What I intend to bring out in this article is the fruit of a couple of discussions we had in the last year or two in the Redlands Y.P. Society.  The question simply stated in straight-forward terms was, how do we explain to people what we believe?  What should we tell people, especially young people our age with whom we have contact, when they ask “What does your church ‘believe?’” (i.e. ‘confess and maintain’).  This is a very practical and important question.

The question is not whether we should witness.  Neither is it the intention of this article to enter into the proper motive and reason.  I think by now we have pretty much been persuaded that bearing witness is something we have every reason to do, and it is something that we ought to do better and more often.  A number of convention speeches found in a past issue of the 1986 Beacon Lights did an excellent job in laying that out.  Yet, though we know we ought to speak up, we hesitate.  Why?

To a great extent the reason why we hesitate to say anything, I am sure, is that we are not sure what to say, or at least where to begin.  It is a bit like speech class.  We would like to get up there and make a decent speech.  Expressing one’s thoughts belongs to the very heart of man.  But what if we get up there and have nothing to say, or we cannot remember anything very clearly, and we get all muddled up and begin to speak complete nonsense, non sequiturs, and monsters of a hundred different names.  Horrors.  The stuff nightmares are made of.  Ask any preacher facing the business week after week.  We would make great fools of ourselves.  And making great fools out of ourselves would be of greater embarrassment than the embarrassment of saying nothing at all.  So we say nothing at all.

We should remember, of course, that being willing to be counted a fool for Christ’s sake is not the unique calling of ministers, but it belongs to the very business of Christianity.

When a person asks, “What does your church teach?” they certainly are not interested in a detailed account of the Reformed system of doctrine, at least not at the beginning.  They want something brief and to the point, that ‘something’ that sets us apart from what everybody else teaches.  This is what we want as well.  So the question is, where to begin, and what to zero in on.  I am convinced that if we KNOW where we intend to begin we will have the necessary confidence to begin.  So a few practical suggestions.

In the first place, keep mind that two things that belong to the heart of the Christian faith as we hold it and as the Reformers held it are the truths of ‘Salvation all of grace’ (with emphasis on the ALL) and a high esteem for the Scriptures.  In any presentation of what the churches we attend believe, these two things ought to be made clear from the outset.  Anyone who is ever going to be attracted to our faith and feel at home in our churches will have to be attracted to these two doctrines.

If someone, in friendly curiosity, were to ask me what our churches ‘believed’ (and this is usually the approach.  People are not simply interested in what we believe personally, but why we are members of these Protestant Reformed Churches, rather than of some other), I would answer “That our salvation is all of God’s grace, God’s great, free grace.”  This is where I would normally begin.  If there is anything that defines what we as churches have struggled to maintain in its purity throughout our existence, it is this truth.

Now undoubtedly some would want to add the word ‘sovereign’ to this ‘free grace,’ and they would be right.  At some point it must be added.  But we ought to be warned that most of those with whom you have contact will have never heard of the word ‘sovereign.’  It will be to them as a foreign word, and you will have to immediately answer the question, ‘Sovereign? What do you mean by sovereign?’ I would prefer to say something about ‘grace’ before I have to explain ‘sovereign.’

That salvation is all of grace means simply that salvation is undeserved, in fact, contrary to what we deserve.  It means salvation does not depend upon us.  It does not depend upon anything good found in men, neither does it depend upon the will of man.  Rather it depends utterly and entirely upon the power of God’s almighty grace.  It is determined wholly according to God’s good will and purpose, and is found entirely in Christ Jesus and is based upon His work.

That salvation depends upon sovereign grace means that it is dependent upon the Divine will and power of God alone.  God determines who shall be saved.

So, having said we believe salvation is all of grace, God’s almighty grace, we go on to say briefly, “And this means all of our salvation comes from God.  It is not dependent upon man.  We cannot save ourselves.  We cannot make ourselves worthy of being saved.  Our very will to be saved is according to the power of God’s great grace.”

There are a couple of advantages in beginning with this ‘all of grace’ emphasis.  In the first place, it says something positive, and ‘faith’ by very definition is positive.  We believe, after all, IN Someone and IN truths about Him, and not simply against various things.  And this is precisely why we take a stand against a great many teachings that are popularly supposed to be Biblical today, which are not.  Not simply because we are negative and are against teachings that are popular, but because we are for the truth of God’s grace, God’s great sovereign free grace.

Thus we must state that we are for the doctrine of salvation all of God’s great and mighty grace.  And because we are for that we take our stand against many of the popular doctrinal teachings and views of our day.

This brings us to the second advantage of beginning with our emphasis upon ‘salvation all of grace;’ it prepares us immediately to explain why we take exception to teachings such as Arminianism, Roman Catholicism, the theory of Common Grace, and so forth.  Almost everyone, of course, will subscribe to the statement that salvation is all of grace.  What is so distinctive about that?

What can and must be shown, if the opportunity presents itself, is that while these systems claim to teach salvation is all of grace, in reality they deny it.

Arminianism with its ‘free-will-ism’ denies it because it teaches that one’s salvation depends upon a man’s choice and his natural ability to love God, and not simply upon the power of grace.  Roman Catholicism, with its meritorious works notion, makes salvation depend upon a man’s works, earning his salvation, and not upon free grace at all.  And the theory of common grace does an injustice to grace too, because it teaches that there is a grace of God that does not save; a grace moreover that does not come through Christ and the cross; and that apart from the grace of the cross men can do things pleasing to God.

In brief, all these systems do an injustice to the truth of God’s grace as it is in Christ Jesus and to man’s utter dependency upon it if he is to be pleasing to God and spiritually alive.  If opportunity arises we can show this to them.  The point is, we do this in order to maintain the purity of grace, salvation all and entirely of this unmerited, irresistible grace.

Something ought also to be said about our high regard for Scripture, that it is God’s Word, and that we believe everything it says and teaches.  In the midst of today’s apostasy that is much more distinctive than one may realize.

But before I touch on that (in a following article), let me say that in connection with our stating that we believe that salvation is all of God’s almighty grace (meaning it is not dependent upon man’s will or worthiness), we ought to know the five (5) points of Calvinism.

Calvin’s name ought to come up early in any introduction to our ‘beliefs.’  To some he is known; to others not.  In either case his name is likely to give rise to further questions, either because the person has heard various rumors concerning him (most, most likely false), or they know nothing and wonder who this Calvin was, and what he taught.  The 5 points of Calvinism present us with a good way of presenting what we believe in an organized way.

Do you know the 5 points of Calvinism?  You should.  A Protestant Reformed young person ought to be as familiar with them as the Lord’s Prayer.  If you know what the 5 points are, you will have some confidence in your ability to give at least a brief summary of what we believe and teach.  And confidence is the main ingredient in any attempted and useful explanation.

The 5 points of Calvinism are:

Total Depravity

Unconditional Election

Limited Atonement

Irresistible Grace

Perseverance of the Saints

All one has to do is to remember that the national Dutch flower is TULIP and one has a good memory device for recalling these five doctrines that give the heart of Calvinism.

A brief explanation of each of the five could be as follows:

Total Depravity – This means that man is spiritually dead and that he is in bondage (a slave) to sin and Satan.  How can such a man do anything pleasing to God apart from grace!

Unconditional Election – This means that our salvation is dependent upon God’s sovereignly free choice of man; it is not dependent upon a man first choosing God.  God has eternally chosen whom He will save.

Limited Atonement – Christ died not for all men but for His sheep, those whom the Father had given Him, the elect.  All those for whom Christ died will surely be saved!

“What!  You mean God does not love everybody?”

“That’s right.”

“What about John 3:16, ‘God so loved the world…’?”

If the conversation takes this turn one ought to be prepared to answer.  (Read the pamphlet “God So Loved the World…” by Rev. Homer C. Hoeksema. DH)

Irresistible Grace – No man of himself wants to be saved if it means having to give up the world and serve Christ.  It is only God’s almighty grace that overcomes this natural resistance and makes us willing.  Christ’s Holy Spirit changes our hearts.

Preservation of the Saints – True faith cannot perish.  It brings eternal life.  How can eternal life perish?!  God will keep from Satan those who belong to Christ in time and eternity.

This in brief is what the 5 points teach.  Much more could be said.  I only intended to refresh your memory.  I will suggest Biblical proof texts in the next article, D.V.  This will do as a beginning.

If we know and confess that our salvation is all of God’s mighty grace, for which we give Him daily thanks; and if we remember we are Calvinists in churches of Dutch ancestry who confess God’s sovereignty and favor ‘TULIPS,’ we are on our way.

We do not have to feel embarrassed that we have nothing to say.  We do; something very important.  And we ought to be confident in stating in simple, clear terms what belongs to the heart of our confession.

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me.”

To be continued.