No Pardon for the Living or the Dead

I have been examining the speech on forgiveness that was given by Prof. B. Gritters a while back in Grace Protestant Reformed Church.¹ The speech is worth considering at length because it was a good summary of current Protestant Reformed doctrine about justification and the covenant of grace, and it was a good predictor of where the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) are headed with their doctrine. They are headed right back to Rome. Only God knows how long it will take them to get there, but at the rate they have been developing in their theology, it is not impossible that elements in the Protestant Reformed Churches very shortly will have good things to say about Rome. The Roman Catholic Church epitomizes the Man-centered theology that at present is ravaging the Protestant Reformed Churches.

The message of the speech was the same as Rome’s message. The speech was a message that the believer is unforgiven unless… This is the message of Rome, according to answer 80 of the Heidelberg Catechism: “The mass teaches that the living and dead have not the pardon of sins through the sufferings of Christ, unless…” (Confessions and Church Order, 116). Professor Gritters’ teaching is the same: the living and the dead have not the pardon of sins unless… His condition is repentance. There was no forgiveness in eternity. There was no forgiveness at the cross. There is only forgiveness if and when man repents. God is willing to forgive. God made provision in the cross of Jesus Christ for that forgiveness. God does not forgive unless man repents first.

That this is true for the living and for the dead Professor Gritters made perfectly clear in his speech. He was asked, “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?” Professor Gritters responded,

Yeah, that gets at the heart of what I’m saying too. I’m thankful for this question because it seems to indicate that we’re forgetting that forgiveness is God speaking to me, “I don’t impute that sin to you. I am not going to hold you accountable for that sin,” when we say about that sin, “God, I’m sorry for that sin.” 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. Now, remember about those sins, God decreed not to hold them to our account. Jesus Christ died for them and paid for them. They are fully paid for. If we die not thinking about some of them, you might say that you’re not forgiven of those sins. That just means you didn’t hear about that sin God saying to you, “I forgive you.” They’re paid for though. You’re going to go to heaven.

According to Professor Gritters, the greatest blessing of salvation is to hear that God forgives your sins. And this is true. According to article 23 of the Belgic Confession, “We believe that our salvation consists in the remission of our sins for Jesus Christ’s sake” (Confessions and Church Order, 51). Yet in the above quote regarding forgiveness for the living, Professor Gritters downplayed it as though it is no great thing. In the sinner’s life there are sins that he never confesses, so he never hears God say to him that he is forgiven. He remains unforgiven. There are things that God decreed for the elect sinner and for which Christ died for the elect sinner that never come into the possession of the sinner.

This same thought Professor Gritters carried over to the dead man. In response to the same question, he gave another example of his theology of unforgiveness:

Let me give another example of this. I think this is pretty important. It’s possible that on the way home one of us gets in a wreck and dies and didn’t confess a certain sin that we’ve committed. We didn’t think about it; or maybe we did, and we were ready to confess it when we got home tonight, but we died before we confessed it. 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.”

In light of this dreadful theology, a questioner asked, “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 responded, “I think that is what I was just talking about too.” The answer to the questioner was, “Yes, you do die unforgiven.” It appeared as though the professor also implied that we should start confessing future sins. He certainly did not reject that as wrong. The questioner also pointed out—either wittingly or unwittingly—the folly of Gritters’ theology when the questioner suggested that perhaps we should repent of future sins in case we die before we can repent. However, since we do not know what specific sins we are going to commit, we cannot repent of them.

It was all just lunacy. What will be next? Mass for the dead? That is what happens when one preaches man’s wisdom instead of the wisdom of God in Jesus Christ: that of God’s eternal good pleasure and by his amazing grace, Jesus Christ is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30–31). We are forgiven of all our sins, even those of omission and even the ones that we never confess. The Lord taught us to pray, “Forgive us our debts!” And God hears his people and lifts them up in the gospel of the full and free pardon of all their sins and gives to them the joy of their salvation.

A Little Whimsy

In pressing his theology of unforgiveness, Professor Gritters waxed whimsical when it came to the unforgiven infant. In response to the same question in which he taught that we are unforgiven in life and unforgiven in death, he also wondered about a child who dies in infancy. He said,

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. Now, remember about those sins, God decreed not to hold them to our account. Jesus Christ died for them and paid for them. They are fully paid for. If we die not thinking about some of them, you might say that you’re not forgiven of those sins. That just means you didn’t hear about that sin God saying to you, “I forgive you.” They’re paid for though. You’re going to go to heaven.

That’s why it’s possible for a baby who dies in infancy, who’s never committed one actual sin, to go to heaven. He’s not been forgiven in the sense that he never heard consciously God say to him, “I don’t hold that sin against you.” He’s an infant; he died in his mother’s womb maybe. But Christ died for his sins; God determined to take him to heaven, and he went to heaven though he didn’t hear in his ear and embrace with his believing heart that declaration of God.

But as I was thinking about that today, I thought, Hmmm. Maybe that needs to be clarified a little bit in this way. When that little infant, who never spoke one word and never thought any thought, gets to heaven, he is able to speak. And this is what he is going to say: “God, forgive me of my sinful nature. Forgive me of my connection to Adam.” And then God is going to speak to him and declare, “I don’t hold that against you because I put that responsibility on my Son, and he’s forgiven”—if we may imagine that. That’s when he would hear God say it to him.

You cannot make this stuff up!

Now, I am being generous in supposing that Professor Gritters was talking about the infant child of believers. He did not actually say that. So let us just suppose that he was talking about the infant child of believers. He said, “I thought, Hmmm.” He was doing theology out of his own brain and not out of the word of God. In harmony with his own wisdom and not the wisdom of God, Professor Gritters supposed and asked his audience to imagine the little infant who dies. And what did the professor come up with out of his own brain? That infant goes to heaven and is given a voice. With his little voice that infant has to say, “God, forgive me…” And then and only then will that infant hear God say, “I do not hold that against you.”

Has Professor Gritters never read what the Reformed creeds say about the elect infants of believers? The infants are holy! So we read in Canons of Dordrecht 1.17:

Since we are to judge of the will of God from His Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature, but in virtue of the covenant of grace in which they, together with the parents, are comprehended, godly parents have no reason to doubt of the election and salvation of their children whom it pleaseth God to call out of this life in their infancy. (Confessions and Church Order, 159)

The elect infants of believers are holy. They are holy without a single work, word, deed, or action. They are holy because they are righteous. They are righteous without a single work, word, deed, or action. They are righteous because they are forgiven: forgiven by God at the cross of Jesus Christ, forgiven by God in eternity. And when they die, they are instantly in their heavenly home, surrounded by all the glories of the heavenly, with their resurrected souls given to them as the reward of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and they enjoy living and reigning with Jesus Christ. It is just as in life. Elect infants are holy before they do one thing and by virtue of the covenant of grace into which they are freely and graciously incorporated by God their eternal Father.

Does Professor Gritters not know what answer 74 of the Heidelberg Catechism says about elect infants?

Since they, as well as the adult, are included in the covenant and church of God; and since redemption from sin by the blood of Christ, and the Holy Ghost, the author of faith, is promised to them no less than to the adult… (Confessions and Church Order, 111)

Elect infants have the promise. That promise certainly includes their forgiveness. By Professor Gritters’ logic the infant child who lives does not have forgiveness either, unless and until he repents. He has a conditional promise in the covenant: God will forgive you when you repent.

Does Professor Gritters not know what the Reformed baptism form, which he has read many times in his ministry, says regarding infants?

Holy baptism witnesseth and sealeth unto us the washing away of our sins through Jesus Christ…And when we are baptized in the name of the Son, the Son sealeth unto us 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. (Confessions and Church Order, 258)

To be accounted righteous before God is to be forgiven. We have that as a free gift, even before we repent. Our elect infant children have that in the womb without one act of repentance. It is because the elect infant children of believers have that righteousness before God, and that without one act of repentance, that I also baptize those infants. The Reformed baptism form says that we baptize infants because “as they are without their knowledge partakers of the condemnation in Adam, so are they again received unto grace in Christ.” “Received unto grace in Christ” is the antithesis of “the condemnation in Adam.” You could say that as they received condemnation in Adam without a single act or work, so they are partakers without their knowledge, acts, or works of the forgiveness that is in Christ. Baptism, as the form reminds us, is “a seal of the covenant and of the righteousness of faith; and therefore Christ also embraced them, laid His hands upon them, and blessed them (Mark 10)” (Confessions and Church Order, 259).

The Heidelberg Catechism in answer 74 says that we baptize infants because they “are included in the covenant and church of God.” Ultimately, that inclusion is eternal and includes all the benefits of salvation in Christ, including the forgiveness of sins. The infant is not unforgiven until he repents, but he is forgiven apart from his repentance by grace and the free mercy of God, which extends to believers and their seed in the covenant of grace.

Professor Gritters contradicts the Reformed creeds because he contradicts the Lord, who said, “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3). Christ also said,

16. Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. 

17. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein. (Luke 18:16–17)

Jesus told his disciples his doctrine of salvation. That doctrine does not change when one becomes an adult. Indeed, Jesus applied his doctrine of salvation to the adult. Except you—the adult—become as a little child…! That is the experience of salvation. The experience of salvation is that the elect sinner is saved as a little child who does nothing for that salvation. That is the experience of faith too. Faith does nothing for salvation but rests in Christ alone. A child does not experience that consciously. The adult does. 

Only a big grown-up has to first repent before he is forgiven; but then, of course, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Professor Gritters by his theology does not open the kingdom, but he closes the kingdom except you repent first. He is like the theologians that Christ excoriated: “Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered” (Luke 11:52).

In his theological musings Professor Gritters taught that little children must become like adults and confess before they are forgiven. As such he also forbade the children to enter the kingdom. His theology is in essence no different than the conditional covenant theology that always suspends the promise to children on their acts of conversion, their repentance, or whatever else man has conceived to make a condition.

Perhaps this similarity in covenant doctrine is the reason that the Protestant Reformed Churches are increasingly cozy with the churches of the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council (NAPARC). There are a few differences in terminology, but in essence they all teach a conditional covenant promise to the infant children of believers; that is, they teach Arminianism in the sphere of the covenant. The Protestant Reformed Churches have made it their specialty to teach conditional covenant experience, but all are agreed that there is something man does first before God does his part. If I cannot predict when the Protestant Reformed Churches will snuggle in bed with Rome, their union with the churches of NAPARC is already a practical reality. Protestant Reformed theologians speak at the conferences of the churches of NAPARC. Protestant Reformed elders wish those who depart the PRC the Lord’s blessing in their new church homes in apostate Reformed denominations. Protestant Reformed ministers comfortably move to preach in the pulpits of those other Reformed denominations and with hearty commendations from their abandoned churches.

The repentance of little children in the covenant is not the way that the children enter the kingdom, but repentance is the manifestation of the kingdom of God that they possess and in which they are included, even before they are born. This is what we also teach the children. We teach them that as children of the kingdom they have forgiveness in Christ and to sorrow for their sins. Their forgiveness is part and parcel of their holiness that they possess by virtue of the covenant of grace in which they and their parents are included. That little children cannot repent does not mean that they are unforgiven, but it means that they must come yet to the years of discretion in which they consciously experience the gospel of forgiveness and thus fall down before their God with increasing awareness of their sinfulness and in thanksgiving for forgiveness freely given them in the gospel of justification by faith alone without works. If they are taken from this world by God before they can repent, then we are not to imagine them as repenting in heaven before God forgives them, but we imagine them as living and reigning with Jesus Christ and that as the testimony of God to how we all receive the kingdom: without our works and by grace alone or, as Christ said, “As a little child”!

Rewriting the Bible

This false theology about forgiveness Professor Gritters based on his abuse of scripture. Last time I looked at his abuses of the history of David’s sin with Bathsheba and of the record of the preaching of John the Baptist and the apostles. All these Professor Gritters made to serve the theology that a man is not forgiven unless he repents, that repentance is unto forgiveness, that repentance is so that a man may be forgiven, and all the other iterations of that kind of language that he used in the speech, all of which can be summarized this way: repentance is the prerequisite or condition to forgiveness. God is willing to forgive. God wants to forgive. God made provision for forgiveness. But God does not forgive and may not forgive unless and until man repents.

When Professor Gritters could not twist a scriptural passage to support this wickedness, then he simply rewrote scripture. The gospel according to Professor Gritters he found in Genesis 3. Remember that his doctrine is that forgiveness comes after and only after repentance, that repentance is unto forgiveness, and that the fruit of that repentance is reconciliation. He said,

So go back all the way to the beginning of human history, when God had Adam and Eve in his bosom, as it were; and then they sinned, and he said, “Away from me.” And he put them out, and he put that barrier in front of the garden’s entrance of flaming swords and said, “Stay away.” And then God went to pursue Adam and Eve; clothed them with the skin of an animal, whose blood was shed as a picture of substitutionary atonement; and then said, “Now that you’re covered, come back to me.”

The Holy Spirit, whose history it is, will be Professor Gritters’ judge. Here is the account of Genesis 3 as written by the Holy Ghost:

7. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. 

8. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. 

9. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

21. Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them.

22. And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: 

23. Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. 

24. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

Where is Professor Gritters’ fable in the history of Genesis 3? When did God once push Adam and Eve away from him? God came and sought them out! Adam and Eve fell into the arms of Christ. They were always forgiven. The Genesis history is nearly the exact opposite of Professor Gritters’ account. Perhaps he could also rewrite Genesis 1 and 2: “In the beginning, millions and millions of years ago, God made a big bang…” And the whole audience would nod at his learned explanation of scripture, which is nothing more than deceit. Did anyone at the lecture actually open up Genesis 3 and read what it says? Did no one remember the order of events that they learned in their catechism classes? Professor Gritters evidently was counting on either the ignorance, the complacency, or the complicity of his audience. He simply rewrote scripture to find his theology of repentance and then forgiveness and then reconciliation, or rather, to find in scripture his theology of conditional forgiveness and a conditional covenant.

He did the same thing with the parable of the prodigal son. Professor Gritters said,

Forgiveness always aims at coming back. The father says to the prodigal son, “Welcome home, son.” The prodigal son, who returned in repentance, heard the father say, “I forgive you,” and saw the father’s open arms, so that he could come back.

That is not what happened at all. The son was repentant, no doubt. But he did not say one thing before his father embraced him. Not one thing. I will let the Lord be Professor Gritters’ judge. Here is the account in Luke 15:17–21:

17. And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!

18. I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee,

19. And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.

20. And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.

21. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.

The point of the whole parable and even of the whole chapter is not that there is first repentance and then forgiveness and then reconciliation, as though the salvation of the sinner looks rather like assembling a piece of furniture from IKEA. The point of the parable is the joy at the repentance of the sinner as a miracle of the grace of God, who loves that sinner. That sinner he sought and found, and that sinner he drew back by cords of love.

A Strange God

I have said before that the God of the Protestant Reformed Churches I do not know. This theology of repentance and then forgiveness, as all theology must, traces itself back to one’s doctrine of God. In the speech Professor Gritters gave us his doctrine of God. I must quote a few sections from the speech. They will be unedifying to you, but they will be enlightening about the state of theology—or the doctrine of God—in the Protestant Reformed Churches.

The whole sacrificial system of the Old Testament pointed to that [forgiveness aims at reconciliation]. It ought to be very clear to us that forgiveness always aims at reconciliation. When the people of God came in the form of a priest, who went for them to where God lived, they had to go past the altar of burnt offering to see there on that altar substitutionary atonement, satisfaction for sin, that God provided a substitute for them. And then when they saw that and embraced that blessing with believing hearts, they didn’t turn around and leave, but they went in to God’s presence. They lived with him because God is symbolizing in that: “I want you to come back and be with me. But it will only be via the forgiveness of your sins. Come back, come back.”

Now, you must understand that when God says, “I want you to come back and be with me,” that is the wish and will of God. And when Professor Gritters said, “But it will only be via the forgiveness of your sins,” then that was not merely a statement that God in his eternal will for us to come back then also gives the forgiveness of sins. But the professor made clear that when God says to the sinner, “Come back, come back,” the will of God for the sinner’s reconciliation with God and the way of coming back through the forgiveness of sins hinges on, or is conditioned on, the sinner’s repentance and coming back. Remember that for Professor Gritters God does not forgive until and unless the sinner repents. Thus the full thought was that God says, “I want you to come back to me. Come back, come back in repentance. And then and only then will I forgive you.” Not that God makes that sinner come back to him. God does not bring to pass his eternal will for the elect sinner’s reconciliation. God is pleading, “Come back, come back.” The sinner must do something first. Billy Graham could not have said it better. He certainly said nothing worse.

At the altar God provided the sacrifice and thus also the forgiveness through which his people are reconciled to him, and on that basis God brings them back to him. As God says,

18. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; 

19. To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. 

20. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. (2 Cor. 5:18–20)

God’s command to be reconciled is not hinged on the sinner’s repentance but is based on what God actually did at the cross of Christ. God reconciled his people to himself. The ambassador of God is to declare that and to command in God’s name that they be reconciled, which word God effectually uses to reconcile them to himself.

Concerning his doctrine of God, Professor Gritters said,

First, about God: All of God’s works from eternity to eternity have their center in the cross. Everything that God determined was aiming at the cross, found its climax in the cross, and everything after the cross finds its significance in the cross. The cross is central. All of God’s works are aiming at that. This is what’s important to him: the provision for us guilty sinners that he puts away our sins. And that’s why you can read, for example, in Psalm 86:5 (we are going to sing that, God willing, at the end) that God is always ready to forgive. Do you want to know what kind of disposition God has that stands behind that declaration to you? It’s a readiness to forgive. And that’s why Micah 7:18 can say, “He delights in mercy.” It’s almost as though you can say about God, “There’s nothing he likes to do more than show you and me the mercy of saying to you, ‘I put away your sins. They are gone.’”

Everything in this paragraph reeks of contingency. These statements about God’s decree and God’s provision and God’s disposition must be understood in light of what Gritters taught throughout the speech: God does not forgive in eternity; God does not forgive at the cross; but God forgives only when the sinner first repents. That God is ready to forgive, then, means that he does not forgive unless and until you first repent.

But Professor Gritters should know that the word translated in Psalm 86:5 as “ready to forgive” means forgiveness. It is the adjective of the verbal root meaning to forgive. The noun form is used in Psalm 130:4. In the intensive form, meaning abundant forgiveness, the word is found in Nehemiah 9:17 and in Daniel 9:9. In all of these cases and in Psalm 86:5, the word is a statement about the nature of God. It is not a statement so much of God’s willingness to do something. It is not a statement of what God is prepared to do. It is a statement about the unchanging God. The word is parallel in Psalm 86:5 with God’s goodness and mercy. God is not prepared to be good. God is not ready to be good. He is good. He is goodness itself. He is good in all that he decrees and in all that he does. God is mercy. He is mercy itself. So God is forgiving. As God is good and unchangeably good from eternity to eternity, so with God is forgiveness, unchangeably and perfectly from all eternity. Not merely an attitude that wants to forgive and not an impotent desire, but there is forgiveness with God from eternity to eternity. From eternity to eternity, as the good, unchangeably just, and unchangeably merciful God, God forgives. That is simply in his nature. This is part of his decree as well concerning the salvation of sinners. That with God is forgiveness explains the salvation of sinners. It is not something that he wants to do if man does his part, but it is who God is by nature, what he determined in his decree, and thus what he brings to pass and reveals in his people for the glory of his own name as the God of all grace and mercy.

What Professor Gritters meant when he said, “God is always ready to forgive,” he made clearer when he compared us to God. We have to forgive like God forgives. I have no quibble with that. But Professor Gritters’ explanation of our forgiveness is more telling for the light it sheds on the doctrine of God.

Now, do you see what stands behind that declaration [our forgiving others]? That’s forgiveness—a declaration. What stands behind that declaration is a disposition to forgive. Don’t be angry; don’t be bitter; don’t be evil speaking; be kindhearted and tenderhearted to each other. And then comes the act of forgiveness. I, like God, want to be ready to forgive.

God might not be able to forgive yet because man did not repent, but God is ready! Some God. All men will perish in their sins.

Confess Specific Sins or Remain Unforgiven

Professor Gritters’ ignorance of who God is as the God of forgiveness not only explains why the professor so forcefully and repeatedly taught that sinners are unforgiven, but it also explains his insistence that forgiveness comes only after the confession of specific sins. That we do not confess specific sins is why a man can be unforgiven in this life, why he can be unforgiven in his death, and why the infant is unforgiven until the infant repents of a specific sin. The sinner must make the specific confession of a specific sin, or he remains unforgiven for that sin.

God is the God of forgiveness—abundant forgiveness—who forgives all my sins and not only the ones that I confess. I wish I could confess all my sins, but my confession about myself is like that of the psalmist: “For innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head: therefore my heart faileth me” (Ps. 40:12).

Oh, Professor Gritters does not hear Christ in those lines! And so he will not let a believer say that and be forgiven either!

My iniquities are more than the hairs of my head. More than the hairs of my head, like the phrases the stars of heaven and the sand on the seashore, is a description of that which is innumerable. I have so many sins that I cannot count them all. So the one who is conscious of the multitude of his sins and the depth of his sinfulness, as the publican in the temple, simply becomes the sinner and the ungodly, the embodiment and epitome of sin, before God. He lowers his head and cries out, “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13). In the publican Jesus gave to us the example of the man who went home justified. God said to that poor man, “Forgiven. No condemnation. There never was condemnation, and there never will be condemnation.” The publican did not confess one specific sin. He simply became the sinner, the ungodly, whom God loves to justify because with God there is forgiveness. The publican did not even become the repentant person. He became the ungodly. And it is the ungodly whom God justifies.

To such a one the gospel of Professor Gritters is that he is unforgiven until he numbers up in order to God all his specific sins so that he may hear from God that he is forgiven for those specific sins. Until then he remains unforgiven. Perhaps, as the fictional infant in Professor Gritters’ story, he would have the chance in heaven to confess his sins to God so that he may hear that he is forgiven. But, then again, perhaps not? And relying on his confession of specific sins, his poor conscience is continually vexed; and all his life long and in his death, he is without assurance that he is in fact forgiven.

Merit Theology

Professor Gritters’ doctrine of repentance and then forgiveness is merit theology. That is how he explained it. When he was justifying his doctrine that there must first be repentance before God forgives, he said that this does “justice to justice.”

Now, at this point it’s important, before we go on to the third element of God’s forgiveness of us, to ask about that relationship. Why first repentance, then forgiveness? And the answer includes at least two elements. The first, if I may say it that way, to do justice to justice. To do justice to God’s attribute of righteousness. To do justice to justice. You see, because forgiveness comes after confession, not because confession and repentance earn God’s forgiveness—Christ and his cross earned forgiveness. But forgiveness is for those who recognize that sin ought to be punished. And that opens up to an entirely new subject that ought to be developed in a series of sermons or lectures, and that is the righteous demands of God with regard to sin. God is a righteous God. Psalter 85:2 says, “All the doings of the Lord in justice have their birth.” That is, the womb from which all of the doings of God come forth is justice. Justice. And that means, then, in connection with God’s forgiveness of us, the sinner must recognize what God calls sin, sin; he must recognize that he ought to be held responsible; that what he did deserved punishment; and that he asks to be freed from that responsibility. And then God says, “Now you’re thinking aright. You deserve to be punished, but I put my punishment on my Son; and when you embrace him by faith, confessing that you ought to be punished, now I declare to you, ‘I have put away your sin on Jesus Christ.’” To do justice to justice; or, to use the language of the Heidelberg Catechism that most of us are familiar with, “God’s justice must be satisfied,” and everyone needs to live in the consciousness of that reality. To do anything different, people of God, is to do greatest injustice to this central reality of God’s doings in the cross. Why the cross? You have to ask yourself that question. Why the cross? And the answer is, because your sins deserve what he got. And you’re going to get his blessing only when you acknowledge what he got should have come to you. You’re not going to hear God speak unless you acknowledge that.

Note that Professor Gritters’ doctrine of repentance first and then forgiveness does “justice to justice.” Note that he was not explaining merely that our salvation has its foundation on God’s justice and that we cannot be saved apart from the satisfaction of the justice of God. But he was explaining why man must do something first. It is to satisfy the justice of God. God is unjust if he forgives before we repent. God is only just if we repent first and then and only then can he forgive. All the rest of what Professor Gritters said was just camouflage.

But the justice of our salvation was secure at the cross. It was there that God did justice to justice. Stating that repentance is necessary for forgiveness on the ground that it does “justice to justice” is a denial of the cross of Christ. Christ suffered, the just for the unjust. Even if repentance were unto forgiveness, there is nothing just in that at all because no one’s repentance is perfect. That God forgives the ungodly is the wisdom and grace of the God who did justice to justice at the cross of Christ. The glory of God’s justice is not that he demands that sinners first repent. The glory of God’s justice and the wonder of his grace are that he satisfied his own justice at the cross for those who are unjust, in order that he might be just and the justifier of the one who believes in Jesus. If repenting for forgiveness does justice to justice, then repenting is the thing that merits forgiveness. Professor Gritters can deny it all he wants, but in his scenario repenting for forgiveness does justice to justice. It is just, then, that God demands repentance before forgiveness, and it would be unjust if God gave forgiveness before repentance.

Where is the outcry? Where is the offense? This is just appalling theology. This is merit theology. This is doing theology. This is man-first theology. There is no gospel or grace in the business. God does not demand that the sinner repents to be forgiven in order to do justice to justice. Where is that in scripture and the creeds? Repentance is the gracious gift of God to an unworthy sinner, who is still unworthy even if he does repent and whose repentance when examined in the light of God’s justice is a shabby thing. Repentance, in fact, never does justice to justice. If repentance has to do justice to justice, then we are all doomed.

The theology of the speech was abominable, bankrupt, crass, and damning. There was no joy in it. There was no hope in it. There was no comfort in it. There was no assurance in it. Remember for Professor Gritters you can die unforgiven. He tried to cover that up with a few worthless assurances. But the people got the message. So one listener asked, “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 replied, “I think that is what I was just talking about too.”

The message of the speech was unforgiven!