RFPA Blog News

Self-examination and Repentance (Haggai 1:5-6)

Let us then, as members of the church, be always busy considering our ways. Let us observe the spiritual condition of the church and not be blind to the fact that God may very well be sending his judgments on the church for her unfaithfulness. Certainly we must not think that because the members of the church are prosperous in material things and because the church has many members and enough in the offerings to pay for all sorts of programs, these things are evidence of God’s blessing. The church is blessed when the members of the church are clothed in the spotless robes of Christ’s righteousness and when they have the bread of life as the food of their souls and the water of life as their refreshment. Read More

Forgive Us as We Forgive - Part 3

God’s grace is first: he forgives us, freely, graciously, without our works. We receive that forgiveness by faith alone, by embracing Jesus Christ with a believing heart. As a fruit of God’s grace we are thankful, and, being thankful, we forgive our neighbor. When we compare our enormous debt of guilt with our neighbor’s trifling transgression against us, we freely forgive him. It is, as the Catechism expresses it, “our firm resolution from the heart to forgive our neighbor.” The one who does not forgive his neighbor, but who lives in bitterness, anger, and resentment; the one who plots his revenge: he does not know the forgiveness of sins. He shows that he has not tasted that the Lord is gracious. Read More

Forgive Us as We Forgive - Part 2

David does not make any excuses, he does not attempt to hide or deny his sin, he does not lash out in anger against the prophet, he does not make a partial confession, or bemoan himself because he was caught: he simply says, “I have sinned against the Lord.” When David confessed his sin, and repented of it—and not before; see Psalm 32:3-5—God forgave him freely and graciously. Read More

Forgive Us as We Forgive - Part 1

God’s forgiveness of us is designed to be a pattern for our forgiveness of our neighbors. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” (Matt. 6:14) is our plea in the prayer that Jesus taught us. We are debtors to God and we seek the canceling of the debt. Others are debtors to us and they seek the canceling of their debt. When we forgive others, we do what God does, but on a much lesser scale, mimicking what God has done for us: “Even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye” (Col. 3:13). Read More

Leveled Membership FAQs

1. How many books would I get as a leveled member? The chart below shows you how many books come with Level 1 membership and how many books come with Level 2 membership. As a thank you for signing up, leveled members also get to pick out some additional free books from our Complimentary Books Catalog.* Level 1   Membership Level 2  Membership Books in membership  4  8 Free books from the Complimentary Books Catalog* 2  4   *Please note that the free...

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Our Rejection of Conditions (6): Critiquing a Novel Definition

The Protestant Reformed Churches and her sisters still reject conditions in salvation and in the covenant. We insist that faith is not a condition so that the believer makes himself to differ from the unbeliever, but it is the gift of God. We insist that grace is not wider than election, not on the mission field, and not in the covenant community, but God has grace, effectual, sovereign grace, only for his elect. We insist that God’s promise never fails because everything that God promises surely comes to pass. This is always how we have understood “conditions:” an activity of man on which salvation depends or on which it is contingent. Read More

Our Rejection of Conditions (5): Conditional Grammar in the Bible

If you believe, repent, obey, walk in the light, are fruitful in good works, and persevere in faith and godliness, you show yourself to be one of God’s children exactly because God has worked such saving graces in you—you believe, you repent, you walk in the light, you keep God’s commandments not by virtue of your freewill, but by virtue of God’s grace given to you in regeneration and in sanctification. If God has given you the gift of faith, that faith will not remain hidden, but it will bear fruit. If, on the other hand, you remain unbelieving, impenitent, disobedient, and fruitless, you have no reason to apply the description of believers to yourself.

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Our Rejection of Conditions (4): Herman Hoeksema, late 1940s and early 1950s (Part 2)

The Holy Spirit, who first pricked them in their hearts [in Acts 2], regenerated and called them, now through the same preaching of the apostle Peter rouses them into conscious activity of repentance and baptism. Mark you, in all this there is absolutely no condition. The hearers do not take the initiative whatsoever. It is the Holy Spirit, that regenerated them and called them to faith, that now unconditionally rouses them to the activity of repentance. And when they thus repent, that repentance is not a condition unto salvation and unto the remission of sins, but is the active fruit in the hearers of the grace of God that wrought in them and that was first and unconditional. Read More

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.

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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. Read More

Special note from the RFPA board: the badly copyedited books

Special note from the RFPA board: the badly copyedited books Read More

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.

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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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Preaching Repentance and Forgiveness (7): Repentance and Remission

Two concepts are included and, clearly there is a relationship between them. Quite simply, God forgives the sins of those who repent, or God forgives sinners when they repent. “I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin” (Ps. 32:5). “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, and he will abundantly pardon” (Isa. 55:7). “I send thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me” (Acts 26:17b-18). That should be enough—God forgives us when we repent—but to dispel confusion, we should explain the relationship further. 

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