and you would have all sorts of problems if you mingled and confused the two.

Well, let me be the first to mingle and confuse the two because there is absolutely not a shred of difference.

And a man has to be intentionally and willfully blind to teach otherwise. The fact that forgiveness is justification stares at him in the clearest language possible in Belgic Confession article 23. The title is “Justification.” This article has to deal with our justification, which is the truth that God imputes unto the elect sinner the righteousness of Jesus Christ and acquits the elect sinner of all his guilt, and it frees him from the liability to punishment. And what does the first sentence say? “We believe that our salvation consists in the remission of our sins for Jesus Christ’s sake, and that therein our righteousness before God is implied” (Confessions and Church Order, 51). Remission of sins is forgiveness. And your salvation is in the forgiveness of sins. And forgiveness of sins is justification.

A man is no longer Reformed and he does not hold to the truth of the Reformed creeds if he needs to make a huge distinction between justification and forgiveness, for there is none.

Now, where does repentance fit in all this?

The doctrine today is that repentance is necessary for the forgiveness of sins. And Reverend Tan creates a boogeyman with the Reformed Protestant Churches’ doctrine of repentance. He tries to scare his flock with the assertion that the Reformed Protestant Churches do not teach repentance. I quote: “I’m going to make it very, very practical…” He is now speaking of the practical implications of our doctrine of forgiveness. “I’m going to make it very, very practical as a way to help you see the gravity and the seriousness of the error of those who have followed a schismatic group.” That refers to us.

What they’re actually doing is telling people, “You don’t have to call others to repent. You don’t have to call others to repentance. You don’t have to call others to faith.” That’s the reality of what they’re saying.

And let it be abundantly clear that this is patently false. The Reformed Protestant Churches teach repentance! We teach repentance as that profoundly spiritual work in the whole soul of the child of God, so that that child of God who according to his nature loved all that is perverse and wicked and sinful and lusted after all that is opposed to God and all that hates God; that sinner who by all of his work was an enemy against God and turned to God and spit in God’s face and cast God away from him as much as he was able and said about God, “You are not good. There is other good besides you”; that man who loved his sin and delighted in the ways of sin—this man now stands over against himself and with God condemns himself and says about himself, “I am ungodly. I am wicked, and I am depraved. There is not one good thing that dwells in me.” That man loathes and humbles himself; that man too has a new stirring up from his heart, so that he truly loves God; he loves the name of God; that man can speak God’s name in truth and says about God’s revelation of himself, “That is beautiful, that is delightful, and I love to meditate upon God”; and that man has a beginning of new obedience. That is the repentance that we teach. There is a real spiritual turning. Man first said about God, “God is evil,” because man loved sin. And now this repentant man says, “God is good,” and the man says about his sin, “Sin is bad.” A real spiritual turning of his soul.

And we teach repentance as absolutely necessary. That is the urgency of the call of the gospel when the gospel is proclaimed. The gospel reveals men as they truly are—as depraved in themselves and who have no hope in anything that they do; the gospel sets forth Jesus Christ as the only way of salvation; and that gospel commands, “Repent and believe.” And there is urgency to that call. There is seriousness to that call. The true minister proclaims in the name of Christ, “Repent and believe.” And then the minister warns that all who do not repent and do not believe will surely be damned. We teach repentance as absolutely necessary. We just do not teach that repentance is necessary for forgiveness.

And there are those who slander the Reformed Protestant Churches, as they slandered the Reformation church and said about the Reformation church, “You teach justification by faith alone. You do not want men to walk in good works. You take away from them the impetus for their walking in good works.” We hear the same charge today, “You deny the call to repentance. You are not going to teach the call to repentance.”

“Simply listen,” is our response, “to Reformed Protestant preaching, and you will hear a call to repentance.” We just do not teach repentance as necessary for forgiveness.

This is what we teach: God justifies the ungodly, the one who is in his own mind and consciousness ungodly, a man who is totally needy and impoverished for anything. He has not one thing to hold on to. He has not one deed of love; he has no activity of repentance; he has no tear that he clings to, not even his activity of believing; he is in whole need of the salvation of God and says about himself before God, “I am that sinner; I have hated you; I have despised you; and I have not done one good thing in your sight. Before thee not one man is justified; before thee not one man can stand and not I. I am evil, born in sin. I am a sinner. Have mercy on me.”

That man God justifies. That man God forgives. God forgives that man in his own mind and consciousness, so that he knows the blessedness of God and tastes the goodness of God in God’s not imputing unto him his sins. God forgives the man who is guilty and in himself condemned but elect in Jesus Christ. This is whom God forgives.

And that stands now in direct opposition to Reverend Tan’s teaching about forgiveness. This is what Reverend Tan taught: “What is forgiveness?…” And now Reverend Tan is going to give his definition of forgiveness. Never mind that forgiveness is explained in the creeds. You could search forgiveness on Google and get a better definition than Reverend Tan’s. Forgiveness is the acquittal of guilt and punishment. But this is Reverend Tan’s doctrine:

What is forgiveness? Forgiveness by its very definition is this: It is God’s speaking the gospel to the soul of a penitent sinner. God’s speaking the gospel to the soul of the penitent sinner. It is literally in the definition of what forgiveness is that one has to be penitent.

That is absolutely astounding. That is a damning statement and doctrine about what forgiveness is. There is so much false doctrine trucked into that definition, and that then permeated the minds and thinking of those who heard that doctrine. I do not know where he got this definition. I do not know if he made it up himself. Perhaps, he even got it, I do not know, but if he got his definition from the seminary, then men in the PRC ought to storm the seminary and cast out their professor. There is no place where you can find this as the definition for forgiveness: “Forgiveness by its very definition is this: It is God’s speaking the gospel to the soul of the penitent sinner.” Consider, first of all, who is forgiven according to Reverend Tan. It is the penitent. At least Reverend Tan put the word sinner in his definition. It is the “penitent sinner.” Keep in mind that it is not what Romans says, that God justifies the ungodly, the one who stands in himself condemned. God justifies the “penitent sinner.” Reverend Tan did not even include election in his definition, election which is the power and the source for the knowledge and the enjoyment of forgiveness. He emphasized over election that one must be repentant to know his forgiveness. It is in the very essence of the definition, he said, that one must be repentant to know his forgiveness. That is shocking and appalling.

And then you can understand what the devil does with that. Reverend Tan had in mind what forgiveness is. And Reverend Tan said that God forgives a person for the sake of Christ’s merits alone. But snuck into that statement was the idea that man still has to repent for forgiveness. So he taught what would seem on the surface to be true doctrine, all the while undermining the very heart of the gospel.

God does not forgive the penitent sinner. Let me be very explicit. If a penitent sinner asks God for forgiveness and says, “God, be merciful to me a penitent sinner,” God will not forgive that person. God does not justify that man. God justifies the ungodly.

This is Reformed Protestant doctrine, which is the gospel, which is the truth of your salvation, and which is the reason for your existence in the world: God forgives without repentance. I am not going to qualify that. I am not going to immediately add a but. I am going to leave it right there.

That doctrine will be slandered as antinomian, and that doctrine will be condemned. But that doctrine is the truth because God is God, and God is a se. God freely gives the covenant and every blessing of the covenant without contingency, without condition, and without prerequisite. There is no hesitancy in the giving of the covenant and of blessing. There is no potential for the enjoyment of the covenant and that blessing. God gives it. There is no in the way of for the blessing and the experience of the covenant. God gives it. God freely gives according to his will and by his sovereign working the knowledge of one’s forgiveness.

And then as a blessing of his covenant, God also works repentance. It is all free, freely given by him, because God will show forth his covenant, and he will have his people know his covenant and his own blessed life.

If God were to work in any other way, then he is not God. He works forgiveness freely, and he works repentance freely exactly because he is God. That is what I mean, that we let the doctrine God is God control our understanding and govern our doctrine of justification and forgiveness and repentance.

I am not going to take the time now, but you can scour Belgic Confession article 23, and you can scour the teaching of the Heidelberg Catechism when it deals with our justification and the forgiveness of sins (see Lord’s Days 7, 11, 23, 26 [Q&A 69–70a], and 27), and you will find not one mention of your works, of your repentance. That is because God justifies, and God forgives the ungodly.

There is one more aspect that I want to bring out about Reverend Tan’s speech, and that has to do with sanctification. Justification and sanctification are twin benefits of the cross. Yet you may never confuse the two. You can confuse and mingle forgiveness and justification all you want, but you may not confuse and mingle justification and sanctification.

The two certainly go together. If there is a criminal who was condemned and sits in prison, and the judge reverses his judgment about that criminal and says about that man who is a criminal, “I pardon you. I forgive you. I do not impute unto you your sins and your trespasses, and I release you from all condemnation,” then that man still has to be released from his prison cell. This mirrors the relationship between justification and sanctification. God justifies the guilty and in himself condemned sinner. Because God justifies him, God also releases him from the power and the pollution of sin. God sends his Spirit, and the Spirit takes up his abode in the heart of the justified man and works in this life the new beginning of obedience. That is the relationship between justification and sanctification. They are twin benefits of the cross. But you may never confuse the two.

It is the error of Rome to mix that relationship between justification and sanctification. Rome teaches that a man has to be sanctified. Rome teaches that a man actually has to be made good. And that man who is made good becomes righteous before God by man’s own works. And by that Rome turns the whole gospel over on its head.

I bring this up because there was the beginning of that mingling in Reverend Tan’s speech. It had to be that way. When a church departs from the gospel truth in one aspect, she is going to corrupt the whole truth. The truth is one, and if you deny the truth in one aspect, you are going to deny the whole truth. Reverend Tan in his doctrine class about forgiveness and repentance mingled justification and sanctification. And I quote: “What is sanctification? Sanctification is the Spirit of Christ working in us so that we more and more conform to the image of Christ. And how does the Spirit work that?” Now, keep in mind that Reverend Tan was still describing what sanctification is, and he said, “First, the Spirit exposes our sin. Then we repent; then God forgives.”

Who is the man whom God forgives, according to Reverend Tan? The man whose sin has been exposed, the man who has hated sin and who has taken his place with God and condemned himself and said, “I am a terrible sinner,” and the man then who has turned from sin and who has cleaved to God. That man first repents, then he is forgiven. Sanctification then justification.

They can deny my charge all they want; but when you bring forgiveness into the doctrine of sanctification, you flip the whole gospel over on its head.

The Importance of This Doctrine

Now, what is our starting point for doctrine and for understanding scripture? God is God. That is where we always start. That is where we always begin. And you will not go wrong with your doctrine when you start from the truth that God is God, that God is a se, that God is not caused by or influenced by any other creature, and that the nature of God’s covenant is always without contingency, without condition, without prerequisite, without in the way of, without dependency, and without any potential.

In this truth God is glorified as God. Not unto us, O Lord of heaven, but unto thee be glory, to thee belongs mercy, to thee belongs covenant faithfulness, and to thee belongs truth. With this Reformed doctrine God is glorified as God.

And the god that Reverend Tan taught is a work of his own hands. He has fashioned for himself a stock. He has imagined for himself a god that has eyes and a god that has ears and a god that has hands and feet and a god that has a nose. With the doctrine that Reverend Tan taught, he prays to a god that will not hear. He asks god to see what that god cannot see. And he asks god to work with his hands that which that god cannot work, for that god is blind and that god is deaf and that god is impotent. And so are those who make that god.

Our trust, beloved, is in Jehovah. He is our help and our shield. And he will show his name and truth. And he will show us his covenant because that is his delight. And he will teach us what is the nature of his covenant because that is his will and his good pleasure.