The Pastor And The Free Offer Of The Gospel Part 1: The Pulpit

by on December 10, 2024 | Comment

There has been much interest in recent years on the subject of the free offer of the gospel and several helpful books have been written on the subject.1 This research has helped further clarify that Calvinism is not the same thing as hyper-Calvinism, and that within a Calvinistic framework the free offer of the gospel is a core tenet. In fact, we might say that Calvinism and a commitment to the sovereignty of God in all things actually undergirds the free offer and emboldens evangelism because we believe God can and will really do something.

Building on this, I will offer two essays considering how the free offer of the gospel relates to and impacts pastoral ministry—both in the pulpit and in personal evangelism.

Before we consider how the free offer of the gospel impacts preaching, it will be helpful to give a definition of the free offer. To do this, let us first consider the gospel itself. The gospel is all about what God has done in Christ to redeem sinners to himself. Though we had sinned and rebelled against a holy God, this same holy God sent Jesus Christ his Son into the world to save sinners. Jesus lived a perfectly sinless life in the place of his sinful people, and at the cross he bore our sin and the holy wrath of God that was due us for our sin. He was raised from death on the third day which showed forth that the work he had accomplished for his people was sufficient. In his resurrection we truly see his triumph over sin, death, and hell. By faith in him, we are counted righteous. Just as he bore our sin at the cross, when we trust in Jesus, his righteousness is credited to our account and reckoned to be ours. Jesus has secured salvation for his own people by his work. The gospel message is all about the person and work of Jesus Christ. Or we could say, Jesus himself is the substance of the gospel. To quote Donald John Maclean, “Jesus in all the glory of his person and work is the gospel.”2

If we now have a brief summary of the gospel, then what is the free offer of the gospel? The free offer means that God himself offers freely Jesus Christ and all his benefits to sinners. To quote Maclean again, the “free offer” is a “well meant and sincere invitation from God to all without exception to embrace Jesus Christ as Savior.”3 If the free offer is God’s offer, then this means that though God has elected a people for himself and that number cannot be changed, yet the church is to hold out the gospel indiscriminately to sinners and offer them Christ. We are to call anyone who will hear to faith and repentance.

This is at the root of our understanding of the gospel message and the commission to proclaim the gospel. Paul makes clear in 1 Timothy 1:15, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” Jesus himself says in Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” It is to lost sinners that Jesus came. He states, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32). The church’s role is not to discern who the elect are and then preach the gospel to them only but rather we are to hold out Christ to lost sinners trusting that Jesus is a powerful Savior. John Murray put it well when he said,

The gospel is the proclamation of good tidings, good tidings from God, good tidings of what God has done, good tidings of what he has promised to do. The passion of missions is quenched when we lose sight of the grandeur of the evangel. It is to a lost world that the gospel is sent. To a world lost in sin and misery is proclaimed the marvel of God’s love and grace, the tidings of salvation, salvation full and free, salvation that could not be greater, because it is salvation in him who is himself the wisdom, power, and righteousness of God.4

Or as Maclean has put it, “It is one of the glories of the gospel that it is universal in scope. There is nothing narrow or limited about the good news of salvation. It is for ‘all the nations’” (Matt 28:19, c.f. Ps 2:8, Ps 96:1–3).5

If this is true, this must have an impact upon the preacher’s preaching of the gospel. First, it means that we ought to have an evangelistic edge in our preaching of Christ. It is true that preaching must be more than simply evangelistic. Pastors are to instruct the people of God, and this will involve more than simply giving evangelistic pleas. But I fear that one of the defects in much of contemporary Reformed preaching is not an overemphasis on evangelistic preaching but an underemphasis on evangelistic preaching.6 There are some who will wander into our midst or come at the invitation of a friend who do not know Christ. There are others perhaps even within our congregations who are self-deceived, professing Christ but with no real understanding of him or of the gospel message. There are believers in our midst who need to be reminded of the glories of Christ in the gospel and to be called back to him. We are never to be done with preaching the gospel, and we are never to be done with truly offering Christ to our hearers.

What about our Calvinistic commitments? Do these not negate the free offer of the gospel? If one looks at things from a purely rationalistic perspective, then perhaps they would. But we are not rationalists. We hold that there are certain parallel truths taught in Scripture which we struggle to understand how to reconcile, and yet they are not contradictory. Scripture teaches unconditional election in no uncertain terms, and yet it also teaches the gospel offer. And again, we might argue that our Calvinistic commitments undergird and embolden our commitment to the free offer. Donald Macleod writes helpfully, “We are about God’s work and there is always good reason to hope that if God has sent us here it is because in this particular audience there are those whom he has ordained to eternal life and whom he is now calling through his Word.”7

If our Calvinistic convictions embolden rather than undermine our offers of the gospel, then we ought to recover in our preaching urgent and passionate appeals for the lost to come to Christ. We are to preach the whole counsel of God which involves preaching Christ from all of Scripture. In preaching Christ from all of Scripture, we offer the gospel, pleading with men and women and children to come to Jesus Christ. This is as important today as it has always been. There are many competing messages, compelling people toward false religions or pseudo-religions. There are varieties of New Age spirituality that seem to offer a glimmer of hope but in the end lead to destruction. There are all kinds of secular messages encouraging people to find identity anywhere but in Christ. And not least, there are all sorts of subtle forms of pernicious legalism and self-righteousness that manifest themselves in seeking salvation in our own obedience or in being on the right side of a culture war or in making up for our past with personal penance. We need our people to see that salvation is only in Jesus Christ and that it is only in him that one will find a right standing with God. We need to proclaim the work of Christ and his righteousness as the only means by which to stand before a holy God. And we need to teach our people that when they receive Christ, they receive a person who is a perfect Savior.

It is easy to become stilted or dry in our preaching when we lose sight of the urgency of the claims of the gospel and when we lose sight of the fact that God is really doing something when the Word is preached. It is easy to become distracted from preaching the gospel and the Christ who is offered to sinners. And it is easy to forget that we preach to those for whom eternity is at stake. But when we do these things, we rob our people and others in our midst of what they most need. As John Murray writes,

It is a grave sin against Christ and his gospel not to realize that it is precisely the definiteness of the redemption which he accomplished that grounds and validates the fulness and freeness with which he is offered to all men in the unrestricted overtures of his grace. And if we have any reserve or lack of spontaneity in offering Christ to lost men and in presenting the claims which inhere in the glory of his person and the perfection of his finished work, then it is because we have a distorted conception of the relation which the sovereignty of God sustains to the free offer of Christ in the gospel. It is on the crest of the wave of the divine sovereignty that the full and free overtures of God’s grace in Christ break upon the shores of lost humanity. But not only so. If we fail to appreciate what the free offer of the gospel is, and if we fail to present this free offer with freedom and spontaneity, with passion and urgency, then we are not only doing dishonor to Christ and his glory but we are also choking those who are the candidates of saving faith.8

If we do not hold out Christ and all his benefits to our hearers, it is due to our distorted understanding of the doctrine of election and not due to the doctrine of election itself.9 The same God who elects a definite group of sinners unto life is the God who says, “Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezek 33:11). The Christ who died for a definite and particular group of sinners, “thus securing an eternal redemption” (Heb 9:12), is the same Jesus who says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt 11:28–30). If the electing God and the Christ who is a definite Savior pled with sinners, then we likewise ought to plead with sinners to come to Christ. May the Lord help us to proclaim the glories of the gospel and the riches of Christ with a warm-hearted and passionate urgency.

Notes

  1. For example, see Donald John Maclean, All Things are Ready: Understanding the Gospel in its Fullness and Freeness (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2021) and Donald Macleod, Compel Them To Come In: Calvinism and the Free Offer of the Gospel (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2020). See also John Murray, “The Atonement and the Free Offer of the Gospel,” in The Collected Writings of John Murray Vol. 1: The Claims of Truth (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1976), 59–85, and John Murray, “The Free Offer of the Gospel,” in John Murray, The Collected Writings of John Murray Vol. 4: Studies in Theology, Reviews (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1982), 113–32.
  2. Maclean, All Things are Ready, 15.
  3. Maclean, 11–12
  4. Murray, “The Atonement and the Free Offer of the Gospel,” 59.
  5. Maclean, All Things are Ready, 11.
  6. For a very helpful lecture on this subject, see David Strain, “Evangelistic Preaching,” Edinburgh Theological Seminary, YouTube, February 9, 2016, beginning 39:49.
  7. Macleod, Compel Them To Come In, 46.
  8. John Murray, “Some Necessary Emphases in Preaching,” in The Collected Writings of John Murray Vol. 1: The Claims of Truth (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1976), 146–47.
  9. I am here giving further development to a similar statement made in my article, “Reflections on John Murray’s ‘Some Necessary Emphases in Preaching,’” Seventeen82.com, April 16, 2024.

©James Ritchey. All Rights Reserved.

Part Two. 

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  • James Ritchey
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    James Ritchey is originally from Birmingham, Alabama and studied at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, MS (2018). James serves as mission developer and pastor at River City Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARP) in Little Rock, AR.

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