REFORMED HERALD
September, 1992
A Publication of the
Reformed Church
in the United States
"Heralding the Good News of Jesus Christ"
EDITOR'S CORNER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peter B. Grossmann
"The problem with you Reformed guys is that you're always yakking about
'doctrine'! How about just encouraging people to be Christians, to get saved,
love Jesus, and live decent lives? What's so all-fired important about
'doctrine'? After all, we're all basically working for the same goals, aren't
we?"
Yes, we Reformed folks talk about doctrine a lot. We defend the teachings of
the Bible vicorously, even to the point of seperating from churches and
organizations that deny that the Bible is God's inspired, infallible Word.
Yes, we're kind of the oddballs on the Christian scene because we are so
insistent that purity of Biblical doctrine be maintained.
Why is that? The answer is very simple: It does make a difference what you
believe. If you don't believe the right things, your life will not be
consistent with God's revelation, and your very soul may be in danger of
eternal condemnation in hell.
Strong words, you say? Yes, they are. Please take a look at Loraine
Boettner's article on premillennialism later in this issue. Errors of doctrine
lead people to the brink of hell. That's why a "reformed" church must keep on
reforming.
In this era of church history, the premillennial view of Christ's return
very often goes hand-in-hand with arminianism. (Though the one does not
necessarily follow from the other.) Arminianism, named after the once-reformed
Dutch tehologian Jacob Arminius, is an elaboration of an old heresy in the
church. The Synod of Dordt in 1618 met to answer five docrinal points
formulated by the Arminians. That Reformed meeting developed what we now know
as the Five Points of Calvinism (T-U-L-I-P).
Arminian teaching is very popular. Almost all evangelical churches outside
the reformed camp hold to one form of Arminianism or another. Why is this
system so popular?
Arminianism is a system of self-salvation. It hold that in the Fall man did
not lose the ability to do good. Man still has free will to choose between
good and evil. Christ died equally for every individual of the whole race of
man, simply making salvation a possibility. God's grace is offered equally to
all, and man can of his own accord receive or reject His grace. To be saved,
man has to repent, accept (or receive) Christ, and get born again (in that
order). Saving grace is not necessarily permanent, but after being born again,
man can reject the gifts of God and perish eternally. Man must cooperate with
God to be saved. God makes no distinction between persons. Thus, all the saved
are elect, not as indivduals, but as a class. Predestination means that God
simply has foreknown who will turn out to be believers and He has predestined
them to be conformed to the image of Christ. God may try and try to save a man,
but unless that man is willing to accept the efforts of God, God can do
nothing.
The attractiveness of Arminianism is that it gives man credit, and heaven
knows, we all could use some of that.
This doctrinal system takes God off the throne and puts the free will of man
on the throne. Man is in the center of things. He would gladly steal God's
sovereignty from Him. That's why Adam and Eve so willingly fell prey to
satan's temptation: "You will be as God..."
It sounds good to be told that there is some good in all of us, and that we
can accomplish great things. It is sweet music to our ears to hear that we can
get to heaven on our own, or at least by working together with God.
However, when it comes to matters of life and death, heaven and hell it does
not matter whether what we believe is agreeble to the human heart. What
matters is whether what we believe is the truth as tested by the Word of God.
The Bible clearly indicates that God chooses man not on the basis of merit,
but out of His sovereign choice. He chose Abraham, a pagan worshipper of the
moon. He chose Jacob over Esau, before they were born, saying, "Jacob have I
loved, Esau have I hated." God chose Israel, not because it was the greatest
political, millitary, scientific power of the age. God chose a nation of
slaves so He might show that blessing is not of man's merit, but of His grace
and mercy alone. God chose you the same way, for the same reason. The glory
belongs to God, not you.
In His grace God sent His Son to die as the perfect sacrifice for sin, and
then He gave Christ's rigteousness to us as a freely imputed gift.
Then God chose to save man through faith in the most foolish activity of
all: the preaching of the good news that our Substitute's work in a servant's
death on a criminal's cross is the only way to life. We performed no heroic
deed to earn it.
Doctrine is important. Wrong doctrine destroys.
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