Rev.
Ronald Hanko
Rev. Hanko is a minister in
the Protestant Reformed Churches in America and has authored a number of books,
including (among others) the following: Doctrine According
to Godliness: A Primer on Reformed Doctrine (2004), The Coming of Zion’s
Redeemer: Commentary on Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi (2015). He was also
the joint author of Saved by Grace: A Study of the Five Points of Calvinism (1995) and
its accompanying study guide.
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Introduction and Clarification
Many
today believe that on God’s part the gospel is a free or well-meaning offer of
salvation, by which they mean that God expresses in the preaching a passionate
or earnest desire or want or wish that all who hear it be saved. We strenuously
object to this teaching.
We
do not, however, object to the word “offer.” Scripture does not use the word “offer”
to describe the gospel, but the Reformed creeds do. We have no objection to the
creeds.
Rightly
understood, the word “offer” is not only acceptable, but emphasizes an
important truth about gospel preaching. The root meaning of the word is “to
present” or “to show.” The word is not used with that meaning anymore, at least
not in everyday speech. But it is with that older meaning that the Reformed
creeds use the word. Thus used, the word simply emphasizes the important truth
that the preaching of the gospel must display
Christ and make Him known to all who
hear.
There
are few today, however, who speak of the gospel as an offer and mean that
Christ is “presented” in the gospel. Most mean that, in the gospel, God
earnestly desires the salvation of
absolutely all who hear and makes Christ available
to them. This teaching we oppose.
The Free Offer and
Arminianism
There
are two main theologies which teach the free offer of the gospel in this wrong
sense. In each case our objection is different.
On
the one hand, there are those who acknowledge that they are not Reformed or
Calvinistic. For them, the idea that the gospel is anything but a well-meant
offer is incredible. If we may compare their system of doctrine to a jigsaw
puzzle, the free offer of the gospel is just another piece in the puzzle. Into
their picture, it fits nicely between the teaching that Christ died for
absolutely everyone and the notion that man’s freewill choice determines if he
will be saved by Christ.
In
this system, sometimes called Arminianism,
it is the free offer of the gospel that gives
men the opportunity to decide for Jesus. When salvation is offered to them
in the gospel, they are able either to accept or reject the redemption Christ
purchased for them and for everyone by His sacrificial death. Indeed, the
gospel can only be an offer, if salvation depends on man’s will and
choice.
This
alone ought to give Reformed men and women pause. A teaching that fits so well
into the Arminian picture of
salvation ought to be suspect.
In
Arminianism, though, our objections are not only to the free-offer teaching,
but to the whole system. We would not
discard just one piece of the jigsaw but the whole picture. We do not want a
system that makes man’s will (not God’s will, God’s cross or God’s grace) the
decisive factor in salvation and which does not give all the glory to the
Triune God alone.
The Free Offer and Reformed
Theology
There
are others, however, who are Calvinistic and Reformed. They believe in
unconditional election (Eph. 1:4) and in particular redemption—that Christ died
for His beloved sheep alone (John 10:11, 15, 26). They believe, too, that salvation,
including faith, is a gift of God
(Phil. 1:29). Nevertheless, they reckon that the gospel is a well-meant offer
of salvation to all sinners who hear the preaching. In their case, we object to
their efforts to make the free-offer teaching a part of Reformed theology and
Calvinism. Some of these objections follow.
If
we also compare Calvinism and Reformed theology to a jigsaw puzzle, then the
free offer is like a piece that does not fit—a piece from the wrong puzzle. No matter how you turn it and try to
force it, it will not fit. The thing to do then is to throw away the bad piece
and to find the piece that does fit. In the hope that this will be done, we
wish to show how and why an ineffectual
desire of God to save the reprobate does not fit into Reformed theology.
The Free Offer and the Nature
of God
One
place where free-offer teaching does not fit into Reformed theology is in the
whole area of theology proper, i.e.,
the doctrine of God. Implicitly or
explicitly, a divine desire to save the reprobate denies fundamental truths
regarding the nature of the Most High Himself. To put the matter bluntly,
free-offer teaching leads to a different conception of God than does the
theology of those who reject it. This alone, if true, ought to be enough to
condemn free-offer teaching in the mind and heart of every Reformed person.
The
free offer denies, first, a basic truth about revelation—the truth that all God’s revelation is self-revelation (God’s making Himself known to us). No matter
what the content of that revelation, no matter how it is given, it all, in the end,
reveals who and what God is.
All
God says and does, therefore, is a revealing of who He is in Himself. That means, in turn, that God’s revelation cannot contradict what He is
in Himself. What He says cannot be
different from what He is. What He does cannot contradict who He is. For
example, since God is a just God,
then none of His works and words, whereby He reveals Himself, can be unjust. We
may not be able always to demonstrate to unbelievers why God’s ways are always
just, but because they are part of His revelation of Himself they cannot be
unjust.
The
logic of this is that, if any of God’s works or ways are unjust, then He is also unjust in Himself, an unjust
God. And, if He is an unjust God, He is not God at all—likewise with all His attributes.
The
defenders of the free offer deny this, often explicitly. They say, in defence
of the free offer, that God can be
something different in His dealings with men from what He is in Himself.
Free-offer teaching says that He can
desire to save everybody, love them and be gracious to them in the gospel, and
yet be in Himself, from eternity, of a different
mind, will and heart concerning them. His revelation of Himself in the gospel
can and does contradict what He is in Himself.
If
this is true, then revelation is not
really revelation, an uncovering and showing of who and what God is in
Himself. In fact, revelation would then tell the very opposite of the truth about the nature and will of God—it would be
a lie. Put a bit more bluntly,
free-offer teaching says that God does not tell those who perish the truth—especially the whole truth—about Himself. He speaks to them of love
and grace and mercy. He even does loving, gracious and merciful things for them,
the free offer claims, but in His own heart, mind and will there is no grace or
love or mercy for them. He not only did not choose
to save them but He did not even intend to have His Son die for them or to give His Spirit to them. What He says and shows
in the gospel is not the truth about who and what He is from eternity and in
Himself.
Yet
those who believe in the well-meant offer are not afraid of saying this. They
speak of two wills in God, a revealed will to save absolutely all who hear the
preaching (expressed in the free offer of the gospel in time) and a secret will
not to save them (determined in eternal reprobation). They may even say that
God both hates (Rom. 9:13) and loves those who perish. That,
however, only raises further problems with Jehovah’s other attributes.
For
one thing, it denies God’s oneness.
His oneness means that He is, in Himself and in His revelation, one and
indivisible. This is denied by those who hold to the free offer.
They
hold that God is of two minds, two wills, two hearts concerning those who perish (contrary to Job 23:13). He loves reprobate sinners and He does not love them (Ps. 11:5). He wills their salvation (in the gospel)
and does not will it (in eternal
election). Nor are His revelation and His eternal mind and will one and the
same. In His revelation He is one thing—in Himself another. No defender of the
free offer has ever shown how such teaching can be reconciled with the
fundamental teaching of Scripture, the great “Shema” of Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear,
O Israel: The LORD our God is one
LORD.” Indeed, it cannot be reconciled with God’s oneness. It is a piece that
does not fit Reformed theology.
Another
aspect of God’s oneness is His absolute
simplicity. This means that there is no disharmony, no contradiction, and
no imperfection, in God. In this sense also He is one and undivided in His nature and revelation, His words and
works, and in all His attributes. The “theology” of the free offer cannot be
reconciled with God’s simplicity. It flatly contradicts this crucial attribute
by teaching that there are contradictions and imperfections in God. Think, for
example, of the “two-wills” teaching, which is at the heart of free-offer
theology. Not only do the two wills contradict
each other, but one will always remain unfulfilled
and unrealized with respect to all those who perish.
Nor
are these the only attributes of God that are contradicted by the free-offer
teaching. Such teaching also denies God’s unchangeableness
(James 1:17). He changes His mind and will and His word about those who perish,
showing a sincere desire for their
salvation in the gospel and then, in the end, damning them. He promises them eternal life in the gospel but then
does not give it, for He does not even give them the necessary means in the death of Christ and the work of His Spirit.
Free-offer
teaching opposes the eternity of the
Most High too (Ps. 90:2). It teaches that there is a love, a grace and mercy of
God, which lasts as long as the gospel is preached, whereas God’s “mercy
endureth for ever” (Ps. 136:1-26).
His eternal will, so they say, is only revealed in predestination.
The
free offer even contradicts His sovereignty
(Isa. 46:9-10) in that it teaches that there are, in the gospel, a resistible grace and a divine love that do not save.
The
truth is that the free offer of the gospel fits none of God’s attributes. Is a
grace that well-meaningly offers salvation but does not give the means of
salvation an infinite grace? Is
telling men that God loves them, while He does nothing either in the cross or
by the Spirit to save them, in keeping with His truthfulness (Deut. 32:4)? Is it divine wisdom well-meaningly to offer salvation to those whom He excluded
from it by eternal reprobation (Rom. 9:17-18, 22)? Is it really love to say to them that God passionately
desires their salvation while He secretly planned otherwise?
What
then? The free offer does not fit with revelation.
It does not fit the attributes of
God. It does not fit the doctrine of
God. It fits nowhere. Nor can any defender of the offer make it fit without
bending or ruining other pieces of the picture.
The Free Offer and the Five
Points of Calvinism
There
is, however, another part of the picture called the “Five Points of Calvinism.”
Every Calvinist know and loves the Five Points. Does the offer teaching fit
there? Again, the answer is “No!” Consider the following.
Free-offer
teaching contradicts the first of the Five Points, the doctrine of total depravity. Total depravity means,
very simply, that fallen man is “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1). To
offer something well-meaningly to a dead man, wanting and intending him to have
what is offered, is both useless and foolish.
Free-offer
teaching does not square with unconditional
election and reprobation (Westminster
Confession 3:7), since its offer is, by its very nature, conditional. It is
conditional in that its acceptance depends on the will of the person to whom
the offer is made. You cannot offer something to a tree, which has no will. You
cannot offer something to someone who is asleep, whose will is not active. Yet
free-offer teaching says that God well-meaningly offers something to those whose
wills are inactive for good and cannot—if you believe the Reformed truth
of the bondage of the will (Rom. 3:11; 8:7)—choose
to accept it. A desire of God to save the reprobate does not fit with the
truth that salvation does not depend on man’s will but wholly on God’s eternal,
unconditional will and good pleasure (John 1:12-13).
Free-offer
teaching does not reconcile with limited
or particular atonement either (Eph. 5:25). Almost inevitably, it leads to
a denial of limited atonement. An offer of salvation in Christ is both
insincere and empty, if Christ did not
die for those to whom the offer was made. Even men who believe in
particular atonement are forced to make statements that deny limited atonement
in their defence of the free offer. In the very last paragraph of The Free Offer of the Gospel, John
Murray and Ned Stonehouse say, “It is Christ in all the glory of His person and
finished work whom God offers in the Gospel.” How can He be so offered, if He
is not available?
The
offer also denies irresistible grace.
The offer is supposed to be a kind of divine grace, yet the grace shown in the
offer is not only resistible, but always resisted by those who perish. Where,
then, is the great Calvinist doctrine of irresistible grace?
Nor
can a gospel, which is only an offer, provide anything of what is necessary for
perseverance. The gospel is the means
of perseverance to the end—but not if it only an offer. What can an offer do to
keep us “through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (I
Pet. 1:5)?
Here,
too, the pieces of the jigsaw must be bent, forced or cut to a different shape
to allow the teaching of a desire of God to save the reprobate to fit among them.
The free offer adds nothing positive to Reformed theology. It is a piece from a
different picture—that of Arminianism.
The Call of the Gospel
But
what is the piece we are looking for? What is the gospel if it is not a
well-meant offer?
The
answer is plain. The gospel comes with a command or call, which is sovereign
and powerfully irresistible to awaken those dead sinners whom the Son wishes to
quicken (John 5:21, 25), thus accomplishing
what God eternally and unchangeably willed, and applying the redemption that
Christ achieved for them on the cross. The gospel is also a means of hardening, according to which the good
pleasure of God is sovereignly accomplished with respect to those who refuse to
repent and are punished for their sins (John 12:39-41; II Cor. 2:16).
This
is a truth largely forgotten today. Even those who are not caught up in free
offer theology have, for the most part, forgotten this great truth. Not knowing
that the preaching of the gospel is “the power
of God unto salvation” (Rom. 1:16), the means by which faith comes (Rom.
10:17), the way in which we hear the voice of the Good Shepherd (John
10:27-28), they neglect preaching. Both preachers (who ought to know better)
and the members of their congregations (who probably do not) are guilty. Not
knowing that the gospel is the effectual
word by which God calls His people out of darkness into light, the clear proclamation
of the truth of Scripture is replaced by appeals, emotional displays and a
hawking of Jesus Christ that makes Him little more than something to be sold in
the marketplace.
May
God grant, therefore, not only a correct understanding of what preaching is,
but also a revival of true preaching in the church and in evangelism—preaching
that is indeed the power of God unto salvation to all those whom He has chosen
and for whom Christ died.
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