“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28–30).

Sharp Contrast

Such are the burden-easing and rest-giving words of our Lord to weary and toiling sinners. All rest is of him and from him. In ourselves there are only burden, labor, and toil. That burden, labor, and toil are the unbearable yoke and bondage of the law and the unbearable burden of guilt. Whosoever is in the law and is under the law cannot have any other experience than that of bondage and a bondage in which there is no rest. There is no rest now, and there is no rest eternally.

Astoundingly, man exists under that bondage and supposes that he is free. Not all who hear the word of the Lord are laboring and heavy laden. Many in his audience have no sense of burden and no realization of toil. Only when the Lord by his grace opens your eyes, ears, and hearts do you begin to see in what peril you stand, and you weary of it all. You stand before the living God unable to be right with him in yourself. And Jesus comes and draws you to himself. He takes away the killing yoke of the law and lifts the crushing burden of guilt. He places on you his yoke—which is easy—and his burden—which is light—and gives rest to your souls.

Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is all of him, and it is none of us. Such is the truth of the calling. For what Jesus did in those verses was to call his own. He did not call all. He called only his own. In that calling he certainly, infallibly, and irresistibly saved his own by his powerful voice. He lifted their burdens, and he gave them rest. “Come to me!” Jesus said. And he made that call resonate in their hearts, and they came to him, drawn by his irresistible summons.

Beautiful!

Gracious!

Saving!

But listen!

Another sound!

It is not enough for salvation that God has sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into the world. It is not enough that there is a Jesus. It is not enough that this Jesus was born of a virgin, that this Jesus lived a perfect life, that this Jesus taught and defended the word of God, that this Jesus suffered under the wrath of God in an atoning death, that this Jesus arose with his body from the grave on the third day, that this Jesus is ascended in power at the right hand of God in the heavens. Not enough for salvation.

God must not only have sent Jesus into the world, but I must come and you must come to Jesus. I must become one with him, so that I enjoy his fellowship and share in his salvation. For salvation it is necessary that I come to him. And if I do not come to him, there is no salvation and no enjoyment of the blessings of salvation.¹

Ugly!

Wicked!

Damning!

Such were the words that Rev. Ronald Cammenga (now Professor Cammenga, Emeritus of the Theological School of the Protestant Reformed Churches) preached in 2003 on Matthew 11:28. It is difficult to comprehend how a man who claims to be Reformed can get something like that across his lips. That he could preach those words in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he so savaged, indicates that he is not Reformed at all. He is Arminian at heart.

In those statements Cammenga created a disjunction—fatal—between the saving acts of God in Christ and the coming of the sinner to Christ. The sinner by his obedience to the call adds to Christ’s work, which Cammenga said was “not enough” and which must also then be insufficient. He did not teach that the calling proceeds from God’s election. But the coming of the sinner to Christ is the activity that makes all the other saving acts of God worthwhile and effectual. It is “not enough” that Jesus was incarnate, died, was raised, and ascended to God’s right hand, but we must come to Jesus. Jesus is not a savior, a complete savior, unless and until we come to him.

Sickening!

Clear Departure

Christ saved us at the cross. He saved us with a holy calling too.

But for Cammenga Jesus made salvation a possibility, a possibility only realized when we come to Jesus.

Worse, if that were possible, Cammenga posited the possibility that those who are called do not in fact come and do not in fact enjoy the blessings of salvation. Especially this last statement is important: “If I do not come to him, there is no salvation and no enjoyment of the blessings of salvation.”

I doubt highly that if you pressed Cammenga, he would deny that there is election and that the elect are called. But what then was he doing? He was teaching especially that in the daily experience of salvation it is the sinner’s coming to Christ that brings with it the enjoyment of the blessings of salvation. I daresay that if you pressed Cammenga, he would say that the elect have salvation, but what the elect do not have is the enjoyment of salvation until they come to Jesus Christ. Perhaps I am being too generous. But the issue here is that for Cammenga there is not an irresistible demand in the decree of election that the elect are called and that by the power of that calling, the elect infallibly come. It seems that for Cammenga everyone in Christ’s audience is laboring and heavy laden, and there are some who will obey the call and come to Jesus. But not all are laboring and heavy laden. That is a characteristic of God’s elect when God begins to work in them through the calling. For Cammenga the calling is not the fruit of election, so that the call goes out into the world to gather God’s elect. It is not inconceivable for Cammenga—as it is for a Reformed man—that the elect who are called would not come. Cammenga conceives of and teaches the possibility that an elect child who is called would not come to Christ and that he would not enjoy his salvation.

If anything should have told everyone who had ears to hear that there was something seriously wrong in the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC), then it should have been that sermon with the quotation above at its heart.

Cammenga’s sermon was protested to the consistory of Southwest Protestant Reformed Church, and the protest eventually went to the September 8, 2004, meeting of Classis East of the PRC. I sat at the deliberations. The delegates were not appalled by the preaching of Reverend Cammenga, and some delegates even demanded more of that kind of preaching in the churches. They had gotten the message, and they liked the message. And make no mistake: the quotation above was the heart of the sermon and is the doctrine that Cammenga intended to communicate as he was preparing his congregation to partake of the Lord’s supper the following Sunday. He had crafted the whole sermon to come to the point that what Jesus did for salvation was “not enough,” but also you must come! For Cammenga not only election and the cross bring salvation into your possession, but also your act of coming to Christ is necessary to make the cross worthwhile and saving.

In that sermon Cammenga taught the new Protestant Reformed doctrine of the calling. I say that this doctrine was new because it was a departure from the doctrine of the calling taught by Rev. Herman Hoeksema, Rev. George Ophoff, and others who were the founding ministers of the PRC. The PRC had her origin in controversy over the doctrine of the calling. The Christian Reformed Church in 1924 with her adoption of the three points of common grace also adopted officially the doctrine of the calling known as the well-meant gospel offer or sometimes simply called the free offer. This doctrine was found in what Hoeksema called in Dutch the little point of the first point. That first point reads as follows:

Concerning the first point, with regard to the favorable disposition of God toward mankind in general, and not only to the elect, Synod declares that according to the Scripture and the confessions it is determined that besides the saving grace of God, shown only to the elect unto eternal life, there is a certain kind of favor, or grace of God which He shows to His creatures in general. This is evidenced by the quoted Scripture passages and from the Canons of Dort II, 5 and III and IV, 8 and 9, which deals with the general offer of the Gospel; whereas the quoted declarations of Reformed writers from the golden age of Reformed theology, also give evidence that our Reformed fathers from of old have advocated these opinions.²

The Christian Reformed Church slipped the free offer of the gospel into her decision, as though it were common knowledge that there is a general offer of the gospel. In that the Christian Reformed Church showed what she wa s after—a grace of God that offers salvation to all men who hear the gospel. That was the real prize. There is a favor of God in which he desires the salvation of all men and according to which favor he offers salvation to all men in the gospel. That decision was a corruption of the doctrine of the calling.

Rev. H. Hoeksema and others most vigorously opposed that doctrine. In their opposition they explained clearly the truth of the calling and insisted on a doctrine of the calling governed by election and proceeding from the truth of God’s sovereignty. They insisted on a doctrine of the calling that gave all the glory to God, who draws his people to Christ and saves them in Christ. Those men gave no glory to man in the calling, as though the calling of God depends on the response of man. There was nowhere to be found in their doctrine of the calling a disjunction between what God had done—election and the cross—and what man must do yet to receive the blessedness that God had prepared for man. Their view of the calling was that the very election and work of God in Christ demand the calling and the effectual coming of the elect to Christ.

Hoeksema’s Doctrine

That the election and work of God in Christ demand the calling and effectual coming of the elect to Christ is what the men who opposed the corrupt doctrine of the calling preached as well, as is clear, for instance, from Hoeksema’s exegesis of Matthew 11:28. I remind the reader that he wrote the following in July 1925, so it represents the founding doctrine of the calling in the Protestant Reformed Churches.

I [Jesus] will give you rest!

He is the Rest-giver because it is He that accomplished the task. He put His shoulders under our burdens, the burdens of our guilt and sin and condemnation. For the Father gave Him a people from before the foundations of the world, a people whose Savior He was to be, their Head and their Redeemer, and whom He was to bring from the horrible slavery of sin and death into the glorious liberty of the children of God. He, therefore, was to take their place, and to assume their burdens of guilt and sin, to carry them way down into the dark and deep valley of His agony and death, to leave them there forever.

And He did so, according to the will of His Father.

He did put His shoulders under their heavy burdens, under which they would have been crushed into death and hell.

And He was strong, for His Name was Almighty God.

He was able to bear these burdens even unto the accursed tree of the Place of Skulls, to enter with them into the dark abyss of death and hell, to toil and labor with them until He had shaken off the load of guilt and the shackles of death, and, first from Calvary, then soon from Joseph’s garden, He might send forth the glad tidings: It is finished!

He accomplished the task.

With Him there is rest.

And the Rest-giver He is, too, because it is He that causes us, by the irresistible operations of His Spirit and grace to enter into His rest.

By nature we would not even seek to enter into that rest. Surely, we may seek rest, but we do not desire His. Rest we seek and imagine to possess in the accomplishment of our own righteousness, which is abominable to Jehovah. But He never forgets His people, neither leaves them alone. Into their hearts and minds He enters by the Spirit of grace. In that heart He knows how to create unrest and worry. He reveals unto them the greatness of their sin, the abomination of their vain righteousness, their own impotency to fulfill the demands of the law, their proneness to all evil, and the corruption of their heart and mind…

And with unrest He fills the heart, till every last basis of self-confidence is removed, till from the heart the cry is wrung: “O God, be merciful unto me, a sinner!”

And then, when all the wisdom and prudence, all the righteousness of works, all self-conceit and self-confidence to carry our own burdens and remove them is uprooted, and the heart longs for a righteousness that is not its own but God’s, He stands forth in all the beauty of His salvation, in all the glory of His power, and says: “Weary toiler, it is finished. The task thou laborest to accomplish is completed. The work is done!”

It was done for you.

Completely finished by Me.

I will give you rest!

Come unto Me!

Blessed summons, when by the gracious call of His Spirit, He makes it resound in our soul!

And blessed soul that obeys that summons and comes!

It is a coming which is the result of Father’s drawing. For no one can come unto Him except the Father which sent Him draw him. The drawing is first, and the coming second. The drawing is the cause, and the coming is the result. It is the drawing of that love which is always first, and the coming of faith which relies on that love.

It is a coming which begins when we cast away all our own righteousness and every basis of confidence in self. For we cannot come unto Him with aught of self. Empty and poor and naked, weary and exhausted, as the drowning man who struggled with the tempestuous sea till his strength was gone, thus we must come to Him Who is our all.

It is a coming that continues when we see Jesus as we never see Him with our natural eye, full of grace and glory and life and rest and peace, the fullness of our wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and complete redemption, and when our soul, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, desires to possess Him above all the treasures and pleasures of the world.

It is a coming by which we draw nearer, when we hear Him address us, as with the natural ear we could never hear, so clearly and distinctly as if He were calling us by name: “Weary toiler, heavily burdened one, cease from toiling at your impossible task. I have finished. Come unto Me and rest!”

It is a coming whereby we know and trust that when He bore the burden of His people’s sin, our transgressions and our iniquities were also upon Him, so that we believe His promise and trust for life and death with all our soul in that promise: I will give you rest!

And that promise He fulfills.

He fulfills it when He sheds forth the love of God into our hearts, that love in which there is no fear, and when He gives us the faith by which we shout in joy and redemption: “We, therefore, being justified by faith, have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He fulfills it when, if we would return to the old burdens and the slavery of sin and death, He draws us back unto Himself and assures us, “Your sins are forgiven.” He fulfills it, when amid the battle and strife of this present life in the midst of the world, He makes us partakers of the peace that passes all understanding.

And He will fulfill it to the last.

For the final rest is not yet.

There still remains a sabbath for the people of God.

The eternal sabbath.

And the Rest-giver will surely bring that final rest. When all of life is over and all the weary night is past, and the last one of His toiling people shall have been brought into the rest He accomplished, then He shall come again and lead His people into the perfect rest. Then the toiling and groaning creation shall be delivered from the yoke of vanity and corruption and partake of the rest of God’s children.³

Oh, how antithetical, how joyful, and how comforting is this doctrine over against the wretched and disturbing Arminianism of Cammenga. There is no rest in his doctrine. There is only what man must do to be saved. God and all his work in Christ are turned into a possibility unless and until man comes to Christ.

Cammenga’s Arminianism

The teaching of Cammenga in his sermon was a total rejection of the doctrine of the calling taught by Hoeksema, and thus it was also a total departure from the doctrine that was the founding doctrine of the PRC. The PRC sold her birthright! And Cammenga has taught this doctrine to a generation or more of Protestant Reformed ministers. His doctrine is a corruption of the truth of the calling and is fundamentally Arminian. His doctrine of the calling is essentially an offer, and it is essentially conditional.

This can be seen if we distill the Arminian doctrine of the well-meant gospel offer. What is that doctrine at its heart? Often people get wrapped up with the words offer and condition. But take the doctrine down to its simplest form. At its heart the doctrine of the well-meant offer is devoid of election. By the admission of the doctrine’s proponents, the calling in the well-meant gospel offer does not proceed from election, but the calling proceeds from God’s general attitude of favor toward humanity in general.

Neither does Cammenga’s doctrine of the calling have election in it. There is something in his doctrine for everyone. There is a decision that all who hear must make. There is no inevitability in his doctrine from election to calling to salvation. His doctrine is potentiality and possibility. As far as his audience is concerned, God has an offer of salvation to everyone who hears the gospel, if they will come to Christ. Cammenga’s doctrine of the calling is not God’s carrying out his plan of salvation by the calling. Cammenga’s doctrine of the calling is man’s making effectual the sacrifice of Christ for himself and his own enjoyment of salvation. To make the kind of disjunction that Cammenga makes between God’s work and man’s coming is to deny election and that God’s election bears its fruit in the calling.

Further, the well-meant gospel offer has at its heart a contingency. That contingency means that there is the possibility that those who are called do not come. The offer of God goes to all, and it depends on a response from man. So also Cammenga’s doctrine teaches. Indeed, the one follows from the other. Because his doctrine of the calling is election-less, it is also a doctrine that contains the possibility that those who are called do not come. His word to his audience—and remember, he does not view those who hear as unbelievers and worldly people—which is the church, is that if you do not come, there is no salvation and no enjoyment of salvation. Man is able to frustrate the will and power of God expressed in the calling to come.

It is completely inconceivable that God elects his people, that Christ dies and is resurrected for his people, and that his elect people not come to Christ. “Come to me!” says Christ. That is not the proclamation of a condition. That is the proclamation of the sovereign Lord, who carries out his counsel of election and draws his people unto himself.

Calling as God’s Work

Before I define the calling, I want to emphasize three things about the calling that by themselves refute every corruption of the doctrine of the calling and especially the corruption of Cammenga’s Arminian conception of the calling that it is not enough for your salvation that Christ died, but also you must come to Jesus.

The calling is the work of the triune, sovereign God. The calling is the work of the triune, sovereign God to carry out in the elect sinner, at the level of the sinner’s consciousness, God’s decree appointing that sinner to salvation. The calling is about the work of God. The calling is not about what man must do. The calling is not about what man is able to do. The calling is not the proclamation of the condition for man’s experience and enjoyment of his salvation. The calling is about God and his sovereign work of grace.

The analogy here is the creation of the world. Frequently in scripture the calling of the sinner to Christ is described in terms of God’s creation of the world. For example, Romans 4:17 says, “Even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.” God is the God of the calling in creation and in salvation. In both he calls into being that which is not. The work of salvation is more wonderful than creation in that God’s calling raises dead people to life.

The same thought is found in 1 Corinthians 1:26–29:

26. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:

27. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

28. And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:

29. That no flesh should glory in his presence.

God is the God who not only calls but who also calls the things that are not. He does this in creation and in salvation. The purpose is that no flesh glory in his presence. If one’s doctrine of the calling allows men to glory, which Cammenga’s does, then that is also its condemnation. Cammenga, in fact, denigrates the work of Christ in favor of the obedience of man to God’s calling. The issue in Cammenga’s doctrine is not God but man. Cammenga robs God of his glory and gives it to man. The purpose of the doctrine of the calling in scripture is that God receives all the glory, as indeed he does, if the calling of the elect in salvation is like God’s calling in creation in the beginning. Man is nothing in that calling. God is everything in that calling.

This analogy between God’s calling of us and his creation of the world is also found in 2 Corinthians 4:6: “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” As foolish as it is to focus on light and the act of light becoming when light was called, so foolish is it to focus on the sinner and his coming when the sinner is called. The focus is not light or the sinner, but the focus is God and his sovereignty and power. The point is not to say, “Oh, see how light came forth” or “See how the sinner came” but to say, “Oh, behold the power and glory of God, who causes light to be and who calls sinners out of darkness into his marvelous light.” When speaking about the calling, the point that the calling is about the work of God cannot be emphasized too much. When one starts with the principle that the calling is about God and his wonderwork in Christ, then one never can arrive at the sort of doctrine of the calling as taught by Cammenga. His doctrine is the fruit of making the calling about man and what man must do for salvation and the experience of salvation. Cammenga’s doctrine of the calling is a doctrine of man.

Calling Proceeds from Election

Further, and before I come to the specific definition of what this work of the triune, sovereign God in calling is, I must emphasize that the calling proceeds from election. The calling and election are inseparable, and the one cannot be discussed without the other. Wherever calling is mentioned or taught, whether explicitly or implicitly, election is in view as the source. Wherever election is taught, calling is there as the fruit. So 2 Timothy 1:9 teaches that God “hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.” Here I note that the calling of the child of God is according to God’s purpose, which purpose is the election of his people in Christ.

I note also and will note throughout the course of my treatment of the various doctrines of our salvation that our calling is simply synonymous with our salvation. Calling is our salvation. Scripture often speaks this way about the various benefits of salvation. Regeneration is our salvation. Calling is our salvation. Union with Christ is our salvation. Justification is our salvation. Sanctification is our salvation. This idea refutes the common notion that there is a temporal order of salvation in which salvation is given in installments and that those installments are mutually dependent upon one another. The point of presenting salvation as mutually dependent installments is to introduce the activities of man as vital to the reception of the next benefit of salvation. So, for instance, God regenerates and calls man. Man is then to respond positively and come. Man’s coming then issues in his faith, and his activity of faith issues in his justification. But scripture has a different viewpoint. Each benefit of salvation is salvation. When we are regenerated, we are saved. When we are called, we are saved. When we are united to Christ, we are saved. When we are justified, we are saved. And this is true of all the benefits of salvation. They are salvation. And, if I may speak foolishly for a moment, if you would die immediately at the point of your calling, then you would be saved and go to heaven.

Also Romans 8:29–30 teaches the inseparable source of the calling in election:

29. Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

30. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

There is no man or the activities of man in this golden chain of salvation. Calling proceeds from, is demanded by, and is the fruit and effect of election. In a very real sense, election obtains for God’s people the promise and salvation by means of the calling.

This vital connection between election and calling is the point of the apostle Peter in 2 Peter 1:10: “Brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall.” Here the apostle exhorts the Christian to make his calling and election sure. The explanation of this is that when the believer hears God address him in the depth of his being through the preaching of the gospel, then the work of God in that calling is to assure the believer of his election by God. This is because of the inseparable relationship between election and calling as between cause and effect or root and fruit.

Christ taught the inseparable connection between calling and election both positively in the case of the elect and negatively in the case of the reprobate. So we read in John 10:26–27: “Ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Jesus speaks of the calling when he speaks of his voice. He knows whom he calls because he elected them. His sheep hear Jesus’ voice and follow him as the fruit and effect of his calling to them. In the case of the reprobate, Jesus does not call them. He never knew them. And they do not come to Christ and believe in Christ because they are reprobate.

To illustrate that where calling is mentioned, election is in view, I point out Acts 2:39 and Peter’s proclamation of the promise on Pentecost: “The promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” Peter preached the promise to all who heard. However, the promise is unto those and those only whom God calls. According to Romans 8:29, those whom God calls are those whom he foreknew and whom he predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son.

Once again, it must be emphasized that if one starts with the inseparable relationship between calling and election, one never can arrive at Cammenga’s doctrine of the calling. His doctrine of the calling is election-less. Election, on the contrary, finds its fruit in the calling and the salvation of those called according to God’s purpose.

The Cross and Calling

One more point that must be emphasized is the relationship between the cross and the calling. By “the cross” I mean Christ’s incarnation, lifelong obedience, atoning suffering, resurrection, ascension, and glorification. The incarnation culminated in the cross. And the cross is the ground for the glorification of Christ and his receiving from God the promise of the Holy Spirit. In his sermon Cammenga specifically said that the cross is not enough for salvation. Now, that is incredible! The cross accomplished salvation. Christ said at his cross that the whole will and counsel of God for our salvation is finished! Christ justified his elect church at the cross, about which God gave testimony when he raised Christ from the dead. At the cross he was our complete and perfect savior, in whose wounds we find unspeakable consolation. As with the truth of the relationship between election and the calling, so we must speak about the relationship of the cross and the calling. The cross is not to be placed in juxtaposition with the coming of the sinner to Christ. The cross was not that which merely made possible the sinner’s coming to Christ, but the cross was the very ground and foundation of the sinner’s coming to Christ. Exactly because the elect sinner and the whole elect church were in fact reconciled to God at the cross, so they must be reconciled to God in their own minds. They must, in short, be called unto him. Such is the apostle’s teaching about the calling in 2 Corinthians 5:18–21:

18. 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.

21. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

One cannot ever teach Cammenga’s doctrine of the calling if one starts where the apostle started. We are elect. We are reconciled. Now, be reconciled! That is the divine, effectual word that God makes to resonate in the hearts of his elect people, drawing them irresistibly to himself and into his covenant fellowship.

How, then, do we define that calling by God of his elect? The calling is the wonderwork of God’s grace in Christ whereby God addresses the elect sinner in the depth of his being and on the level of his consciousness, summoning him from darkness to light and translating him from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. In this calling the elect sinner is drawn irresistibly to Christ by the Father and comes to Christ willingly.

I will develop this subject in the next editorial, the Lord willing.