The Beginning of Conversion

7 MAY

But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live. Ezekiel 18:21-22

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Ephesians 2

If this humane invitation of God does not stir us, we have no excuse. For He bears witness that He is gracious to us when we heartily desire to be reconciled to Him. Still, He requires serious repentance.

A kind of half-conversion can be discerned in many who think they are safe before God if they can only bring forward something worthy of praise. But that is like a servant offering his matter muddy wine, which is mixed not only with dregs but also with filth. So are the works of those who do not put away all depraved desires and strive to free themselves from corruptions of the flesh.

Note what is taught here, that the beginning of conversion is to renounce oneself and one’s lust. To that must be added another part of duty, for when anyone bids farewell to his vices, he must also devote himself in obedience to God. The prophet here joins the two together, since one cannot be separated from the other. Hence the Spirit here shortly defines what true and legitimate conversion is. He says that when someone is converted, his life is prepared for God, since God will forget all his sins. This confirms the doctrine, for God cannot be entreated as long as He imputes our sins to us. Hence, we may deem Him gracious to us, for He promises that as soon as we truly repent, all our sins will be buried and no longer remembered.

The incomparable goodness of God is that He deigns to forget all our sin as soon as He sees us earnestly desirous of returning to Him.

John Calvin

FOR MEDITATION:

This text is excellent material for self-examination. If true conversion involves fleeing from or evil desires and corruptions and devoting ourselves obediently to God, it should be our regular practice to examine ourselves to make sure that, by God’s grace, we have indeed done these very things. Have you?

365 Days With Calvin

Selected and Edited by Joel R. Beeke

Inciting God’s Wrath

6 MAY

Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; As the vine tree among the trees of the forest, which I have given to the fire for fuel, so will I give the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Ezekiel 15:6

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Matthew 3:7-12

As often as we are favored with God’s gifts, by which we approach Him and overcome the world, we ought also to remember what we were before God took us up. Acknowledging our original condition will erode all arrogance and prevent us from being ungrateful to God.

But that is not sufficient; we must also recognize that not only has God’s free grace raised us to such a height, but it also sustains us. Thus our continued state of grace is not because of our efforts but depends only on His will. Remembering our origin ought to humble us but also impress on us the sense of our infirmity. From this we learn that we cannot persevere unless God daily, yes, even momentarily, strengthens us and follows us  with His favor.

Finally, if God afflicts or chastises us with His rod, we should know that He chooses this means to beat out of us the foolish confidence by which we deceive ourselves. We thus ought to diligently weigh the meaning of the phrase “the wood of the vine is useless when it is torn up,” especially when dry. For although profane nations perish, yet it is not surprising that God’s judgments will be even more severe toward the reprobate who are members of the church and have been enriched with spiritual gifts, yet who persist in unbelief.

The punishment of such ingratitude will make us an example to others, so that whole world may be astonished at such dreadful signs of God’s anger. The Jews will become such objects of God’s wrath that they will cause hissing and abhorrence in the nations around them. They will be an astonishment and curse to the profane nations.

John Calvin

FOR MEDITATION:

The judgments that God will exact on those who belong to His church but are not true members are a terrifying prospect! The discipline that He uses to humble our pride is to be welcomed. It may be painful, but it reminds us that we owe everything to God’s grace.

365 Days With Calvin

Selected and Edited by Joel R. Beeke

Boasting in the Lord

5 MAY

Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; As the vine tree among the trees of the forest, which I have given to the fire for fuel, so will I give the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Ezekiel 15:6

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 1 Corinthians 1:26-31

That this discourse might profit us today, we must perceive that we are superior to the whole world through God’s gratuitous pity, even though by nature we having to boast of in ourselves. We cannot carry ourselves with pride in our reliance on God’s gifts, for this would be sacrilege. We would in arrogance be snatching away from God His own praise and clothing ourselves, as it were, in His spoils.

Paul, in speaking of the Jews, shortly but clearly defines both sides of or condition: “Do we excel?” he asks (thereby making himself one with the Jews). “Are we better than the Gentiles?” (Rom. 3:1). He answers, “By no means, for Scripture denounces all of us as sinners who are cursed. Since we are all children of wrath, we can claim no superiority over the profane Gentiles.”

After prostrating the pride of his own nation, the Jews, Paul asks again: “What? Are we not superior to others?” He then answers, “Yes, in every way, for the adoption, worship, law of God, and covenant confer such remarkable superiority on us that cannot be found anywhere else in the whole world.”

How can the Jews excel and be preferred to others, yet excel in nothing? The answer is that they have nothing in themselves to allow them to despise the Gentiles of boast of themselves as superior because their excellence is not in themselves but in God.

John Calvin

FOR MEDITATION: God chooses men and women who are not worthy of His favor and pours His grace and mercy on them, making them new creatures. They may be preferred above all other people, but they can boast only in the Lord. If you have been chosen by God, do not boast in yourself; boast in the Lord for what He has done for you.

365 Days With Calvin

Selected and Edited by Joel R. Beeke

Why God Deceives the Prophets

4 MAY

And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the LORD have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel. Ezekiel 14:9

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 1 Kings 22:19-23

God does not rage like a tyrant but exercises just judgment.Also, no deceptions of doctrine are allowed without God’s permission. This seems at first absurd, for God seems to battle Himself when He gives freedom to Satan to pervert sound doctrine. If this perversion happens by God’s authority, it seems completely contradictory. But let us always remember that God’s judgments are not without reason called a profound abyss (Ps. 36:6). When we see rebellious men acting as they do, we should not expect to understand what far surpasses even the understanding of angels.

Therefore we must soberly and reverently regard God’s works, especially His secret counsels. With the aid of reverence and modesty, it will be easy to reconcile these two things: that God gives birth to and cherishes and defends His church and confirms the teaching of His prophets, while at the same time He permits it to be torn and distracted by dissension.

God acts this way to punish the wickedness of men as often as He pleases when He sees them abuse His goodness and indulgence. When God lights up the flame of His doctrine, it is the sign of His inestimable pity; when He allows the church to be disturbed and men to be in some degree dissipated, that should be imputed to the wickedness of men.

Whatever the explanation may be, God says Himself deceived the false prophets, for Satan could not utter a single word unless God permitted Him to do so. God not only permitted, but ordered Satan to do so to exercise His wrath against the wicked.

John Calvin

FOR MEDITATION: It is difficult to understand why God allows Satan freedom to rage within the church by perversions of doctrine. Nevertheless, we can take comfort in knowing that all the storms that rage are under God’s control. Satan will never completely overwhelm the church or defeat God’s purposes.

365 Days With Calvin

Selected and Edited by Joel R. Beeke

Finding Safety in the Church

3 MAY

And mine hand shall be upon the prophets that see vanity, and that divine lies: they shall not be in the assembly of my people, neither shall they be written in the writing of the house of Israel, neither shall they enter into the land of Israel; and ye shall know that I am the Lord GOD. Ezekiel 13:9

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Hebrews 10:19-25

The Holy Spirit admonishes us not to conclude that people are true members of the church because most of them seem to excel other people. For just as the chaff lies above the wheat and suffocates it, thus hypocrites bury the sons of God, whose number is small. Hypocrites also shine forth in their own splendor, and great numbers of them seem to make them exclusively worthy of the title of the church.

Hence let us examine ourselves, searching whether we have the living root of piety and faith, which are those interior marks by which God distinguishes His children from strangers, or hyprocrites.

This passage also teaches nothing is more formidable than to be separated from God's flock. We cannot hope for safety unless God collects us into one body under one head. When we safely reside in Christ alone, we cannot be separated from Christ without falling away from all hope of safety. Christ will not and cannot be torn from His church that He is joined to by an indissoluble knot, as the head is to the body. Hence, unless we cultivate unity with the faithful, we are also cut off from Christ. Nothing, then, is more fearful than to be separated from God's people, and therefore from Christ.

Psalm 106:4 says, "Remember me, O God, in Thy good will towards Thy people: visit me with Thy salvation." When the author of the psalm prays this way, he acknowledges that we will have true and solid happiness when the Lord embraces us along with the rest of the faithful. For God's good will toward His people is that fatherly kindness by which He embraces His elect.

If God thinks us worthy of His fatherly favor, then we may be truly confident of safety.

John Calvin

FOR MEDITATION: 

In a day when many Christians are focused only on their own individual relationship with God, this passage reminds us of the importance of the church. The church is not just a means to advance our own walk with God, but a divinely appointed institution. Connecting with the church is therefore not an option, but a requirement for true believers.

365 Days With Calvin

Selected and Edited by Joel R. Beeke

THE GREAT HERESIES that have destroyed many churches in the past, and that in in the process of destroying many other churches today

 With regard to the specific gross heresies that sweep a church away from Christ to antichrist, away from God to Satan, away from the true church to the false church, they include the following according to Scripture and the Reformed creeds.

There is the gross heresy that Jesus is not God come in the flesh (1 John 4:1-6). This is the lie of liberalism, particularly Protestant liberalism. But this lie has many aspects. And we must not suppose that this lie at once enters a church in the gross form of an outright denial of the deity of Jesus and of the Trinity. Usually, it enters a church in the form of a rejection of sovereign grace in salvation. Arminianism leads to theological liberalism. Arminianism is incipient theological liberalism. it is incipient theological liberalism by virtue of Arminianism's denial that God's (one) gracious will for the salvation of (elect) sinners is effectual. An ineffectual, dependent god is not the God of classical (biblical) Christianity.

There is the lie that salvation is earned by, or dependent on, the works of the sinner. This is the false doctrine of Rome. This error is exposed in the book of Galatians.

There is the lie of salvation by, and dependent on, the free will of the sinner. This is the false doctrine of much of evangelicalism, fundamentalism, and neo-Pentecostalism today. Paul condemns the doctrine of free will as a form of a false gospel that characterizes a false church: "[Salvation] is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy" (Rom. 9:16). The Synod of Dordt condemned this lie as a false gospel on behalf of all Reformed churches everywhere to the end of time.

But the doctrine of free will comes into churches subtly, usually by means of a teaching that, although there is a predestination of some to salvation (about which the churches hear less and less), there is also a universal love and grace of God in Christ that desires the salvation of all without exception and that goes out to all without exception, attempting the salvation of all.This universal grace, in the nature of the theory, is not efficacious, so that the implication is that the reception of this grace depends on the sinner's acceptance of it (about which the churches hear more and more as time goes on). The time to fight this false gospel to the death as at the point of its subtle introduction into a Reformed church). "Obsta principiis!" ("Resist the beginnings!")

In an informative book, the Presbyterian Gary North (with whom I have crossed swords over Christian Reconstruction post-millennialism) demonstrates that the apostasy of the once-great Presbyterian Church (USA), the church of the Hodges and Warfield, into deepest, darkest liberalism began in the early 1900s with the insertion into the Westminster Confession of an article teaching a universal love and grace of God and a desire of God for the salvation of all without exception. The revision of the confession, in 1903, consisted of a "missions-related affirmation that God loves humanity in general and seeks the salvation of all mankind - a denial, in other words, of God's 'double predestination' of fallen mankind to either heaven or hell."The apostasy of the Presbyterian Church (USA) went this way: "from Calvinism to Arminianism to liberalism."

I for one do not intend to be the reason that my grandchildren must fight criticism of Scripture, rejection of the deity of Christ, and denial of the resurrection of the body, because I would not fight the beginnings of liberalism in the denial of God's sovereignty in the salvation of elect sinners. Besides, I regard the false gospel of salvation by the free will of the sinner, making an inherently impotent cross effective for oneself, as being as much a denial of the gospel as is outright liberalism.

There is also the gross heresy that criticizes Scripture as a human word and a human book, full of errors, subject to the critical judgment of man's mind, whether his scientific mind, his philosophical mind, his ethical mind, or his religious mind. Invariably, it enters a church by the criticism of the opening chapters of the Bible. The battle should be fought there. If the battle with unbelief is lost in a church at Genesis 1, the end will be the criticism of the opening chapters of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

There is the gross heresy of mysticism: salvation not by faith in Christ according to the word, but by feeling, by direct, emotional contact with God. This is the horrendous error of the charismatic movement, in addition to its other errors. But this movement does not take a church over all at once with the introduction of new prophecies, holy laughter, being slain in the Spirit, and other such monstrosities. It will seek entrance by asking for the "mere" approval of the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit in our age.

There is the gross heresy of antinomianism. This appeared already in the apostolic churches, as 2 Peter, Jude, ad the Nicolaitans and Jezebel in Revelation 2 and  3 prove. This is the error of licentiousness as the lawful implication of grace. But also this evil does not appear in a church full-blown: "Let us sin that grace may abound." Rather, it comes in almost innocuously: "We must not discipline the man or woman, but in love receive him or her, even though he or she walks impenitently in sin. Is Jesus not merciful (especially to my son or my daughter)? Is not God a God of love? Doesn't God forgive sinner's?" This seemingly Christian attitude and mind are, in fact, an attack on the third mark of the church. Their sentiment is also another gospel than the gospel of Scripture. The gospel of Scripture teaches salvation from sin, not salvation only from the punishment of sin, as though the forgiven sinner can, and even may, continue impenitently in the bondage of sin, to the great dishonoring of a holy God. The evangelical churches in the United States, in addition to their other errors, are antinomian through and through.

These are the great heresies that have destroyed many churches in the past, and that are in the process of destroying many other churches today.

Every believer must be on guard against them in his or her own church and fight them if they begin to appear.

Out of a love of the truth!

Prof. David J. Engelsma 

Bound to Join, pp.143-146

Hastening to the Breach

2 MAY

Ye have not gone up into the gaps, neither made up the hedge for the house of Israel to stand in the battle in the day of the LORD. Ezekiel 13:5

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Nehemiah 2:11-18

The prophet identifies false prophets by saying to the approved and faithful servants of God that false prophets have not gone up into the breaches, nor built up a hedge to protect the house of Israel so they might stand in the battle in the day of Jehovah. Their teaching must be altogether rejected because they do not have the right goal in mind, Ezekiel says.

The true goal of God's servants is to consider public safety, and, when they see signs of God's wrath, to meet that wrath head-on in an attempt to prevent urgent calamity. Impostor prophets viewed the people not only as impious, but rebellious, so they saw no hope of their repentance. On the other hand, though they were blind, they could see signs of God's approaching and threatening vengeance. Hence it was their duty to go forward to the breaches.

What the prophet means by "breaches" here is any opening in a wall that allows an enemy to storm into a city. So when the iniquity of the people overflows like a deluge, it opens up a rupture through which God's wrath may pour immediately, laying waste to everything until it is reduced to nothing.

Those who desire to faithfully discharge the office of teaching ought to hasten to this breach to recall people from their impiety and to exhort them to repentance.

John Calvin

FOR MEDITATION: 

What a powerful image abundant sin making a breach through which God's wrath can pour. Have you made any such breaches in your life? Repent and pray today for repairs before God's punishment pours.

365 Days With Calvin

Selected and Edited by Joel R. Beeke