Category Archives: “free offer” of the gospel

The Genuine Offer of the Gospel: Part Two of a series on “the Free Offer of the Gospel”

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In his defense of “The Free Offer of the Gospel,” John Murray wrote the following [Murray’s name appears on the pamphlet along with Ned Stonehouse’s. However, in the reprint of the essay in Vol. 4 of Murray’s collected works, the editor writes that, “although Dr. Stonehouse, as a member of the committee [of the OPC], offered editorial suggestions, the material was written by Professor Murray” (p. 113).],

It would appear that the real point in dispute in connection with the free offer of the gospel is whether it can properly be said that God desires the salvation of all men. The Committee elected by the Twelfth General Assembly in its report to the Thirteenth General Assembly said, “God not only delights in the penitent but is also moved by the riches of his goodness and mercy to desire the repentance and salvation of the impenitent and reprobate.”

Thus, the issue seems to hinge on whether or not the offer of the Gospel by God to the reprobate can be legitimately described as “sincere,” or “genuine.” Since I find the term, “free offer,” less than perspicuous, I will henceforth use the term “genuine” or “sincere” to refer to the offer of the gospel as described in the above quotation from Murray.

Murray offers several exegetical arguments for his position, but all of these will make more sense if we first deal with some background theological concepts. The debate over the genuine offer of the Gospel is a subset of the debate over the doctrine of common grace. Murray himself indicates as much when he uses Matthew 5.44-48 to argue for the sincere offer of the Gospel, a text we will see is at the heart of his argument for common grace [Collected Writings, vol. 4, pp. 114-115].

John Murray believed in common grace. Indeed, he considered the subject “not only of particular but also of very urgent interest to the person who accepts the witness of Scripture regarding the total depravity of human nature by reason of sin.”[“Common Grace,” Collected Writings , vol 2, p. 93. This essay was originally printed in The Westminster Theological Journal , Vol. V, i, 1942.] In his essay, Murray states several things about common grace which are relevant to God’s sincere offer of the Gospel to the reprobate. The most important of these is that “unregenerate men are recipients of divine favor and goodness.”[Ibid, p. 104]

God loves the unregenerate. To defend this proposition, Murray cites Acts 14.16, 17 and 17.30 in which Paul preaches to pagans that God has not left them without witness to Himself-specifically witness to “his own goodness.” [Ibid, p. 105] Murray also points to Matthew 5.44, 45 and Luke 6.35, 36 where believers are exhorted to love their enemies in order to show forth God’s own character.

Here the disciples are called upon to emulate in their own sphere and relations the character of God, their Father, in his own sphere and relations. God is kind and merciful to the unthankful and the evil; he makes his sun to rise upon evil and good, and sends rain upon just and unjust. Both on the ground of express statements and on the ground of what is obviously implied in the phrases, “sons of your Father” and “sons of the Most High,” there can be no escape from the conclusion that goodness and beneficence, kindness and mercy are here attributed to God in his relations even to the ungodly. And this simply means that the ungodly are recipients of blessings that flow from the love, goodness, kindness and mercy of God. Again it would be desperate exegetical violence that would attempt to separate the good gifts bestowed from the disposition of kindness and mercy in the mind of God.[Ibid, pp. 105, 106]

(In my opinion this is Murray’s best defense of his position. Thus, I will concentrate on it, and not on other lines of exegetical defense which I don’t find as immediately compelling-such as Genesis 39.5: “the LORD blessed the Egyptian’s house on account of Joseph.”)

TO BE CONTINUED

God loves his people as a whole (The Free Offer of the Gospel & Common Grace)

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I have already pointed out this excellent interaction with Peter Leithart. But since then someone else posted an astute comment showing how all this ties in with a belief in the free offer of the Gospel (as John Murray called it) and Common Grace (on which John Murray also wrote a brilliant essay).

I would like to highlight Pastor Leithart’s concern that we say what we say to our children “meaningfully”. This is my concern as well coming from a Baptist background. Hosea would seem to be a great example of Yahweh’s passionate affection and concern for his people as a whole, including those headed for destruction. We appear tentative at best and unwilling at worst to talk that way about the church. Perhaps, asking for the difference between children of believers and the children of unbelievers would be helpful. We say to children in the covenant, “The benefits of the covenant of grace belong to you – you have a share in the inheritance – now believe it”. But of the unbelievers and children we have to say you have nothing until you come in. Sorry if these thoughts are a bit spotty. I am simply trying to use language that expresses the ‘favor’ Leithart speaks of. Happy to hear a push back . . .

A sermon I preached many years ago from Ephesians: Part One of a series on “the Free Offer of the Gospel”

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Jonathan Edwards was a famous preacher, pastor and writer during colonial times. He is still revered today by Reformed thinkers–by those who share with him a Calvinistic heritage in the Christian faith. Recently a historical scholar dealt with how Edwards would address “seekers.” You see, supposedly there are unregenerate people who are seeking God in such a way that if they do certain things they just might be saved. From studying all of Edwards’ sermons and writings, this scholar created a hypothetical prayer that these seekers should pray. Here it is:

Dear God, whom I hate with all my being precisely because you hate and threaten me with hell, I hate this punishment perhaps even more than I hate you. Or, maybe I should say that I love my comfort even more than I hate you. For that reason I am asking a favor of you. I want you to make me love you, whom I hate even when I ask this and even more because I have to ask this. I am being frank with you because I know it is no use to be otherwise. You know even better than I how much I hate you and that I love only myself. It is no use for me to pretend to be sincere. I most certainly do not love you and do not want to love you. I hate the thought of loving you but that is what I’m asking because I love myself. If you can answer this ‘prayer’ I guess the gift of gratitude will come with it and then I will be able to do what I would not think of doing now–thank you for making me love you whom I hate. Amen.

Now, we could just stop there and ask if we find anything remotely like that sort of prayer for sinners anywhere in Scripture, but I don’t want to do that yet because it gets better (or, really, worse). Here is another prayer written under the direction of the same theological impulse:

You do not rest on God’s owing you any sympathy, not to think of pardon. You may not even rest on His mercy. He is sovereign in that. If you presume on anything, including the mercy of God, you will never receive mercy. If you do not presume but only beg, there is hope. One day–tomorrow? Thirty years from now? You may get up from your knees a new creature in Christ Jesus! A new you with a penitent heart! But you may not, ever! God may still let you go to the hell you so richly deserve.

Lets think about how the Apostle Peter witnessed. Acts chapter 2, verses 37 and 38:

Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Drop to your knees right now and realize that you hate God even as you do so, and do not pretend to be sincere but beg God to change your heart. Maybe he will do so today, or next week, or thirty years from now; and maybe never. After you can prove to us that God has changed your life then we will baptize you because you have already received the Holy Spirit.”

No, wait! I’m making that up, aren’t I? What does the Bible really say?

Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Brothers and sisters, that is the Biblical call of the Gospel. Repent and be baptized. Do it now! Don’t wait for another day. Don’t insult and mock God’s character by insinuating that he is stingy with his Gospel offer or not to be trusted to keep his promises.

You see, in the Bible, salvation, deliverance from the wrath of God, is not something secret that you can only hope for as you wait for some sort of mystical experience from God that you are now a “new creature.”

If you tell your son or your daughter to go clean their room and they instead collapse cross-legged on the floor and close their eyes and begin humming, then that child is being disobedient. And if your son or daughter defends his action by saying he was listening inside for some still small voice or a sudden change in his heart to make him or her want to go clean his room, then you would consider him not only disobedient but would be angered because your authority as a parent was obviously being flaunted on a flimsy pretext. Your command to that child was not sent from your brain as a hopeful mental burst that you wanted to somehow reach the psyche of that person! No; you gave a public order that everyone could hear.

And how much more a crime it is, to refuse to take God at his word, sent to us publicly and objectively? Remember what the author of Hebrews says about Abraham’s wife Sarah? “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised” (11.11). God is faithful. We should respond to his promises in trust, and not insult him by pretending that these promises are somehow hard to understand or to rely upon.

As I said: in the Bible, deliverance from the wrath of God is not secret. It is a public fact. Those who are depraved enemies of God are subdued and adopted as God’s own children through His Son Jesus Christ. And the family of God is no less visible than the Horne family, or the Jones family or the Smith family or any other family in this congregation. The Kingdom of Christ may not have much outward glory at this time, but it is not invisible. It is no less visible than the state of Oklahoma, or the Merchant Marines, or the nation of France.

And that community is the very body of Christ! How can it be otherwise? He writes that “And he put all things under [Christ’s] feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph 1.22, 23). And then later: “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (4.1-3). Why? “There is one body and one Spirit” (4.4).

Now what body and Spirit is the Apostle referring to? Basic contextual interpretation says that he is referring to the body of Christ, the fullness of him who fills all in all. And this is no invisible body. On the contrary it is visible and you and I had better work on making it more glorious by bearing with one another and maintaining the bond of peace. Brothers and sisters, Paul is talking about us. We are bound to Christ by the Holy Spirit. We are his body and he our head. We are members of one another.

If you remember last week, that’s the rationale given in chapter 4, verse 25 for why we must speak the truth to one another and put away falsehood: We are members of one another. How can we base an ethic of truth telling on the fact that we are members of the same body unless the membership in the body is a public fact?

We could ask the same question about Romans 14.15 and First Corinthians 8.11. In both passages Paul warns us not to ruin or destroy the brother for whom Christ died. That means it must not be some great secret for whom Christ died. Christ died for his Church and we are commanded to regard fellow professing Christians as brothers and sisters for whom Christ died.

Again, the body that is the fullness of him who fills all in all is the same body in which we are supposed to maintain the bond of peace. Paul is not talking about people scattered across time and space who just happen to believe the same things but are otherwise unrelated to one another. He is talking about people in an identifiable community called the church.

And if it needed to be made any more clear, Paul goes on to say in verse 11 that this Church has been given pastors. Furthermore, these pastors are for the building up of the body. This Christian congregation and the other Christian congregations in Minco [town in which I originally preached this sermon], are members of the body of Christ. We are united to Christ by the Holy Spirit and to one another.

As far as we can tell from his writings, it has never entered Paul’s head to think of the Church as simply a name for all the people who believe the Gospel message apart from whether or not they associated in congregations to worship God and grow in the Word and serve one another. No, for Paul the church is an actual society, and that society is not merely a human society, but it is a renewed humanity, the fullness of the body of Christ. “And he put all things under [Christ’s] feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph 1.22, 23).

Make no mistake: as we continue in Ephesians we will see that Paul can warn Christians about the dangers of backsliding to the point of unbelief and apostasy. Paul knows that some may prove unbelievers. And he does affirm that perseverance is God’s gift. For example he warns Timothy:

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. They are upsetting the faith of some. But God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity” (Second Timothy 2.15-19).

But even when Paul is dealing with a congregation in deep danger, like the Corinthians, he does not hesitate to affirm “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (First 12.27). Those warnings about the future never keep him from assuring his congregations that they are presently in Jesus Christ and that in Him they have all salvation and glory.

Nor does the mystery of predestination mean that God is less than sincere in his offers and promises. We may not understand how it all works together but we don’t need to. We dare not use one doctrine to undermine all the promises and assurance Christ has given us that we, First Reformed Presbyterians Church in Minco, OK are members of the body of Christ.

But are we living in such a way that we can say we intend to remain members of his body? Do we really value our bond with one another as our bond that ties us to Christ? Are we committed to cultivating it? Do we see the Church as Christ’s body united to him by the Spirit?

You see, without understanding what Paul says about the Church, our talk of grace can become meaningless, resulting in fear and uncertainty. If the grace we receive from God through Christ is invisible, intangible, undetectable then we can never be sure that we have in fact received any. In that direction lies madness. God doesn’t want us to give us secret grace that we can only wonder about; he wants to give us tangible and public grace for which we can give him thanks and praise because we know we have it! I don’t want to be someone who just preaches about how we need grace. I want to be a faithful pastor who declares to you God’s people that he has actually given you grace. And not only to you but to your children.

But in addition to the problem of doubt and lack of assurance there is the problem of presumption. You see, if the grace of God is a secret work inside of me, then I can claim to have received the grace of God even as I go on living my own autonomous, self-sufficient, life as a “good person.” I say I am thankful to God though I never worship him. I say I depend on Jesus even though I have never depended on anyone for anything. I say I belong to Jesus even though I am, to all appearances, and for all intents and purposes, not accountable to anyone. Without an objective covenant community, the Gospel becomes simply a few abstract points and the recital of a written prayer which acts simply like an afterlife fire insurance policy. Praying the sinners’ prayer becomes merely a way of saying magic words to go to heaven.

But Jesus told people to leave their former lives and follow him. He formed a new community by his teaching and example and then promised that community his presence by the Holy Spirit. Trusting Christ entails following Christ as a member of his community, the new people of God. There is ordinarily no salvation anywhere else.

So please, think about these things so that you may benefit from them more greatly and may never be tempted to trade them for anything. When you come to worship, you’re not coming to just any organizational meeting. You’re not coming simply to hear a good lecture or an inspirational speaker. You’re coming to the place where God has said that he meets with his people. You are not manifesting a fellowship of like-minded souls. We’re not just the club for Presbyterians. No, you are manifesting yourselves as the body of Christ. You are assembling in the presence of God. Remember what Paul wrote to the Ephesians (2.19-21):

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

So writes the Apostle Paul to give believers confidence that they belong to God and he belongs to them through Christ. Most of the Old Testament saints could not enter the Temple on pain of death. Now we actually are the Temple. God is with his people, the Church.

So lets remember that we need to receive and develop in what we have been given. We’ve been engrafted into the Church. Let’s appreciate God’s presence there. Let’s look forward to entering his presence, confessing our sins and receiving his forgiveness, and being nourished by him at the Lord’s Table before we are blessed for the coming week and sent back to our homes and back to work. Let’s remember that hear we especially hear God’s word for our lives. If all that mattered was skillful speech and knowledge, there are probably several radio programs to which you could be listening to instead of me. If we don’t believe that God really is here to meet with us and deal with us in the ministry of Word and sacrament, why even bother to show up? We are left at our homes hoping that we may be truly converted or else presuming that we are.

But if the Church is really the body of Christ, then in the Church we find Christ who is the sum and substance of our salvation.

The best way to defend soteriological Calvinism?

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I had objections to the doctrine of predestination but, eventually, these were overcome. What happened is R. C. Sproul’s original (black hair, turtleneck, plaid pants) lectures on “The Holiness of God”powerfully reintroduced me to my own depravity and guilt. The new understanding of my depravity broke down my objections to facing the passages that talk of our need for God’s invincible grace. The new understanding of my guilt broke down my objections to facing the passages that spoke of God’s sovereign rights to have mercy on whom he chooses.

From that point on, I was sure that all objections to decreetal calvinism stemmed from an underestimation of our depravity and our guilt in comparison to God’s holiness.

But what if there are Arminians who are not concerned about such issues?

What if they simply want the cross of Jesus Christ and the offer of salvation in the Gospel to be as deeply revelatory of God’s nature as anything else in Scripture?

It was Athanasius, I think, who said we learned something more essential about God when we named him “Father” from the revelation of His Son, Jesus, than when we named him “Uncreate” from the revelation we find in creation. The point was that creation was God’s volition but that begetting the Son, and being begotten of the Father were eternal relations. God could have chosen not to create and would have been no less God, but he could never fail to beget the Son. Knowing the Son is the Son and the Father is the Father is a grasp of God’s essence much more than knowledge of God as Creator.

And here is the problem. Salvation is supposed to be a revelation of God. It can’t be given equal weight with the trinitarian relationships, of course; if God could choose whether or not to create then the cross could also be chosen or not. But, within creation and the revelation therein both special and general, when we compare the wrath of God to the love of God, wrath looks like it is more fundamental and more revelatory of God’s character.

Think about it. What do we know about God’s character? What must be true about God beyond any possible contingency? The answer is: God must inflict penal suffering on sin. What is fundamental about God is that he punishes. That he is loving and merciful is true, but it could just as easily not be in regard to sinful human beings.

From one angle, this all makes perfect sense. Mercy can’t be obligated, of course. But when it comes to understanding God’s fundamental nature, what it can sound like is that it would make no difference to who God is if he were to damn all creation. He would still be a holy and righteous God. (Come to think of it, inasmuch as Sproul’s lectures were intended to make the listener open to TULIP, the entire project was theological: to relativize love and make it subordinate to holiness. God can decide to be forgiving but fundamentally he must establish separation, control, perfectionism, and punishment.)

Every time a Calvinist tries to get an Arminian to see things differently, he might well be saying something that sounds quite different to the Arminian than what he intends. I have assured and do assure people every time the issue comes up that we should not be amazed that sinners are reprobate but instead should be amazed and thankful that any sinners will ever be saved. Soteriologically and legally this is fine. Theologically it sounds like we have no real revelation of God’s character in his salvation of sinners. The fundamental reality is wrath and the contingency is sometimes that wrath gets put on Jesus instead of the sinner. And this rhetorical gap only widens as we talk about who amazing it is that God saves, how suprising and how strange. Are the doctrines of grace a revelation of or an exception to God’s essence?

I have known of professing Christians who struggle with assurance for no apparant reason. I’m beginning to wonder if this is not a sort of existential or metaphysical angst. Yes there is grace and salvation but the bedrock character of God is punitive justice. Wrath is the fundamental metaphysic. And I think we see other problems cropping up in the Christian life, though if someone wishes to simply deny this, I have no argument to make. Recall Jack Miller’s query as to whether believers who affirm that God loves them are willing to concede that God likes them? Is our presentation of God’s love for sinners something like Darcy’s first proposal to Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice? Does God confess that he loves us in spite of his better judgment and even against his character? Do we give that impression? Would it be good news if we did? Yet it is hard to know how we can affirm slavation as a gratuitous gift without risking sounding like this. Obviously God wasn’t obligated to forgive anyone. Nevertheless, there is tension present in affirming this. It sounds like we don’t know God and this may be the reason why the particularism of Calvinism is resisted.

Is it possible much promotion of calvinism is designed to distract listeners/readers from this problem? Of course, the distraction involves truths about God’s holiness, our sin, and God ability to save. No one is trying to be distracting. But when we find people resisting, maybe it is not because they want to believe they are less depraved than they really are or that God is less capable of salvation. Maybe they want to believe that God is love–that the giving up of his Son is just as revelatory of God’s character as anything else.

So what to do?

First off, I think we should beat Arminians to the punch in bringing up this objection. Let’s admit to it and face it.

Secondly, let’s say that, as powerful as such considerations are, exegesis still trumps our feelings. Of course, by that I don’t mean that our feelings are wrong. On the contrary, it is obvious from reading the Bible that God wants us to have those feelings. Rather, the point is that those feelings must somehow be compatible to what the Bible teaches about predestination and salvation. Even if everything doesn’t fit together as neatly in our minds, it still remains true that the Bible teaches God’s ultimate plan for all things, total depravity, unconditional election (nothing foreseen is the basis for it), limited atonement (God’s motive for sending Jesus was personal), invincible grace, and the preseverence of the eternally elect.

Thirdly, lets emphasize The Free Offer of the Gospel and Common Grace. Here John MacArthur’s excellent comments are a helpful corrective to a lot of hypercalvinism is a great help. But there is a lot of great stuff out there including John Piper, Robert Dabney, and, of course, John Calvin. A couple of things are important here:

  1. Creational Grace The difference between monotheism and everything else–atheism, pantheism, deism, or polytheism–is that the latter means that one can and should have ultimate grattitude and ultimate trust. Reality is not the product of chance, whether impersonal forces or competing personal agents, but a gift of grace. The awful truth of sin and reprobation is found in the fact that people have refused to given thanks and refused to trust (Romans 1.18ff). The background and presupposition of depravity is God’s initiating love.

    We believe that man was created pure and perfect in the image of God, and that by his own guilt he fell from the grace which he received, and is thus alienated from God, the fountain of justice and of all good, so that his nature is totally corrupt. And being blinded in mind, and depraved in heart, he has lost all integrity, and there is no good in him (Gallican Confession, Article IX).

    Everytime we tell of sin we have a chance to tell people of the goodness and love of God that we have and continually deny and distrust. This doesn’t answer every possible question one might have but it does reinforce the metaphysical reality that God is the giving God (James 1.5)

  2. The offer of mercy and grace is sincerely given to all who here it. Even in affirming that the resistance to God’s kindness will lead to perdition Paul does not hesitate to affirm that God’s kindness is intended to bring us to repentance (Romans 2.4, 5). We need to teach God’s decree but not allow it to be used to portray God as either insincere or stingy.

This won’t solve every issue, but it will help us all remember that an ontology of love is something that wrath must somehow fit into rather than love being an inexplicable raft on a sea of fire.

Fourth, lets remember the danger of relying on the printed word to persuade people of the truths of predestinaton and monergistic salvation. When people hear new doctrines (new to them) they have nothing but their imaginations to guess how these new principles would alter their lives. It is much better to introduce people to new communities where people can see that these truths are embodied in love. Otherwise, many may reject the doctrines of grace thinking that, in order to be in the image of God, they must be selective in their love. And worse, some who do embrace these teachings may miscalculate and become the charicatures we all want to avoid. (Think of John MacArthur’s words in the article linked above: “I am troubled by the tendency of some-often young people newly infatuated with Reformed doctrine-who insist that God cannot possibly love those who never repent and believe. I encounter that view, it seems, with increasing frequency.”)

Fifth and finally, when one sees photographs of people who lived their lives in the American frontier wilderness, one often sees people hardened by the elements. And, in our literature and moveies we often see those who survive scoffing at the “tenderfoots” and “soft” Easterners who pass by on trains. Let us not grow hard because we have mistakenly been thinking of reality as hostile, and if we have grown hard, lets not rationalize this by mocking Christians who seem more concerned about portraying a God who is generous than one who is the ultimate cause of all things. One shouldn’t have to choose between those options but if one does, it is not at all clear that one is superior to the other.

God won’t share his people with another

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In Isaiah 48 we read:

Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver;
I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.
For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,
for how should my name be profaned?
My glory I will not give to another.

In the context of a prophecy that God will deliver his people from Babylon and the nations, Someone recently pointed out to me the text of Jeremiah 13.11:

For as the loincloth clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, declares the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory, but they would not listen.

This chapter in Jeremiah is full of severe judgment. But here in the midst of it, God himself tells his people that their sin strips him. His loins are uncovered and his glory has been taken away.

I commented awhile back on how astounding it is that God tells us that we are his inheritance, and shows us in Scripture the saints praying to God to remember his inheritance and protect his people–as if God were some pauper hoping to come into a fortune. As if we corrupt sinners were his fortune. Jeremiah 13.11 is of the same sort. The all-glorious God considers himself naked without us–we who are by nature sinful and ashamed and prone to trade God for fig leaves.