Theology on Thursday

One of the texts which I required seminary students in my evangelism class to read was J. I. Packer’s Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. I agree wholeheartedly with Packer as he writes with biblical insight:

Evangelism…is a task appointed to all God’s people everywhere. It is the task of communicating a message from the Creator to rebel mankind. The message begins with information and ends with an invitation. The information concerns God’s work of making His Son a perfect Saviour for sinners. The invitation is God’s summons to mankind generally to come to the Saviour and find life. God commands all men everywhere to repent, and promises forgiveness and restoration to all who do. The Christian is sent into the world as God’s herald and Christ’s ambassador, to broadcast this message as widely as he can. This is both his duty (because God commands it, and love to our neighbour requires it) and his privilege (because it is a great thing to speak for God, and to take our neighbour the remedy—the only remedy—that can save him from the terrors of spiritual death). Our job, then, is to go to our fellow-men and tell them the gospel of Christ, and try by every means to make it clear to them; to remove as best we can any difficulties that they may find in it, to impress them with its seriousness, and to urge them to respond to it. This is our abiding responsibility; it is a basic part of our Christian calling. . . .

The God of the Bible is both Lord and Lawgiver in His world; He is both man’s King and man’s Judge. Consequently, if we would be biblical in our outlook, we have to make room in our minds for the thoughts of divine sovereignty and of human responsibility to stand side by side. Man is indubitably responsible to God, for God is the Lawgiver who fixes his duty, and the Judge who takes account of him as to whether or not he has done it. And God is indubitably sovereign over man, for He controls and orders all human deeds, as He controls and orders all else in His universe. Man’s responsibility for his actions, and God’s sovereignty in relation to those same actions, are thus, as we saw, equally real and ultimate facts. The apostle Paul forces this antinomy upon our notice by speaking of God’s will (thelema) in connection with both these seemingly incompatible relations of the Creator to His human creatures, and that within the limits of a single short Epistle. In the fifth and sixth chapters of Ephesians, he desires that his readers may be found ‘understanding what the will of the Lord is’ (v. 17) and ‘doing the will of God from the heart’ (vi.6). This is the will of God as Law giver, the will of God that man is to know and obey. In the same sense, Paul writes to the Thessalonians: ‘This is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication.’ [I Thes. iv.3; cf. Mt. vii.21,xii.50;Jn, vii.17; I Jn. ii.17, etc.] In the first chapter of Ephesians, however, Paul speaks of God’s having chosen him and his fellow-Christians in Christ before the world began ‘according to the good pleasure of his will’ (verse 5); he calls God’s intention to sum up all things in Christ at the end of the world ‘the mystery of his will’ (verse 9); and he speaks of God Himself as ‘him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will’ (verse I I). Here God’s ‘will’ is clearly His eternal purpose for the disposal of His creatures, His will as the world’s sovereign Lord. This is the will that God actually fulfils in and through everything that actually happens—even man’s transgressions of His law. Older theology distinguished the two as God’s will of precept and His will of purpose, the former being His published declaration of what man ought to do, the latter His (largely secret) decision as to what He Himself will do. The distinction is between God’s law and His plan. The former tells man what he should be; the latter settles what he will be. Both aspects of the will of God are facts, though how they are related in the mind of God is inscrutable to us. This is one of the reasons why we speak of God as incomprehensible. . . .

There are some who have come to believe in the sovereignty of God in the unqualified and uncompromising way in which (as we judge) the Bible presents it. These are now wondering whether there is not some way in which they could and should witness to this faith by modifying the evangelistic practice which they have inherited from a generation with different convictions. These methods, they say, were devised by people who did not believe what we believe about God’s absolute sovereignty in salvation; is that not of itself reason enough for refusing to use them? Others, who do not construe the doctrine of divine sovereignty in quite this way, nor take it quite so seriously, fear that this new concern to believe it thoroughly will mean the death of evangelism; for they think it is bound to undercut all sense of urgency in evangelistic action. Satan, of course, will do anything to hold up evangelism and divide Christians; so he tempts the first group to become inhibited and cynical about all current evangelistic endeavours, and the second group to lose its head and become panicky and alarmist, and both to grow self-righteous and bitter and conceited as they criticize each other. Both groups, it seems, have urgent need to watch against the wiles of the devil. . . .

Whatever we may believe about election, the fact remains that evangelism is necessary, because no man can be saved without the gospel. ‘There is no difference between the Jew and the Greek,’ proclaims Paul; ‘for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord (Jesus Christ) shall be saved.’ Yes; but nobody will be saved who does not call upon the name of the Lord, and certain things must happen before any man can do this. So Paul continues: ‘How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?’ [Rom x.12 ff.] They must be told of Christ before they can trust Him, and they must trust Him before they can be saved by Him. Salvation depends on faith, and faith on knowing the gospel. God’s way of saving sinners is to bring them to faith through bringing them into contact with the gospel. In God’s ordering of things, therefore, evangelism is a necessity if anyone is to be saved at all.

We must realize, therefore, that when God sends us to evangelize, He sends us to act as vital links in the chain of His purpose for the salvation of His elect. The fact that He has such a purpose, and that it is (so we believe) a sovereign purpose that cannot be thwarted, does not imply that, after all, our evangelizing is not needed for its fulfilment. In our Lord’s parable, the way in which the wedding was furnished with guests was through the action of the king’s servants, who went out as they were bidden into the highways and invited in all whom they found there. Hearing the invitation, the passers-by came. [Mt xxii.1 ff.] It is in the same way, and through similar action by the servants of God, that the elect come into the salvation that the Redeemer has won for them. . . .

Whatever we may believe about election, the fact remains that men without Christ are lost, and going to hell (pardon the use of this tarnished phrase: I use it because I mean it). ‘Except ye repent,’ said our Lord to the crowd, ‘ye shall all . . . perish.’ [Lk xiii.3,5] And we who are Christ’s are sent to tell them of the One—the only One—who can save them from perishing. Is not their need urgent? If it is, does that not make evangelism a matter of urgency for us? If you knew that a man was asleep in a blazing building, you would think it a matter of urgency to try and get to him, and wake him up, and bring him out. The world is full of people who are unaware that they stand under the wrath of God: is it not similarly a matter of urgency that we should go to them, and try to arouse them, and show them the way of escape?

We should not be held back by the thought that if they are not elect, they will not believe us, and our efforts to convert them will fail. That is true; but it is none of our business, and should make no difference to our action. In the first place, it is always wrong to abstain from doing good for fear that it might not be appreciated. In the second place, the non-elect in this world are faceless men as far as we are concerned. We know that they exist, but we do not and cannot know who they are, and it is as futile as it is impious for us to try and guess. The identity of the reprobate is one of God’s ‘secret things’ into which His people may not pry. In the third place, our calling as Christians is not to love God’s elect, and them only, but to love our neighbour, irrespective of whether he is elect or not. Now, the nature of love is to do good and to relieve need. If, then, our neighbour is unconverted, we are to show love to him as best we can by seeking to share with him the good news without which he must needs perish. So we find Paul warning and teaching ‘every man’: [Col. i.28] not merely because he was an apostle, but because every man was his neighbour. And the measure of the urgency of our evangelistic task is the greatness of our neighbour’s need and the immediacy of his danger. . . .

Whatever we may believe about election, and, for that matter, about the extent of the atonement, the fact remains that God in the gospel really does offer Christ and promise justification and life to ‘whosoever will’. ‘Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’[Rom. x.13] As God commands all men everywhere to repent, so God invites all men everywhere to come to Christ and find mercy. The invitation is for sinners only, but for sinners universally; it is not for sinners of a certain type only, reformed sinners, or sinners whose hearts have been prepared by a fixed minimum of sorrow for sin; but for sinners as such, just as they are. . . . The fact that the gospel invitation is free and unlimited—’sinners Jesus will receive’—’come and welcome to Jesus Christ’ [Title of a book by John Bunyan]—is the glory of the gospel as a revelation of divine grace. . . .