Grace freely offered
(Grace
Notes July 2004)
Many readers of this magazine will be used to hearing the gospel
regularly preached in such a way that Christ is offered to the hearers
without restraint; all are urged to come to the Saviour, to repent and
believe that they may have eternal life. I was converted under such
preaching. It was directly and passionately evangelistic and also wholly
true to the doctrines of grace.
We should not take such preaching, and such men, for granted. Some of our
forebears, sincere and godly men, who formulated the rules of faith of many
of our churches in previous generations, took a very different view. They
could not see how the tenets of Calvinism – total depravity, unconditional
election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints
– could allow the gospel to be proclaimed indiscriminately. They concluded
that a man in his sin must not be pressed to do that which he is incapable
of doing by nature. Nor, they maintained, should the unsearchable riches of
Christ in the gospel be offered to all as though there were no distinction
between the elect and the non-elect.
The following examples are taken from old Strict Baptist articles of
faith:
Article XXIV
We believe that the invitations of the gospel… are intended only for
those who have been made by the blessed Spirit to feel their lost state as
sinners and their need of Christ as their Saviour.
Article XXVI
We reject the doctrine that men in a state of nature should be exhorted
to believe in or turn to God.
Article XXXIII
For ministers… to address unconverted persons… indiscriminately,
calling upon them to savingly repent, believe and receive Christ, or perform
any other acts dependent upon the new creative power of the Holy Ghost, is,
on the one hand, to imply creature power, and, on the other, to deny the
doctrine of special redemption.
Article XXXIV
We believe that any such expressions as convey to the hearers the belief
that they possess a certain power to flee to the Saviour, to close in with
Christ, to receive Christ, while in an unregenerate state… must therefore
be rejected. And we further believe that we have no Scripture warrant to
take the exhortations in the Old Testament intended for the Jews in national
covenant with God, and apply them in a spiritual and saving sense to
unregenerated men.
Their position became known as ‘anti duty-faith’, because they
caricatured those who urged all to repent and believe as maintaining that
saving faith was ‘a legal duty’. Anti duty-faith clauses in many cases
persisted on paper even after it had become a minority view and was
practically ignored. It was not until the 1980s that the ‘anti duty-faith’
clause was removed from the articles of faith of the Metropolitan
Association of Strict Baptist Churches (now the Association of Grace Baptist
Churches (South East)).
It seems significant that the compilers of Grace Hymns decided to omit
from Charles Wesley’s hymn, ‘Jesus! The name high over all’ the
following verse, which is found in Christian Hymns:
‘O that the world might taste and see
The riches of his grace;
The arms of love that compass me
Would all mankind embrace.’
Presumably these sentiments were deemed unworthy of inclusion.
Hugh Martin writes in his commentary on Jonah: ‘We are not to modify
the freeness of God’s offered mercy on pretence of taking care of the
glory of God, and the maintenance of His law. This was substantially Jonah’s
sin - the sin of pretending to be more careful of God’s glory, and more
qualified to advance it, than God himself’.
The free offer of the gospel was offensive not only to Jonah in the Old
Testament but also to Peter in the New. Both were made exceedingly
uncomfortable by the fact of God’s intention that not only should the
gospel be proclaimed to the heathen, to Gentiles, but that many of them
would believe. Both had to learn that their loyalty to God and his honour,
to the doctrine of election, did not and must not imply any restriction at
all in the scope of their commission. Their course must be to obey the
revealed will of God, not to make themselves arbiters of his secret will.
Of course the free offer of the gospel has been the conviction of
Reformed preachers and theologians through the centuries. Listen for example
to Gresham Machen (‘The Christian View of Man’): ‘What a great mistake
it is, then, to think that the doctrine of predestination is contrary to the
free offer of salvation to all. Of course, it remains true in the fullest
and richest sense that whosoever will may come. None who will trust in
Christ is excluded. None, I say, none without any exception whatsoever. …Never
have we any right to withhold the gospel from any man wherever he may be.’
And from Horatius Bonar:
‘We believe in human impotence, in the bondage of the human will, in
the enmity of the human heart to God. We believe in the sovereignty of
Jehovah, and His eternal purpose. We believe in the absolute necessity of
the Holy Spirit's work, alike before and after conversion. At the same time…
we proclaim a free and world-wide invitation to sinners; we present to every
sinner a gracious welcome to Christ, without any preliminary qualification
whatsoever. We bid no man wait till he has ascertained his own election, or
can produce evidence of regeneration, or sufficient repentance, or deep
conviction. We tell every man, as he is, to go to the Saviour this moment,
assured that he will not be cast out or sent away.’
Another writer has said: ‘In no part of the gospel is pardon offered to
man on the ground of his being one of the elect but everywhere on the ground
of his being on of the species.’
Let us pray that God will raise up more men who will be lovers of the
doctrines of grace and unfettered, direct preachers of the gospel of grace!
