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Living Joyfully in Marriage — A Review
The strength of this book is that it takes Scripture as the ultimate authority as regards what is best for us in marriage (and all of life) and how properly to respond to difficulties in marriage. Each chapter is based on a specific Scripture text which is explained and applied as one would expect in a book based on a sermon series. In addition, the author takes into account many other Scripture passages to support the points he makes. When Scripture is taken as God’s revealed truth, we will know there was a first man and a first woman, who were tempted by a serpent, and ate of the forbidden fruit, and thus brought the wages of sin upon the whole human race. When Scripture is given its proper place, as the author does throughout the book, we will see our hope in Christ alone.
Our Rejection of Conditions (3): Herman Hoeksema, late 1940s and early 1950s (Part 1)
If something is a condition it is something that man must do, perform, produce, or contribute on which his reception of salvation depends, or on which it is contingent. Such a condition must be contrasted, explains Hoeksema, from something that God gives or something that God works in the sinner whom he saves; for, since it is God-given or God-worked, it is not a condition for salvation, but part of the salvation that God gives. That remains true even if in God’s good pleasure certain activities of man (believing, repenting, etc.) precede God’s giving—and man’s receiving—of certain blessings of salvation. Temporal sequence is not decisive in the determination of whether or not something can be called a “condition’ in salvation or in the covenant.Special note from the RFPA board: the badly copyedited books
Special note from the RFPA board: the badly copyedited books
Our Rejection of Conditions (2): A Survey of Creeds and Literature
We notice again the elements of conditional theology that the Protestant Reformed Churches and her sisters reject. First, grace is wider than election or the promise is general and for more than the elect; second, man is able to—and, therefore, must—do something (believe, obey, persevere, etc.) on which the covenant depends; and, third, the “something” (believing, repenting, obeying, persevering, etc.) that a man does is not given to him by grace or included in God’s promise, but is his contribution to salvation. Faith is not—and cannot be—a condition because it is the God-given and God-worked means by which God makes us partakers of salvation, and it is part of salvation itself. And in that sense—necessary means—the older Reformed writers used the term “condition.” Because of its ambiguity, many modern Reformed writers avoid the term, and because of its erroneous nature, we reject both the term and the theology behind it.
Our Rejection of Conditions (1): What Conditional Theology Is
The sinner who is the object of salvation (the one who is saved) is not the doer of salvation, that is, he does not save himself, he does not contribute to his salvation, and no part of God’s salvation depends on any activity that he performs, either by or without the grace of God. Of course, once God begins to save a sinner, he makes that sinner active and conscious, but the sinner’s activity, even his conscious activity (believing, repenting, etc.) is always only the fruit of God’s activity, or God’s saving work by the Spirit of Christ in him.
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