power of God, in His participation in God’s majesty. In this, however, he does not cease to be true man but He realises—and this is the mystery of the Resurrection—a life of man in eternal righteousness, innocence and blessedness. For His sake (in Him alone and in Him once and for all) this righteousness is ascribed to us for time and eternity.
4. Because the salvation of man through God’s humiliation and man’s exaltation is not our own but God’s work, the work of Jesus Christ both crucified and risen, therefore the salvation of man can be brought about neither through the acts of a cult nor through the endeavours of a morality but can only be received through faith.
LECTURE IX
(Art. 11)
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE FUTURE AND THE PRESENT LIFE OF MAN
1. The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, because the power of God, as the one single and real power over all men and over the whole world, is the power of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.
2. In faith in Jesus Christ, i.e. in gratitude for the salvation which He has brought about and in recognition of His divine power, man is permitted to understand his existence anew as divine grace and favour. With this hidden yet real change Jesus Christ has become the Lord of man’s future also. But man’s present life has become a waiting for Jesus Christ as for Him who will make manifest this change.
3. Jesus Christ as the coming and expected one will execute the last judgement over men, in so far as He will unveil and judge the life lived in faith in Him as the eternally holy and the eternally blessed life in God’s light, but will unveil and judge all man’s work for salvation as remaining in sin and therefore as remaining in the darkness of eternal death.
4. The coming of Jesus Christ in judgement determines man’s present life as the expectation of faith which has nothing to fear except that it might become unbelief, error or superstition. And it has not even to fear this, in so far as it does not live by itself but by the power of Jesus Christ and by the salvation of man already brought about in Jesus Christ.
LECTURE X
(Art. 12)
FREEDOM TO BELIEVE
1. To know God means, according to Reformed teaching, to be a new man who obeys God and therefore believes in Jesus Christ as the prophet, priest and king in whom God Himself has acted, acts and will act.
2. By believing in Jesus Christ and receiving the salvation brought about by Him alone, man recognises his own unfaithfulness and therefore ceases to believe in himself. Therefore he cannot understand his faith as a work which he would be free to do by means of his own strength, for which he would possess in his own powers the organ and the capacity, and which he could prepare for, start, persevere in or continue by his own skill and achievements.
3. By believing in Jesus Christ and receiving the salvation brought about by Him alone, man recognises God’s faithfulness. Therefore he may understand his freedom to believe, i.e. to live a new life in obedience and hope, as the wonderful and unmerited but real gift of the Holy Spirit. According to Reformed teaching it is God alone through whom God is recognised in truth by sinful man reconciled through Him.
PART II: THE SERVICE OF GOD
LECTURE XI
(Art. 13)
THE REAL CHRISTIAN LIFE
1. The essence of all good action consists in the renewing of man through the Holy Spirit, and therefore through faith in Jesus Christ (cf. Lecture 10). This renewing is what makes the Christian life real and is as such the meaning of the span of life alloted to man.
2. Since man knows in faith the God who in Jesus Christ graciously intervenes on his behalf, he knows that he himself is God’s enemy and therefore a sinner, but also knows that he is acquitted of this sin and really separated from it. He knows his sin as that element of his existence which is alien to himself. He acknowledges that it has happened, is happening and will happen. But he can own allegiance to it no longer and he may own allegiance to the grace which forgives it.
3. Faith means the divine crisis which overtakes human existence, in the course of which man is convicted again and again of his sin, but is also and to a much greater extent assured again and again of God’s grace, in order that he may give God the glory in all the decisions in which both conviction of sin and assurance of grace become actual every day.
4. The real Christian life consists therefore in the accomplishment of daily thankfulness and repentance which, when it is efficacious and genuine, is not the good or bad fruit of our efforts, but is as a reiteration of faith in Jesus Christ the work of the Holy Spirit.
LECTURE XII
(Art. 14)
THE ORDINANCE GOVERNING THE CHRISTIAN LIFE
1. The ordinance governing the Christian Life is the Divine Law. Man has not himself to decide about what is good or evil, or about what is enjoined or forbidden. God has decided about that by His having given to His grace, revealed in Jesus Christ, the form of a definite claim upon man, and by His having therefore given to faith in Jesus Christ the form of definite obedience.
2. Jesus Christ has come to us as true God, that as such He might perfectly take our place and make us partakers of eternal life (cf. Lectures 7 and 8). Therefore the Divine Law demands that man, because he believes in Jesus Christ, should honour and call upon God, attend to His Word, seek Him in the ways which He Himself has shown man, and receive His salvation through the means which He Himself has given man.
3. Jesus Christ has come to us as true man, that as such He might really take our place and so partake of the misery and despair of sinful man (cf. Lectures 7 and 8). Therefore the Divine Law demands that man, because he believes in Jesus Christ, should exist for his fellow men, and render them as limited and weak human beings, honour, service and help.
4. The ordinance governing the Christian life, the way of thankfulness and repentance, the criterion of good and evil is therefore faith in Jesus Christ, which as such cannot exist without love to God and man and thus without the fulfilment of the true, the Divine Law.
LECTURE XIII
(Art. 15)
THE TRUE CHRISTIAN LIFE
1. Our thankfulness and our repentance are true obedience and are acknowledged by God as fulfilment of His Law, in so far as they are the work of faith in Jesus Christ, active in love, and therefore in so far as Jesus Christ intervenes on our behalf by His suffering and obedience. He and He alone is the true Christian life.
2. Precisely because Jesus Christ intervenes on our behalf by His suffering and obedience, we, regardless of the actual insincerity, superficiality and imperfection of our outward and inward achievement, are and remain in all circumstances and without intermission claimed for obedience to God’s Law and therefore for Christian life in love for God and man.
3. Precisely because Jesus Christ intervenes on our behalf by His suffering and obedience, we, regardless
