“Sin is here treated purely as a matter of consciousness, and its deeper source in the corruption of nature is left out of account. And not only this, the seriousness of sin, even as a conscious state or act, is inadequately realized. Outside the sphere of Christianity all sin is interpreted as virtually a matter of ignorance. Its essence is not opposition to God but failure to recognize the true attitude of God towards man as love. The most profound form of sin is unbelief w/ reference to the love of God in Christ. That w/ such a view of sin, and from a standpoint which makes love the only attribute of God, the church doctrine of satisfaction has no ground left to stand on is plain. What Christ has done to save us is not to bear the curse of sin in compliance w/ the demands of divine justice, but by holding fast to his vocation and trust in God notwithstanding His sufferings. He has assured us that, in spite of our sins, we are objects of divine love. Thus our justification consists of the forgiveness of sins. Everything here, it will be perceived, moves within the sphere of subjective consciousness: it is not a change of being, nor even a change of relation, but a change of thinking that is aimed at and brought about…. No wonder, then, that a theology to this extent oblivious of the crying soteriological needs of the sinful world easily reconciles itself to the thought that the supernatural in history lies outside the province of our practical concern. We for our part, believe, and we say it deliberately, that it were a thousand times better for the church to be torn and shaken for many years to come by the conflict with (Higher) criticism than to buy a shameful peace at the stupendous doctrinal sacrifice which such a position involves.

Geerhardus Vos
Redemptive History & Biblical Interpretation – pg. 467-468

1.) Vos is saying here that what evangelism has devolved into, even during his time, is the attempt to get people to realize and accept that God really does love them quite irrespective of their sin nature or sinful acts.

2.) Vos is suggesting that a Gospel that only speaks of a forgiveness quite unconcerned that God extends forgiveness upon the basis that His justice has been satisfied, His just wrath has been quenched, the just ransom price paid, and sin justly removed is a forgiveness that is completely alien to the Biblical Christian faith.

3.) Vos is pressing the point that forgiveness can not be reduced to being defined as positive mental attitudes regarding God’s attitude toward sinful men. The Gospel is not the call for people to have warm fuzzy thoughts about God absent of realizing that confident thoughts about God are predicated upon taking refuge and finding safety in the Lord Christ. Unrepentant sinners will not be saved by switching their thinking so that they go from hiding from God they know is opposed to them to hiding from God by insisting God loves them.

4.) Vos is connecting the dots between this kind of Gospel with the reality that those who trumpet this kind of Gospel have no concern about whether the supernatural in the Biblical records are true or not. If all one is trying to do is to convince people that God’s love is the love of a harlot and remains ablaze for all who will be convinced of it, quite apart from old fashioned notions of repentance, then what need is there to be concerned about the supernatural record of Scripture? All of that can be tossed because it is quite irrelevant to this kind of salvation. Virgins giving birth … dead men resurrecting, people walking on water, God creating the world out of nothing – what does any of that matter if all that salvation consists off is a really good add campaign to convince people that God has forgiven them?

5.) Vos says he would rather fight than switch on this point. He refuses to reconcile his thinking to such a low and tawdry view of forgiveness being accepted as the Gospel.

If you’re in a Church that thumps a forgiveness that is completely decontextualized from Scripture you need to run for your life. If you’re in a Church where the pastor can not affirm that a virgin gave birth, or who can’t affirm talking snakes, or who can’t affirm that axe heads can float, or that the supernatural really happened and not merely that since people believe it happened therefore it was spoken of as happening then you upon the peril of your soul you need to find another pastor.

“It is customary to say that he (the author of Hebrews) insists upon the possession by Christ of our human nature as essential to His priestly representation of us. But this is not saying enough. The line of reasoning followed in the second chapter shows plainly that the solidarity lies back of this, that the assumption of human nature through the incarnation is not its basis but only a form in which the principle asserts itself. When we are told that ‘both he that sanctifies and they that are being sanctified are all of one’ (2:11), it would be a mistake to interpret this phrase ‘of one’ of the common descent of Christ with us from Adam or Abraham. That something else is meant the working out of the idea in the sequel convincingly shows. For the author proceeds to prove this fact of this solidarity from the observations that Christ calls believers His spiritual brethren, and that He resembles them by assuming the same trustful attitude towards God which marks them as children of God, nay that He Himself sustains to them the relation of a father to his children. All this lies in the spiritual sphere and while, in its concrete form, not possible w/o the incarnation, is not in principle caused by it. On the contrary, the author represents the incarnation as the further carrying out of a spiritual solidarity already given: “Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, He also Himself, in like manner partook of the same.” (Heb. 2:14). The joint-sonship of Christ w/ believers does not follow from the incarnation, it produces the incarnation: because those w/ whom He was spiritually identified, those whom He resembled in sonship, partook of flesh and blood, He carried His solidarity w/ them to the point of the assumption of their nature. It is obvious that the root of the identification of Christ w/ us which underlies His priesthood is sough in His standing before God, in the divine appointment by which His destiny and the destiny of the people of God were forever united. It is what the old theology called the federal oneness of Christ w/ believers that is here taught. That this idea is actually in the writer’s mind follows from one striking feature in the representation which is often overlooked. Believers are not merely called joint-children of God with Christ, but are called ‘children of Christ.’ The writer puts on the lips of Jesus the Isaianic utterance: ‘Behold I and the children whom God has given me’ (2:13) and joins to this the affirmation that, because the children, i.e., Christ’s children, were partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same. They were His children because back of all temporal developments in either His birth or their Birth, they had been given to Him of the Father. He stands not only in general solidarity with them, but in that specific form of solidarity which constitutes Him the Father and them the children – a representation which is unique in the New Testament, where believers are elsewhere called the children of God and the not the children of Christ.

Geerhardus Vos
Redemptive History & Biblical Interpretation –pg. 209-210

A significant problem in much of the Church’s thinking today is its inability to see the temporal as being conditioned upon the eternal. One example of this is discussions regarding union w/ Christ. Currently there is a debate in the Reformed Church as to whether or not union w/ Christ yields forensic justification or whether forensic justification is logically prior to union w/ Christ. My contention, is that both schools have a problem because neither school seems to want to make distinction between existential subjective union w/ Christ, Historic objective union w/ Christ and eternal objective union w/ Christ. Nor does either school currently debating seem to want to make the distinction between existential subjective justification, Historic objective justification and eternal objective justification.

We have to realize that the point that Vos makes here is that before we can talk about a existential subjective union w/ Christ that occurs when the Spirit of Christ applies the benefits of salvation to me personally we must talk about the historic objective union that was in place between the believe and Christ even in Christ’s incarnation and then in His baptism, death, resurrection and ascension. The subjective existential union w/ Christ that was applied by the Spirit to the elect was applied because the elect were united to Christ objectively in all the redemptive work that He accomplished. But even this union w/ Christ has need to be traced back one step further to realize that both the objective Historic union w/ Christ that the elect had when Christ came and the existential union that came into existence when the Spirit made that historic objective union subjective in his application of salvation upon individually elect believers is itself predicated upon the reality that the elect have objectively, from eternity always been united to Christ. This is the point that Vos is making above. The debate isn’t whether or not Subjective existential union w/ Christ is logically antecedent or subsequent to subjective forensic justification. The debate is whether our eternal union w/ Christ is logically antecedent or subsequent to our eternal justification in Christ. All that becomes subjectively true of us when we look to and trust Christ is only true because it was all objectively true in Christ’s death and all that was objectively true in Christ’s death was objectively true from eternity past in the counsels of God.

There has never been a time when the elect have not been united w/ Christ, (this is Vos’ idea of solidarity above) though for many it was true that that the eternal and historic objective truth was not yet a subjective reality. Notice how all this flows seamlessly. What is objectively true in eternity becomes objectively true in space and time by virtue of Christ’s finished redemptive work and this then becomes true existentially for the believing one as the Spirit perichoretically administers the union Planned from eternity by the perichoretic work of the Father and executed in time by the perichoretic work of the Son.

There is much much more to be said here and I may return to this later. We need to speak of how we end up with a works salvation if we don’t make the kind of distinctions we are speaking of here. We need to speak further about the relation between eternal justification and eternal objective union w/ Christ. We need to speak further about the relation, role and character of faith both with these distinctions and without these distinctions.

For now, let what Vos has said sink in. Vos appeals to Hebrews 2:10f to remind us that there has always been from eternity a solidarity (objective eternal union) between Christ and His people. This is significant exegesis and theology because when properly understood this insight moves one from Reformed to Reformed.

“Perhaps most striking is the difference in emphasis on justification between Luther and Lutheranism on the hand and Reformed theology on the other. For the former, justification is central to the whole of theology. It is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. It functions as a kind of critical methodological tool by which any aspect of theology, or theology as a whole is to be judged….However, there is hardly an instance in Reformed theology placing justification in the center. Not that Reformed theology opposed justification by faith alone, or salvation by pure grace. On the contrary, they saw salvation in its entirety as a display of the sovereign and free mercy of God. The explanation lay in the fact that, for Reformed theology, everything took place to advance the glory of God. Thus the chief purpose of theology and of the whole of life was not the rescue of humanity but the glory of God. The focus was theocentric rather than soteriological. Even in the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), where soteriological concerns are more prominent (one of its authors, Zacharias Ursinus [1533-1587] was formerly a Lutheran) the famous first question ‘What is your only comfort in life and death?’ is answered w/ reference to the action of the Trinity, beginning, ‘I am not my own but belong… to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.

Following from this was an attempt by Reformed theology to grasp the unity of creation and redemption. The whole of life was seen in the embrace of God’s revelatory purpose. With the covenant at its heart, the whole of life was to display God’s glory. Naturally, that included at its heart the restoration of sinners to fellowship w/ God. It also entailed, however the reconstitution of both civil and ecclesiastical affairs. Lutheranism, in contrast, showed less developed interest in the application of the gospel to political life and focused more narrowly on soteriology. Possibly this stemmed from Luther enjoying the patronage of his Elector, which freed him from having to safeguard the Reformation in a political sense in quite the same way as his Reformed counterparts. The net result was that while for Lutheranism justification by faith was the heart of theology, for the Reformed theologians it was subordinate to an overarching sense of the centrality of God and his covenant. Yet, for both, the underlying concern for the gratuitous nature of salvation, its objective reality extra nos, was the same.

Robert Letham
The Work of Christ – pg. 189-190

Another way to put the differences between Lutheranism and Reformed worldviews is that for Lutheranism salvation is for man and terminates on man, individually considered while for Reformed thought salvation is for God and serves the terminating end of a renewed cosmos dripping and saturated with God’s glory. For Lutheranism the teleology is man atoned for, whereas for Reformed thought the teleology includes but doesn’t end with man atoned for. For Reformed thought the teleology is the atonement as well as all the totality of corresponding and inevitable consequences that the atonement brings upon men who have been atoned for. Atonement for individual men is not the end product of Christ’s work. Atonement is the beginning and creating point of enlisting men into the cause of cosmic renewal for the glory of God. Men are not atoned for and saved for the sake of being atoned for and saved. Men are atoned for and saved to be put on a mission to take captive every thought and take dominion over every crevice of the cosmos to make all thoughts and all crevices obedient to King Christ. In Reformed thought, classical Lutheran thought is provincial and anthropocentric and is far to horizontally circumscribed and vertically nugatory.

Straight thinking Reformed folk don’t doubt that real live honest to goodness Lutherans or wanna-be Escondido Reformed Lutherans are part of God’s elect Church. We just think that their theology leaves them developmentally disabled – much like a child who has a rare disease that does not allow them to ever grow up.

Letham, says that the focus of Lutherans is soteriological while the focus of Reformed is theocentric. I think Letham is being diplomatic and kind there. In point of fact both theologies are focused on soteriology. The difference is that that Lutheranism focuses on a soteriology that has a anthropological terminal point whereas Reformed thought focuses on a soteriology that has a theological terminal point.

Clearly, in light of what Letham writes, the Reformed church is being invaded by Lutheran theology body snatchers. Clearly, there has been some cross breeding and pollination that is giving some flavors of the Reformed church a hybrid feel about it.

Let the Reformed church be the Reformed church!

“Is promise or law paramount in God’s covenant? For (John) Murray, the covenant is ‘a sovereign administration of grace and of promise.’ For (Meredith) Kline, however, law has priority because God is by nature just, whereas his grace is dependent on his will. These differences are more than incidental. They affect the way we view the whole gospel and thus impinge on the work of Christ.

From an examination of Paul’s discussion of the relationship between the promise of the Abrahamic covenant and the law of the Mosaic covenant, it is hard to see the two as competitors. They coexisted. the law did not set aside the promise. It was added. It did not supplant, but served the promise.

17 And this I say, that the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ,[a] that it should make the promise of no effect. 18 For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise.

19 What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made… 21 Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! … (Gal. 3:17-22)

The covenant is certainly a sovereign administration of grace by God to man. We are not only mere creatures but also sinners who have lost rights. Yet law also has a regulative role. Sin and righteousness have content. They can be and are defined. Paul, in attacking the legalism of the Judaizers, does not set aside the law itself (Rom. 3:13; 7:7, 12, 14, where he calls the law ’spiritual’ and thus according to his customary usage ‘originating from the Holy Spirit). In this sense, grace is constitutive of the covenant relation, while law is regulative. It is by pure grace that that God establishes the covenant. It is by grace that we are brought into such a relation with him. It is the law, however, that defines both what sin is and also in what obedience consists. It maps out the path we are to follow in fulfilling our covenant obligations… As David Hill comments on Mt. 5:18, ‘the validity of the Law is emphasized,’ and again ‘… in none of these passages is there an intention to annul the demands of the Law, but only to carry them to their ultimate meaning, to intensify them, or to interpret them in a higher key. This is the time of the fulfillment of the Law, not its destruction.’”

Robert Letham
The Work of Christ – pg. 40-41

1.) The new and better covenant is still a covenant where grace is constitutive and law is regulative. We are still brought into the covenant by pure grace, however being in relationship w/ the Lord Christ by means of covenant that covenant and that relationship still finds the law being the regulative means that defines what sin is and informs us as to what obedience consists.

2.) Letham, by way of implication, reminds us of some of the differences between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. Whereas the covenant of creation was between God and Adam in Adam’s innocence, the covenant of life was between God and Adam in Adam’s guilt. While in the prelapsarian covenant grace may be present it is grace of a qualitatively different nature then the grace that is present in the postlapsarian covenant. The inability to find substantive differences between the prelapsarian and postlapsarian covenants, opting instead to view each of the covenants as only offering a difference in degree ends up wreaking ripple effect havoc all the way through our theology. On the other hand, the tendency to view all required obedience in the covenant of grace to be of one piece with the covenant of works and so to disparage the ongoing legitimacy of law in covenant life as the regulative standard for those in covenant is equally disastrous. To suggest the covenant of grace is merely “new and improved” covenant of works ends up belittling the work of Christ for His people by insisting that our obedience combined with Christ’s obedience is how justification is gained. To suggest the covenant of grace castrates the law, and does not require our sincere but imperfect obedience, likewise ends up belittling the work of Christ for His people by stripping away the obedience of the body from the obedience of the head.

Now we will have no tuck with the accusation that such an arrangement ends up teaching that we get into the covenant by grace and stay in by law. Such an objection stems from the false premise that informs it. Being members of the covenant of grace, and offering up imperfect but sincere obedience, can not be understood as the means by which we stay in the covenant of grace without also realizing that increasing but never perfect obedience is all of grace. Also this objection lose traction because it fails to realize that any member of the covenant of grace would never be so impressed with their obedience as to think that by the means of that obedience they were keeping their place in the covenant. All genuinely converted covenant members rejoice in their ever increasing Spirit given obedience but being genuinely converted they also rejoice in the reality that the obedience that they can ultimately rest in is the obedience of their majestic covenant liege Lord freely imputed to them.

3.) Note Letham’s brief but fabulous definition of “spiritual.” In Paul’s usage of the word “spiritual” there is no connotation of “ethereal,” “gnostic,” or “non-corporeal.” It is a word that indicates “originating from the Holy Spirit.” So when Paul says that we are spiritual, he does not mean we are not corporeal. When Paul says that we are to “walk in the Spirit” he does not mean that we only act in a kind of love that is informed by autonomous good intentions. When Paul says that the “Law is Spiritual” he does not mean that we get to make it up as we go. There is a crying need in the Church today to quit using the word “spiritual” in such a way to give approval for only God knows how many errors.

“It is important to note the overall theological context of the miraculous in the history of revelation. In the OT, miracles are not scattered throughout but occur unevenly. The principal occasions where miraculous activity takes place are during the time between the exodus and the conquest, and also at the start of the prophetic era in the ministries of Elijah and Elisha. Even more significant is the conjunction between miracle and outbursts of eventually insripturated revelation. The uneven distribution of miracles is not haphazard. Miracles occur at times when fresh revelation is given by God. Moreover, fresh revelation itself is associated w/ acts of redemptive power by Yahweh. There is correlation between redemptive deed and revelatory word throughout, attended in turn by miraculous sign. These interventions are consequently not spectacles in their own right. They are pointers to something else, signposts to the redemptive works of the living God of Israel. Along these lines, it is hardly surprising if at the climax of God’s works and ways in salvation there should be fresh, and even more pronounced, occurrence of the miraculous. The coming of God’s own Son was his supreme self-revelation. He came to save hs people. This was the event to which the whole of scripture had pointed. The miracles of healing and deliverance which Jesus did, and which the apostles performed in his name, were the apex of the Biblical pattern of signs witnessing to the salvation of God.

If this connection between redemptive deed, revelatory word, and miraculous sign is valid, there are a number of corollaries. First, Christ has achieved complete salvation. Nothing additional is needed. He left no theological deficit to be made up. All that God continues to do for us is an outflow of what he achieved in the incarnate Christ. No further redemptive deeds can add to that. Thus also, God’s revelatory words are complete too. Holy Scripture is sufficient for our salvation (II Tim. 3:16-17). Christ’s ministry, in person and through his Apostles is complete. Of course, God continues to apply the fruit of his labor to us continually by the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless if this is valid (which historic Christianity has affirmed that it is) further displays of the miraculous are unnecessay and theological superfluous. It could be said that we now live in the ‘age of the Spirit,’ and so God is free to do whatever he chooses. It would be foolish to argue that miracles cannot occur or even that they do not occur. We are, it is emphatically true, in the ‘age of the Spirit.’ Yet, the Spirit’s chief work is to testify to Christ. He does this through the Scriptures he inspired and through the teaching of the apostles whom he empowered and who were appointed by Christ himself to be witnesses of his own resurrection. After Christ there is no theological deficit to be filled in. God’s supreme revelation, his unsurpassable action took place in him.

Robert Letham
The Work Of Christ - pg. 67-68

Reduced to its essence what we have is that the miraculous happens in concert with – and confirmatory to – redemptive progress and revelatory word. With the coming of Christ we have not only the apex of redemptive progress anticipated in earlier episodic outbursts of redemptive brilliance but also the apex of revelatory word and miraculous confirmatory sign. With the close of the NT canon in the death, resurrection, ascension, session and outpouring of Christ, the history of redemption is complete save for his final return. The objective history of salvation is complete. With redemptive history being complete, the revelatory word that interprets redemptive deed is likewise complete as is the Miraculous sign that confirms redemptive deed and which is what is interpreted by revelatory word. What this means is that nothing can be added to our accomplished redemption, and there can be no further inspired or inscripturated revelatory word. Likewise this means the age of the miraculous is as discontinued as the necessity for more redemptive history or more revelatory word.

Certainly, we should not rule out completely what the Puritans called “remarkable Providences,” but the notion of miraculous signs and wonders that is so often pushed by Pentecostalism (whether first wave, second wave, third wave, or fifteenth wave) is doing grave damage to the effectiveness of Christianity and the fact that so many putatively Reformed people are pursuing this unfortunate and dangerous misinterpretation is a deadening burden upon the Reformed Church. The erstwhile attempt by legions of Reformed folk trying to combine this Pentecostalism with Reformed theology is nothing but the attempt to combine fire and water.

It is fire and water because the two components are antithetical to one another. Pentecostalism with its mad frenzied rush to miraculous gifts, tongues, signs, and wonders is a movement that accentuates the experience of the individual to the neglect of the Word. In contrast Reformed theology has always been logocentric and Word oriented. Pentecostalism interprets the Spirit’s work as emotionally subjective and individually self-interpreted while Reformed theology interprets the Spirit’s work as objective as seen by the Holy Spirit turning the individual away from the self to the Word which speaks a Christ outside of us. The signs and wonders Pentecostalism yields a personal and individual Christ while Reformed theology gives the Christ of Scriptures to God’s covenantally gathered people.

The Church today should no more search for or anticipate the miraculous reoccurring the it should search for or anticipate the necessity for more redemptive history or more ongoing revelation. Christ is God’s final redemptive deed, revelatory word and miraculous sign. The Spirit knowing that only exhibits Christ in Scripture.