and Lord of this world and of man, without standing in need of them, in virtue of His eternal love.
3. Because God reveals Himself to man in Jesus Christ, it is established secondly that the existence of the world and of man in particular is grace, i.e. that it has its glory in the overflowing glory of God and not in itself and hence neither in its spiritual nor in its natural side, neither in its coming into being nor in its passing away, neither in its freedom nor in its necessity. Its being permitted to be gratitude for God’s grace and to serve His glory is what makes it true and real and possessed of meaning and purpose.
4. Because God reveals Himself to man in Jesus Christ it is established thirdly that in the midst of the real world in its entirety it is man who is called to be thankful, i.e. to recognise God’s glory in his own existence and to actualise it and in doing so to trust God who is Creator and Lord of the rest of the world besides.
5. The points which we have established are not a matter of abstract conjecture and reflection about “God,” the “World” and “Man,” but a matter of the exposition of the concrete revelation given in the Person of Jesus Christ. In this God Himself has confirmed and explained the order of the relation between His glory and the glory of man described above.
LECTURE V
(Art. 2c–3)
THE WAY OF MAN
1. The way of man as the way he goes himself is the history of his attempt to seize the glory of God for himself and is, therefore, necessarily the history of the loss of his own glory. The way of man, however, as the way in which God goes with him is the history of Jesus Christ, i.e. the history of the victory in which God proves His glory even in the Fall of man and is therefore necessarily the history of the restoration of man’s glory also.
2. By revealing Himself to man in Jesus Christ, God brings against man the accusation that his own way is the way of ingratitude towards God’s grace. Man, unfaithful to his calling, which is to serve God’s glory, makes himself the lord of his life, as if he were God. What he does thereby, he would have to be, without prospect of deliverance, if God withdrew His hand from him, viz. deprived of his own glory, i.e. a prisoner to the contradiction of his own nature, lost in a world which has ceased to have a lord and therefore ceased to have a meaning for him and subject to vanity. Man’s own way is the way of sin, i.e. of offence against God, which only God can make amends for.
3. By revealing Himself to man in Jesus Christ, God gives him the promise and commands him to believe, that it is He, God Himself, who makes amends for the evil done by man. This, man’s own way, is also the way in which God goes with him by becoming man in Jesus Christ. It is the way in which He confers on him the new unmerited glory of calling him His child, a glory which cannot be destroyed by any debt or punishment.
4. A pessimistic anthropology has nothing to do with that accusation and an optimistic anthropology has nothing to do with that promise. It is the Holy Spirit of God Himself who humiliates man as sinner, exalts him as believer and who enables him to be recognised in this humiliation and exaltation.
LECTURE VI
(Art. 4–6)
THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JESUS CHRIST
1. The revelation of God in Jesus Christ is the history of God’s faithfulness in the midst of man’s unfaithfulness and is therefore the history of the way of the grace of God with sinful man. In the testimony of the Old Testament the revelation of God is the history of the church which lives by the promise of Jesus Christ. In the testimony of the New Testament it is the history of Jesus Christ Himself. This twofold and inseparable history is at once the source and the subject of the Reformed teaching.
2. To instruct the church about herself, the revelation of God is borne witness to in the Old Testament as the history of a people, which, as a sinful people, has been elected and called, sustained and increased, blessed and led by God. Although it does not possess more than the promise and the command to have faith and although it ends its history in confirming man’s unfaithfulness by the rejection of Jesus Christ, nevertheless by its existence it testifies to the fact that the promise given to it has a ground and the faith commanded it has an object.
3. To instruct the church about her Lord and Saviour, the revelation of God is borne witness to in the New Testament as the history of Jesus Christ, Who as true Son of God has assumed true manhood and Who, rejected by men but confirming God’s faithfulness, has thereby reconciled sinful man with God in His own person. In the humiliation of His divine nature and in the exaltation of His human nature He is the goal, the significance and the content of the history of that people, the ground of its promise and the object of its faith, the ruling head of its church.
4. The historical and critical study of the Bible performs the task of understanding the human documents of the Old Testament and the New Testament as human documents. The question as to their divine content is not a question for critical study as such, but is the question with which faith has to do and is perhaps also the one with which superstition, error and unbelief are concerned.
LECTURE VII
(Art. 7–8)
GOD’S DECISION AND MAN’S ELECTION
1. Jesus Christ in His unity as true God and true man is the eternal, merciful decision of the just God for fellowship with sinful man and thereby the eternal, merciful election of sinful man for fellowship with the just God—a decision and election consummated in time.
2. Jesus Christ is God’s decision for man. It is free mercy that God decides for man and not against him. But that which for us is mercy is strict justice in the case of Jesus Christ, because He is the true God and because God in His human life and death has Himself taken our place and therefore finds His perfection again in the active obedience of this man and so is in pure fellowship with Him.
3. Jesus Christ is man’s election for God. It is free mercy that man is permitted to live with God and is not compelled to perish without Him. But that which for us is mercy is strict justice in the case of Jesus Christ, because He is true man and because God in His human life and death has Himself taken our place and therefore finds our guilt atoned for in the suffering and obedience of this man and so is in pure fellowship with Him.
4. God’s decision and man’s election is not a general truth (either in the sense of a hidden divine decree or in the sense of a quality of discernment belonging to man). It is exclusively the truth of the God-man Jesus Christ which is described above and which can be grasped in faith.
LECTURE VIII
(Art. 9–10)
GOD’S WORK AND MAN’S SALVATION
1. The salvation of man is his translation out of sin into righteousness before God and out of death into the fullness of life with God. This translation is not his own work but that of God. And this work of God is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the epitome of the Incarnation of the Son of God.
2. Jesus Christ the crucified is God in His humiliation, i.e. in His self-sacrifice—in His participation in the curse, the plight and the despair of the existence of sinful man. In this, however, He does not cease to be true God, but He takes—and this is the mystery of the Cross—the sin, guilt and punishment of man away from him and upon Himself. For His sake (in Him alone and in Him once and for all) sin is forgiven us for time and eternity.
3. Jesus Christ the risen is man in His exaltation, i.e. in His being raised up
