Prof. Barry Gritters recently gave a speech at the request of Grace Protestant Reformed Church’s evangelism committee. The speech was entitled “The Confusion about Forgiveness.”¹ Professor Gritters is not normally so forthcoming as he was in this speech. He prefers to work behind the scenes, pulling levers like the Wizard of Oz or quietly playing the backroom politician. He was asked many questions after the speech. He normally answers questions with questions. But that night he came out with his theology. Some of the questions were quite insightful.
I hope that after the questioners got their answers they fled.

In the speech Professor Gritters said, “Forgiveness is not in eternity.” He likewise denied that there was forgiveness at the cross. He called the cross a “provision.” Whatever he meant by that exactly, he did not tell the audience. I suppose that the cross as a “provision” means that the cross provided some objective basis of salvation. But, denigrating the cross of Christ with all his might, Professor Gritters assured his audience repeatedly that there was not forgiveness at the cross. Forgiveness is—and only is—a declaration of God: “God’s forgiveness of us is a declaration to us from his mouth to our ears that goes down into our hearts that embrace that declaration by faith.” That declaration comes after—and only after—repentance: “That declaration comes to us after confession and repentance.” Even then, there is forgiveness only for those sins that we specifically confess:

There are other sins that we never confess. Some of them we don’t even know we committed; some of them are sins of omission we never think about…If we die not thinking about some of them, you might say that you’re not forgiven of those sins…We die unforgiven of that sin, that is, not that Jesus didn’t die and pay for that sin, but that I didn’t hear God say to me, “I don’t hold it against you.” Forgiveness, again, is God’s declaration to us, “I forgive you.”

That was the message of the speech: unforgiven!

Unforgiven in eternity.

Unforgiven at the cross.

Unforgiven when you die.

This is truly appalling theology. Let the defenders of the Protestant Reformed Churches, such as Prof. D. Engelsma, defend this speech! Let’s have a letter setting us all straight on how orthodox the Protestant Reformed Churches are as evidenced by this speech, given by a professor of theology in the Protestant Reformed seminary, whom one would suppose is their leading light.

In the face of Professor Gritters’ denial that there was forgiveness at the cross of Christ and in eternity and in the face of his assertion that forgiveness is only a declaration after a confession of some sin, an astute question came from the audience: “What’s the biblical basis for defining forgiveness as primarily a declaration? Colossians 2 and Ephesians 1 seem to indicate that forgiveness is at the cross.” The questioner did not indicate to which verses of Colossians 2 and Ephesians 1 he referred. Perhaps it was Ephesians 1:7: “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.” Or perhaps it was Colossians 2:13–14:

13. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;
14. Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.

“Redemption” is what Ephesians 1:7 calls the cross of Jesus Christ, and the verse says that this redemption is the forgiveness of sins. Colossians 2:13–14 says that, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us by nailing it to Christ’s cross, God forgave all our sins. In the face of these testimonies of the Holy Spirit, yes, pray tell, Professor Gritters, what of the scriptures that explicitly say that there was forgiveness at the cross, so plainly that a ten-year-old could tell you that this is what these passages mean?

Making sure that no one left the speech that night thinking too much of the cross of Christ or of the decree of God, Professor Gritters replied to the questioner:

Yeah, that’s a great question. Uh, I did talk about that somewhat in my speech. Let me clarify: Colossians 2 and Ephesians 1 seem to indicate that forgiveness is at the cross because there is such a close connection between the judicial ground of forgiveness in the cross and the forgiveness that God declares to me in my lifetime—sometimes such that that’s called forgiveness, just as sometimes God’s decree is called forgiveness. But if we would be careful, though those are the root of forgiveness and the basis for forgiveness, this is forgiveness: this declaration. Remember that song: “When I confessed transgression, then thou forgavest me.” When was that? When Nathan the prophet came and spoke; he declared.

Maybe a different perspective I didn’t use tonight is that forgiveness is the negative half of justification. Justification has a negative side—God forgives sin—and a positive side where God imputes to you the righteousness of Christ. He says, “I take away your sins; I give you the righteousness of Christ.” That’s the concept of justification.

When does justification take place? Well, it takes place, as the Bible says, by faith. When the judge declares to me, “Not guilty,” and the judge also declares to me, “You’re righteous.”

Justification has its root in eternity, its basis in the cross, but takes place when God speaks to me. That is why in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, the Pharisee went home unjustified. And the Bible says that the publican went home justified. He came to the temple miserable; he left the temple justified because he heard God say to him when he beat his breast and said, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” he heard God say to him, “You’re justified.”

For Professor Gritters, scripture—which cannot lie—only calls the cross forgiveness because there is such a close association of the cross with forgiveness. His other admission, that scripture also calls the decree forgiveness, is startling. I would like to hear of the scriptural passages that say this. The decree forgiving all of the elect their sins is a doctrine of good and necessary consequence from the teaching of scripture that the cross is eternal, for instance in Revelation 13:8: “All that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” The reasoning is this: if Christ was slain in eternity and if there was forgiveness at the cross, then there was a decree to forgive all the sins of God’s people in eternity. Regardless of the lack of a scriptural passage, however, Professor Gritters made the same argument about the decree as he made about the cross: the scripture only calls the decree forgiveness because there is such a close association between the decree and forgiveness. But there was no forgiveness in eternity, and there was no forgiveness at the cross. 

Unforgiven you are from all eternity.

Unforgiven you are at the cross of Jesus Christ.

This close association of the cross and the decree is realized only when you repent.

Then the professor became bold. Asserting what many Protestant Reformed ministers—including Rev. M. McGeown—deny, Professor Gritters said that forgiveness is part of justification. Thus when he was talking about forgiveness, he was speaking about justification. If, according to Gritters, you are unforgiven at the cross and unforgiven in eternity, then you are likewise unjustified at the cross and unjustified in eternity.

It should be noted that many Protestant Reformed ministers—in the interest of denying the gracious justification of the sinner by faith only and in the interest of teaching the false doctrine of the forgiveness of the sinner by faith, repentance, and obedience—deny that justification and forgiveness are the same doctrine. The thinking goes like this: scripture teaches so clearly that we are justified by faith alone that we cannot deny it, so we will make a distinction between justification and forgiveness. Then we can teach justification by faith alone; but when we come to teaching the truth of forgiveness, we can talk about the sinner’s experience. We will teach that the sinner is justified by faith alone; nevertheless, the sinner does not have the experience of justification (forgiveness) until and unless he repents, believes, and is nice to his neighbor.

The whole distinction is complete nonsense and is demolished on Christ’s parable of the publican, who went home justified (forgiven), and on article 23 of the Belgic Confession, which summarizes justification by speaking of the forgiveness of our sins: “We believe that our salvation consists in the remission of our sins [forgiveness] for Jesus Christ’s sake, and that therein our righteousness before God [justification] is implied” (Confessions and Church Order, 51).

But Professor Gritters apparently departed from his colleagues and denied the distinction between justification and forgiveness. For him it clarifies his position that we were not forgiven in eternity and that we were not forgiven at the cross to say that we were not justified in eternity and that we were not justified at the cross. We are only justified (forgiven) in time after we repent. At least he disagrees with one of the most baseless and unscriptural distinctions yet to come out of the mouths and from the pens of Protestant Reformed ministers, and he agrees with the Reformed Protestant Churches—and about all of the Reformed tradition—that forgiveness and justification are the same, forgiveness being one part of justification.

However, in his assertion that we were not justified at the cross, he runs afoul yet again of the Holy Ghost—and the Reformed tradition. For the Holy Ghost—who cannot lie—said in Romans 4:25 concerning Jesus Christ, “Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” This passage means that Jesus Christ was delivered because of our offenses, and he was raised again because of our justification. The passage teaches explicitly in words no man can gainsay that we were justified at the cross. Because justification is the same as forgiveness, we were also forgiven at the cross.

Thus the thesis of Professor Gritters’ entire speech and the theology on which the entire speech was based is dashed on the rock of scripture. If not, then Christ has not risen. This also points out the deadly seriousness of Gritters’ assertion that we were not justified (forgiven) at the cross. He denies the resurrection of Jesus Christ. For if we were not justified at the cross, then Christ is not risen from the dead. And if Christ is not risen, God is a liar, the apostles were all false witnesses of Christ’s resurrection, we do not rise, our faith is vain, and we are still in our sins.

Unforgiven!

I applaud Professor Gritters for making clear how thoroughly and completely his denomination denies the gospel of grace.

If he were to read this article, then I would also tell him to repent. I would also say to him, “It’s about time, Barry.” When his denomination was in the middle of a life-and-death struggle for the truth of the gospel, he was nowhere to be found except in the back rooms of synodical meetings and of the Standard Bearer office and out and about making false and lying charges of sin against the men who had started Sword and Shield. In light of the content of his speech about repentance and forgiveness, I judge him unforgiven, since he has never sought the forgiveness of the men against whom he lied. He has never shown the least hint of repentance for his false accusations and slander of those men publicly and behind their backs and through which he finally engineered their ecclesiastical destruction so that he could take over their inheritance and make himself a garden of herbs.

For example, after Sword and Shield came out, Professor Gritters, along with the other two editors of the Standard Bearer, Prof. R. Dykstra and Rev. K. Koole, charged me with sins for my involvement in sending a letter to them and the board of the Reformed Free Publishing Association (RFPA), expressing dissatisfaction with their leadership at the Standard Bearer. They charged me with sins via a letter in an email. A letter! An email! Surely, they took the whole matter of charging sins very seriously! They assured me in their letter that they were trying to keep the matter private; but they threatened that if I did not repent of my misdeeds within seven days, they would take the matter to my consistory. They assured me in their letter that they were very concerned for my soul and my salvation. They were so concerned for my soul and my salvation, in fact, that it took the editors nine months after my alleged transgressions to send the email/letter to me. Not a word for nine months, and then came charges of sin by a group of men against a brother and that via an email/letter, which included the threat that they would immediately take the matter to my consistory if I did not repent soon enough. Assuring me in their letter that they were very careful to follow Matthew 18, they also reserved the right for themselves to stop following Matthew 18 whenever it suited them and to go directly to my consistory.

Could it perhaps be that the editors thought that such charges of sin would be a convenient way to threaten me? If that did not work, then to attack me at my consistory in order to have me suspended or at least to stop my writing in Sword and Shield? The final judgment will reveal that. When I actually took their charges to my consistory, the editors were incensed and insisted on meeting with the consistory to bring their charges of sin against me in person.

The editors made a farce out of Christ’s instruction in Matthew 18. They made a farce out of charges of sin. They made a farce out of brotherly love in the church. The charges were so transparently false and self-serving that even the elders of Crete Protestant Reformed Church dismissed the charges. And that is saying something because those same men a few months later trumped up some of their own charges of sin against me.

Professor Gritters and the other members of the editorial Cerberus at the Standard Bearer did the same thing to Rev. Martin VanderWal and Rev. Andy Lanning. When Reverend Lanning’s case came to Classis East, even that Reformed Sanhedrin could not affirm the charges.

Did Professor Gritters repent for his false charges and his abuse of the whole practice of charging sin and of brotherly love? He did not. He acted as though he had never tried for months to have false charges of sin brought against three ministers in good standing.

This is just one example. I have others. I was charged with sins so many times by the editors of the Standard Bearer—Professor Gritters included—that it became obvious to me that those men are carnal and that all their professed concern for my salvation was simply a lie, a ploy, a tactic, and intimidation.

Just one more example to make the point that Professor Gritters is the least qualified person to speak about forgiveness, repentance, and forgiving one another. When I wrote a letter responding against Reverend Koole’s October 1, 2018, Standard Bearer article in which he talked about what a man must do to be saved, and I sent the letter to the Standard Bearer office, the editors promptly refused to publish the letter. So I published it on the RFPA blog. This set off a firestorm. Professor Gritters, along with the other editors, demanded an immediate meeting with the board of the RFPA in order to try and force the RFPA to take down my blog post. The demands continued for weeks. When the editors finally had a meeting with the RFPA board, the editors behind my back charged me with sin at that meeting. Even the unprincipled men at the RFPA understood that that board meeting was no place to bring charges of sin and that perhaps the editors ought to go the way of Matthew 18 or make a case pending with my consistory. And the board members told the editors so.

Of course, so great was the editors’—Professor Gritters included—concern for my salvation that for months I did not hear about their charges of sin against me; and even then, I did not hear from the editors until after I submitted another article for publication in the Standard Bearer, at which time the editors informed me via email of their charges of sin and threatened that unless I repented, I would never again be published in the Standard Bearer. There was no follow-up to their charges. That passed for godliness at the time in the Protestant Reformed Churches. The Lord will bring all that abuse out in the day of judgment, and I await that day, for as Professor Gritters reminded everyone in the speech, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Rom. 12:19).

And it was not just Reverend VanderWal, Reverend Lanning, and I who were charged with sin; it was Prof. D. Engelsma as well. He was charged with sin by Professor Gritters at two different consistories. Professor Gritters charged Professor Engelsma with the sin of transgressing scripture’s teaching about divorce for Professor Engelsma’s position that an abused spouse may file for legal separation. Professor Gritters first went court shopping by trying to force Crete Protestant Reformed Church to give up Professor Engelsma’s credentials and to send them to Trinity Protestant Reformed Church so that its consistory would try the case. When that did not work, he charged Professor Engelsma with sin at Crete’s consistory. After Crete’s elders rejected the charge, did Professor Gritters apologize to Professor Engelsma? Did Professor Gritters apologize to the consistories for the false charge? Or, if he disagreed with the judgment of Crete’s consistory, did he take it to classis? No, he did not. The charge of sin is still standing to this day.

When I read all his pious-sounding explanations of how to go the way of Matthew 18 and how to forgive brethren, I wanted to puke. When Professor Gritters spoke about repentance and forgiveness and going to a brother who sins against you, he was being a complete hypocrite. He made false charges of sin, he did not follow up on his charges of sin, he used or ran roughshod over Matthew 18 as it was convenient for him, and he made charges of sin against men to others without ever going personally to the men he charged with sins. Then when there was real sin, he did nothing if it would hurt the reputation of a friend. Thus he allowed that friend to continue his predations on the sheep and the lambs, especially on the ewes, and to disgrace the office of the minister of the word. He used charges of sin to coerce, to intimidate, and to get his way. A charge of sin is a very serious thing, but Professor Gritters treated it as a weapon. I have been on the receiving end of his abuse, his fake charges of sin, and his false professions of concern for someone’s soul. I view him as an abuser, a fraud, and a hypocrite. But then again, the members of the Protestant Reformed Churches like those kinds of people, place them in positions of honor and respectability, applaud them for their great spirituality, and ask them to give speeches on topics for which they are wholly unqualified.

It is no wonder, then, that Professor Gritters’ speech was false doctrine about forgiveness. He knows nothing of forgiveness. In his own practice he may use the doctrine as it suits his purposes, and his doctrine is consequently a doctrine of man’s decisive role in his own forgiveness. In his speech he gave his theory on forgiveness. It was only that: his theory. The speech by Professor Gritters was simply a concoction of truth and sophistry. The theology of the speech was the false doctrine that Professor Gritters had fabricated out of his own brain and then passed off as biblical through the corruption of scripture and lip service to the Reformed creeds. He openly admitted in the speech, the purpose of which was to clear up confusion on forgiveness, that he was not going to quote the Reformed creeds much. When he did mention the creeds, all he did was quote them. Could that be because the creeds refute his false doctrine about forgiveness? The warning of Colossians 2:8 must be issued against the speech: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” That is all this speech was: philosophy and vain deceit that spoils now and eternally.

The entire speech can be summarized in a few words. The speech was part and parcel of the Protestant Reformed theology that denigrates the decree of God, displaces the cross of Jesus Christ, ignores the work of the Holy Spirit, and makes the sinner’s possession and enjoyment of his salvation depend upon what he does.

The message of the speech was that there was no forgiveness in eternity.

The message of the speech was that there was no forgiveness at the cross.

There is no forgiveness until the sinner repents. There is no forgiveness of any sins for which the sinner does not specifically repent.

A sinner can even remain unforgiven when he dies!

Unforgiven!

The message of the speech was that the repentance of the sinner is the decisive activity upon which the decree of God, the cross of Christ, and the forgiveness of the sinner depend for their realization now and at the death of the sinner.

Even more succinctly, the speech was part and parcel of the Protestant Reformed theology that in a certain and vital sense, man precedes God: man must first draw near to God, and then God will draw near to man, and there are activities of man that precede the blessings of God.

To use the language of Professor Gritters’ speech: God decreed to forgive, God made the provision for forgiveness at the cross of Christ, God is willing to forgive, and God wants you to come back to him. But do not forget that you do not have forgiveness in eternity. You do not have forgiveness at the cross of Christ. You do not have anything that God decreed, that Jesus Christ provided for, and that God wants for you and is willing to give you unless and until you repent. The speech was Arminian to the core.

Worse, the speech was Roman Catholic theology. That kind of theology turned the sensitive Martin Luther into a spiritual lunatic, who scoured his life for sins to confess so that he could experience peace with God. The theology of the Roman Catholic Church was the following:

First of all, one must go to confession. This was not optional but absolutely required. Indeed, it was a sacrament “of the Church.” So one must go to confession, and when one went to confession, one must confess every sin one could possibly recall.²

Here is a description of the tortured Luther:

Luther’s overactive mind was constantly finding ways in which he had fallen short, and so every time he went to confession, he confessed all of his sins, as he was supposed to do, but then, knowing that even one unconfessed sin would be enough to drag him down to hell, he racked his brain for more sins and found more. There was no end to them if one was honest about one’s thoughts, and Luther was entirely honest. What if he left confession but had forgotten to confess one errant foul thought from three days before? If one died before one had one’s last rites, one died “in one’s sins.” So Luther would drive himself and his confessor half-mad with his endless confessions, which seemed to make him feel no better, because he would torture himself afterward, feeling that surely he must have forgotten something.³

That is the difference between Martin Luther and Barry Gritters: Luther was honest, and Gritters is not. Luther was honest about himself, about sin, and about God until he could find comfort only in the righteousness of Christ, for which he did nothing. Gritters is dishonest about God and the cross of Christ and about sin and forgiveness because he finds comfort in what man must do to be saved. 

With some of their questions, some in the audience evidenced that they felt that dishonesty. Somehow, they sensed that they were being swindled. Something did not add up. There was no forgiveness in eternity? There was no forgiveness at the cross? If a man does not confess a sin, then he is unforgiven? A man can die unforgiven? So someone asked, “What’s the biblical basis for defining forgiveness as primarily a declaration? Colossians 2 and Ephesians 1 seem to indicate that forgiveness is at the cross.”

Another wanted to know, “We don’t receive forgiveness of our sins until we own them. What about those sins we don’t even know are sins, also sins of omission?”

Still another inquired, “If we have to repent from our sins, then we are forgiven; then do we have to repent from future sins, in case we die before that happens? Otherwise, we die in our sins unforgiven?”

Professor Gritters airily brushed these questions aside and beguiled the questioners of their reward, their peace in the cross of Christ, and the forgiveness that he accomplished there for his elect people.

The speech was an example of the Protestant Reformed Churches’ current state of inebriation with the doctrine of Man. Throughout the speech Professor Gritters claimed to clear up confusion. He did. He made perfectly clear that the Protestant Reformed Churches are false to the core, having denied the heart of the gospel in the decree of God, the cross of Christ, and the justification of the sinner by faith alone.

I will examine Professor Gritters’ false doctrine more closely next time.