Three Blind Mice (3): The Gospel of the Law

Introduction

I remind the reader that I am examining the speeches given by Rev. Joshua Engelsma, Rev. Richard Smit, and Rev. Daniel Kleyn at an officebearers’ conference hosted by Crete Protestant Reformed Church last September.

In his speech Josh teaches that men are not justified in eternity and that they are not justified at the cross. They are not justified unless and until they repent and believe. Justification is a possibility on the contingency that men repent and believe.

In his speech Smit builds on Josh’s wicked denial of the gospel by teaching that men are justified through faith and repentance. In his whole long and convoluted speech, he does not say “justification by faith alone”—not one time. He does not believe justification by faith alone. He is also representative of the theology of the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) generally.

In this editorial I take up Rev. Daniel Kleyn’s speech.

The Gospel of the Law

Kleyn’s speech is a complete hash. He chose for his subject the need for admonitions in the preaching. Yet the most important distinction that he should have made between preaching the admonitions of the gospel and preaching the admonitions of the law, he does not make.

This distinction is easily made. The admonitions of the gospel are the gospel. The gospel comes and declares Christ Jesus, who is of God made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption and who says that he is the only way to the Father. Along with that comes the calling not to be afraid, to come to Christ, to believe, and to repent. All of these say to man, “Be nothing and do nothing.” For instance, the command of the gospel to believe does not mean that man must do something. The command is exactly the opposite: that man do nothing! This is the meaning of Canons of Dordt 3–4.17:

The apostles and teachers…neglected not to keep them [the church] in the sacred precepts of the gospel in the exercise of the Word, sacraments, and discipline…For grace is conferred by means of admonitions. (Confessions and Church Order, 170)

The PRC and her theologians are constantly and deceptively making this article teach that grace is conferred by the preaching of the law. But the article is about the gospel and its precepts, which are entirely different from the law and its precepts. Canons 3–4.5 has something to say about the preaching of the law and its precepts:

For though it [the law of the decalogue] 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)

There is no grace in the law or in the preaching of the law. Only the gospel brings grace. The law brings condemnation. The gospel brings salvation, joy, peace, and assurance. The law brings damnation, misery, bondage, and terror. Always the law and the gospel must be properly distinguished.

If that distinction is not maintained, then the preaching of the gospel becomes the preaching of the law, and the preaching of the law becomes the preaching of the gospel. Faith becomes works, and works become faith. And this is precisely what we encounter in Kleyn’s speech.

The theme of the conference is “Justification and Forgiveness.” Daniel Kleyn uses the phrase “by faith alone” twice in his speech, and both times he denigrates the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In one instance he makes sure to remind his listeners that the doctrine of justification by faith alone does not negate the need for admonitions. In the other instance he makes 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.

Kleyn also takes a worthless swipe at the Reformed Protestant Churches, just like the other two speakers:

Now, there are some, as we know, who argue that [justification negates the need for admonitions]. Those that argue that it does will usually say something like this: “Because we are eternally justified and because we are justified at the cross, we are forgiven before we repent. And therefore, the minister of the word ought not to admonish believers with the admonitions of scripture, nor with the call to believe, nor with the call to repent.”¹

Where in the world today is it taught that the elect are eternally justified if not in the Reformed Protestant Churches? Kleyn has his eyes on the Reformed Protestant Churches. Now, if he can prove that someone in these churches has said that the minister ought not to admonish believers, then I welcome him to it. But his swipe at the Reformed Protestant Churches is just a slander and another one of the straw men that these parade-ground polemicists like to set up to knock down, so that they do not have to contend with the actual arguments of their opponents. So, he too is a coward and a dishonest theological opponent.

There are a couple of hilarious sections in the speech. In one of these Kleyn explains his reason for choosing the topic of admonitions for his speech:

I believe that we have been inclined in recent years to shy away from admonitions, especially to shy away from preaching them.

One wonders what has been going on in the PRC that possibly could have brought about such a sad state of affairs?

Reverend Kleyn informs us:

I think we will also admit that it’s been a struggle to preach admonitions in recent years because of the controversy and schism and because of the criticism against ministers and because of the knowledge that there are sometimes listeners who listen simply to find fault.

Now, that is rich! Poor Protestant Reformed ministers! They had to put up with those big meanies and schismatics who are now in the Reformed Protestant Churches. Besides, the tender souls of these ministers have to deal with critical listeners.

I wonder how Protestant Reformed ministers would have fared in Berea?

But the confession that the ministers have shied away from preaching admonitions is laughable on the face of it. Randomly pick a Protestant Reformed sermon, and you will find that from beginning to end the sermon is stuffed full of admonitions. And if the text on which a minister is preaching is not an admonition, then he will turn the text into an admonition.

We who left the PRC and formed the Reformed Protestant Churches did not leave because the ministers were preaching admonitions. But we left because the PRC has completely corrupted the gospel—as the three speeches make perfectly clear—and because all the admonitions preached by the ministers were serving the wicked work of bringing us again under the yoke of bondage. And we stood fast in the liberty wherewith Christ made us free. Christ cut a hole in the PRC’s net, and so escaped are we. When I read the three speeches, I cannot help but sing a little hallelujah to God for that deliverance. The Protestant Reformed house has become a house of death, wrath, sin, and guilt because it is a house of the law and not of the gospel.

But the question is this: In a conference on justification by faith alone, what is Kleyn all about with this speech on admonitions? It could be just a part of the Protestant Reformed unbelief in the gospel. Paying lip service to the doctrine of justification, the ministers want to make sure that the people understand that they cannot be careless and profane.

But I suspect in light of the other two speeches, which make clear that there is no forgiveness without prior and prerequisite repentance, that Kleyn’s job is to reinforce that idea and then to instruct the officebearers on how admonitions are to be used to bring about repentance and with it to bring about and bring into reality God’s forgiveness. For it must be remembered that according to Josh Engelsma and Richard Smit, there is no forgiveness in eternity, and there is no forgiveness at the cross. There is forgiveness only through faith and through repentance.

Since the three speakers do not believe in the power of God to salvation—the doctrine of justification by faith alone—they must have another power of God to salvation, and that is the power of admonitions. So Kleyn’s speech adds this thought to the other two speeches: Justification is also for working and obeying sinners, not only for repenting and believing sinners. The Protestant Reformed gospel is not God’s justification of the ungodly, but her gospel is forgiveness for one day for repenting, believing, and working sinners. My, my, what good people the Protestant Reformed people must be in order to have that gospel of forgiveness preached to them. And tomorrow their repenting, working, and believing to be justified starts over, and the next day, and the next day, until they are dying and wondering if they have repented enough, believed enough, and worked enough. Then they will come to Jesus, and he will say to them, “Depart from me, you wicked evildoers. I never knew you.”

Kleyn titled his speech the “Necessity of Admonitions in the Preaching.” He should have titled his speech “I Am Not Ashamed of the Gospel of the Law, for It Is the Power of God to Salvation to Everyone Who Repents, to the Jew First and Also to the Greek” (Kleyn [Romans] 1:16).

Kleyn’s focus on the law brings up an important lacuna in the presentations of the three speakers on justification. The crux of the whole doctrine of justification is the issue of justification and the law and of the justified Christian and his deliverance and freedom from the law. In Romans 3 the apostle Paul relates the doctrine of justification by faith alone to the law. After saying in verse 28 that we are “justified by faith alone without the deeds of the law,” the apostle says in verse 31 that his doctrine of justification by faith alone does not make the law void but establishes the law. He insists that his doctrine of the justification of the sinner by faith alone means that God is both “just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (v. 26).

By that measure any doctrine of justification—such as the doctrine of Rev. Joshua Engelsma, Rev. Richard Smit, and Rev. Daniel Kleyn—that is not the doctrine of justification by faith alone makes the law void. For all their professed interest in the law, by their doctrine they make the law void, overturn it, and militate against it and the place that God gave to the law. Only the doctrine of justification by faith alone establishes the law. But nowhere in their speeches does any one of them explicitly address the matter of justification by faith alone and the law.

Nevertheless I believe that Kleyn’s speech does show that he has a doctrine of the law as it relates to justification. However, his doctrine does not establish the law but does violence to it. He does not give his doctrine of justification in the speech, but by virtue of the fact that he spoke last and did not publicly rebuke the wicked doctrine of his colleagues, he shows that he consents to their wicked doctrine of justification, and I impute their doctrine to Kleyn. For him too there is no justification in eternity, and there is no forgiveness at the cross, but justification is through faith and through repentance. Besides, by the very fact that Kleyn remains a minister in good standing in that hold of every foul spirit and cage of every unclean bird, I know his doctrine. His speech comes right out of that doctrine, for he could not have said the things that he said if he believed in justification by faith alone.

Let us leave aside for a moment Kleyn’s mashup of the admonitions and precepts of the gospel and the admonitions and precepts of the law. Let us for a moment focus just on the admonition in the preaching to obey the law and the central gospel truth of justification by faith alone.

The admonition of the law is the preaching of the law. It is the “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not” of the law. There is no difference in this point between him and us when he says,

Strict preaching [of the law] means making clear exactly what God requires of us, that God means what he says in every admonition, in every rebuke, in every command, in every exhortation that he gives and that, in summary, God requires perfection. What does God say? Love me. But love me with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. With all of that, nothing less.

In this connection I note that Reverend Kleyn has a number of true things to say in his speech. The problem with the Protestant Reformed ministers is not that they cannot say some true things, but they press them into the service of the lie. But here I agree with him. The law preached is not do what is in your power, try your hardest, or work with your best efforts. The law preached is not that God accepts imperfect obedience. But the law demands absolute inner and external perfection.

The only quibble I have is that Kleyn does not make clear that the summary of the law is primarily a requirement that the nature of man be perfect. The law certainly addresses man’s deeds, but the law demands that his deeds proceed from a perfect nature. The PRC no longer believes in the total depravity of the nature of the regenerated sinner, and so the law’s requirement that man’s nature be perfect is not a minor quibble with Kleyn. The regenerated sinner cannot fulfill the law because of the very fact that his nature too is yet carnal and sold under sin (Rom. 7:14). The regenerated sinner by virtue of this fact is guilty before the law even before he performs one deed. Let us grant for a moment the folly that a regenerated man can obey with a perfect deed. His deed is polluted by his sinful nature.

Kleyn also admits that if a minister preaches admonitions as he describes above regarding the strict preaching of the law, “then he has not preached the gospel.” An admonition is not the gospel, and the gospel is not an admonition.

But as Kleyn tries to explain how and why the minister is to preach admonitions, the wheels start to fall off.

I want to remind the reader that wherever Kleyn says “admonition,” I insert “law.” Kleyn himself says that an admonition is the preaching of the law and not the preaching of the gospel.

Now to explain the great and glorious power of the law unto salvation, Kleyn says,

Admonitions [the law] are to be preached. They are given in the word of God, and the minister is directed to preach them by God himself in order that through them as a means of grace that God uses and applies by his Spirit, the people of God are directed to Christ in whom there is pardon for and deliverance from their disobedience and to Jesus Christ, who empowers his people by his Spirit out of gratitude to keep the admonitions that God sets before them, who gives them the desire and ability.

He continues,

And so the faithful minister of the word preaches admonitions [the law] with a view to bringing believers to be thankful and to obey the admonition out of gratitude as their motivation…

Preaching admonitions [the law] involves setting admonitions [the law] forth as being God’s way of salvation for his people…The experience and enjoyment of that salvation is in the way of a holy walk…not a perfect walk but a walk of holiness…The admonitions [the law] of scripture…are used by the Spirit to lead God’s people in that way, so that in that way they experience and enjoy and rejoice in the salvation they have in Christ.

It must be made clear that in this next quote when Kleyn says “the word,” he has in view admonitions [the law].

All who hear, whether elect or reprobate, whether believer or unbeliever, must be confronted with the admonitions [the law] of scripture and the demands of the word of God [the law]…

If those who are unbelievers being addressed at that time are elect unbelievers, he will use the word [admonition/law] and cause the word [admonition/law] to be effective through the Spirit to turn them from that and to bring them to faith in Christ…

Admonitions [the law] applied by the Spirit serve to stir up God’s people to thankful living.

Then Kleyn asks, “Why do admonitions [the law] benefit God’s people in these ways?” And he answers,

[The] voice of Christ is the voice that is made effective by his Spirit, who applies what he says [in the admonition—the law] to cause the hearers who are his to do it.

Kleyn sprinkles his statements with a good salting of grace and the Holy Spirit and adds in a pinch of Christ to enhance the flavor of his law-pottage. But his point is the benefits that admonitions as admonitions have. His point is the many things that the law as law does.

The law is a means of grace!

The law directs the people to Christ.

The law brings about thankfulness.

The law stirs up to thankful living.

The law brings obedience.

The law leads people in the way of holiness.

The law leads people in the way of holiness in order to give them the joyful experience of their salvation.

The law turns, brings repentance, and leads unbelievers to faith in Christ.

The law sets forth the way of salvation.

If the law does all these things, what need is there for the gospel? There is no need for the gospel.

Then Kleyn cautions ministers: “It is crucial that when admonitions are preached, they are not Christless.”

However, this warning is worthless. Christ included with the admonitions is only to cover men’s disobedience, to empower men to keep the admonitions, and to make their keeping of the admonitions the way of their salvation and their joyful experience of salvation. This is another form of the old saw in the PRC: “And we do this all by grace, beloved.” The minister has preached the law for fifty minutes, and at the end of the sermon, he brings Christ in as the possibility! And that is what Kleyn does here too.

He says that the law demands perfection, but then he contradicts that when he speaks about the experience and enjoyment of salvation in the way of a holy walk (in the law). He says that that holy walk is “not a perfect walk.” Thus he means that one can have the experience and the enjoyment of salvation in the way of an imperfectly holy walk, but he gives no ground for that. If the law indeed demands perfection in nature and deeds and the sinner is unable to live a perfectly holy life, then for the sinner there is no joy in the law but only condemnation, which brings bondage and wrath. Yet for Kleyn all these good things received by the grace of the law come to those who imperfectly obey the law. Kleyn says that the law does all this wonderful and glorious work by grace, by the Spirit, and by Christ. But therein Kleyn makes Christ serve Moses (the law) and not Moses serve Christ.

This is really abominable theology that parades itself as Reformed.

It is evident that the Protestant Reformed ministers do not know what the law is and that especially they do not know what the law does in connection with justification. There is no excuse for this in light of the Canons of Dordt, the other Reformed creeds, and the clear teaching of scripture.

The apostle says, “By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20). This means that there is no peace for Christians in the law, and there is no way of salvation in the law because the law brings the knowledge of sin. With the knowledge of sin come condemnation, wrath, and the power of sin and death to rule the sinner. Only in freedom from the law does sin not have dominion over us, and thus we are transferred to another power, namely, the power of the Spirit. Exactly because we are not under the law but under grace is there any holiness, any desire for good, and any longing after God in us at all. That does not come from the law but from the Spirit, who is ministered to us by Christ. Christ ministers the Spirit to us because we are righteous by faith alone, not by repentance and works. Under the law man hates God. Under grace, not under the law, man loves God. The love of God does not come about by the law but by grace. The love of God does not come about by admonitions but by the righteousness of Christ.

So the apostle says, “Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). And later he says even more strongly, “Now being delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter” (Rom. 7:6). We were held in bondage to the law, and under that bondage we were dead because the law brings condemnation. Wherever the law reigns, there is condemnation; wherever there is condemnation, there is bondage, wrath, and death. The justified Christian is delivered—saved—from the law! This means that if you bring the law back in as the way of salvation and as the power to work thankfulness, to turn one to faith in Christ, and all the other grand things that Kleyn attributes to the grace of the law, then you have overthrown a man’s salvation in Christ, and that man cannot serve except in the dead and damning service of the oldness of the letter.

The question becomes, what does the law do when it is preached? The question is not, what does the law do sometimes when it is preached or when it is preached to unregenerated people? But what does the law do when it is preached to Spirit-led, regenerated people? What does the law do every time it is preached? And that question is, what does the admonition (the law) do? What do the admonitions be a righteous father, be a faithful mother, be an obedient child, and be a faithful employer do? These too are the law, for the law is always “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not.” The law is good, righteous, and holy. The law is spiritual. The law is the revelation of the righteousness of God, and the law’s mission is that this righteousness of God prevails. The law speaks of life too. Wherever the righteousness of God is, there is life also. The law aims at life and the righteousness of God.

But what the law brings about is condemnation and death. The law is a ministry of condemnation and death. The law is not that according to its nature, but the law is that according to the design of God because the law comes to carnal people. The aim of the law is that the righteousness of God prevails, and the law does that by killing sinners. That is what regenerated Christians are yet. In their flesh they are carnal and sold under sin (Rom. 7:14). They are not carnal in the sense of ungodly, carnally-minded men, for Christians have the Spirit in them. But they are carnal in the sense that in their flesh they are yet rooted in the sinful, totally depraved condition of Adam. Thus when they would do good, then sin is present with them; the good that they would do, they do not; the evil that they would not do, they do. When the law comes to them, it brings the knowledge of sin, sin revives, and the commandment ordained to life they find to be to death. Sin deceives them when the law comes. By the commandment, sin slays them, sin under the law becomes exceedingly sinful, and transgressions abound.

So the apostle says,

3. What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:

4. That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Rom. 8:3–4)

God will have the righteousness of the law fulfilled in us. When the apostle speaks of the righteousness of the law, the word “righteousness” means justification. Righteousness or justification contrasts with the condemnation of the law. There is a condemnation of the law that came on the whole human race in Adam. There is also a justification of the law. The justification of the law is that the law and all its demands are satisfied.

The fulfillment of this in us the apostle says is by God’s work of sending his Son, Jesus Christ, in the likeness of sinful flesh to deprive sin of its power by justifying us from all things from which we could not be justified by the law. This the law is impotent to do. The law speaks of the righteousness of God, but the law cannot bring about the righteousness of God. The law speaks of life, but the law cannot bring life. Life and righteousness God brought about in Jesus Christ. This is the life and the righteousness of God without the law that the gospel declares and that is received by faith alone, that is, by doing nothing!

And having brought about the righteousness of God, then God through Christ also brought about life. And this is what the apostle also has in view when he says that the justification of the law is “fulfilled in us.” Because in Christ God fulfilled the righteousness of God, in Christ God also gives life, repentance, joy, happiness, love for God, hope, and patience. These all are things that the law demands. God fulfills them in us—not by the law but by the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ.

And so we walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh—not by the admonitions of the law but on account of the righteousness of God imputed to us and through the power of the Spirit of life in Christ that we receive because there is no condemnation to us in Christ.

The Canons in heads 3–4 teaches exactly this about the law:

Article 5. In the same light are we to consider the law of the decalogue, delivered by God to His peculiar people, the Jews, by the hands of Moses. For though it 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.

Article 6. What therefore neither the light of nature nor the law could do, that God performs by the operation of the Holy Spirit through the Word or ministry of reconciliation, which is the glad tidings concerning the Messiah, by means whereof it hath pleased God to save such as believe, as well under the Old as under the New Testament. (Confessions and Church Order, 167)

Kleyn says that “admonitions [the law] are not preached simply to point out how depraved we are.”

But pointing out man’s depravity is precisely what the law does. The Heidelberg Catechism in Lord’s Day 44 says that God will have his law “strictly preached” in the churches, “[so] that all our lifetime we may learn more and more to know our sinful nature” (Confessions and Church Order, 134). This is the service of the law to the gospel. But really even in that service, the law depends on the gospel, for if a man is not in Christ, that man never can know truly his sins and misery. When the law comes to a man who is not in Christ, that man will speak about his ability to keep the law, how the law works many good things in the church, and how there is assurance and joy in the law. But when the law comes to a man in Christ, the law shows that man his misery. It is the work of the law to point out and to reveal man’s misery. By the law is the knowledge of sin. Without that, nothing else that is good follows from the preaching of the law.

Further, whatever response there is in the Christian to the preaching of the law is not the work of the law but of faith and of the Spirit by the gospel. In answer to the question, “Why will God then have his law [the ten commandments] so strictly preached?” answer 115 of the Heidelberg Catechism says further that we

thus become the more earnest in seeking the remission of sin and righteousness in Christ; likewise, that we constantly endeavor, and pray to God for the grace of the Holy Spirit, that we may become more and more conformable to the image of God, till we arrive at the perfection proposed to us in a life to come. (Confessions and Church Order, 134)

The law cannot be heard in the church without the gospel. The law must be kept in its proper place in the church in order that Moses not displace Christ, that the law does not become the gospel, that works do not become faith, and that faith does not become works. When the Christian seeks remission in Christ, that is not the work of the law but the response of faith to the knowledge of sin that the law brings. The law does not become a power to salvation that makes the Christian seek Christ. Christ makes the Christian seek Christ. Christ might use the law as a goad to destroy man’s flesh, pride, and his pretentions to righteousness; to damn all his works as filthy rags, including his miserable repentance; but it is not the law but Christ who does that. To seek the Holy Spirit to conform us more and more to the image of Christ is not the work of the law but of Christ and the Spirit. The law does not do that. The law does not make us want to be holy Christians. The Spirit and Christ, who ministers the Spirit to us by faith and writes the law on our very hearts, do that. Christ, the Spirit, and the gospel are alone the power of God to salvation. The law serves them, and they do not serve the law.

The law (admonition) does not make anyone thankful, holy, or good. The law (admonition) does not make anyone want to be thankful. Only the righteousness of Christ freely given to the ungodly sinner by faith alone makes him thankful and that through the operation of the Spirit. The Spirit also writes God’s law on our hearts and causes us to love that law. The law does not make us love the law. Under the law we hate the law. Justified by faith alone, having the Spirit of Christ administered to us, then we also say, “Conform us, O Lord, to the image of thy Son, Jesus Christ, that perfect person!”

Someone will say to me, “But Kleyn is talking about preaching the law to Christians, to regenerated, Spirit-filled believers! The Spirit makes them want to keep the law!”

In response I say that Kleyn is one with Rev. Joshua Engelsma, Rev. Richard Smit, and the rest of the PRC in teaching that man is justified by faith and by repentance. This faith and this repentance are what man must do for his justification. By teaching that, they place their entire denomination back under the law. Paul told the Galatians, who were overrun by these kinds of ministers, “I testify again to every man that is circumcised [for his justification]…ye are fallen from grace” (Gal. 5:3–4). And we say that if you have to repent for your justification, if you have to believe for your justification, or if you have to utter one sigh for your justification that you have fallen from grace and are in bondage to the law. You are not under grace but under the law! And this is precisely what the PRC teaches and what Engelsma and Smit teach. Engelsma says that the gospel of forgiveness is for penitent sheep. Smit says that we are forgiven through repentance and through faith. Kleyn does not refute them. He agrees with them. His doctrine is a doctrine of being under law.

Reverend Kleyn thinks that when he is preaching the law, he is making a holy, good, thankful, and an obedient church. He thinks that if he sprinkles his law-preaching with enough grace, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ that his law-preaching will make his people obey the law. But the very opposite is happening. Because they are not under grace but under the law, the law is giving them the knowledge of sin, making sin exceedingly sinful, causing them to hate God and to come under condemnation and wrath, and binding them under the power of sin and death. That is what the law does to all who are under it. By the law is the knowledge of sin! The law has a power over those who are under it, and that power is to condemn sinners. The strength of that condemnation makes them servants of sin and of death. But the law does not have any positive power in sinners to bring about good things, holy things, and righteous things in them. This is true also of the regenerated. We might say that this is especially true of the regenerated.

But when I say that Kleyn—along with the rest of the Protestant Reformed ministers—wants to make holy, good, and righteous people, then I speak according to their own expressed purpose. The PRC wants to make her people holy, good, and righteous through repentance and faith under the law, speaking according to her own professed purpose.

But the reality of those in the grip of the false doctrine of works-righteousness and those who teach that and damn and mock the truth is much different. The apostle says that false teachers teach what they teach not to make people holy but to bring them into the power of the false teachers: “They zealously affect you, but not well; yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect them” (Gal. 4:17). The false teachers are excluded from the kingdom and are not going to be saved, and they will exclude you, will have you not be saved either, and will have you hang on their words and give the false teachers a comfortable existence in this world.

Reverend Kleyn mocks the gospel and says that Christ does not obey for us.

As regards our sanctification, we cannot say, “Christ obeys God for me.” It is true that he empowers us to obey God. He empowers us by his Spirit to obey God.

Kleyn also mocks his opponents, who attribute all to Christ, and sets up another straw man—the dishonest polemicist that he is. But Christ does not merely empower man to obey. He “works in man both to will and to do [of his good pleasure], and indeed all things in all” (Canons 3–4.14, in Confessions and Church Order, 169). By his mockery Kleyn shows that he does not understand justification by faith alone and the relationship of justification to the law (admonitions) and that he does not understand sanctification either. Paul says about all his abundant labors, “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). And in Galatians 2 Paul confessed about his whole Christian life,

19. I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.

20. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

You see, the PRC is ignorant of what faith is. Faith is the elect believer’s union with Christ. By that union the elect believer is made one with Christ. By that union the believer is in Christ and is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, and Christ is in the believer. Through faith alone the believer is righteous before God and an heir of eternal life simply by virtue of his connection to Christ and his righteous corporation. By that same faith the believer lives in and out of the Son of God by his Spirit. The believer’s life is such the product and work of the Spirit of Christ that Paul simply attributes the whole thing to the Spirit:

17. The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

18. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. (Gal. 5:17–18)

The response to the doctrine of the PRC is that all repentance done in order to be justified and forgiven is nothing but wickedness, and all obedience performed in order to be pleasing to God by it is iniquity. The PRC mentions the Spirit, but she has put her people under the law, so there cannot be the Spirit in the PRC. The apostle says that you cannot be led of the Spirit if you are under the law. The law to people who are under law is a ministry of condemnation, so that they must be judged by that law for their imperfections, and they must be sold into slavery to sin and death.

In Christ by faith alone, the justified believer is delivered from the law because in Christ he is justified from all things from which he cannot be justified by the law. He was one with Christ in eternity, and thus he was always justified by God. This reality God made manifest when he raised Christ from the dead. And because this is true, the gospel comes and says, “Repent, believe, be reconciled to God, have peace with God through Jesus Christ.” And by faith as knowledge and confidence produced in the justified believer by the Holy Spirit through that gospel, he is made aware of and assured that those things spoken in the gospel are true for him, and he rests in his Lord and in his everlasting righteousness for time and for eternity.

Because the justified believer is righteous in Christ, he can be admonished because that admonishment (law) can no longer condemn him and hold him in bondage to condemnation and because in Christ the justified believer has the Spirit. When the law increases sin in the believer, makes sin exceedingly sinful, and makes him cry out, “O wretched man that I am,” then he is not turned to Christ by the law, but he is turned to Christ by Christ because the justified believer is one with Christ. Christ by his Spirit comforts the believer that he belongs to Christ, and Christ by his Spirit lives in the believer, and he walks in the Spirit by the power of the Spirit. The law can speak of the righteousness of God, but admonitions (the law) cannot conform anyone to the law. Only the gospel of justification by faith alone and the Spirit of Christ conform one to the law.

The three speeches at the officebearers’ conference were given by three blind mice.

If the blind lead the blind, then both will fall into the ditch.

So these blind leaders have proved the undoing of the once-grand Protestant Reformed Churches. Once she was wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked, but she was rich with gold and clothed with white raiment bought by Jesus Christ. Now she is rich and increased with goods and has need of nothing, and she sits clothed in purple and scarlet and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls of her own works—a gaudy whore with her golden cup full of the abominations of her false doctrine.