Beware Hyper-Calvinists!
It seems that hyper-Calvinists are dangerous, fanatic religious creatures! There is no better way of frightening the faithful children of God than by warning them of hyper-Calvinists lurking around some dark corner.
What are these “hyper-Calvinists?” These presumably believe in sovereign and eternal election of a specific people to heavenly glory in Christ (Rom. 9; Eph. 1:4). These then draw fantastic, anti-scriptural conclusions from this. If God chooses His people in Christ from eternity, there is no need for preaching the gospel on the mission field. If God has His people there, He will bring them to salvation and to the church. There is no need to call sinners to repentance–since God has already determined their salvation. In fact, in extreme form, the hyper-Calvinist would deliberately preach of God’s work in salvation only to the elect of God. The gospel has nothing to say to the reprobate.
Let it be clearly understood: the Covenant Protestant Reformed Church of Northern Ireland are NOT hyper-Calvinistic. Because we deny a “free offer of the gospel” to all who hear the preaching, we are equated with “hyper-Calvinists.” We emphatically believe that God eternally has chosen a people in Christ. We believe He will preserve them and bring them to glory for Christ’s sake (Phil. 1:6; John 10:28-29). We believe that God uses the means of the preaching of the word to bring elect sinners, who are now in darkness, to repentance.
The church, therefore, must preach the word. It must be preached on the mission fields, wherever God would send it, to call sinners to repentance and belief in Jesus Christ as the only Saviour (Matt. 28:19). It must be preached within the congregations, reminding all who hear, that God commands repentance and faith in Christ (Acts 16:31). No preacher, no mere human being, can know who of his hearers is an elect of God. Therefore, with great urgency, and fervency, the preaching must go forth. It must present Christ and Him crucified (I Cor. 2:2). It cannot be addressed only to “elect.” All must hear what Scripture declares. But they must hear from Scripture that Christ died only for “His people” (Matt. 1:21). They must hear that Christ does not pray for the world, but only for His own (John 17:9). They must hear that Christ makes distinction between His sheep (already in the sheepfold and those still without—John 10:14, 16) and those who are not His sheep (John 10:26). They must hear that Christ gave His life for His sheep (John 10:15) and that they will hear and follow Him (27). That must be preached far and wide, within and without the congregations, to God’s glory. The command of Scripture must be preached: “Repent and believe and thou shalt be saved.” God will use such faithful preaching to bring (elect) sinners to repentance. Only He knows from eternity who these are.
Because we deny a “free offer of the gospel” (which is not scriptural terminology and cannot be supported by Scripture) but rather preach promiscuously the call of the gospel (which IS the proper scriptural term and can be supported by Scripture), we have been called “hyper-Calvinists.” Is this a fair charge? Rev. Hanko
The Believer’s Choice
“And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:15).
Do men have a choice in their salvation?
So it is often presented. Christ is preached, but the hearers must choose. Do they want to accept Christ or do they refuse? The choice is theirs. In fact, God cannot save a man unless he first chooses for God.
The text quoted above is often used as proof that men have a choice. After all, does not the text say: “Choose you this day whom ye will serve …”?
A common practice has again been followed: A text has been taken from the Bible and badly mistreated for purposes of supporting some idea or doctrine which is not found in the Bible at all.
If one would only read the text as it stands in Scripture, one could see that it does not support any such notion of man’s free choice in salvation.
Joshua, just before he died, called all Israel together to Shechem. In a rather lengthy and beautiful speech, he reminded them of all the blessings God had given to them in leading them from Egypt to Canaan. But because among the Israelites were to be found idols, especially idols which their fathers had served when they still lived in Ur of the Chaldees and in Egypt, Joshua admonishes them to put these idols away. The danger of idolatry was a great one, for in Canaan too Israel was surrounded by people who served idols.
Joshua has reference to this fact when he speaks of a choice which Israel has. The choice which he presents to them is not a choice between Jehovah the true God and idols. It is a choice between the idols Israel’s fathers served or the idols of the people of the land: “If it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell.”
Joshua wants to impress upon Israel that if they do not want to serve God, then they may choose between different idols. But it makes no difference to him what idols they choose, for all are evil and vanity.
Over against that idolatry, Joshua makes his ringing promise: “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Salvation does not depend on man’s choice to serve God or permit Christ to enter his heart.
Man’s choice is always for sin — apart from God’s work of grace. He can do nothing else but choose sin. Luther wrote his greatest book, The Bondage of the Will, to prove that man’s will is a slave to sin.
That is the horror of sin: man cannot do any good at all — that is bad enough. But man cannot even want to do good. That is the great slavery of sin. He is so tightly tied in the chains of sin that his will is bound completely and can only choose sin.
What a hopeless sinner man is! Salvation is only of God.
Yet Scripture teaches that we choose. In Hebrews 11:24-26 Moses is said to have made a choice: “By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward.”
But Moses’ choice for the people of God was a choice which he made “by faith.” When God gives His people the gift of faith, by that power of faith they are able to choose to cast their lot with the people of God by forsaking the world with its treasures and pleasures. They are able to do this even when joining with the people of God means suffering affliction with the people of God and enduring the reproach of Christ.
Do you have that faith which only God can give (Eph. 2:8)? Then you are able to choose for God’s people over against the world with its pleasures and attractions. Prof. Hanko
What About the “Bastard?”
We thank those who responded to our News by asking questions of a spiritual nature and asking concerning difficult texts. We will try to answer some of these in the News.
One question was: How do I answer a “seeker of God’s grace,” who has been born out of wedlock, when he or she questions me quite emotionally about the very specific declaration made in Deuteronomy 23:2?
The text reads: “A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord …” Briefly, this person should be reminded that the cross of Jesus Christ represents a fulfilment of the Old Testament rules and regulations. That person ought to put out of his/her mind the very thought that these circumstances of his birth in any way affect his salvation.
The Old Testament makes very clear that the sins of the fathers are not the reason for punishment of their children (cf. Jer. 31:29-30). The point of Deuteronomy 23:2, therefore, was not that God was punishing the bastard for the sins of his father any more than God was punishing those “wounded in the stones” (1) when they too were excluded from the “congregation of the Lord.”
We must remember that in the age of “type (picture) and shadow,” God would reveal His own holiness and righteousness in a way that Israel could understand. Whatever was “imperfect” or “unclean” was not to stand in God’s tabernacle. So also, the gentile could not stand before the “congregation of the Lord” (3, 8). The Israelite too must bring a perfect lamb before God in sacrifice.
All of this served to remind the people of the infinite holiness of God—and the sinfulness of natural man. Any who stands in the “congregation of the Lord,” after all, must be spotless and holy.
Ultimately, no person could stand before God. Man is a sinner, but God is without sin and is perfectly righteous. The Old Testament sacrifices also pictured the fact that only in the way of shed blood could any stand in the “congregation of the Lord.”
Christ’s cross has made the Old Testament pictures no longer necessary. We have now the Spirit of Pentecost to guide in all this truth (John 14:26). We have been taught that righteousness is not by “law” but by “grace” (Gal. 2:20-21).
Scripture further declares in Galatians 3:26ff, “For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” The slave, the Greek, the female (or the bastard) are not excluded from Christ because of that fact, for “if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (29). We must remember, then, that His people are “adopted” (Gal. 4:5-6) and “born again” (John 3:3) through the work of the Spirit of the Son, on the basis of His atoning work.
