We then, as workers together with him,
beseech you also that ye receive not
the grace of God in vain. (For he saith, I have heard thee in a time
accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold,
now is the day of salvation) (II Cor. 6:1-2).
WELL-MEANT OFFER / FREE OFFER ARGUMENT:
This passage is used to support the
“general, well-meant offer” (or “free offer”) of the gospel—the teaching that
God sincerely and earnestly desires, wills, wishes or wants all persons that
outwardly hear the preaching to be saved and, in the preaching of the gospel,
offers grace and salvation (along with all its blessings) to each and every
hearer for their acceptance or rejection.
(I)
Prof.
Herman C. Hanko
(a)
Question 1: “According to II
Corinthians 6:1, it is possible to receive grace ‘in vain.’ Does not this imply
that a reprobate or a false convert can at least receive grace, even though it
is in vain?”
No, it certainly does not mean that an
unbeliever receives grace. The point is that God saves a number of people and
that group becomes a congregation of Jesus Christ. Upon that congregation, God
sends the blessings of His grace. They grow in grace and in the knowledge of
the truth. God is gracious to that church as a body.
It almost always happens that there are
also those in the congregation who are not true believers. They confess the
truth for a while. They may even be chosen as office-bearers. But they are not
faithful. Hebrews 6:1-6 speaks of such people. And so the warning is pertinent
and needed.
There is also the carnal seed born in
the church who do not show their ungodly colours until they become young people
or confessing adults.
The grace God gives to a congregation
creates a sphere of Christ’s gracious workings in saving His church. The
congregation as a whole and each individual in it is called not to use this
grace of God in vain.
Everyone knows that, when a farmer
irrigates his field, he waters weeds, as well as his crop. But the weeds
receive the water in vain. Indeed, the watering causes them to grow rapidly and
manifest themselves as weeds. So it is in the church. Hebrews 6:7-8 uses this
figure too.
Question 2: “When Paul writes in II
Corinthians 6:2, ‘Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of
salvation,’ is he not implying (a) that salvation is available to all who hear,
and (b) that their receiving of it depends upon their response to this message,
and (c) that God, through the apostle’s beseeching, is Himself expressing an
ardent desire for all to respond immediately and be saved?”
For some strange reason that I will
never understand, the phrase “now is the accepted time,” along with “now is the
day of salvation,” is interpreted to mean that an invitation of the gospel is
addressed on that very day to those listening, and that, if they do not do
something about it and accept Christ, they will lose all opportunity to be
saved. This interpretation is a favourite of Arminian evangelists who want to
scare people into believing—something they find profitable to do for they
believe that a man’s final salvation depends on the choice of his own will and
not on God’s sovereign power to save whom He will. What nonsense!
The apostle refers in II Corinthians
6:2 to the entire new
dispensation. With the coming of Christ and His glorious work, salvation
now comes through Christ’s power to gather His church from all nations on the
earth. It is no longer limited to the Jewish nation, where the saints knew the
gospel through types and shadows. I might add that, after all, “one day is with
the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (II Pet. 3:8). Today,
as well as when the apostle wrote these words, is the day of salvation. It is
always, in the new dispensation, the day of salvation.
At the same time, God confronts
everyone who hears the gospel with His solemn and urgent command to repent of
their sins, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. So the church is
ordered to preach the gospel that God saves sinners through faith in Jesus
Christ, and ministers are called to command all to repent, turn from their
sinful way and believe on Christ. The command to all to repent is “serious,”
as Canons of Dordt III/IV:8 expresses it. God is earnest and
not playing games when He commands all who hear the gospel to repent and to
believe in His Son.
Question 3: “Most commentators believe
that II Corinthians 6:2 teaches that the grace of God spoken of in the text
means the gracious offer of the gospel—an offer of reconciliation and pardon,
which can be accepted or rejected. What can be said about this?”
Those commentators are wrong. Those who
defend an ineffectual divine wish to save the reprobate are guilty of
blaspheming Him by insisting that He is unable to save those whom He desires to
save. Let us hold fast to the truth and give glory to God.
(b)
Question 2: “II
Corinthians 5:19-20 and 6:1-2 speak of the apostles (and, by
extension, the church) being entrusted with the ‘word of reconciliation.’ The
passage says that we are to ‘beseech’ men to be ‘reconciled to God.’ Preachers
are called ‘ambassadors’ who pray in ‘Christ’s stead,’ pleading for his hearers
‘to receive not the grace of God in vain’ and informing them that ‘now is the
day of salvation.’ How are we to understand these verses without referring to a
well-meant offer of grace and reconciliation through Christ on the part of God
to all who outwardly hear the gospel?”
This question brings us to the heart of the
issue, the preaching of the gospel, and must be carefully considered.
The first point that must be made is that the
heresy of the well-meant gospel offer confuses a command of
God to all men to believe in Christ with a gracious offer to
everybody. The Bible has many commands to all who hear the gospel, for they
must forsake sin and believe in Christ.
It seems to me that this distinction is, as my
seminary professor was wont to say, as clear as the sun in the heavens. I
cannot see why anyone not bent on teaching heresy can possibly confuse God’s
command to believe with a loving offer to the reprobate of an available
salvation that He will give to him if only he believes. The only sense one can
make of it is a denial of total depravity: man can of his own power of will
accept the offer Christ makes to them. A denial of total depravity is a fatal
error that ultimately destroys the whole truth of sovereign grace.
Wherever we preach the gospel, we are
commanded to confront everyone with the command to believe. We tell them that
they are under solemn obligation to trust in Christ or else they will earn for
themselves everlasting hell. It is a fact that God is in dead earnest when He
tells man that he must trust in Christ crucified and risen.
The reason why God commands all men to believe
is this: He created man capable of perfect obedience. Man’s loss of the ability
to believe is not God’s fault but man’s own fault. God is just and still
requires that men obey Him; His command is that man, even in his fallen state,
obey God. God does not say, as it were, “Oh, you poor man. You disobeyed me but
that’s alright. I still love you and I will save you, if you want to be saved.”
The Heidelberg Catechism faces
this question already in Lord’s Day 4: “Doth not God then do injustice to man,
by requiring from him in His law that which he cannot perform?” The Catechism tells
us that this is not true for the Most High is just. The sinner must still do
what God commands.
In The Triple Knowledge, his
commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, Herman Hoeksema uses an apt
illustration. It goes like this. I contract with a builder to build me a house.
He wants his money before starting the project and I give it to him. If he
takes this cash, squanders it on an around-the-world cruise with his family and
comes back broke, he is still under obligation to build me a house. If he
refuses to do the job, pleading a lack of money, I may take him to court so
that he fulfils his promise. He may not plead inability, for I made him able to
build the house. By his sin, he put himself in a position that he cannot do it.
Certainly, that sin of his does not release him from his obligation.
The Synod of Dordt, in its battle against the
Arminians of its day, who also taught a well-meant offer of the gospel rooted
in an alleged divine love for all men, specifically enjoined upon the Reformed
churches the calling to preach the gospel of the cross to all men with two
parts to that gospel: (1) everyone who hears the gospel is under solemn
obligation to believe in Christ and (2) the promise of salvation is that God
will save all who believe.
I am not fond of the word “plead,” which the
questioner uses (although the text does not use it) but God is serious when He
commands men to believe in Christ. He is not playing games; He is not “teasing”
men; He is not playing a joke. It is the will of His command that man do indeed
believe in Christ. God, after all, created him in such a way that he was
capable of obeying God in all things. God does not ever release him from this
solemn obligation. The decisions of the Synod of Dordt make this clear too.
They can be found in Canons III/IV:8-9.
[ … ]
…
The defenders of the gospel as a loving offer to everybody head for head
confuse the command of the gospel with a mere offer. This is inexcusable
exegesis. Even in every-day speech, who confuses an offer with a command?
…
In [II Corinthians 5:20], Paul says that, as an ambassador of the gospel of
Christ, he “beseeches” the Corinthians to be “reconciled to God” through faith
in Jesus. The offer defenders appeal to the word “beseech.” On that word and
similar words in Scripture, they hang their doctrinal error of God’s universal
love and tender plea to absolutely everyone to believe in Christ.
…
[W]ords similar to the word “beseech” indicate the seriousness of God’s
command that comes to all men to believe in Christ. God means what He says when
He commands all men to forsake sin and believe in the gospel. He does not play
games. Several remarks must be added to this.
Historically,
the Reformed churches have always made a distinction between the will of God’s
command and the will of God’s decree. The doctrine of election and reprobation
belongs to the will of God’s decree; the will of God’s command is that all men
forsake their sin and believe in Christ. Yet the will of God’s command is
related to the will of His decree, for the will of His command is the means
God uses to execute the will of His decree of reprobation so that
reprobation is accomplished by God in the way of wicked man’s rejection of
the gospel. The doctrine of a well-meant offer to all, rooted in an alleged
divine desire to save everybody, has crowded out the doctrine of sovereign
double predestination. This refusal to believe the truth of divine
predestination is not only rooted in its inherent conflict with the idea of a
well-meant offer, but historically those who hold tenaciously to a well-meant
offer of the gospel have denied, or ended up denying, double predestination.
Such
has been the nature of the preaching of the gospel throughout history—even in
the Old Testament times. Even then, the gospel always came with the command to
forsake sin and believe the promise of God that He would send the Seed of the
woman, Jesus Christ.
And
so God has worked through the ages. The gospel was preached to the organism of
the nation of Israel, including elect and reprobate. The gospel was always the
same: it included an urgent command to all who heard it to repent of their sins
and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ—in the old dispensation, to believe in the
promise of the coming of Christ as the Seed of the woman. But that command,
preached to the organism of the nation, came to the elect as well as the
reprobate, for the elect had to repent and believe the promise of Christ, as
well as the reprobate. That was the command of God that came to all.
But
along with that command came also the promise that whoever believed in Christ
would receive eternal life in Him. That promise too came to all who heard the
gospel. Those who rejected God’s command and scorned His promise were damned;
those who believed the promise, forsook their sin and repented were saved.
So
it is also in the new dispensation. In the organism of the church, this is
always the command of the gospel: repent and believe! Never is that gospel to
be reduced to a mere loving offer to all men absolutely, for that is a
caricature of the gospel, and does terrible despite to the only true and
sovereign God.
From
God‘s point of view, the true preaching of the gospel that I have described is
the means He uses to accomplish His purpose of election and reprobation, for
the gospel is “the power of God unto salvation” to all who believe (Rom. 1:16).
God gives the gift of faith to His elect whom He knows eternally as His own
(John 17:9). Whereas, He hardens the reprobate who reject the gospel and mock
His command to repent.
God
works in this way because He does not treat men as robots, so that the elect
believe because God pushes the right button. My minister used to say that God
does not take the elect to heaven in the top bunk of a Pullman sleeper. He
works in them so that they actually do believe. Nor does God work in the
reprobate in such a way that they reject the gospel because God compels them to
reject it. Adam was created capable of doing all the things that God commanded
him, but he rebelled and now his descendants show their wicked rebellion by
turning their backs on Jehovah and remaining in the slime of sin.
The
figure that Scripture uses to explain this truth is found in Isaiah
55:10-11 and Hebrews 6:7-8. It is the figure of rain that falls on
the earth, and waters both herbs and weeds. The rain is responsible for the
herbs bearing food and it is responsible for the growth of the weeds so that
they manifest themselves as weeds. The same is true of our Lord’s teaching in
the parable of the four kinds of soil, and the parable of the wheat and tares
(Matt. 13:3-30, 36-43).
Yet
it must also be remembered that the gospel is preached to an organism,
whether a nation, a church or a family. Hence, in John 15:1-8, Jesus
compares the nation of Israel to branches. Christ Himself is the vine and God
is the husbandman. There are branches in the vine that bear fruit and there are
branches that do not bear fruit. The latter are those who do not turn from
their wicked way (in Jesus’ day, particularly worshipping God in outward and
formal law-keeping to gain salvation by the works of the law). The former are
those who confess that only by faith in Christ can they be saved (in Jesus’
day, Nicodemus, the Marys, the disciples, the thief on the cross, etc.).
-----------------------------------------------
(II)
Prof. David J. Engelsma
THREE QUESTIONS:
Q. 1. “According to verse
1, it says that it’s possible to receive grace “in vain.” Does this not imply
that a reprobate or a false convert can at least “receive grace,” even though
it be in vain?
Q. 2. “When Paul writes,
‘Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation,’ is he
not implying that salvation is (a) available for all who hear, (b) that their
receiving of it depends upon their response to this, and (c) that God, through
the apostles' “beseeching,” is Himself expressing an ardent desire for all to
immediately respond and be saved?”
Q. 3. “Most commentators
believe that the grace of God spoken of in the text, means the gracious offer
of reconciliation and pardon, which can be accepted or rejected. What can be
said about this?”
First,
the exhortation that the Corinthians not receive the grace of God in vain does
not imply that this is possible in the sense that a man is the recipient of the
grace of God, but perishes. In light of verse 2, the apostle is exhorting the
church not to receive the gospel that
Paul preached in vain in the sense that the gospel of grace came to it, but the church did not believe it or
hold on to it. This is a possibility, indeed a reality in many cases. The
church and its members are therefore guilty of having the gospel brought to
them, but, by their unbelief, not benefiting from the gospel. This implies
neither a frustration of gracious purposes of God, nor a falling from grace on
the part of individuals.
Regarding
your second question, whenever the gospel is preached the ministers beseech, or
ardently exhort, the hearers to receive the gospel, that is, believe it and
embrace it. Salvation is brought near to all who hear in the sense that whoever
believes will be saved by the gospel. Receiving the gospel is by faith. The
implication is that whoever believes will receive the gospel and salvation. But
there is no implication that believing depends upon an alleged ability to
believe in the hearers. Scripture rather denies that faith lies in the natural
ability of the hearer. Faith is the gift of God. As for “beseeching,” the
meaning is an urgent call regarding a life or death matter for the hearers. There
is no teaching or even implication of a desire on the part of God that all
hearers receive the gospel and be saved. First, it is the workers, not God, who do the beseeching in the passage. Even with
regard to the call of God to receive the gospel, this is the will of His
command, not the will of His good pleasure. God commands certain things as the
duty of the hearer that He does not purpose in His counsel. He urgently
commanded (besought, if you will) Pharaoh to let His people go, but He decreed
that the king would not let the people go, so that God might make His power
known in the king’s refusal.
The
implication of the explanation the third question proposes is that all hearers
of the preaching of the gospel have the ability to receive the gospel. How is
this to be squared with the doctrine of total depravity? Also, if this is true,
salvation depends upon the sinner. How does this harmonize with salvation by
grace? In addition, if God sincerely desires the salvation of all who hear,
this contradicts His will of predestination. It also makes God powerless to
save, and makes salvation depend on the will of the sinner. Grace is at stake.
This
is the answer also to your third question. The text teaches the reality and
urgency of the external call to salvation by preachers: a beseeching of all to
repent and believe, and in this way, to be saved. The gospel calls all hearers to believe and
instructs all hearers that all who believe will be saved. There is no teaching
in the text that all are able to believe or that salvation depends on the will
of the sinner. The question begs the question whether all hearers have the
natural ability to repent and believe. Ephesians 2 describes all to whom the
gospel comes as “dead in sin.” Dead sinners do not have the ability to do what
the gospel calls them to do. When one does what the gospel calls him to do,
namely, believe, this is because of the particular grace of God to him: “By
grace are ye saved, through faith, and this [faith] is not of yourselves, it is
the gift of God” (Eph. 2).
To
use the language of Ezekiel, when God passes by the dead infant weltering in
his blood and says, “Live!” the exhortation does not imply that the dead child
has the ability to do so. With the call to the elect, God gives the efficacious
grace to obey the call. According to His reprobation, He withholds this grace
from the others to whom the external call also comes. The reprobate is
responsible for rejecting the call, even though he has no ability to heed it. It
is his fault that he is in his desperate spiritual condition.
-----------------------------------------------
(III)
John Gill (1697-1771)
[Source: Exposition of the Entire Bible]
[Note:
Gill speaks of the minister’s of the
church as those who might receive the grace of God in vain, (i.e., the ministry
or teaching of the gospel of grace), and not so much the church as a whole.]
“we
beseech you also”; you ministers also; as we have entreated the members of the
church, to be reconciled to the order of the Gospel, and the laws of Christ in
his house, so as fellow labourers with you, and jointly concerned in the same
embassy of peace, we beseech you the
ministers of the word in this church, that ye receive not the grace of
God in vain: by “the grace of God,” is not meant the grace of God in
regeneration, and effectual calling, which can never be received in vain; for
the grace of God never fails of producing a thorough work of conversion; nor is
it ever lost, but is strictly connected with eternal, glory: but by it is meant
either the doctrine of grace,
the Gospel of Christ, so called, because it is a declaration of the love and
grace of God to sinners, ascribes salvation in part, and in whole, to the free
grace of God, and is a means of implanting and increasing grace in the hearts
of men. Now this may be
received in vain by ministers and people, when it is but notionally received,
or received in word only: when it is abused and perverted to vile purposes, and
when men drop, deny it, and fall off from it; or else by the grace of God may
be designed gifts of grace, qualifying for ministerial service; and the sense
of the exhortation be, that they be careful that the gifts bestowed on them
might not be neglected by them, but be used and improved to the advantage of
the church, and the glory of Christ; by giving up themselves to study,
meditation, and prayer, by labouring constantly in the word and doctrine, and
by having a strict regard to their lives and conversations, “that the ministry
be not blamed”; which exhortation he pursues in, and by his own example and
others …
-----------------------------------------------
(IV)
Robert Hawker (1753-1827)
[Source: “The True Gospel,
no Yea and Nay Gospel,” quoted in The
Standard Bearer, vol. 11, no. 6 (December 15, 1934), pp. 138-139]
And
what is the yea and nay gospel?—Truly it is much easier to say what it is not,
than to tell what it is. For a yea and nay gospel is, in fact, no gospel at
all. It is everlastingly made up of may-be’s
and if-be’s. It is altogether
conditional, and therefore must of necessity leave the whole in the final event
to a peradventure. It doth not rest upon God’s will, but upon man’s pleasure.
It is not founded in divine appointment, but in the result of human attainment.
Not in what God’s grace is, but in what man’s merit shall be. And of consequence,
according to this state of things, the whole is left at the last to an uncertainty
which shall prevail: God’s power or man’s; the Lord’s counsel or man’s works. A
precarious sample this of a yea and nay gospel.
Moreover,
all the principles of a yea and nay gospel are in correspondence with those
outlines of the system. A yea and nay gospel takes for granted that all men are
alike in a salvable state; neither can any man fail of salvation but from his
neglect of the opportunity at one time or other afforded him. And if a man
seeks for acceptance before God, partly by faith and partly by good works, he
is certain of happiness. Christ is made, by the yea and nay gospel, nothing
more than a procuring cause. So that if a man so far makes use of Christ as by
him to seek out his own salvation in the exercises of faith, and repentance,
and good works, he doth all that is required of him, and Christ will make up
the deficiency. The improvement of this opportunity with such men is the sure
way of salvation; and by the neglect of it a man, according to their creed, may
be lost. In those ups and downs, those hopes and fears, the principles of a yea
and nay gospel consist. And thus living at an uncertainty; such men die at an
uncertainty; and they go out of the world as they came into it, at a
peradventure, concerning the one thing needful.
And
the advocates of a yea and nay gospel, all act in perfect conformity to those
principles. The preachers of it are continually holding forth a motley religion
which they call the gospel, made up of law and gospel, faith and good works.
Were it not for the awfulness of the subject, a man might smile to hear what
very wooing and wining the words are made use of by them to gain upon the hearts
of their hearers by human persuasion. Offers
of Christ, yea pressing Christ
upon the congregation, are the chief topics adopted. And sometimes, from the
great earnestness with which they have worked up their natural feeling to
persuade, they enforce the present opportunity as if, should it be neglected,
never another perhaps may be afforded them. And not unfrequently they call into
aid that blessed scripture of the Holy Ghost which the apostle Paul hath given
the church in a very different sense from what those men use it: ‘For he saith,
I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation I have succoured
thee. Behold now is the day of salvation.’
-----------------------------------------------
(V)
More to come! (DV)
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