The Analogy

The following is a portion of a conversation that took place in the consistory room of a Protestant Reformed church in October 2021, several months after the formation of the Reformed Protestant Churches. Present at the meeting were five elders, a minister, and me, at that time a member of the Protestant Reformed laity.

As a member of the Protestant Reformed laity, I had sought help and counsel regarding the development of the controversy between the Protestant Reformed Churches and the Reformed Protestant Churches. I had turned where I thought that I should, to the spiritual leaders of the church. I wanted their wisdom from the word of God, their advice regarding the issues, and their answers to the charges leveled against them from the Reformed Protestant Churches.

My wife and I, newly married, had met with the whole consistory once already in September 2021. We were left with many concerns and questions; and on top of that, things were rapidly developing in both denominations. I sought another meeting with the elders and minister to further discuss these things. Since the last meeting, Professor Cammenga had preached his now infamous sermon “Shall We Continue in Sin?,” Professor Huizinga had given his conscience-soothing lecture “Whom the LORD Loveth, He Chasteneth,” and the Standard Bearer was continuing to publish Christ-displacing articles. My hope was to bring our concerns regarding these lies to our consistory so that they would recognize them, repudiate them, and lead our congregation into the truths of God’s sovereignty and Christ’s perfect work on the cross and the condemnation of man and his works for fellowship and blessing.

My wife and I were not, at this time, intent on leaving the denomination. We still clung to our place in the Protestant Reformed Churches, our friends there, our work there, and our life there. We desired our consistory to wake up out of a deep stupor and to show a holy zeal for the glory of God and to attack the lie in the midst of our churches.

The meeting with the consistory left us very disappointed. Not only did the elders and minister refuse to attack and condemn the lies in their midst; but they defended them, gave excuses for them, and, I believe, even developed them.

During the meeting the discussion with the elders and minister turned to good works and how they are brought about in the life of a child of God. After some talk about the extent in which God is involved in the good works of his people, an elder said, “That’s what the RPs believe. It’s like they think God needs to be there every step of the way [in doing good works].”

I answered, “That’s the truth, though. God does need to be there every step of the way. We cannot do anything without him.”

Then the same Protestant Reformed elder responded, “So I have been trying to explain the controversy to my kids in a way that is easy for them to understand. An analogy I came up with to help them to understand the issue is to imagine [that] a man gets a new dog and trains it. He starts out showing the dog where to walk, what to do. And then after training the dog, the master can throw a stick and look away, and the dog gets it and comes right back to the master. The master doesn’t need to help the dog every step of the way and show him every little thing to do. When a dog is well trained, it just does it without the master being there for every little thing. And that gives more glory to the master, because he’s a good trainer.”

After several seconds of silence, the Protestant Reformed minister said, “Uh, another analogy would be the vine and the fruit.”

Years later, I still think about this interaction. I have often wondered how this analogy could have been left unchallenged in that consistory meeting. I wonder that both for myself and the other men present. I could see a look of discomfort on the face of the minister as I glanced over, waiting for something to be said in response to that analogy. Perhaps the minister was pondering if this analogy was the result of his own preaching and teaching that one cannot call a regenerated child of God totally depraved; and if one does, one is heading toward antinomianism.

But nothing was said. With me, four elders, and a minister present, there should have been eruptions of holy horror against such an abasement of God’s work in the lives of his children. But there were not—not from the elders, not from the minister, and not from me.

While all the men in that room failed to condemn that false theology, God’s faithful and abiding word condemns it for us. I pray that those who believe this about God’s work or are silent regarding this error take heed to God’s word and turn from this deadly error and disparagement of God, his grace, and his Son, Jesus Christ.

This error came from somewhere, but I am not sure where, other than from the mind and wisdom of man that run mad to find anything wherewith to claim credit for man’s working and doing. All I know is that for my remaining time in that Protestant Reformed church, that error was never addressed, spoken against, or condemned by any of the elders or the minister. I must conclude that either those men believe this error, or they fail to see the deadly seriousness of this analogy, and therefore they tolerate it. The following words are for all to see how sharply this idea is condemned by scripture and the Reformed confessions and that the glory of God’s truth is revealed, leaving none with excuse.

Dumb Sheep, Not Well-Trained Dogs

Jesus said in John 15:4–5,

4. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.

5. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

“For without me,” Jesus declared, “ye can do nothing.” Were the branch removed from the life-giving vine for a moment, the branch would wither and die. Were the Spirit of Christ removed from God’s child for a second, the child would become incapable of bringing forth a single good work and become spiritually dead. Sin and Satan would immediately once again rule in his heart and direct all that child’s thoughts, desires, wills, and actions toward opposition to God.

The power of our entire lives of good works is Christ alone. He dwells in his children by his Spirit, constantly breathing life into them and constantly sustaining them in that life. A moment apart from that Spirit, or even a moment not completely sustained in the Christian life by the Spirit, would mean utter and complete spiritual death. Of course, it is impossible for God to remove his Spirit from his child or to stop sustaining him in the Spirit, but this is to illustrate how utterly dependent God’s people are upon the Spirit for their entire Christian walks in this world.

If God were to look away for a moment and leave his child to perform some good as a well-trained dog, speaking foolishly, God would look back and see not only that the dog failed to perform that which God had commanded, but he would also see that the dog immediately ran into extreme peril and killed itself.

This is why God in his wisdom designates a very specific animal to compare to his elect people: sheep, not well-trained dogs. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6). Sheep are dumb. They are clueless to the constant dangers that surround them. If they wander away from home, they are incapable of finding their way back. They need a shepherd constantly to oversee them, whose life is given over to watching the sheep, protecting them, defending them, and guiding them in the way they should go. No shepherd would tell you that it would be wise to attempt to train sheep where to feed, where to travel, and when to come home at night and then to leave the sheep alone, even for a moment, to have them do those things. And God is the most wise, almighty, good shepherd of his sheep who knows the frame of those sheep.

God does not train us and then let us go on our own to perform good works. Belgic Confession article 24 teaches very clearly that

we do good works, but not to merit by them, (for what can we merit?) nay, we are beholden to God for the good works we do, and not He to us, since it is He that worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. (Confessions and Church Order, 54)

This article of the Confession puts not only the ability and potential for good works in God’s hands but also the very doing of the works. God does not merely train us, empower us, or give us the ability to carry out his will; but the entire bringing forth, willing, and doing of good works are God’s work in us through the Spirit. God does not begin the work, and then we finish it. God does not show us how to do the work, and then we do it. God does not cooperate with us to bring about the work. But the work is, from beginning to end, 100 percent the working of the Spirit in us, sweetly bending our wills and causing us to do that which God in eternity ordained that we should do.

God’s Providence

The mere thought that God could glance away while we perform good works is a direct contradiction of Lord’s Day 10, which teaches us the following:

Q. 27. What dost thou mean by the providence of God?

A. The almighty and everywhere present power of God, whereby, as it were by His hand, He upholds and governs heaven, earth, and all creatures; so that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, and all things come, not by chance, but by His fatherly hand.

Q. 28. What advantage is it to us to know that God has created, and by His providence doth still uphold all things?

A. That we may be patient in adversity; thankful in prosperity; and that in all things which may hereafter befall us, we place our firm trust in our faithful God and Father, that nothing shall separate us from His love; since all creatures are so in His hand, that without His will they cannot so much as move. (Confessions and Church Order, 93–94)

All things, including our good works, come by God’s fatherly hand. He delights to work in his children and in his creation. He is active in his children and creation and never, even for a second, leaves things unattended to glance away. Every good work and every step of the process of bringing that good work forth are the results of this working and activity of God. God receives all glory, honor, praise, and credit for those works. We receive none. Those good works did not come from us. We did not issue them forth. We did not accomplish them after being shown by God how to perform them. If it were any other way, then man would have reason to boast. And if man has reason to boast in some respect, that alone is enough to condemn a theological idea.

Ephesians 2:8–10 trumpets,

8. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

9. Not of works, lest any man should boast.

10. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

God saves us merely of his good pleasure, electing us in Jesus Christ and saving us through faith—a gift of God. The reason God does this is for the sake of his own glory and that man may not glory in any part of salvation. God creates us as new creatures in Jesus Christ and brings forth every good work that he before ordained in his good pleasure to work in us. From beginning to end, salvation and its fruit are indeed of Jehovah.

This idea that God would look away from us or leave us unattended also takes away the comfort of God’s children revealed in God’s word that we constantly abide in and with him. God is constantly with us wherever we go—every step of our Christian walk—and he will never leave us nor forsake us for Christ’s sake alone.

God forsook Christ on the cross for our sins that were put upon Christ; and because Christ suffered the horror of the complete absence of God’s presence for us, God cannot and may not leave or forsake his people. They are righteous in God’s sight with Christ’s very righteousness and washed clean of all sin. For God to leave his people on their own, especially after saving them and bestowing upon them grace and his Spirit, would be to deny the work of Christ on the cross!

No, rather God says in Christ, “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world!” What a comfort that truth is to sinners. God never leaves us! God never looks away, even for a moment. God never leaves us on our own in this valley of tears, in this narrow way, in this sin-cursed world with dangers and threats on every side. He never says, “I have trained you; now go do what you have to do.” God cannot and may not do that to his children, who are bought with Christ’s precious blood. God loves his children and delights to dwell with them and fellowship with them constantly and forever.

This false idea of how God works with his children is essentially deistic. The deist imagines God somewhere in the sky, winding up the universe like a clock and watching it all unfold. The god of deism rarely, if ever, intervenes in his creation and is content to let things occur on their own. The god of deism is distant, uninvolved, and unloving. And a god who trains his children, only to let them go on their own to do this or that, is a distant, uninvolved, and unloving god. He is not God at all. God is present always with his people, and he constantly works through them and lives through them by his Spirit.

This false idea of how God works with his children is also essentially Arminian. This idea teaches that man, once regenerated, is able to do good on his own of his own will. The teaching is that once man is enlightened (trained) by God’s grace, man can do good by virtue only of that empowered and enlightened will, perhaps cooperating with God’s grace. So much is man’s will empowered and enlightened that man does not need God there every step of the way to sustain man by his Spirit, but God merely gives man some grace, or some training, and man can do good without God. This is a mockery of God and his grace, and it ultimately puts the power of man’s life of good works in the power of man’s will, as does the Arminian.

Purpose of the Law

Another problem with the analogy of a well-trained dog is its very conception of how the law functions in the life of the child of God. I do not believe that this was the main point of the elder when he used this analogy, so I will be brief here. But I believe that there is an important point to be made here with the analogy’s underlying use of the law. The analogy takes the law—the commands given to the dog as it is being trained—as the power unto the obedient life of that dog. The dog is shown and taught by the law what to do and how to obey; and, eventually, those commands get through to the dog, and the dog can obey the master. The dog can sit, roll over, fetch, bark, and be silent because of the commands repeated over and over by the master.

This, however, is not the function of the law in the life of the child of God. The law simply does not have the power to fuel the Christian life. The law was never given by God as a thing to repeat to God’s children until they can obey it.

Canons of Dordt 3–4.5 teaches, in full agreement with God’s word, that

though it [the law] discovers the greatness of sin, and more and more convinces man thereof, yet as it neither points out a remedy nor imparts strength to extricate him from misery, and thus, being weak through the flesh, leaves the transgressor under the curse, man cannot by this law obtain saving grace. (Confessions and Church Order, 167)

God’s own purpose for the law is to more and more convince man of his sin and his inability to keep the law, not by repetition to train man to learn to keep the law. God’s law can be brought to us over and over and over, demanding perfection, declaring the perfection of God, and laying before us the requirement to keep the law with the threat of damnation; and the law will never cause us to or make us obey it. That is shocking! That is totally opposed to our carnal understanding of how that law should function. But God’s law was never written, delivered, and preached for that purpose.

Well, then, what is the power to our lives of good works?

Canons 3–4.12 states,

And this is the regeneration so highly celebrated in Scripture and denominated a new creation: a resurrection from the dead, a making alive, which God works in us without our aid. But this is in no wise effected merely by the external preaching of the gospel, by moral suasion, or such a mode of operation that after God has performed His part it still remains in the power of man to be regenerated or not, to be converted or to continue unconverted. (Confessions and Church Order, 168–69)

Canons 3–4.17 teaches that

the use of means, by which God of His infinite mercy and goodness hath chosen to exert His influence, so also the before mentioned supernatural operation of God by which we are regenerated in no wise excludes or subverts the use of the gospel, which the most wise God has ordained to be the seed of regeneration and food of the soul. (Confessions and Church Order, 170)

The power behind our lives of good works is not the law. The power is not moral suasion or coaxing obedience out of us. The power is not something begun by God and finished by us after he gives us the power to obey. No, the power behind our lives of good works is the gospel through the operation of the Spirit making us new creatures. Where the gospel is preached to God’s children, one finds those who live lives of good works in thankfulness to the God of their salvation.

More Glory to God?

Many will read this and insist that this analogy is not what the Protestant Reformed Churches teach and believe. They may chalk this up to a mistake, a slip of the tongue, or a moment of unclarity. But many will deny this came from Protestant Reformed preaching and writing.

Those who believe that they are not in danger of this theology or deny it exists in the Protestant Reformed Churches should reread the last part of the analogy. The line that is meant to connect the dots, the piece that completes the puzzle, the phrase that is meant to bend the teaching into orthodoxy is this: more glory is given to God when his child goes off on his own after being properly trained and performs goods works.

And how often is that phrase not said to excuse the glorification of man’s doings? Glory is given to God when God works this way. “I do good works! God does not do them; I do them!” they may say. “I really do them; it is me; I can do good!” they exclaim.

If you believe it gives glory to God to claim credit for your good works, then I want you to imagine yourself saying that before Christ on the day of judgment. You say that now before men—say it before God. Shout it before God. March right up to the throne where Christ sits and say, “I really do good works. You did not do them; I did. I did good. You worked by your grace in me, but I did the work.” One who claims credit and shouts for the world to hear, “I really do good works; it is not God doing them; I do them,” will hear Christ say the words of Matthew 7:23: “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

God hates self-righteousness. God hates man’s boasting in himself and his works. God hates when worms and sinners take credit for the work that he accomplishes. That claiming credit for good works is unbelief speaking. That is the flesh speaking. The ones who will march up to Christ on the judgment day and proclaim before all that they did good works and were able to do good are unbelievers. They do not know God and his perfect standard, his other-worldly holiness, and they do not have a knowledge of themselves and their misery. Good works are Jehovah’s work alone. Not first God, then man. Not God and man. Not God’s training and man’s doing. Jehovah’s work alone.

God in his counsel chose an elect people who would praise his glorious grace. God foreordained and prepared every good work they would ever do. God sent Jesus Christ to the death of the cross to cover the sins of his people and to make them righteous, thereby giving to them the right to do good works. God through Christ sends forth his Spirit into the hearts of his children to regenerate them and to create in them faith. God sends all the life and righteousness of Jesus Christ into the hearts of his children. God gives to those children a work he has prepared and determined to work in them. God causes them to will the work by his Spirit out of the gift of that new, regenerated heart. God causes them to do the work by his Spirit’s constant operation. God gives the ability to do the work. God gives the energy required to carry out the work. God gives the breath and the beating of the heart to sustain his child’s earthly life to do that work. By his fatherly hand, God causes the mind to work, the hands to move, and the feet to walk to bring to pass his eternal will in that child.

And what does God’s child do? What does that child accomplish? He does do something in this process; he does accomplish something; that is sure. What that child does, what that child accomplishes, is to ruin that work.

That work is carried out by a sinful and corrupt flesh that defiles and pollutes that work. So much does the child of God disfigure that work that God must take it and sanctify it in the blood of Jesus Christ, so that God may be properly praised by it. Man adds nothing and contributes nothing to that work. He does the exact opposite. If he were to compare that work to God’s perfect law, he would weep, seeing all the sin that polluted that work: all the sinful motives, all the sinful motions, all the sinful thoughts while carrying out that work. He would cry to God, “Be merciful to me, a sinner. I have polluted and corrupted even those good works, which were eternally prepared, died for by Christ, given as a gift through faith, and worked and caused by the Spirit. I have made those works ugly by my flesh!”

God is not glorified when man takes credit for his good works and claims that he, not God, did them. God’s child who desires by the Holy Spirit to glorify God abases himself and makes the confession of Paul his own confession. “By the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (1 Cor. 15:10).

Children of God perform good works. Children of God labor. Yet, not they, but the grace of God that is with them. Glory be to God! God—who eternally prepares that work, establishes the right to do the good work, and brings forth that work by his almighty power—causes and moves his children to perform the work, forgives their polluting of that work in the blood of Christ, and sanctifies that work!

May these truths of God’s word go forth conquering and to conquer and fulfill God’s eternal will concerning those who hear the truth.