And
Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said, The kingdom of
heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, and sent
forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would
not come. Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are
bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed,
and all things are ready: come unto the marriage. But they made light of it, and
went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise: and the remnant
took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them. But when the
king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed
those murderers, and burned up their city. Then saith he to his servants, The
wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore
into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage. So those
servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they
found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests. And when
the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a
wedding garment: And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not
having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then said the king to the
servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer
darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called,
but few are chosen. (Matt. 22:1-14).
COMMON
GRACE ARGUMENT:
The
parable of the wedding feast is thought, by many, to teach that the gospel is a
“well-meant offer of salvation” or an “invitation,” expressing a desire of God
for all men, bar none, to be saved.
(I)
Prof.
David J. Engelsma
I call attention to the fact
that in that passage in Scripture … Jesus did not speak of an “offer” or of an
“invitation,” but of a call, a summons. The king sent forth his
servants to “call them that were
bidden” (v. 3). Throughout the passage, the word translated “bid” and “bidden”
is consistently, in fact, the Greek word meaning ‘call’ and ‘called.’ In
addition, Jesus’ own authoritative explanation of the parable is the truth that
“many are called, but few are chosen”
(v. 14).
The call to the many who
disobeyed the summons to the wedding dinner was not a well-meant offer that
ignored, indeed contradicted, God’s eternal decree of choosing, that is,
election, as is the case with [the common grace] theology of a desire, that is,
gracious will, on the part of God for the salvation of those who reject the
summons. On the contrary, the summons—the “call,” the “bidding”—is strictly
controlled by and serves election.
What this means is that the
general summons, the serious summons, to all who hear the gospel message is
motivated by God’s sincere desire and gracious will for the salvation of the
elect among them only. This desire is realized in every case. Controlled as it
is by the decree of election, the universal summons, or call, in its external
aspect is not the expression of a desire on the part of God for the salvation
of all who hear the summons. In the preaching of the gospel, God does not
desire the salvation of all hearers. According to Jesus, in Matthew 22:14, God
calls many in the gospel whom He has not chosen, that is, towards whom He is
not graciously inclined and whose salvation He does not desire. He calls many
whom He has eternally reprobated.
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(II)
Herman
Hoeksema (1886-1965)
About this we remark:
1. That already this last word,
“For many are called, but few are chosen,” should have been enough for [the
defender of common grace] to make him see clearly that in this parable there is
no reference to a general and well-meant offer of grace and salvation on God’s
part. There can be no doubt but that the Saviour wants us to understand the
entire parable precisely in the light of these words. They are an explanation
of the parable. If now the main thought of the parable had been that the Lord
offers His grace to all without distinction, with the sincere purpose to save
them all, then there should have been stated at the end: for grace is offered to many, but few accept it. But precisely that
is not stated. What is stated—even
somewhat unexpectedly, upon a superficial reading of the parable—is that many are
called, but few are chosen. This immediately lets us know that God the Lord
does not purpose to save all who live under the preaching of the Gospel, but
that He gives grace only to the elect to follow up and obey the call to the
wedding. You have therefore also in this parable a call to come to the wedding-feast which goes forth to all who are
bidden, but a particular bestowal of
grace (no offer) upon the elect alone.
2. That the wedding here is the
kingdom of heaven, as that is prepared for the Son by the Father, was
foreshadowed in the old dispensation in Israel, was realized with the coming,
the suffering, and the exaltation of the Saviour, and presently shall attain
its full realization in the day of Christ.
3. That those who are bidden
and who will not come are the Jews. That call of the servants of the King is
the call of the prophets … However, they paid no heed to that call of the
prophets, but resisted their word, mistreated them, and killed them, and
thereby showed that they were not worthy to enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Therefore the King in righteous wrath burned their city. Israel as a nation was
rejected. Jerusalem was destroyed.
4. That this call of the
prophets was never a general offer of grace. The invitation to come to the
wedding was no offer of grace, but a call
to repentance, to keep God’s covenant, and to walk in His ways. However,
seeing that, according to the explanation of the parable by the Saviour
Himself, not all who were called were elect, they did not all receive grace to
heed the call. Israel as a nation manifested itself as completely unworthy to
enter into the kingdom of heaven when that kingdom was revealed in Christ
Jesus. Therefore Israel was rejected.
5. That the servants then, upon
the commandment of the king, turned away from Israel in order to go out into the
highways and byways, to call Jew and Gentile, good and evil, to the kingdom of
heaven. But also in the new dispensation this calling goes forth always
according to the rule that many are
called, but few are chosen, and that therefore we must not expect that all
who are outwardly called shall also come. The entire parable teaches precisely
the opposite of what the [the defender of common grace] wants to draw from it,
namely, that grace is precisely not
an offer, but a power of God unto
salvation, and that where that power of God to salvation does not operate
in the calling, hardening sets in, and rejection follows. But the elect receive
that power of God unto salvation, and they enter into the wedding of the
Kingdom of heaven.
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(III)
Prof.
Herman C. Hanko
(a)
The parable speaks of many who
rejected the call to come to the wedding feast. This call, to which Jesus
refers by the words “many are called,” is the external call of the gospel. This
is not always admitted by interpreters of this parable. Many make the main
point to be the display of the patience of God. They would have us believe that
on the foreground is a picture of God, who can justly destroy these men who
refuse to come, but who continually gives to the wicked another chance in the
hope that they will still change their minds and come to the wedding feast. As
far as God is concerned, he loves them all and longs to see them all come to
salvation. There is a certain limit to this patience of God: presently it will
be too late. But for the time being God eagerly and longingly seeks to persuade
them to change their minds and come to him.
Others admit that the call of
the gospel referred to here is the external call, but they insist that this
external call is an offer of salvation. Much like the other interpreters, they teach
that God loves all men through a cross that is for all men and an atonement
that covers the sin of all men. Based on the universality of the love of God
and the universality of the atonement of the cross, God offers the salvation of
the cross to all men and gives them all an opportunity to accept this offer and
heed the invitation to come to the wedding feast of the Son.
We have noted before that this
is the age-old error of Pelagius and Arminius, which makes God a helpless
beggar dependent on the will of man. It is an error that has been condemned
again and again by the church. Yet it is an error which, sad to say, has laid
its paralyzing grip on much of the church world of today.
The external call of the gospel
is quite different from these ideas. In the first place, the external call
comes to all who hear the preaching of the gospel. These hearers are not all
the men in the world, for all men in the world do not hear this external call.
But there are many more men who hear than are actually saved. The conclusion of
this parable makes a distinction between the “many” who are called and God’s
“few” who are chosen.
The external call of the gospel
is the call to repentance and faith in Christ. This does not mean that God
invites men to come to him. A king never invites, at least not in the sense in
which we use the word today. Even an earthly king never invites his subjects to come to the palace. They are summoned and
commanded to come by the sovereign prerogative which the king possesses. The
choice of whether they are going to come or whether they will refrain from
coming is not left up to them. They refuse to come at their own peril. How much
more is it not true that the sovereign Lord of all never invites to the wedding
feast. He calls and commands to come, and he thus places men before the
obligation to come.
This call of the gospel is
essentially the demand of God to all men that they love him. This was the
demand God placed on Adam in paradise. This demand God maintains. The fact that
man has sinned against him and has by his sin fallen into total depravity does
not alter the fact that the demand remains. But because man sinned against God,
this demand becomes the demand to love God in the way of repentance and in the
way of turning from sin to faith in Christ
(b)
The defense of the well-meant
offer involves an incorrect interpretation of the distinction between God’s
decretive will and His preceptive will. According to God’s decretive will, God
determines to save only His elect. According to His preceptive will, God
desires to save all men. That there is contradiction between the two is
justified on the grounds of the doctrine of paradox or apparent contradiction …
[The defender of the well-meant offer] must not include in the preceptive will,
God’s desire to save all men. God’s desire is not His command. God’s desire is
that which He wills to do, that which He has eternally purposed in His counsel.
God’s desire is His decretive will. Just as soon as one speaks of a “desire” of
God, one speaks of God’s will, in other words, His decretive will.
(c)
[Source: Common Grace
Considered (2019 edition), p. 352]
[In] Matthew 22:1-14,
where Jesus speaks of a wedding feast to which many were called, although they
refused to come, the call was not an “invitation.” It was the king’s wedding
feast for his son, and the king called
(v. 3) the guests. Now the call of a
king is not an “invitation.” It is a command.
So much so is it a command that when those called did not come, the king “was
wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned
up their city” (v. 7).
Not even a king destroys those
who decline an “invitation.” But a king has every right to destroy those who
refuse to obey a command.
Jesus, the supreme teacher,
also immediately adds that God accomplishes His purpose: “For many are called,
but few are chosen” (v. 14).
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(IV)
Rev.
Martyn McGeown
The
classic passage on the gospel call as a command is the “Parable of the Wedding
Feast” in Matthew 22. Many have misinterpreted this parable to teach a sincere
and gracious invitation to the reprobate to receive and enjoy
salvation. However, the word “invite” is inappropriate. Throughout the parable,
Jesus uses the Greek verb “call” (kaleo):
The
kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his
son. And sent forth his servants to call [kaleo] them that were bidden
[i.e., called, kaleo] to the wedding: and they would not come.
Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden [i.e.,
called, kaleo], Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my
fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage (vv.
2-4).
Many
of the called refuse to come, and the king destroys them in verse 7. Then Jesus
adds, “Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were
bidden [i.e., called, kaleo] were not worthy” (v. 8). After the wedding
feast is filled with guests—who were not only called, but “gathered” (v.
10)—Jesus concludes, “For many are called [kaleo], but few are chosen”
(v. 14).
The
first important lesson from this parable is that both the external preaching,
which comes to both elect and reprobate, and the internal call of the Holy
Spirit, which is given only to the elect, are referred to as a “call” in
Scripture (vv. 3, 14). God calls both the elect and the reprobate, but in
different senses. The call of Matthew 22:14 is not the same, therefore, as the
call of Romans 8:30 (“whom he called, them he also justified”). Some who are
externally “called” (kaleo) are not justified and glorified, and
therefore we could say that they are not elect. Thus the hyper-Calvinist, who
denies that God externally “calls” the reprobate, is proved to be in error.
This text is the basis for the classic Calvinist and Reformed distinction
between the external call and the internal call.
Second,
the word kaleo proves to us that the gospel comes as a command
to all who hear, not as a gracious invitation. If I invite you to my birthday
party, that is a gracious invitation, which you are free to accept or reject
without any serious consequences. When God, the King in Matthew 22, calls men
and women to the wedding feast of His Son, Jesus Christ, He is greatly
displeased when they refuse. Moreover, we read that He destroys those who do
not come (v. 7). That cannot seriously be understood as a gracious invitation
to them.
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(V)
More to
come! (DV)
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