I am in the middle of writing a paper on the relationship of the church and salvation, and it includes this, from John Calvin's seminal work, the Institutes of the Christian Religion:

Let us even learn from the simple title ‘mother’ how useful, indeed how necessary, it is that we should know her. For there is no other way to enter into life unless this mother conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us at her breast, and lastly, unless she keep us under her care and guidance until, putting off mortal flesh, we become like the angels (Matt. 22:30). Our weakness does not allow us to be dismissed from her school until have been pupils all our lives. Furthermore, away from her bosom one cannot hope for any forgiveness of sins or any salvation, as Isaiah (Isa. 37:32) and Joel (Joel 2:32) testify. Ezekiel agrees with them when he declares that those whom God rejects from heavenly life will not be enrolled among God's people (Ezek. 13:9). On the other hand, those who turn to the cultivation of true godliness are said to inscribe their names among the citizens of Jerusalem (cf. Isa. 56:5; Ps. 87:6). For this reason, it is said in another Psalm: "Remember me, O Jehovah, with favor toward thy people; visit me with salvation: that I may see the well-doing of thy chosen ones, that I may rejoice in the joy of thy nation, that I may be glad with thine inheritance" (Ps. 106:4-5; cf. Ps. 105:4). By these words God’s fatherly favor and especial witness of spiritual life are limited to his flock, so that it is always disastrous to leave the church (IV.1.iv).

Cyprian said it best: Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus—Outside of the church there is no salvation.

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The attitude that the physical or material is somehow "bad" or "evil" and will eventually be destroyed is a common one, even among Christians, as I've been discussing here recently. Perceptions like this lead to the belief that the creation will one day be destroyed altogether in favour of something spiritual and otherworldly.

Because our bodies are physical, this also leads to what is essentially a glorying in death. To be sure, we mourn the loss of our loved ones, but we celebrate the fact that they have passed through this earth and reached their destination. They have reached their goal. Certainly, there are benefits that the believer receives in death, but this is not the end of the story. I will leave it to John Murray, again from the final chapter of his book, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, to offer the critique and biblical corrective to this error. An extended quote, once more:

Glorification does not refer to the blessedness upon which the spirits of believers enter at death. It is true that then the saints, as respects their disembodied spirits, are made perfect in holiness and pass immediately into the presence of Christ...Yet, however glorious is the transformation of the people of God at death and however much they may be disposed to say with the apostle that to depart and to be with Christ is far better (cf. Phil. 1:23), this is not their glorification. It is not the goal of the believer's hope and expectation. The redemption which Christ has secured for his people is redemption not only from sin but also from all its consequences. Death is the wages of sin and the death of believers does not deliver them from death. The last enemy, death, has not yet been destroyed; it has not yet been swallowed up in victory. Hence glorification has in view the destruction of death itself. It is to dishonour Christ and to undermine the nature of the Christian hope to substitute the blessedness upon which believers enter at death for the glory that is to be revealed when "this corruptible will put on incorruption and this mortal will put on immortality" (1 Cor. 15:54). Preoccupation with the event of death indicates a deflection of faith, of love, and of hope. We who have the firstfruits of the Spirit 'groan within ourselves,' the apostle reminds us, 'waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body' (Rom. 8:23). That is the glorification. It is the complete and final redemption of the whole person when in the integrity of body and spirit the people of God will be conformed to the image of the risen, exalted, and glorified Redeemer, when the very body of their humiliation will be conformed to the body of Christ's glory (cf. Phil. 3:21). God is not the God of the dead but of the living and therefore nothing short of resurrection to the full enjoyment of God can constitute the glory to which the living God will lead his redeemed.

Now that is hope!

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While the whole of John Murray's little book, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, could be considered a gold mine (I heard today that one of our professors, Steve Childers, calls it a "little stick of dynamite"), his final seven-page chapter on glorification is on its own worth the price of the book. There are two things from this chapter I want to discuss, which I will do in the reverse order of Murray's discussion, partly because some of my more recent posts (see here and here) have carried a theme that he addresses as well.

The first, then, is the problem of not acknowledging the goodness and value of creation. Murray pulls no punches when he calls this a heresy. An extended quotation:

One of the heresies which has afflicted the Christian church and has been successful in polluting the stream of Christian thought from the first century to our era to the present is the heresy of regarding matter, that is, material substance, as the source of evil. It has appeared in numerous forms. The apostles had to combat it in their day and the evidence of this appears quite plainly in the New Testament, especially in the epistles. John, for example, had to combat it in the peculiarly aggravated form of denying the reality of Christ's body as one of flesh...

Another form in which this heresy appeared is to regard salvation as consisting of the emancipation of the soul or spirit of man from the impediments and entanglements of association with the body. Salvation and sanctification progress to the extent to which the immaterial soul overcomes the degrading influences emanating from the material and fleshly. This conception can be made to appear very beautiful and 'spiritual,' but it is just 'beautiful paganism.' It is a straight thrust at the biblical doctrine that God created man with body and soul and that he was very good. It is also aimed at the biblical doctrine of sin which teaches that sin has its origin and seat in the spirit of man, not in the material and fleshly.

This heresy has appeared in a very subtle form in connection with the subject of glorification. The direction it has taken in this case is to play on the chord of the immortality of the soul. This seems a very innocent and proper emphasis and, of course, there is some truth in the contention that the soul is immortal. But whenever the focus of interest and emphasis becomes the immortality of the soul, then there is a grave deflection from the biblical doctrine of immortal life and bliss. The biblical doctrine of 'immortality,' if we may use that term, is the doctrine of glorification. And glorification is resurrection. Without resurrection of the body from the grave and the restoration of human nature to its completeness after the pattern of Christ's resurrection on the third day and according to the likeness of the glorified human nature in which he will appear on the clouds of heaven with great power and glory there is no glorification. It is not the vague sentimentality and idealism so characteristic of those whose interest is merely the immortality of the soul. Here we have the concreteness and realism of the Christian hope epitomized in the resurrection to life everlasting...

In like manner the Christian's hope is not indifferent to the material universe around us, the cosmos of God's creation. It was subjected to vanity not willingly; it was cursed for man's sin; it was marred by human apostasy. But it is going to be delivered from the bondage to corruption, and its deliverance will be coincident with the consummation of God's people's redemption. The two are not only coincident as events but they are correlative in hope. Glorification has cosmic purposes...(2 Pet. 3:13; 1 Cor. 15:24, 28).

Forceful as it may sound, that Murray calls this heresy is not an embellishment or exaggeration. He is calling it as it is. When a belief causes you to implicitly deny some of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith, it needs to be eradicated.

Look for part two tomorrow.

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Regeneration, for Herman Bavinck, is not a matter of something entirely new being created within us, but instead is a re-formation of human nature to what it was originally intended to be. There is no new substance added to what is already there, he writes in the first chapter of volume four of his Reformed Dogmatics. He then extends the discussion to creation, and makes this profoundly important point:

Finally also the re-creation that will take place in the renewal of heaven and earth (Matt. 19:28) is not the destruction of this world and the subsequent creation out of nothing of another world but the liberation of the creature that is now subject to futility. Nor can it be otherwise, for God's honor as Savior hinges precisely on his reconquest from the power of Satan of this human race and this world. Christ, accordingly, is not a second Creator, but the Redeemer and Savior of this fallen creation, the Reformer of all things that have been ruined and corrupted by sin. Neither, for that matter, is sin a substance, but consists in lawlessness (άνομια); it is an actualized privation (privatio actuosa) that has indeed violated the form (forma) of the entire created world but did not and could not destroy its substance or essence. Hence, when the re-creation removes sin from creation, it does not deprive it of anything essential, nothing that was essentially and originally characteristic of it (though it was "by nature") and belonged to its essence. For sin is not part of the essence of creation; it pushed its way in later, as something unnatural and contrary to nature. Sin is deformity. When re-creation removes sin, it does not violate and suppress nature, but restores it.

This point cannot be made strongly enough, especially in evangelical circles where creation is often not of great concern. But the fact is, as Bavinck so clearly states, that if creation is not restored, sin gains victory and the Lordship of Christ is rendered null and void.

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When talking about the assurance of salvation, we often look to Scripture for the promises of God's faithfulness, such as we find in Romans 10:9, or we point to the work of the Holy Spirit in assuring us of our faith (see Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 21). Yet, especially in Reformed circles, we seldom mention the assurance that comes to us in the Lord's Supper. Consider what Herman Bavinck has to say in the fourth volume of his Reformed Dogmatics on the profound nature of the Supper:

Of primary importance in the Lord's Supper is what God does, not what we do. The Lord's Supper is above all a gift of God, a benefit of Christ, a means of communicating his grace. If the Lord's Supper were only a memorial meal and an act of confession, it would cease to be a sacrament in the true sense. In that case, like prayer, it could only be obliquely and indirectly called a means of grace. The Lord's Supper, however, is on the same level as the Word and baptism and therefore must, like them, be regarded first of all as a message and assurance to us of divine grace.

...[Christ] makes of [the] elements a meal in which the disciples consume his body and blood and thus enter into the most intimate communion with him. This communion does not merely consist in their sitting at one table, but they eat one and the same bread and drink one and the same wine. Indeed, the host here, in granting the signs of bread and wine, offers his own body and blood as nourishment and refreshment for their souls. That is a communion that far surpasses the communion inherent in a memorial meal and an act of confession. It is not merely a reminiscence of or a reflection on Christ's benefits but a most intimate bonding with Christ himself, just as food and drink are united with the body.

...Calvin, accordingly, correctly remarked against Zwingli that the meaning of eating Christ's body and drinking his blood is not exhausted by believing. Believing is a means, a means that is even temporary and destined to become seeing, but the communion with Christ engendered by it goes much deeper and endures forever. It is a mystical union that can only be made somewhat clear to us by the images of the vine and the branch, the head and the body, a bridegroom and his bride, the cornerstone and the building that rests on it. It is this mystical union that is signified and sealed in the Lord's Supper.

Often there seems to be a hesitancy in Reformed circles to say too much about the Lord's Supper for fear of sounding like some of the Lutherans or the Roman Catholics. Yet perhaps the opposite then becomes a problem as well, and they end up saying too little about it. It is not uncommon to hear the charge that the Reformed understand of the Lord's Supper is much more Zwinglian than Calvinist, and while the accusation might not be entirely fair, you can see the warrant for it. When a church holds the Lord's Supper only four or five times a year and goes to great lengths to emphasize the symbolic and memorial nature of it, it severely diminishes the significance of it.

But the invitation to the table is an invitation to enter into intimate communion with Christ. It is an invitation to "taste and see that the Lord is good" (Ps. 34:8). It is an invitation to be united with Christ when physically partaking of the elements. It is an invitation to have a foretaste of the coming marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:6-10). It is an invitation to receive—not just to remember—His grace.

If you do not believe that the Supper actually does something in the first place, there is no impetus to frequently come to the table. But when you truly understand the Supper as a means of grace, how could you not run to the table at Christ's invitation to receive that grace as often as you can?

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