(April 4, 2022)

Dear Family,

Contrary to what some of you sceptics will be quick to charge, I am not so soon violating my resolution no longer to respond to the errors and challenges of the new churches and their theologians.

What I write in this missive should have been included in my previous letter of March 31, 2022. I intended to include it. I omitted the content of this missive by oversight. It belongs on pages 8 and 9 of the previous letter as part of the creedal condemnation of the doctrinal decision of the RPC, that repentance has no bearing on remission of sins so that the sinner has forgiveness without repenting.

I showed that the Canons of Dordt and the Heidelberg Catechism condemn this doctrine. I intended to add the statement of the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF). I add the official declaration of the WCF here.

About “Repentance unto Life,” the WCF says this:

Although repentance be not to be rested in, as any satisfaction for sin, or any cause of the pardon thereof, which is the act of God’s free grace in Christ; yet is it of such necessity to all sinners, that none may expect pardon without it (WCF, 15.3).

As though the Assembly foresaw the effort of thetheologians of the RPC to justify their attack on repentance by presenting it as a human “work,” the WCF begins its confession concerning repentance by identifying it as “an evangelical grace” (WCF, 15.1). Doing justice to repentance is not the magnifying of a human “work,” as the theologians of the RPC foolishly, or deliberately, charge, but the magnifying of the “evangelical grace” of God.

Further exposing the complete error of the theology of the RPC concerning repentance, the WCF describes repentance, not as love for God, but as sincere sorrow over sin:

By it [repentance] a sinner, out of the sight and sense, not only of the danger, but also of the filthiness and odiousness of his sins, as contrary to the holy nature and righteous law of God, and upon the apprehension of his mercy in Christ to such as are penitent, so grieves for and hates his sins, as to turn from them all unto God, purposing and endeavouring to walk with him in all the ways of his commandments (WCF, 15.2).

And then, as though warding off the attempt to undercut the biblical requirement of repentance by raising the challenge, “how much repentance is required?” the WCF instructs believers that the demand is not for a certain amount of repentance, but for genuine repentance: “those who truly repent” (WCF, 15.4).

Rather than that its necessity is denied, for instance, by the RPC, “the doctrine [of repentance] is to be preached by every minister of the gospel” (WCF, 15.1).

The same doctrine of repentance and its importance is the teaching of the Second Helvetic Confession, in its day (1566) one of the most significant of all the Reformed confessions (Chapter 14). Repentance is grief over one’s sins; “a sheer gift of God and not a work of our strength”; and necessary [with regard to its] confessing our sins to God our Father.”

Now compare with this official, Reformed doctrine of repentance, the doctrine of the RPC: “Repentance has no bearing whatsoever on that man’s remission of sins” and “the sinner has forgiveness without repenting.” Apart from all else, this is not the preaching of repentance that the Reformed creeds (following Scripture) demand, but a deliberate setting of repentance aside as insignificant. The theologians of the RPC deceive themselves if they suppose that this minimizing, if not abolishing, of repentance will not bear evil fruit in their fellowship, especially among their youth.

Everything about the RPC grieves me. Many things about the RPC surprise me. Their cavalier attitude towards the Reformed confessions, and then on such a fundamental issue as repentance, astounds me. They have set themselves a church course of their own making, if not of their own impulse. The end must be spiritual and ecclesiastical disaster.

“Tot zo ver.”

P.S. Since this is an addendum to the previous letter, you may distribute it as widely as you did the previous letter. I hope that it reaches all who read the previous letter.