Thank you very much for the invitation
to speak to you this evening on the herpetic consensus and
the imputed righteousness of Christ. I am going to give a
little bit of background regarding the consensus. I think it's important
we know a little bit of the history, that we understand what caused
the consensus to be written. I want to spend most of my time
speaking on the imputed righteousness of Christ. what that doctrine
is, what it means, and then having laid the foundation of what it
means to say why the Helvetic Consensus was written, what errors
had been brought in concerning that glorious doctrine which
the Consensus was written in order to counteract. I am not
planning to read the two canons of the Helvetic Consensus or
the two paragraphs which deal with imputed righteousness. I
think if I just read them out, they would be words that would
go past you. And so I will leave you to look them up in your own
time. You'll find the Helvetic Consensus
in various places online, but you'll find them on R. Scott
Clarke's Heidelberg blog, amongst other places where the text is
given with all its references, if you want to look it up and
read it. So our brother Cliff has said that this year marks
the 350th anniversary of the Helvetic Consensus. As Cliff
said, the Helvetic Consensus originates in Switzerland and
that's what the word Helvetic means. It means that it is the
consensus of the Swiss. The Swiss reformed theologians
and a consensus is of course an agreed position. So this was
the agreed position of the Swiss Church on key doctrinal matters. What is the background of the
Helvetic Consensus? Well some of you may have heard
of the Academy of Saumur in France. That was a theological seminary,
a religious university, and back in the 1500s, founded in 1593,
it became the centre of a school of thought which taught modified
Calvinism. John Cameron was one of the first
theologians there, a Scotsman, but perhaps one of the most famous
that you will have heard of is Moses Amarat, and you may have
heard of Amaraldianism, the teaching that is named after him. He lived
from 1596 to 1664. And these theologians, they modified
the five points of Calvinism, they modified the teaching of
Calvinism, and in particular they denied the doctrine of limited
atonement. And Amoraldianism is often called
four-point Calvinism. That is, they stated they believed
the other four points of Calvinism but denied limited atonement. One of the problems if you read
the Helvetic Consensus and the variant paragraphs of it is you
find that their doctrines spread. And the problem with doctrine
is that if you are wrong in one point, you end up being wrong
in everything else. In trying to justify your wrong
point, you go wrong on so many other bases. There are very few
doctrinal errors which are confined to just that one point. And that
is really the problem with Amoraldianism. It is not simply a denial of
limited atonement. but it spreads out to affect
all other or many other points of doctrine including the imputed
righteousness of Christ. I believe if I'm right in saying
the first of these papers dealt with limited atonement, the second
one dealt with the call of the gospel, how the gospel is to
be preached and that was part of the reason why Amoraldianism
extended the extent of the atonement because they wanted to be able
to declare from the pulpits that Christ had died for all. that
was really the foundation of Amaraldinism. Well Amarald's
teaching can be summarised as follows. He said firstly that
the plan of salvation was motivated by God's love rather than his
glory. So I would say this evening the
word of God teaches that although God is a God of love, the primary
moving influence in the work of salvation is in the glory
of God. This people have I formed for
myself, he says, that they should show forth my praise. But Amaraut
laid the foundation in God's love. And he said that God loved
all men. Loving all men, he sent his son,
Jesus Christ, to die for all mankind. And he said that the
death of Jesus upon the cross at Calvary was a death that was
sufficient for the entire world, for every man, woman, and child
that ever lived. And all men can therefore be
saved if only they will believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
so the preaching of the Amaraldians was that Christ has died for
you and all you've got to do is believe. And it is your rejection
of him which is the cause of your damnation. But then he went
on to say that God knew that man would not believe in Jesus
for salvation. Amarald faced up to the fact
that there are many in the world that never believe. And they
do not believe because they have not got faith. And so he taught
a subsequent election, he taught that the decree of election followed
on from the decree to save man. And that decree of election was
to give faith to a certain number of the human race, thereby ensuring
that they would believe and be saved. And so although an Amoraldian
would say they believe in election, they put the decrees in different
orders and consequently election is in order to make sure that
people will believe rather than being the foundation for the
atonement. So you see already although an Amoraldian would
say he is a four-point Calvinist, already on one of the other points
he does not see eye to eye with a Calvinist. Well, Amaraldianism
gained popularity in France and Switzerland, and as it did, it
began to divide the Swiss church. And the older school of theologians,
men like Francis Taratin and one or two other well-known theologians
who held the old school Calvinism, the position of limited atonement,
they decided to produce a clear statement of what they believed
should be taught by the church. And that is what we know as the
Helvetic consensus. So the Consensus was principally
the work of a man named Johann Heidegger, who lived from 1633
to 1698 in Zurich. And at the beginning of 1675,
he drafted the Consensus, which was circulated to the ministers
of Zurich, and over the course of the year became widely adopted
as an appendix to the Helvetic or Swiss Confession of Faith.
The document has 25 paragraphs or canons that specifically teach
the truth as opposed to the errors taught by the Amaraldians. Sadly, its adoption didn't last
very long. Political events really overtook it and in France the
revoking of the Edict of Nantes and the persecution of the French
Protestant Church caused many French ministers who were Amaraldians
to move to Switzerland and they refused to sign the consensus.
And while the design for the consensus was to unite the Swiss
church against error, it ended up dividing it. With this influx
of French ministers, the Swiss church became badly divided and
concerned that in a time of persecution, it was better to stand together
than let these things divide the church. The elector of Brandenburg
asked that the obligation to sign the consensus be scrapped.
From as early as 1686 in Basel and 1706 in Geneva, the consensus
was dropped. And although it never formally
was abolished, it slowly fell out of use in the Swiss Church.
And having been a document of the Swiss Church and falling
out of use there so quickly, I think that is the reason why
it has been largely forgotten today. So you may say, well,
what is the relevance of these things to us today? Why on earth
are we remembering the Helvetic consensus? Well, the error of
Amaraldianism, four-point Calvinism, hypothetical universalism, whatever
we may like to call it, is still widely preached in many churches
today. It's very subtle, because its
preachers can speak of election. They can preach the necessity
of the work of the Holy Spirit. They can sound very Calvinistic
from the pulpit. but they fundamentally err on
who Jesus died for, departing from the teaching of the Bible
that Christ died for his sheep, as you'll find in John 10, 15,
and as we read concerning his high priestly prayer in John
17, 9, that he prayed not for the world but for them which
the Father had given him out of the world. The whole of scripture
teaching speaks of Christ being for his people and not for the
whole world. The preaching of the gospel by
an Amoraldin can sound very wonderful as they proclaim the love of
God and tell you that God wants you to be saved, that Jesus died
for you if only you will believe. It's very attractive to the natural
mind which hates the idea that God has willed that any might
be eternally lost. And so although this consensus
fell out of formal use over 300 years ago, the consensus remains
the only formal statement of the Christian Church opposing
the teachings of Amoraldinism. And I say that in a qualified
sense, in its fullness, that I believe it is the only document
which really fully counteracts the teachings of Amoraldinism.
And of course the articles of faith of this chapel, which are
the gospel standard articles, they state we reject the doctrine
called Baxterianism, that is to say, that while the elect
shall assuredly be saved, there is a residuum of grace in Christ
for the rest, or any of the rest, if they will only accept it.
That is, Ameraldianism, or four-point Calvinism, or hypothetical universalism,
And it is that teaching which the consensus was designed to
counteract. So if you want to understand
what your articles of faith mean here, if you want to understand
what is wrong with Baxterianism, then reading the consensus is
perhaps a good place to start. But tonight in this third of
this series of lectures on the consensus I've been asked to
speak especially on what the consensus speaks concerning the
imputation of Christ's righteousness. Now those words might seem rather
long and complicated but it really comes to the very heart of our
salvation. I just want to answer the question,
what does imputation mean? If I impute something, it means
I account something to you. I put something to your charge.
I put something to your account. We talk about imputing guilt
to somebody. If we suspect them of doing something,
we put the guilt to their account. Well the imputation of Christ's
righteousness in simple terms is the putting of the righteousness
of Christ to the account of the Lord's people that his righteousness
might be said to be their righteousness and that that righteousness should
be the ground of their salvation. Now I said this teaching comes
to the heart of our salvation. In the book of Job we read the
all-important question how can a man be just with God or in
simple terms how can I be right with God and that is a very important
question it is the all-important question because we are sinners
Sinners by nature, we are born into this world, as the psalmist
says, born in sin and shaped in iniquity, we go forth from
our mother's womb speaking lies, we are sinners. And God is a
holy God, a righteous God, a God who cannot look upon sin with
the least degree of lenience, but a God who must punish sin.
because he is righteous and he must do that which is right and
sin demands punishment and the wages of sin is death and so
as we stand as sinners this evening before a holy God our sins have
separated us from God, our sins are between us and God. How can
we therefore be right with God? How can we ever be made right
with God? We read in Romans 3, 26, that
glorious statement that God might be just, and the justifier of
him that believeth in Jesus. That is what we need, that God
can remain just, but he can justify his people, he can make them
right with him. And how does he do that? It's
in Jesus, and it is received by us by faith. that God might
be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. Well, I just want to come to
look at this a little more closely. How can God forgive sin and remain
righteous? You see, a holy God and a righteous
God cannot simply say, I will forgive sinners. You'll find
there are some today that will tell you God is so good, God
is so loving, that God can just forgive your sins. Well we as
parents, we love our children and there may be those occasions
when we just because we love them we forgive them. We let
bygones be bygones, we say we'll forget it. And we may forget
it, we may truly forget what they've done, we may truly as
it were wipe it out and pretend it's never happened. But a righteous
God cannot do that because that is not righteous behaviour. The
sin must be atoned for, the payment must be paid. And a righteous
God cannot simply wipe off the debt of our sins. He cannot just
simply wipe off our sins and say they are forgotten. If he
did, he would cease to be righteous. He would cease to regard that
sin as sin, which must be punished. So how can a just God, a holy
God, ever forgive sin? Well, the answer is that God
has found out a wonderful way of salvation, and it all centers
on this, the imputation of Christ's righteousness. In the covenant
that God has made for the redemption of his people, he's appointed
the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, his eternal son, to stand as
a surety for his people. an assurity to bring it into
modern terms, if you take out a rental agreement or perhaps
some mortgage agreements and other situations in life where
you may borrow something, that somebody stands guarantor for
you. They say that if this person defaults on their payment, if
this person fails to pay back what is due, I will pay it. That is what a guarantor does.
And it is a very significant thing to become a guarantor because
you say that you will take the debt. If that person fails to
pay, you will take the debt and you will pay it. And that is
what Jesus Christ did for his people. He said that he would
be the surety for his people, that he would bear and pay the
punishment instead. When Jesus Christ came into this
world to be his people's surety as he hung there upon the cross
at Calvary, he was paying the price that was due for his people's
sins. The wages of sin is death. And
he paid that price upon the cross at Calvary in full. He satisfied
divine justice, all that the law demands of us as a sinner. We are one of his people, he
paid that price. But that transaction requires
imputation. It requires imputation in two
directions. It requires God to impute the
sins of his people to Jesus Christ, to put your sins to the account
of Jesus Christ, that your sins are seen as his sins, that he
might pay that price. And that is the glorious fullness
of that truth that he who knew no sin was made sin for us. Our sins imputed unto him, counted,
put to his account for him to pay. And he paid it. And then his righteousness, the
perfections of Jesus Christ put to our account. That payment
that he paid totally, perfectly put to our account. imputed to
us that in our account where we were debtors where we were
sinners we are now seen no longer as being a debtor we are no longer
seen as being a sinner but we are declared righteous by the
law God's holy law declared righteous by a holy God and it's by this
transaction that God remains just and yet is able to forgive
sins by this glorious transaction that Jesus Christ becomes a surety
for his people and pays what is due for them in their place. Now you see, Amaral had a problem
with this. He wanted the atonement of Jesus
Christ to be for all men. And the only way that payment
could truly be for all men is for all the sins of the world
to be imputed to Jesus Christ, to be put to their account, put
to the account of Jesus Christ, and to there upon the cross at
Calvary to say that he paid for all those sins. He bore the punishment
that was due to those sins. But you can immediately see the
problems with that. There are many in this world that are not
saved, many in this world that go to hell. They remain sinners
all their days. Amarat did not teach that everyone
went to heaven, that everyone was ultimately safe. There were
many that were lost, but how can God be just when Jesus Christ
has died for their sins upon the cross at Calvary and yet
they're paying for them again in hell? And that is what a top
lady says in that hymn, payment God cannot twice demand, once
at my bleeding surety's hand and then again at mine. There
is a fundamental problem with the doctrine of imputation that
we find declared in Romans 3 and Romans 4, in Romans 5, that we
find declared in Paul's writings to the Corinthians, in other
places in the Word of God. Amaraut could not reconcile the
fact that if the doctrine of imputation was true then Jesus
Christ must have paid for the sins of the whole world upon
the cross and therefore nobody should be going to hell. And
consequently Amaraut ended up denying the doctrine of imputation. He took the heart out of the
atonement and ultimately he said that Jesus' death upon the cross
at Calvary had brought man into a state where God could make
a new covenant of grace with him. The death of Jesus Christ
upon the cross at Calvary therefore did not ultimately save from
sin, it was not all that was required, but it brought man
into a state where God could enter into a new relationship
with man. And that is the heart of the
problem with Amaraldianism. The death of Jesus Christ upon
the cross at Calvary ultimately does not pay the price of the
sins of his people. There is a fundamental problem
at its heart. Now friends, I want to just be
clear. because some people think that
limited atonement means that the death of Jesus Christ was
in some way limited, that it was in some way small and insignificant. It's difficult to put into words.
The person that hung upon the cross at Calvary was the eternal
son of God. the eternal Son of God in our
nature, the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh,
of whom John said, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the
only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And
the death of Jesus Christ is full of grace and truth. The
merit of the death of Jesus Christ upon the cross at Calvary is
infinite. His worth is equal to the worth
of the person that hung upon the cross at Calvary, and that
is the eternal Son of God in our nature. And in that sense,
the sacrifice that Christ made upon the cross at Calvary cannot
be measured. It is of infinite value. Oh,
the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin. and Calvinism has never, apart
from those who have gone to the other extreme and preached some
commercial view of the atonement, would never deny that fact, that
the death of Jesus Christ upon the cross at Calvary was glorious,
of infinite merit, of a value that we cannot begin to put a
value on. It is infinite. It is the death
of the Son of God in our nature. Limited atonement does not limit
the atonement in that sense. Limited atonement preaches, though,
that the death of Jesus Christ upon Calvary was not for all
men. It was not for all men in the
purpose of God. As God designed that atonement
in eternity past, it was designed for his people, for the elect.
It was not for all men in its accomplishment. As Jesus hung
upon the cross at Calvary it was a transaction for the sins
that had been imputed unto him and they were not the sins of
the world, they were the sins of his people. The sins which
Jesus bore upon the cross at Calvary were not the sins of
the world, they were the sins of his people and for their sins
alone he died upon the cross at Calvary and therefore to them
alone the righteousness of his death is accounted theirs and
imputed to them. And therefore, the atonement
is limited in its application. Friends, the faith which we read
of in Romans 3 and you can go on to read of in Romans 4, the
faith which is so beautifully brought out in Abraham, by which
Abraham was justified, which God accounted to him for righteousness,
That faith in the life of the Lord's people is the fruit of
the death of Jesus Christ, a benefit which flows from Calvary, and
it is received only by those for whom Jesus Christ died upon
the cross at Calvary. And therefore, you see, the doctrine
of imputation is the limitation at the heart of the atonement.
It is only for those whose sins were imputed to Jesus Christ,
only for those for whom Jesus was the surety and the sin bearer
at Calvary that that atonement has any effect, that that atonement
is the redemption price of them and of them alone. And so it
is the imputation of the sins of the elect to Christ and the
imputation of the righteousness of that death to the elect, which
is the foundation of the doctrine of limited atonement. And because
Amarant would teach that Christ died for all, he had to ultimately
chip away at, he had to ultimately destroy, or try to destroy, take
away, this glorious doctrine of imputation. Well friends that
is the imputation of the atonement at the heart of it. But there
was another problem with Amaral that I just want to briefly mention
because their Helvetic consensus goes on to deal with this second
point at length. If you go back to the Garden
of Eden when you've got Adam and Eve as a sinner before a
holy God, a God we read made them coats of skin. And the divines
tend to take the view, I would not necessarily say universally,
but the vast majority, and I would certainly agree with them this
evening, that there, in order to produce coats of skin, God
took an animal and slew that animal. He killed that animal.
There was a shedding of blood. The coats of skin were provided
and put upon Adam and Eve. And in that illustration, in
that picture, we see the two parts of righteousness which
are required by the sinner. Adam and Eve were a sinner. In
order for God to look upon them with any mercy, there must be
the shedding of blood. There must be the payment of
the price, a soul that sinneth, it shall die. Without the shedding
of blood, there is no remission of sins. The law demands the
death of the sinner. It demands the payment of that
price. the soul that sinneth it shall die. But the second
thing the Lord demands is perfect obedience, perfect obedience. This evening you don't only need
your sins to be forgiven, but you need to be perfectly obedient
because that is what the Lord demands, that is what a holy
God demands. If your sins were just forgiven,
where is your obedience this evening? You've got a life up
until that point where you're called by grace, up until that
point where you know your sins are forgiven. How can you ever
go back and rectify that? How can you ever live those years
that you've lost in perfect obedience and you know that even now, today,
we fail to keep the law. We fail to walk in conformity
to it. We cannot produce that perfect
obedience. But that is the second thing
that the law demands. Now we've spoken of the death
of Jesus Christ, that is the foundation of the forgiveness
of our sins, the foundation of the remission of our sins, the
shedding of blood for the remission of sins, the death of Jesus Christ,
the payment of the wages of sin, which is death. But the Calvinistic doctrine
is this, that the life of Jesus Christ, from the moment he was
conceived in the womb of his mother, by the overshadowing
of the Holy Ghost, till his death upon the cross at Calvary was
an obedient life. He was the one righteous man.
He kept the law in every point. And that righteousness is imputed
with the righteousness of his death. The Calvinistic divines
have tended to talk about those two things separately. His active
righteousness, his obedience to the law during his life and
his passive righteousness. his sin atoning death upon the
cross at Calvary. I prefer not to separate them
because that's what Amaral did, he separated them. They're one,
you cannot separate them. Horatius Boner in that hymn says,
upon a life I did not live, upon a death I did not die. That's
where Horatius Boner hung his hope for eternity. and that is
the salvation of the Lord's people, not only the death of Jesus Christ,
but his righteous obedience to the law throughout his life.
Now Amaranth taught that that righteousness, the active righteousness
of Jesus Christ, the righteousness of Christ's obedience, was not
imputed to a sinner. He said that by faith the elect
received the righteousness of the death of Jesus Christ. They
were forgiven of their sins by the death of Jesus Christ, but
he did not believe that they received the righteousness of
Jesus Christ in his obedience to the law imputed to them. Amaranth
taught that the death of Jesus Christ brought the sinner into
a new relationship with God, a new covenant, a new law. and that is in this country known
as Baxterianism, or in this country known as Wesleyanism. Richard
Baxter took the teaching of Amarant and he developed it along with
Edward Williams. They became known as the Neo-Nomians,
that is, new law, neo, new, and nomos, the Greek word for law,
the Neo-Nomians. And Baxter and Edwards and the
Neo-Nomians taught that by the death of Jesus Christ upon the
cross at Calvary, God's people were brought into a new covenant
relationship with God. They now had to obey. They now
had to work out their own righteousness. They did not have the imputed
righteousness of Jesus Christ. They must work out their own
righteousness. And that is why Baxterianism and Wesleyan Methodism
are ultimately religion of works because they tell you that if
you're saved this evening you've got to be working out your own
righteousness and your salvation ultimately depends upon the working
out of that salvation. Ultimately the heart, Amaraldianism
is a religion of works. And that is why John Wesley in
some places can appear to support the doctrine of imputation because
he believed in the imputation of the passive righteousness
of Jesus Christ. He believed that the death of
Jesus Christ upon the cross saved a sinner. But he could also talk
about imputed righteousness as being imputed nonsense. because
he denied the imputation of the active righteousness of Jesus
Christ to a believer and consequently the believer had to work out
their own righteousness, their own salvation. And so you'll
see how Amaraldianism has come into this country and has been
taught by men such as Richard Baxter and has been taught by
men such as John Wesley. and this teaching is still prevalent
in various different forms under various different guises in the
English church today. Well, it is a complex subject. I don't deny that. If you want
to read further into it, this modern book I can recommend to
you by J. V. Fesco, Death in Adam, Life
in Christ, The Doctrine of Imputation. It doesn't use the authorized
version. I probably should say that, but it's published by a
mentor of Christian-focused publications, and it's an excellent book. In
dealing with the historical overview of the doctrine, It opens it
from the Word of God and shows you the doctrine in the Word
of God, and it summarises it all in a systematic way, in a
theological way, in a way that can be understood. And if you
want what I would say is the best of the old books on it,
then I suggest you read James Buchanan, the Scotsman, his Cunningham
Lectures on Justification, which you will find published by the
Banner of Truth. Both those books are a very important reading.
It is a subject which is at the heart of our salvation, at the
heart of the Christian's hope this evening and therefore it
is vital that we have a grasp of it. Well friends, what is
your salvation founded on this evening? Is it in the works of
your own hands? Is it in working out your own
salvation or do you have to say my hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness? That is where the Lord's people
have to be bought, no righteousness of themselves, condemned under
the law. But the gospel is that God has
provided a righteousness for his people in the death and in
the life of the Lord Jesus Christ and it's given freely, imputed
freely to the Lord's people. Received by faith, which faith
puts on, as the hymn writer says, and which faith rests in and
which faith glories in, a righteousness which is not our own, but a righteousness
which is by faith in Jesus Christ. That is the only hope, the only
way of salvation. Is it your hope this evening?
The imputed righteousness of Christ. Amen.