Three Blind Mice (2): Justified Through Repentance and Faith

Introduction

The editorial this month is a continuation of my analysis of three speeches that were given at an officebearers’ conference hosted by Crete Protestant Reformed Church in September of last year. The speeches were given by Rev. Joshua Engelsma, Rev. Richard Smit, and Rev. Daniel Kleyn. The speeches made plain that the Protestant Reformed Churches have forsaken the gospel of grace. At the heart of that gospel is the justification of ungodly sinners through faith alone as that is rooted in God’s eternal decree of election and justification.

Engelsma’s speech ostensibly was given to explain the difference between a so-called once-for-all forgiveness and daily forgiveness. What became plain in his speech is that there is no such thing as once-for-all forgiveness. This is because for Engelsma there is no justification in eternity and there is no justification at the cross. There is only justification when—and you must say if—the sinner repents and believes. So for the baby at baptism, the grand promises of God the Son—that “He doth wash us in His blood from all our sins, incorporating us into the fellowship of His death and resurrection, so that we are freed from all our sins and accounted righteous before God”—are not true for the baby until he or she repents and believes (Form for the Administration of Baptism, in Confessions and Church Order, 258).

This is abominable theology. It is conditional covenant theology. Protestant Reformed ministers and professors can use the word unconditional in connection with the covenant all they want to, but it is just deception. Their theology is thoroughly conditional. If one’s justification is hinged upon his acts of repentance and faith, then the covenant and all its promises are hinged upon faith and repentance, and one’s whole salvation is likewise hinged upon his acts of faith and repentance.

What the Reformed Protestant reformation has made plain is that the unconditionality of the covenant stands or falls with the doctrine of justification by faith alone. If justification is by faith alone, then the covenant and all its blessings are unconditional. If justification is by faith and by repentance, then the covenant and all its blessings are conditional. Then the cross of Christ is made of none effect, and God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are made impotent and liars. Nothing less than this is the seriousness of the issues for which we contend.

Justification Through Repentance and Faith

The abomination that is the theology of these three speeches continued—and if it is possible, became worse—with the speech of Rev. Richard Smit. The relationship between faith, repentance, and remission is the subject of his speech. He titles the speech “Repentance and Remission of Sins Through Faith in Jesus Christ.” He is obviously nervous. He states that he is going to stick close to his notes! He wants to be clear and precise and he has a lot of quotes!

Afraid of stepping on a landmine, Richard?

Those who do not know and love the gospel have a very hard time speaking about it, and Reverend Smit neither knows nor loves the gospel.

I must reiterate what I said previously about these speeches. The three speakers together spoke a little over twenty thousand words. In the entirety of their speeches, the phrase “faith alone” was spoken five times. Josh Engelsma used the phrase three times, but in all three instances, he simply used “faith alone” as a description of the doctrine of justification. Richard Smit does not use the phrase at all! Mind you, part of his task is to describe the relationship between forgiveness and faith! In a conference on justification and with the task of describing the relationship between justification and faith, Smit does not say “justification by faith alone”—not even once! He cannot, does not, and will not say “justification by faith alone.” Daniel Kleyn used the phrase “by faith alone” two times in his speech, and both times he denigrated the doctrine. In one reference he made sure to remind his listeners that the doctrine of justification by faith alone does not negate the need for admonitions, and in the other he made sure to remind his listeners that they know that justification is not the end goal of God in saving them. So much for justification by faith alone as the heart of the gospel. The three speakers do not believe in justification by faith alone, and they apparently saw no need to use the phrase except as a kind of tagline.

Though he neither knows nor loves the gospel, Reverend Smit is very concerned about the word order that the minister uses in his preaching.

Let the Reformed preacher and missionary proclaim the promise of the holy gospel and the call of the gospel to repent from sin and to believe in that promise of the gospel and expect that to come to pass in that divinely approved word order.¹

What Smit means is that the preacher must first preach “repent” and then preach “believe.” The preacher must preach this because according to Smit’s doctrine there is no forgiveness or justification apart from repentance and believing. Smit believes what Josh Engelsma believes: Repenting and believing are unto forgiveness.

Smit first defines repentance, and then he hacks that wonderwork of God all to pieces as if he were butchering a cow. He says,

Repentance is not a good work, which is the realm of sanctification. Good works are actions of love and obedience unto the Lord out of true faith according to the ten commandments and to the glory of God. Good works are evidence of sincere repentance…

Rather…we understand that repentance is the sincere sorrow of the elect, regenerated, called believer for his sins before God and is evident in a turning from his sins and a turning unto God for the remission of his sins.

Now the question is, why is it so necessary for Reverend Smit that repentance not be a good work? Really, who cares if repentance is a good work or not? But he cares, and the Protestant Reformed Churches care because the churches make repentance that through which man is justified, and if repentance is a work, they fall under the condemnation of teaching justification by faith and by works.

Of course, in this insistence that repentance is not a good work, Smit is in a bit of a quandary because he admits that Calvin viewed “repentance broadly as conversion.” And Smit admits that Bavinck recognized that “these biblical terms for what we call repentance or conversion are not defined logically or dogmatically but are used variously in a broader or more restricted sense.” In other words, when scripture uses the word repentance, scripture does not simply and strictly mean sorrow for sin. But scripture has conversion in the broadest sense in view and sometimes refers to this conversion by one of its parts, which is sorrow for sin.

Herman Hoeksema in his Reformed Dogmatics treats repentance in the section on preservation and perseverance! He gives this definition: “Repentance is a state of mind, a turning of the mind from the love of sin and unrighteousness unto the love of righteousness, and therefore unto a true sorrow over sin.”²

Smit will not say that repentance is a good work, but his spiritual father says that repentance belongs to the category of love. Now the whole law is fulfilled in one word, love (Rom. 13:8, 10; Gal. 5:14). Repentance then involves a whole new love. Formerly man loved sin. Now he loves righteousness. And what is more righteous than God, his Christ, his law, and his glory? Repentance is to renew a man to love of God, love for Christ, love of God’s law, and love for his glory. Repentance very definitely belongs to God’s work of renewal, which is out of the realm of justification, for in justification God justifies the ungodly (Rom. 4:5). In other words, repentance cannot be restricted to a narrow sorrow over sin. Even if you restrict repentance to sorrow over sin, sorrow for sin implies love of God. It is an aspect of Christian love. Just as scripture sometimes speaks of forgiveness and means justification, so scripture frequently speaks of repentance and means conversion.

I have to be honest, I cannot understand why this is so hard for these men, why they are so insistent that repentance be strictly sorrow for sin, and how that definition of repentance somehow saves their insistence that forgiveness is by faith and by repentance from being a denial of the gospel. Let us grant for a moment that repentance is not a work. One thing it is not is faith. Repentance is not faith! And because repentance is not faith, justification is not by repentance, through repentance, or in the way of repentance. But repentance is conversion, and conversion is repentance.

And let us hear how the Heidelberg Catechism defines conversion in Lord’s Day 33:

Q. 88. Of how many parts doth the true conversion of man consist?

A. Of two parts: of the mortification of the old, and the quickening of the new man.

Q. 89. What is the mortification of the old man?

A. It is a sincere sorrow of heart that we have provoked God by our sins, and more and more to hate and flee from them.

Q. 90. What is the quickening of the new man?

A. It is a sincere joy of heart in God, through Christ, and with love and delight to live according to the will of God in all good works.

Q. 91. But what are good works?

A. Only those which proceed from a true faith, are performed according to the law of God, and to His glory; and not such as are founded on our imaginations or the institutions of men. (Confessions and Church Order, 121–22)

Repentance is the evidence of one’s standing in a whole new relationship with the kingdom of God. That one is in the kingdom and a partaker of the kingdom’s grace, mercy, and life; and the power of that kingdom shines out in his attitude toward sin, God, and one’s whole life.

Very important to Smit’s definition of repentance as well is that repentance is a seeking of remission: “Repentance is the sincere sorrow…for his sins before God and is evident in a turning from his sins and a turning unto God for the remission of sins.”

However, seeking remission of sins does not belong to the Catechism’s definition of conversion. To seek remission is faith, plain and simple. Faith alone seeks remission in Christ, and faith alone finds remission of sins in Jesus Christ. That seeking of remission is not a seeking for something that the believer does not have because the truth of God’s kingdom is that whoever seeks shall find, and before we ask God answers us. It is evident that the believer seeks remission in faith in the confidence that everlasting righteousness and eternal life are his merely of grace and only for the sake of Christ’s merits (Lord’s Day 7). Such is the divine order.

Smit adds seeking remission of sins to his definition of repentance because there is one thing that he will not give to the sinner without his repentance, and that is his forgiveness. He will not have the ungodly justified by faith alone.

Having massacred the meaning of repentance, Smit moves on to define believing. To his credit he defines faith as a bond. There is no agreement on this in the Protestant Reformed Churches among the ministers and professors, and there does not have to be because faith as a bond has no meaningful place in any of their theology. As far as their theology is concerned, they could say that faith is a pig. So it is with Smit. He says that faith is a bond, but faith as a bond has no part in his explanation of faith and justification.

But the place of faith as a bond in justification is easily stated. The great benefit of faith as a bond in connection with justification is stated by the apostle Paul in Romans 8:1: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. In Christ means faith as a bond. Simply by virtue of the fact that they are in Christ, there is no condemnation, which means the glorious news that they are justified and have peace with God through their Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:1).

This is part of the explanation of an unforfeitable state of justification even in deep falls into sin. Justification is secure in Christ. The children of God cannot be separated from Christ, and so they cannot be separated from their justification in Christ. In union with Christ, Christ is made by God unto them righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30). This is the explanation of the justification of infants, who believe nothing and repent from nothing. They are in Christ, their savior. This is the true explanation of being justified by faith. Faith puts the children of God in connection with the justified corporation of Jesus Christ. He was delivered on account of their offenses, and he was raised again because he justified them at the cross (Rom. 4:25). Righteousness is in Christ, and the children of God are declared righteous in their connection with Christ through faith.

With his definitions out of the way, Smit finally gets to the real message of his speech. He could have saved a lot of words and been kinder to the ears of the listeners in his long-winded speech if he had come to the real message right off the bat. He asks, “What is the relationship between the Lord’s remission of our sins and our activities of repentance and believing?” For him there is a “close relationship” between these activities. But he does not mean a close relationship. He means that unless and until a man repents and believes—as his activities, by grace, of course—the Lord will not and cannot forgive him. A man is not justified by faith alone but through faith and through repentance as his activities.

So Smit says,

Repentance is the required way in which the Spirit leads the regenerated and called child of God to seek and find by believing the remission of sins in Jesus Christ alone…

When the saving call of the gospel goes forth with its efficacious power by the Holy Ghost, the logical order is that he repents from his sins and receives remission of sins through believing in our Lord Jesus Christ.

It must be this order: First by repenting and then by believing, man will be forgiven. For Smit these two—faith and repentance—are man’s twin activities by which he is justified.

Somehow, Smit then pivots to a discussion of conversion. He finds in scripture and the creeds that conversion involves two things: repenting and believing. He says in connection with Canons 3–4.10, “The Canons there combine repenting and believing in that activity of conversion.”

That is not true. Article 10 actually distinguishes faith and repentance and further makes repentance to be conversion. The article says “faith and conversion” and later “faith and repentance.” If Smit is right that the article on his reading combines faith and repentance as two parts of conversion, then he must also add obedience and good works because the article goes on to say that God’s chosen ones “show forth the praises of Him who hath called them out of darkness into His marvelous light,” which at least includes their lives of obedience (Confessions and Church Order, 168). Smit’s reading is plainly nonsense and self-serving. But Smit’s point is that repenting and faith belong to conversion.

I find this to be a curious development: Conversion consisting of faith and repentance? Conversion is in fact the fruit of faith. There are two things that happen by faith. One thing is that the ungodly sinner is justified by faith alone. The other is that by faith the ungodly sinner is turned from sin to God. Conversion is not the two things that Smit claims: faith and repentance. But according to Lord’s Day 33, conversion is these two things: sorrow for sin and love for God. Smit is not teaching a mere “close relationship” between faith and repentance, but he is teaching that both faith and repentance belong to conversion. And since for Smit we are justified by faith and by repentance, then for him that must mean that conversion is the means to justification. Conversion is indispensable to justification.

Previously the Protestant Reformed theologians have said that faith and repentance are two sides of one justifying coin that the sinner slips into God’s vending machine of forgiveness, but now Smit says that faith and repentance are two sides of the conversion of the sinner and thus he must mean that the sinner is justified by his conversion. This is nothing different than the theology that Hubert De Wolf preached: “Our act of conversion is a prerequisite to enter into the kingdom.” According to Lord’s Day 31, entrance into the kingdom is justification. But for De Wolf conversion was prerequisite to justification. 

This is what Herman Hoeksema said about De Wolf’s theology:

This sermon [of De Wolf] emphasized very strongly [that] our act of conversion is a condition or prerequisite to enter into the kingdom of God. This, whether it is applied to our first entering into the kingdom or to our repeated conversion, is pure Arminianism. The question is: what is a prerequisite? The answer is: a prerequisite is something required beforehand, i.e. as a preliminary to any proposed end or effect.³

And Smit teaches nothing different than De Wolf. Conversion consists of faith and repentance, and by that conversion man is justified.

And for Smit these two, repentance and faith, must be preached in that order. So he tells us that Jesus taught this in Mark 1:15 when he said, “Repent ye, and believe the gospel.” For Smit this is the “divinely approved word order.” But this insistence on preaching repentance first and believing second and remission third gets a little sketchy for Smit when he has to find this “divinely approved word order” in the Canons of Dordt. He begins to quote the Canons, and then he realizes that he has a problem with word order:

The Canons there combine repenting and believing in that activity of conversion. Canons of Dordt 3–4, article 12 teaches that because of the work of the Spirit and his grace, “man is himself rightly said to believe…”

Smit recovers quickly and continues,

Let me read that again: “Man is himself said to believe and repent by virtue of the grace received.” Here in article 12, believing is first, and repent is second, indicating a relationship between the two. Not that one is less necessary than the other. One can be done a little later. It’s not important, but together they are both the fruit of the call of the gospel in the elect, regenerated sinner. And the one cannot be present without the other.

Now this is comical. Smit has insisted that the preacher must preach repentance first, then he can preach believing, and then he can preach remission. It must be in that order, for so taught Jesus, and such is the “divinely approved word order.” And that word order for Smit has theological implications because it points out that a man cannot be justified without his prior repentance. But oops, the Canons has a different order! Well, he can just fudge that a little bit. “One can be done a little later.” You know, you can believe and get around to repenting a little later! Or I suppose you could repent—that is the important one anyway for Smit—and then you can get around to believing a little later. “It’s not important.”

Sounds a little antinomian!

But for Smit the order is important, and he must be chagrined that the Canons does not back up his supposedly necessary and “divinely approved word order.”

And that is not the end of the folly. He has to fudge a little more on his “divinely approved word order.” He says, “When scripture and the confessions use the word order—you can find this: repentance and faith or sometimes faith and repentance. They do both.”

But he is not allowed to flip-flop like that. If his “divinely approved word order” of first repentance and then faith means that one must first repent and then be forgiven by faith, then when scripture says believe and repent, it means that you are first forgiven by faith and then you repent. Then also the scriptures contradict themselves. I say this only for the sake of pointing out the ridiculousness of Smit’s position about word order.

The words—whether in the order of repent and believe or believe and repent—teach the same thing. There are two works of God when he translates his people into the kingdom of his dear Son. He works faith—by which alone we are justified in Christ and have applied to our consciences the verdict of eternity and of the cross and are reconciled to God—and he renews us to repentance, or converts us, so that we might show forth our thankfulness as children of the kingdom and of the light.

Further, while it is true that one—repentance—cannot be present without the other—faith—that is not Smit’s point. Anyone who is truly Reformed knows that faith cannot be without its fruits. But Smit’s point is that in justification it is not faith alone but faith and repentance as the two parts of conversion that justify. Indeed, his point is that first there is repentance, then there is faith, and then and only then can there be remission. So he says about faith and repentance, “They are consistently interconnected and reciprocally support and promote one another.”

Except in justification!

Justification—and the forgiveness of the sinner—is by faith alone. Faith always works by love, but in justification faith does not need either repentance or love to justify. We are justified by faith alone!

You will say to me, “Does Reverend Smit really say that we are justified through faith and through repentance?”

Listen:

One cannot think that he can enjoy forgiveness by only believing but without any repenting from his sins…John preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, which indicates the need for the presence of repenting when receiving by believing the remission of sins (Mark 1:4).

Oh! Really! Let me rephrase what Smit says: One cannot think that he is justified by faith alone! One must also repent to be justified by faith alone, which then means that he does not have justification by faith alone.

Here is another:

The Spirit, you see, leads him [the elect sinner] in the divinely determined right way of repentance and sorrow for sin and in true believing, whereby we receive forgiveness, pardon, justification, and peace with God.

Smit says “whereby.” What is that something “whereby” the elect sinner is forgiven, pardoned, justified, and has peace with God? That something for Smit is the way of repenting and true believing. In the way of repentance and believing, the sinner is justified. Repenting and believing are both necessary to be justified, in which case again there is no justification by faith alone.

Does Smit really believe this chilling, fearful, and damning theology?

In his carefully choreographed performance, he slips up, and his true belief comes out plainly. He draws an analogy between a human father and his child, who has sinned against him, and God the Father and his sinful child:

Having sinned against mother or father, a child whose conscience is yet healthy, knows his guilt, soon discovers that the face of father and mother is not disposed to them in approval of what has been done but is disposed to them in an angry look of holy displeasure for the sin that has been committed and brought into the relationship. The loss of that favor in the face of the father and mother for the little child is most dreadful, tormenting. But the return of the parents’ smile is most comforting, pleasing, and is accomplished, brought about, through the way of the child’s repenting and believing and expressing expressions of forgiveness in Jesus Christ.

Now, this shows that when Smit uses the term “through the way of” in connection with repentance and justification that there is no meaningful difference with “instrument of” justification. Protestant Reformed ministers always try to defend their theology of justification by faith and by works by saying, “No, no, we teach that we are justified in the way of repentance and by faith. Repentance is the way, and faith is the instrument.”

So Smit says that man is forgiven “through the way of…repentance and believing [faith].” But this quotation shows that there is no meaningful difference for Smit between “through the way of…repenting” and by faith. Get the words “the way of” out of there. He just as well could have said through repentance and through faith or by repentance and by faith. If he had said that, he would be making clear that both repentance and faith are parallel and instrumental in justification. The child is forgiven by the parent through repentance and through faith or in the way of repentance and in the way of faith. It really does not make a difference how Smit says it. He means that repentance and faith are coordinate in justification.

Then he also imputes that brutal theology of his home to God the Father and his home:

Similarly, through the child of God’s repentance from sin and through his believing in Jesus Christ, the Spirit works, and the believer receives and experiences the remission of sin and peace with God in Jesus Christ alone.

Either Smit wrote this in his manuscript and reads it—because he says that he is going “to stick very closely…to the wording of my manuscript”—and thus he is the more inexcusable for it, or it becomes so grating to his spirit constantly to deny that he is teaching justification by repenting that he finally just comes out with it. His whole speech is building to that point. It must have been a relief for him to get that off his chest without subterfuge and evasion. He just lays it out there: The child of God is forgiven, justified, and enjoys peace with God through repentance and through faith! No Roman Catholic priest would have any problem with that. That is Rome’s doctrine. And that is the doctrine of the Protestant Reformed Churches.

He should have entitled his speech “Justified Through Repentance and Through Faith.” Then he would not have kept his audience waiting so long to hear his point. I have no doubt that those in the audience were expecting him to make that point. I do not think anyone there batted an eye when Smit said that justification is through faith and through repentance. That man is justified through repentance and through faith is what the Protestant Reformed Churches mean when they say that repentance is the way unto forgiveness, that man repents in order to be forgiven, and that man experiences fellowship with God by faith and in the way of repentance. That is what Smit means when he says, “Repentance is the required way in which the Spirit leads the regenerated and called child of God to seek and find by believing the remission of sins in Jesus Christ alone.” He means justified through repentance and through faith. To be forgiven through repentance and through faith is to be justified through good works and through faith!

And that is anathema!

And all who teach that are anathema maranatha!