XIII A Critique By Noel Espinosa

“ASSESSMENT of the Position
of
Pastor Sing Foo Lau
on
Justification by Faith”
by
Pastor Noel A. Espinosa

(The Principal of
Grace Ministerial Academy,
Manila, Philippines)
======================

Here is the 'courteous' email that accompanied the Assessment :

From: Noel Espinosa
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 02:13:55 -0700 (PDT)
To: singlau@myjaring.net
Subject: thanks and plea

Dear Brother Sing F. Lau,

I would like to thank you for your kind and thoughtful gift of your book. Also your assurance of prayer during my recent ministry in Malaysia is truly appreciated.

But it is with sadness that I was to learn of your deviation from the faith. What compounds the matter is the way you have been defending your case through the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith. I am sorry to say, brother, that your employment of that Confession is totally wrong and unjustified. Are you an expert in the history of that Confession? You seem to totally ignore those who have expounded the 1689 with so much more scholarship. Do you really think that you have seen in the 1689 something that many more in different generations have seen differently?

Or let me put it to you this way. Do you think you know better than those very men who have been instrumental in the creation of the 1689 Confession? There were some thirty seven signatories of the Confession. Do you really speak their mind?

Unfortunately, brother, that is not the case. Those men have left records that clearly addressed the issue that you have promoted in your fellowship of churches. And the original framers of the Confession clearly were not in your position.

I am enclosing the outline of my lecture to the leaders and interested parties in the last Camp. Very clearly, men like Benjamin Keach (considered as the most eminent theologian of that group) held the position that faith is the instrumental cause of justification. This clearly shows that it is very unbecoming of you to use the 1689 to promote a view that the original framers repudiated.

I am pleading with you to set the matters straight. Please go back to the straight paths of theology. Your position is unbiblical, and clearly not held by historical evangelicalism.

But if you will continue to hold to your position, I am urging you to express your repentance in using the 1689 Confession for your defense. To continue doing so after I have shown that its framers are of a different persuasion, that will clearly be spitting upon their graves.

Brother, disown your unbiblical view. But if you cannot, then disown the 1689 Baptist Confession of
Faith. It is definitely not on your side. You only stand by yourself, and by your revered website. But you are neither on the side of the Bible, nor of the Confession of Faith.

I plead with you to return the Confession where it belongs.

In the Lord's mercy,

Pastor Noel Espinosa
=======

ASSESSMENT of the Position of Pastor Sing Foo Lau
on Justification by Faith
By
Pastor Noel A. Espinosa

Preliminary
His Position Summarized
Effectual call unto life (definitive sanctification)
• Justification: condemned is declared righteous
• Regeneration: dead is given eternal life
• Adoption: received as sons, and given gifts
Gospel call is blessed for further sanctification
• Conversion through the ministry of the word
• Faith with works evidences justified state
• Working out salvation with fear & trembling
• Perseverance: God perseveres to preserve the elect in the state of grace
Glorification – based on God’s perseverance alone
SFL Conclusion: The Bible position has always been: justification (legal) is neither by faith nor by works. It is by free grace alone through the blood of Christ alone. This free grace justification is evidenced and experienced by faith accompanied with works of faith.

My General Comments
1. It attempts to radiate strong belief in the sovereign grace of God
2. It changes the ordo salutis on very crucial issues
(a) It is a deviation from the 1689 Confession of Faith
(b) It is a departure from historic Reformed theology
(c) It is a distortion of the Scriptures


Deviation from the 1689 Confession of Faith
Note: SFL asserts that his position is that which is espoused in the 1689 Confession
“The view summarized in the 1689 CoF above has been held by the faithful remnant throughout the church history.”
Problem: Why should his reading of the 1689 be more accurate than that of the dominant number of its advocates?
1. The framers of the 1689 Confession did not advocate his ordo salutis
Note: The most eminent theologian among the signatories of the 1689 was Benjamin Keach
• He wrote the treatise: Actual Justification Rightly Stated…The Introduction: Proving, There is no Actual Justification, or Actual Union with Christ before Faith
Whether believers were not actually reconciled to God, actually justified and adopted when Christ died? The answer was: That the reconciliation, Justification, and Adoption of Believers are infallibly
secured by the gracious purpose of God, and merits of Jesus Christ; yet none can be said to be actually reconciled, justified and adopted, until they are really implanted into Jesus Christ by faith.
• Another treatise: The Marrow of True Justification
Point: The framers believed in justification by faith – taking faith as instrumental cause

2. The 1689 Confession deliberately copied the Westminster Confession in many parts, including justification
Note: It is evident that the Westminster divines upheld the justification by faith ordo salutis
• The independents, John Owen and Thomas Goodwin, were of this conviction
• John Owen, The Doctrine of Justification: “Whereas, therefore, the righteousness wherewith we are justified is the gift of God, which is tendered unto us in the promise of the gospel; the use and office of faith being to receive, apprehend, or lay hold of and appropriate, this righteousness, I know not how it can be better expressed than by an instrument… If we are justified through the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, which faith alone apprehends and receives, it will not be denied but that it is rightly enough placed as the instrumental cause of our justification.”
Point: The 1689 confession was intended to be of the same conviction as the Confession of Reformed theology
For the most part without any variation of the terms, we did in like manner conclude it best to follow their example in making use of the very same words with them both, in these articles wherein our faith and doctrine is the same with theirs, and this we did, the more abundantly, to manifest our consent with both, in all the fundamental


Departure from Historic Reformed Theology
1. Justification and Adoption are not subsumed under Effectual Calling in Reformed Theology
• Effectual calling is by His Word and Spirit… enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God (i.e. to believe)
• The one called is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it
Point: The immediate effect of effectual calling is saving belief in the gospel

2. Justification is objective and legal, not subjective or experiential
Note: SFL forces new meanings on justification just to accommodate his order.
He distinguishes between the legal (effectual call), and the experiential (evidenced by faith and works)

• The great divide between the Reformation and Roman Catholicism is on the former’s emphasis on forensic meaning
Point: The Confession teaches that God freely justifies those whom he effectually calls [not that he effectually calls those he freely justifies], by imputing Christ’s active and passive obedience for their whole and sole righteousness by faith… so the justification referred to here is by faith
3. Justifying faith is itself the gift of God’s grace
Note: SFL aligns faith with work so as to make it appear that sola fide undermines God’s grace
Point: The Confession teaches that the faith of the elect is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts


Distortion of the Scriptures
Romans 4:16 = Therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace
• Clearly, faith is not meant to undermine grace, but precisely it safeguards salvation by grace alone
• This is totally distorted by SFL’s insistence that by faith is in the category of works

Acts 13:39 = by Him everyone who believes is justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law…
• SFL’s construction of this makes believes present tense, and justified perfect tense
• In fact, dikaiou/tai is present passive… SFL has distorted a simple fact!
• Note the contrast with justified by the law of Moses… clearly in the instrumental sense

Romans 3:27 = Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.
• dikaiou/sqai pi,stei must be understood in its instrumental dative sense
• The contrast with the instrument of works again presses the sense of faith as the instrumental cause of justification

Galatians 2:16 = knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.
• The contrast again with justified by the works of the law makes but by faith in the same category of sense
• Moreover, the conjunction ′ina, translated in order that denotes purpose



Final Thoughts
1. SFL’s position is not necessarily damning (or heretical)
• Saving faith is not placed upon one’s order of salvation… SFL’s statements still reveal belief in the grace of God
• There can still be true saving faith amidst much error that is espoused

2. SFL’s position is seriously damaging
• It damages the right presentation of the gospel… no serious call for faith as the saving response to the gospel
• It damages the dynamics of biblical assurance of salvation… Spirit’s testimony; promises; faith and fruit
• It damages the side of human responsibility in its unbalanced emphasis on divine sovereignty

3. SFL’s attitude needs humble correction
• In presuming to know more the meaning of the 1689 than the framers themselves
• In sweeping allegation that this is the position of “the faithful remnant” without the slightest evidence
• In using such a harsh language against the ordo salutis that God has used much in history, and in the present
• In creating division among the saints for such an obscure doctrine

CONCLUSION: To Him who is able to keep you from stumbling… To God our Savior… Be glory and majesty


[Pastor Noel Espinosa gave an eloquent and passionate defense of the ‘standard reformed’ view that the believer’s faith is the instrumental cause of his justification at a public forum during the 2005 Reformed Baptist Combined Church Camp in Port Dickson.]

Read the response here: