A Concerning Phrase

In a certain sense…

This phrase, when heard or read in any conversation, ought to raise concern in the mind of the discerning hearer or reader. How much more concern when this phrase is brought up in a sermon or lecture that purports to teach the truth of God’s word. How much more concern when this phrase is brought up in connection with a controversial subject.

How much concern?

So much concern as to create a burden in the heart and mind of the hearer or reader. So much a burden that resolution becomes an absolute necessity.

This necessity is imposed on the speaker or writer who used this phrase. That speaker or writer’s authority cannot suffice to have the audience accept this phrase. Because I said so must only increase the burden. The burden becomes an important demand. This phrase demands a clear, distinct answer. In a certain sense must be resolved. It can only be resolved with an explanation.

The phrase only gives birth to the question, “In what sense?”

Think about the back-and-forth of a conversation. When one says to another, while introducing a statement of fact, “In a certain sense,” the speaker can only expect the question to follow, “In what sense?” In addition, the question is of such importance that, unless it is answered by an explanation of the “sense,” any further conversation is useless. Unless there is a satisfactory explanation given of the “sense,” only confusion and suspicion will result.

“In a certain sense we must believe in order to be saved.”

“In a certain sense our repentance precedes God’s forgiveness.”

“In a certain sense God’s forgiveness of us depends on our forgiveness of our neighbors.”

Taking away the beginning phrase of each of these statements results in the following: “We must believe in order to be saved.” “Our repentance precedes God’s forgiveness.” “God’s forgiveness of us depends on our forgiveness of our neighbors.” What is remarkable about these statements is that they all are formulations of conditional, Arminian theology.

What is even more remarkable is that a man who claims to be Reformed would suppose that such statements become acceptable and orthodox in Reformed circles when the phrase in a certain sense is prefixed to them. He supposes that these are four words that magically turn heresy into orthodoxy. Can these four words have their effect because they are spoken by a Reformed man, even an officebearer with certain credentials? Can these four words have this effect because they are spoken by a leader with decades of experience and approval? Because these four words are spoken by a leader with proper seminary training who passed every examination and is a pastor of a church or denomination known for its orthodoxy?

Exactly the opposite.

The phrase in a certain sense establishes a certain debt. That debt is in no way the hearer’s or the reader’s. He is not obligated to acknowledge as true what follows this phrase. That debt is the speaker’s or the writer’s. The phrase demands a further explanation. This debt can only be discharged when the speaker or writer clearly explains that certain sense. Used rhetorically, that debt is freely acknowledged by the individual who uses the phrase. The speaker or writer understands that the phrase represents a promise. He binds himself by the use of this phrase to a proper explanation of what he means. With the use of this phrase, he is also accountable to his audience to explain it, and he should acknowledge that his audience has every right to reject what he stated if he does not explain.

As weighty as this debt is when this phrase is used generally in discussions and teaching, this debt is much more weighty for one who represents the truth of God’s word. The truth of God’s holy word, when communicated to God’s people, must be presented with all the clarity that God’s word represents. There is no room for ambiguity or confusion.

Repentance and Forgiveness

What is the meaning of the phrase in a certain sense? What does it truly mean that in a certain sense repentance precedes forgiveness?

In the certain, definite sense that God hears and answers the prayers of his people. In the certain definite sense of David’s record of God’s mercy shown when God heard and answered David’s penitential prayer in grace. “I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin” (Ps. 32:5). As this manner of God’s mercy to his servant is declared in this inspired songbook of the people of God, so are they taught to praise God’s mercy to them, that he freely pardons them when they confess their sins to him. So are they also assured that this will be their blessed experience of God’s mercy, that he will graciously pardon all their sins when they come to him in sorrow over them. As stated in a former article in this series, God’s people flee to their gracious covenant God with the burden of their sin and their guilt.¹ Their repentance before God means that in deep sorrow and humility before God, they confess with shame their wicked deeds, the evil that corrupts even their best works, and their total depravity. They join their evil to themselves, declaring their wretchedness and their misery before God. They do not blame others. They do not blame God but justify him (Ps. 51:4). They blame themselves, holding themselves responsible and accountable for their sins. Their requests for forgiveness mean that they ask God to put asunder what they have joined together. Speaking nothing of themselves, their sole appeal is to God’s mercy (v. 1), that for the sake of Christ’s blood (Lord’s Day 51) God will remit their debts. What follows is the testimony of the gospel to their hearts, the testimony of joy and gladness that all their sins are forgiven. God shows himself faithful to his word of promise in 1 John 1:9.

Indeed, in that sense. That is, in the sense of their conscious experience.

How much there is to be made of this sense of the believer’s conscious experience!

This is the joy and gladness of salvation. It is the blessedness of salvation, the blessedness that results in the praise and adoration of the mercy and grace of God in Jesus Christ. It is what brings about the song of the glorified saints in heaven recorded in Revelation 5:9–10. Burdened with their sin and guilt, the judgment of the law hanging over their heads, they have received from the Lamb slain for their sins blessed freedom from that heavy burden. They have come to their savior, who has called them to himself. Before his cross they have lain down their weariness and their heavy load. They have received graciously from him the promise of his rest, his easy yoke and his light burden. From their graciously relieved hearts, they offer themselves to him a living sacrifice of thanksgiving (Rom. 12:1).

How utterly perverse then to take this blessed sense of man’s experience and to use it to destroy God’s wonderful grace! How utterly perverse to twist this wonder of grace and to make it into a law!

In a certain sense.

This sense: that this repentance must be man’s act that he must do or perform; and that only when he has done or performed his act, then God will be merciful and declare him forgiven or assure him of forgiveness.

Let the reader understand what has been done with this certain sense. Not only does this other certain sense tear the above wonder of grace out of its context of proper experience in order to turn it into a doctrine of works, thus destroying it altogether; but it also pits scripture against itself, destroying the unity of God’s word and its truth. Grace simply cannot be forged into a new law. The freedom of God’s sovereign grace cannot be made obligatory upon the actions or deeds of men. The attempt to salvage something of grace out of this shipwreck is vain. To follow in a certain sense with all by grace recovers nothing at all.

All of the experience of the child of God in all his salvation from beginning to end is by grace alone. There are no gaps in the truth of Ephesians 2:8–10. There is nothing left out for man to fill by any of his ways or manners, behaviors or attitudes, actions or deeds. There is nothing for him to boast of, as if he did not receive it (1 Cor. 4:7).

This is why salvation is all by grace through faith. Why repentance, the broken heart and contrite spirit, is by grace and why God will not despise repentance (Ps. 51:17). Why repentance itself is through faith, through faith in so many ways.

Why John Calvin had the following to say in his Institutes of the Christian Religion:

Then, according to the passage in the Psalms, “There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared” (Ps 103:4), no man will ever reverence God who does not trust that God is propitious to him, no man will ever willingly set himself to observe the Law who is not persuaded that his services are pleasing to God. The indulgence of God in tolerating and pardoning our iniquities is a sign of paternal favour.²

Indeed, why the gospel precedes repentance, why God’s effectual calling precedes repentance, why regeneration precedes repentance, why faith precedes repentance, why grace precedes repentance, and why forgiveness precedes repentance.

To be most clear and to describe the exact sense: also God’s forgiveness of all and every sin committed by his children must precede all their repentance of every sin that they commit. Let the point be very particular and pointed, not general and ambiguous.

The Christian prays, as taught by his Lord, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matt. 6:12). In doing so, the Christian passes over the course of the day in his mind and heart. He recounts a particular sin that he has committed. Bearing that sin on his heart before the Lord, he confesses it. He trusts in the promise of God’s word of forgiveness for that sin by the blood of his savior’s cross. By faith in that promise of God, he receives assurance from the working of the Holy Spirit in his heart that this particular sin is indeed forgiven him. He is indeed washed in the blood of Christ from that sin. He is freed from its condemnation as well as its shame before God.

How did this Christian get there? How did he get from being the Christian who committed the sin to being the Christian forgiven of that sin?

It was by grace alone. It was by grace alone operating thoroughly in him. It was the grace of God alone that gave him his repentance over that particular sin. If this living, holy, and righteous God had dealt with the sinner according to that sin that he had committed, he could not have repented over it. He would never have repented over it. He would only have defended it. He would only have hardened himself in it. In this very sense, regarding this particular repentance over this particular sin, God’s forgiveness precedes the sinner’s repentance.

As this particular sin is repented of by grace alone, so it is repented of by faith alone. Following the above testimony of John Calvin, it is important to understand exactly what is meant by “faith alone.”

Certainly this faith that precedes the sinner’s repentance over his particular sin is that bond worked by the Holy Spirit in his heart, by which he is engrafted into Christ his Lord. He has been incorporated into Christ, so that he is one with Christ, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. Governed by the Spirit of Christ in him, his repentance is necessary. The death of Christ on the cross must bear this particular fruit in him. Without the operation of that death of Christ in him, no repentance of any kind is possible.

But what must be exactly understood of this faith that brings about this particular repentance is the sinner’s conscious, confident assurance that God’s mercy is upon him for the particular sin that he will bring before his God in heartfelt confession. He is assured that God’s promises are true with respect to all his sins. He is assured that the blood of Christ is of infinite value to wash away all his sins. He has the Spirit-wrought confidence that his baptism does seal to him the benefits of God’s everlasting covenant of grace, among which is the washing away of all his sins. He is confident of having been forever received into God’s mercy and forever a partaker of God’s salvation.

From the viewpoint of God’s sovereign, irresistible grace, this wonder of faith preceding repentance becomes all the more clear. Every prayer of repentance, with its own shame and sorrow and with its own humble, sin-owning confession, is the product of sovereign, irresistible grace. It is the result of the effectual call of the gospel. That the sinner comes to his God is only because God irresistibly and effectually calls him, giving to him from his storehouse of abundant grace the sacrifice of God, the sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart.

Truly, what a cause for thanksgiving to God for his gift of true repentance! What an incentive to deep humility before God in the deep sorrow of true repentance!

How blessed also to understand that all the Christian’s various prayers of repentance are not simply scattered evidences and tokens of the working of God’s almighty grace but that they are representations of his entire life’s way before his God. Repentance is truly the entire life of the believer. Repentance is truly the entire life of the believer lived by faith, as led by the grace of God. It is wrought by the Holy Spirit in the depths of his heart, whence all the issues of life flow outward. From his heart of flesh given him by the Spirit, he repents, seeking the remission of all his sins from his faithful, covenant God. From that same heart he walks in repentance, fighting and struggling against the power of sin, his total depravity. In the power of the new man, which is Christ in him, the hope of glory, the Christian puts off the old man with his deeds (Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:9–10).

Blessed Freedom

In light of the above, the Christian has blessed freedom fully and completely to repent of his sins before God. Without the truth that repentance is the gift of God’s grace, worked by the Holy Spirit of Christ in his heart, the Christian can only entertain fierce doubt about the forgiveness of his sins. If his repentance must be his activity that he must perform before God will grant him pardon, he can only wonder whether his sins will be pardoned. What doubts and fears must crowd into his mind and creep into his heart! Such a vast and enormous result as his acceptance with the living and holy God hinges on his action. The forgiveness of his sins is his deliverance from God’s condemnation and the hinge upon which the Christian’s fellowship with the living God depends. Is his repentance thorough enough? Is it sufficiently humble? Does it have enough shame and sorrow? Is the heart broken enough, the spirit contrite enough? Will it be pleasing enough to God? Has he sufficiently repented of all his sins? Is there one, several, or a multitude of sins that he has wholly overlooked, so that there is no repentance, let alone sufficient repentance?

Set over against the holiness and righteousness of God, the repentance of man cannot be sufficient. Set over against the glory of the sacrifice of the Son of God on the cross of Calvary, it cannot be enough. Not only is the very point of repentance the unworthiness of the sinner of God’s acceptance and forgiveness, but also repentance has as its subject the pride of the sinner. Repentance must say that it is not good enough, that as the activity or deed of man, man’s repentance gives God every reason not to forgive. If repentance is the activity of man that he must do to obtain forgiveness, there is no repentance that could be brought before God. Repentance must only obtain condemnation.

But as true repentance is the work and gift of God, it is not of man. As the fruit of the cross of God’s Son and as the result of the operation of the Holy Spirit, it is a pleasing sacrifice of God unto God. As he has so graciously and mercifully wrought this gift in the hearts of his children, so is he pleased to perform what he has promised. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).