When God Converts a Sinner: Confessional Perspectives on Justification and the Christian Life

By Douglas Vickers

In an age of theological innovation and doctrinal discount, the heritage of evangelical Reformed theology is in increasing danger of betrayal. Old established understandings of "the faith once delivered to the saints" are under attack, disturbing the peace of the church, tarnishing its witness, and challenging its purity. Against the pressures of newer fashions in thought, Douglas Vickers here returns to the seventeenth-century confessions of faith and illustrates from successive chapters common to three of those confessions the ways in which, and the reasons why, traditional beliefs and doctrinal constructions are to be preserved.

Among questions examined with biblically informed insight are the relation between eternity and time and its significance for the gospel of redemption, the meaning and function of saving faith, the accomplishment of redemption by the incarnate Christ, the significance of his heavenly high priestly office, the high doctrine of the Christian believer's union with Christ, and the implications these doctrinal realities hold for the Christian life.

In a discussion of contemporary theologies, When God Converts a Sinner examines such innovations as the New Perspective on Paul, Federal Vision theology, Shepherdism, and other attempts to effect a paradigm shift in historically received theology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Aug 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781498274517

Douglas Vickers

Douglas Vickers (PhD, University of London) is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts. Among his recent titles in theology are Discovering the Christian Mind: Reason and Belief in Christian Confession (2011) and The Cross: Its Meaning and Message in a Postmodern World (2010).

Book preview

9781556359828.kindle.jpg

When God Converts a Sinner

Confessional Perspectives on

Justification and the Christian Life

Douglas Vickers

6209.png

WHEN GOD CONVERTS A SINNER

Confessional Perspectives on Justification and the Christian Life

Copyright © 2008 Douglas Vickers. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Wipf & Stock

A Division of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

ISBN 13: 978-1-55635-982-8

EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-7451-7

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Scripture quotations are from the King James Version.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Preface

Chapter 1: The Issue Stated

Chapter 2: The Gospel of Grace

Chapter 3: Eternity, Temporality, and Redemption

Chapter 4: The Grace of Faith

Chapter 5: When God Converts a Sinner

Chapter 6: The Light of His Countenance

Chapter 7: Adoption and Union with Christ

Chapter 8: The Scope of Salvation

Chapter 9: Conclusion

Bibliography

Preface

The title I have chosen is taken from the Westminster Confession of Faith , as will be explained more fully in chapter 5. The doctrinal theology that descended from the Reformation received its highest English language expression in the expansive literature of the seventeenth century and in the Confessions of Faith that were produced at that time, the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), the Savoy Declaration of Faith (1658), and the Second London (Baptist) Confession (1689). My objective in this brief work is to confront a number of questions that arise from a consideration of four chapters that are common to those confessions: chapter 9, Of Free Will, chapter 11, Of Justification, chapter 12, Of Adoption, and chapter 14, Of Saving Faith.

In chapter 1 I indicate the principal questions that stand at the heart of Christian belief. Those questions have to do with the relation between God’s existence outside of time and the entry into time of the Second Person of the Godhead for the accomplishment of redemption; the nature of saving faith and the freedom from the entailment of sin which, as a result of redemption, accrues to the Christian believer; the reality of the Christian believer’s union with Christ; and some consequent aspects of the God-man relation in the Christian’s life journey.

Contemporary theological discussion has clouded the meaning and import of the confessional statements I have referred to and has shunted the church away from its earlier and more secure moorings. There is reason to believe, as a result, that an elevation to prominence of what the earlier and classic confessions of faith have said might at this time contribute to a renewed and clearer understanding of the faith that the church at large is called to confess.

Chapter 3 began life as a paper delivered to the 2007 Annual Conference of the Reformed Congregational Fellowship (RCF), and chapters 5 through 7 first appeared as papers presented to the New England Reformed Fellowship (NERF) in 2006 and 2007. The papers are reproduced here with minimal editorial alteration. I am indebted to the organizing committees of RCF and NERF for their courtesies and to the lively discussions that followed the presentation of the papers.

The unity of the work is established by the sequential discussion of the issues raised in chapters 1 and 2. The chapters that follow align with the statements of relevant doctrines as they are addressed in the Confessions I have referred to. Chapter 7 presents a more direct critique of arguments contained in the literature of the New Perspective on Paul, the Federal Vision theology, Shepardism, and the separate attempts by Richard Gaffin and Michael Horton to effect a paradigm shift in Reformed theology.

My heavy indebtedness to a long line of Reformed theologians will be apparent to the informed reader. We stand on the shoulders of better scholars who have preceded us. I record happily that in the development of my own theology I owe a particular debt to the work of the twentieth-century theologian-apologist Cornelius Van Til. My work in books and research papers, during both my professorship in a non-theological discipline and my writing in doctrinal and apologetic theology in recent years, has had the very valuable editorial assistance of Ann Hopkins and I record my deepest thanks to her. I have benefited from the theological insights and pastoral ministry of Dr. Robert E. Davis of Millers Falls, Massachusetts, and I am deeply grateful for his encouragement in my work. Through what has been a long academic and publishing career my wife, Miriam, has given me support whose value cannot be measured or spoken by any words in this short space.

For whatever blemishes and infelicities remain in the work I take full responsibility.

1

The Issue Stated

It is clear from a survey of the contemporary scene that we live in an age of theological innovation and doctrinal discount. Old established understandings of the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3) are under attack, disturbing the peace of the church, tarnishing its witness, and challenging its purity. Theology, it appears, has lost its earlier and secure moorings. New prophets peddle lesser preoccupations and arguments grounded in shallower presuppositions. Several questions, as a result, engage the reflective Christian mind.

First, given the mystery of the relation between eternity and time, what was involved in the incarnation in this world of the second Person of the Godhead who came as Jesus Christ to be our redeemer? For the gospel declares that when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons (Gal. 4:4–5); that God . . . loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10); and that in due time Christ died for the ungodly (Rom. 5:6). Here we confront the reality that the Son of God came from his timeless eternity in the bosom of the Father (John 1:18) and entered into the time that he had created, in doing so making himself subject to time in order to accomplish salvation for his people. That salvation had been ordained before the foundation of the world and was now to be brought to effect.

Second, what is to be understood as the theological grounding of the statement of the confessions that The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe . . . is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts?¹ In what respects are the Persons of the Godhead jointly engaged in the accomplishment and application to individuals of the benefits of redemption, and what relations do the identities of the redeemed bear to the divine decrees and intentions? In the context of redemption, what is to be understood as saving faith and the individual’s capacity and ability to believe?

Third, in what sense is it true and meaningful for the Christian life that If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed (John 8:36)? What is to be said, by way of implication, of the bondage of the human will in the state of sin to which Adam’s dereliction from his covenantal obligations reduced us? And the question follows, is the gospel statement directed to a freedom of the will that the regenerating grace of God conveys to the Christian believer? The seventeenth-century confessions to which we shall return observe that When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, he freeth him from his natural bondage under sin.² But what, it needs to be asked, are the possibilities for Christian living that follow? What is implied in the apostolic injunction, Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage (Gal. 5:1)?

Fourth, why, how, and with what results, do conditions arise in the Christian life in which the cry of the Psalmist becomes all too relevant, Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit (Ps. 51:11–12)? The confessions again observe that Christian believers may by their sins fall under God’s fatherly displeasure, and not have the light of his countenance restored unto them, until they humble themselves, confess their sins, beg pardon, and renew their faith and repentance.³ What is to be said, in the light of that possibility, of the promise of our Lord that I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth . . . he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you (John 14:16–17)? What is it, then, in which the believer’s eternal security consists, and what guarantees his access to the eternal inheritance that has been promised him in Christ (Heb. 9:15)?

Fifth, in the light of the answers to these questions, what is to be said of the doctrinal and practical significance of the Christian believer’s adoption into the family of God and, as a result, his or her indissoluble union with Christ? Adoption, the Westminster Shorter Catechism declares, is an act of God’s free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all the privileges of the sons of God.⁴ And the apostle to the Gentiles states that the very meaning of salvation resides in the fact that ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father (Rom. 8:15). It will be seen at more length that the high privileges the Christian believer enjoys turn for their reality and significance on the imputation to him of the righteousness of Christ. For in the once-for-all declarative-forensic statement of God that establishes the sinner’s justification, the believer’s title to heaven and his prospect of eternal inheritance are secured. But if, as the Scriptures abundantly declare, that is so, what is to be said of certain contemporary claims that the imputation of the righteousness of Christ at the point of justification does not suffice? What is to be said by way of response to the claim that certain good works of the Christian contribute to one’s final and forensic justification? In what respect, then, does the reality of the believer’s union with Christ establish the inadmissibility of such contemporary innovations in doctrine that tarnish the testimony and challenge the witness of the church?

The chapters that follow address these questions: the relation between eternity and time in our Lord’s incarnation and his discharge of his High Priestly office; the individual’s saving faith and the freedom of the Christian’s will to do good and live righteously before God; the possibility that the Christian may, for due cause and for a time, lose the sense of the presence of God; and the import of the believer’s union with Christ. Our discussion is motivated by the virtual unanimity on these points of the three confessional documents in which the Reformation theology was given definitive expression in seventeenth-century England. They are the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), the Savoy Declaration of Faith (1658), and the Second London (Baptist) Confession (1689). Those confessional statements each made declarations regarding the capacity of the human will in the state of sin, the divine decree and accomplishment of redemption, and the progress of sanctification in the Christian life.

Consider, first, the doctrine of the sinner’s justification before God. That doctrine, it is by now well known, has become the center of extensive and disturbing debate within the evangelical and Reformed church. The expansive literature of the so-called New Perspective on Paul, the elaboration of its aims and claims, and that of the Federal Vision theology, is worthy of close inspection but cannot be discussed at length at this time.⁵ The doctrine of justification, however, which has properly been referred to as the article of faith that decides whether the church is standing or falling,⁶ lies at the center of all that has to be said regarding the revelation of the Christian faith.⁷ For the question of Job of old remains imperative, how should man be just with God? (Job. 9:1). And the apostolic response is spread liberally in, for example, Paul’s letters to the Roman and Galatian churches: Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law (Rom. 3:28), by faith alone and without contribution from individual works; and that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident; for, The just shall live by faith (Gal. 3:11).

The Confessions we have cited put the question of justification in the following terms: "God did, from all eternity, decree to justify all the elect; and Christ did, in the fulness of time, die for their sins, and rise again for their justification; nevertheless they are not [personally] justified, until the Holy Spirit doth in due time actually apply Christ unto them."⁸ In the light of that statement it will be necessary in the following chapters to examine first, the relation between eternity and time that the confessions envisage, and second, the uniqueness of the High Priestly work of Christ that provides the ground of the believer’s justification.

The second of the questions we shall address, that of the nature and efficacy of saving faith and its place as the instrumental cause of salvation, will require a slightly extended comment on the respects in which the relevant doctrines have been understood in the history of the church. The doctrine of man’s natural state, and the inroads to the church’s theology of the philosophic assumption of the autonomy of man, particularly as that has come down through the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, will be seen to be directly relevant. It is of no little importance to observe that whereas the church’s doctrine of Christology was settled at an early date, issues of anthropology did not receive a similar settlement and have been the source of diverging views in the history of doctrine.

The third of our questions, that of the Christian believer’s freedom from the bondage of sin and the possibility of his obedience to the law of righteousness, is stated in similar terms in the three confessions as follows: "When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, he freeth him from his natural bondage under sin, and by his grace alone enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so as that, by reason of his remaining corruption, he doth not perfectly nor only will that which is good, but doth also that which is evil."⁹ At that point the paradox of the Christian life emerges. The new believer in Christ is a saint, as is repeatedly declared in the New Testament letters (Eph. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; Col. 1:2), and he is also a sinner. Our discussion will therefore bring into prominence the Christian’s status and the character of his new nature and standing in Christ that it implies, and what it is that permits and occasions the evil as well as the good that the confessional statements have contemplated.

The fourth question, which addresses the possibility of the true believer’s loss of the light of the countenance of God, has been raised by the confessions in the manner already stated and in the following larger context: "God doth continue to forgive the sins of those that are justified; and although they can never fall from the state of justification, yet they may by their sins fall under God’s fatherly displeasure, and [thereby forfeit] the light of his countenance . . ."¹⁰ Coming to prominence is a question that will be paramount in the following chapters, namely that a distinction is to be drawn between the declaration of God that those whom he gave to Christ to redeem can never fall from the state of justification, and the reality within the Christian life and walk that the light of God’s countenance may for good reason be withdrawn from them.

From the fifth of these questions it follows that if, as the Scriptures abundantly declare, the believer is joined to Christ in an indissoluble union, then nothing can be said that points to the possibility that his eternal security can be in doubt or that it turns on anything other than the once-for-all imputed righteousness of Christ. We shall return to the fuller implications of that conclusion.

The way ahead

The foregoing has established the context in which the following discussions will proceed. A number of conclusions can be stated briefly. First, the mystery of our Lord’s incarnation makes it necessary to consider the respect in which, in order that the Second Person of the Godhead might take a sinless human nature into union with his divine nature, the entailment of sin that accrued from Adam’s fall to all those descending from his by ordinary generation¹¹ should be broken. The cleansing work of the Holy Spirit was engaged at that point. Further, the reality of Christ’s divine and human natures provides the conclusion that no communication of properties existed between them. In terms that will be explored further, there was not, at the incarnation, any commingling of the eternal and the temporal. And it follows, as a result, that there was no commingling of the eternal and the temporal at the death of Christ. It was in his human nature, that is, that he died for his people. But it will be seen also that as our Lord took a sinless human nature into union with his divine nature he did not thereby become a human person, because the human nature was not personalized.¹² It is in that human as well as divine nature that he now discharges his heavenly High Priestly office. In the sympathy for his people that is involved in his priestly office, his human nature actively informs his understanding of his people’s condition and outcomes.

Second, our examination of the nature of regenerate personhood will make it clear that if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; . . . all things are become new (2 Cor. 5:17). When that newness of nature is explored, with emphasis on what will be termed the integral personhood of the individual who is renewed by the grace of God, the question will be raised whether there exists within the regenerate person both an old or sinful nature and a new or godly nature. That question will be answered in the negative, and a fairly extensive but erroneous claim to the contrary in parts of the evangelical church’s testimony will be examined. It will be seen that by the renewing, regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit the individual to whom that grace is sovereignly conveyed is definitively transferred from the realm of sin, condemnation, and death to that of righteousness, justification and life. God the Father, the Colossian text states, hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son (Col. 1:13). That transference is a definitive transference that establishes the new-born child of God in a vital and indissoluble union with Christ.

Third, when it is seen that God can, and that as occasion warrants he does, withdraw the light of his countenance from his people, the remedies that are consistent with the believer’s progress in sanctification will be recognized. But more particularly, the meaning, the significance, and the occasions of sin in the life of the believer will be observed and the respects in which the believer’s sin replicates that of our first parents will be seen. For the essence of Adam’s sin was that he made the false and damning assertion of autonomy against God. That assertion of autonomy had reference to the levels of being, knowledge, and behavior. And it is again the essence of the believer’s sin that he falls subject to the assumption that on all such levels he can proceed independently of the God who in Christ has saved him. It is the sin of imagining that as to the possibilities of correct knowledge and right behavior the individual can establish his own criteria, or find those criteria within his social and cultural milieu. It is the imagination that one can live safely as a branch severed from the vine. It is the sin of assumed autonomy. Such a sin, subtle and perhaps for a time unrecognized, is unworthy of the Christian’s high calling in Christ to whom he is joined.

It will throw light on our fuller examination of these questions to look in the following chapter at the terms and conclusions of the gospel of grace as the word of God has set it forth. The sovereignty of God in salvation, in all aspects of salvation including the sinner’s justification and