“The Effects of Serious Sin” -- Article Five, The Fifth Point of Doctrine, Canons of Dort

Article 5: The Effects of Such Serious Sins

By such monstrous sins, however, they greatly offend God, deserve the sentence of death, grieve the Holy Spirit, suspend the exercise of faith, severely wound the conscience, and sometimes lose the awareness of grace for a time—until, after they have returned to the way by genuine repentance, God’s fatherly face again shines upon them.

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At the time of the writing of the Canons (1618-1619), the Dutch Arminians held that since believers could sever themselves from Christ through gross and serious sins and fall way–and since the Reformed held to the perseverance of the saints–the Reformed were guilty of creating a sense of indifference toward sin which allowed professing Christians to sin with impunity. Of course, it is easy to find cases of professing believers doing exactly that–who, while claiming to be Christians, still live like pagans. The Arminian accusation was that the Reformed understanding of perseverance creates just that sort of problem–it allows and tolerates indifference to sin in the life of professing believers. If believers remain convinced that they are of the elect, and cannot be cast into Hell, then they can sin with complete indifference.

Lest we forget, at the time of the Reformed-Arminian debates in the Netherlands, the Roman church had long held to a distinction between moral and venial sins. Often described as the seven deadly sins (including murder, adultery, and theft), once committed, mortal sins were understood to remove one from the sphere of God’s grace and could and often do lead to eternal damnation. But a venial (or lesser) sin merely requires repentance and possible confession to a priest–depending upon the sin. The Roman church saw itself (and still does) as the judge of which sins are which (as spelled out in its various catechisms) and assigned a remedy to the sinner to remove themselves from their corresponding predicament.

The Arminians rejected the Roman understanding of the church’s role as the dispenser of grace through the church’s sacraments and the presence of a sacrificing priesthood. The Arminians also rejected Roman forms of sacerdotalism–which is the view that the church’s priests have a mediatorial role to play by interceding between God and his people. The Arminians were thoroughly Protestant.

Yet, if you hold that true believers are not guaranteed to persevere to the end in faith, and those who currently do believe in Christ might at some point in the future commit serious sins, fall away, and be lost, then you will end up with something very much like Rome’s distinction between major sins which can actually sever our relationship with God, and lesser sins which do not cause us to lose our relationship with God, but will inhibit our sense of closeness to him. This explains the legalism in some contemporary Arminian circles (especially so-called holiness churches) in which humanly-devised “sin lists” (no smoking, drinking, gambling etc.) characterize church life because these are supposed criteria by which we spot indifference to the sorts of sins which might lead to the eventual loss of one’s salvation.

Article Five of the Canons acknowledge that although there are certain sins, the gravity of which offends God and which do deserve eternal punishment, the elect (those chosen by God, for whom Christ has died, and who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit) will, at some point, come to repentance and be restored to fellowship with God through the merits and intercession of Christ.

As the Canons made clear in Article Three, Jesus Christ will lose none of those given him by the Father. Recall too, that in the very first article under the First Head of Doctrine, the Canons pointed out the biblical teaching that all of Adam’s descendants are guilty for his sin (in Eden as our federal representative) as well as our own personal sins, thereby rendering the distinction between mortal and venial sins practically useless in understanding the Christian life. Sin is sin when it comes to guilt before God–we are all equally guilty and can do nothing to save ourselves. Yet, some sins do have greater consequences upon our lives and sense of our assurance before God.

I might not have killed someone with my hands, but I’ve done it my heart. You have too. We are all guilty of mortal sins in God’s sight and we all deserve his punishment. But the same guilt holds true for “venial sins”–not just the “big sins” we commit. But should the sin in my heart manifest itself with an act of my hands, of course, I will provoke God to greater anger and will face the consequences of my actions–perhaps jail, or other forms of punishment in the civil kingdom, both of which would be well-deserved. Even worse—my conscience will grant me no peace until I do repent.

But God’s elect will repent at some point—that is spelled out in Article Five. They will strive to clean-up the damage they have done to themselves and others (the fruit of true repentance), and ultimately they will be restored to fellowship with the merciful God. The elect will persevere to the end because Jesus Christ preserves them to the and. As for those professing Christians who are not of the elect, who cannot count on Christ’s saving merits, and who are not indwelt by the Holy Spirit, their so-called “venial sins” are more than sufficient to condemn them to eternal loss.