The Free Offer of the Gospel
Winter 2023
God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30)
The very fact that God would command all men everywhere to repent indicates that the gospel is to be freely offered to all. Scripture itself issues the warrant for the free offer of salvation to all men. “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (Revelation 22:17). All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, Christ says, thus assuring that all the elect shall be saved. And then, lest anyone should feel the door of salvation shut to him, Christ goes on to say, “him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37).
Charles Spurgeon, the great nineteenth century prince of preachers, understood the free offer of the gospel better than most. Quoting John Bunyan on Acts 2:38 Spurgeon states: “‘Repent and be baptized every one of you,’ said Peter. As John Bunyan puts it—one man might have stood up in the crowd and said, ‘but I helped to hound him to the cross!’ ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you.’ ‘But I drove the nails in his hands,’ saith one. ‘Every one of you’ says Peter. ‘But I pierced his side.’ ‘Every one of you,’ said Peter. ‘And I put my tongue into my cheek and stared at his nakedness and said, If he be the Son of God, let him come down from the cross!’ ‘Every one of you,’ said Peter. ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you.’”
Spurgeon then addressed his Calvinistic critics. “Many of them are afraid to preach from Peter’s text…When I do it, they say, ‘He is unsound.’ But I do not care for that; I know the Lord has blessed my appeals to all sorts of sinners, and none shall stay me in giving free invitations as long as I find them in this Book.”
Spurgeon’s critics, and those who follow in their train, express concern over what they perceive to be the inconsistency of the free offer of the gospel with the doctrine of a definite atonement. Spurgeon certainly affirmed the truth of a definite atonement, as does everyone who adheres to the Westminster Confession of Faith (see ch. 3 section VI). So the question naturally arises: how can the gospel be offered to all when we know that in an ultimate sense, Christ did not die for all?
The view of Spurgeon’s critics was that there must first be some kind of evidence of the Spirit’s work on the sinner’s heart before the gospel can be offered. In this current age of easy-believism, one might understand how such thinking could exist then and can exist now. On the other hand, the fact that some professors of faith in Christ demonstrate over time that they’ve never truly been born again shouldn’t dissuade the Christian or the preacher from freely offering the gospel to all. Christ Himself predicted that tares would grow up with the wheat, but that in the end the Lord would separate the wheat from the tares (Matthew 13:24–30).
In his work on the free offer of the gospel, John Murray (1898-1975) states in his opening words what the whole matter boils down to: “It would appear that the real point in dispute in connection with the free offer of the gospel is whether it can be properly said that God desires the salvation of all men.” Murray recognizes a distinction between the decretive will of God and the desire of God. “The word ‘desire’ has come to be used in the debate, not because it is necessarily the most accurate or felicitous word, but because it serves to set forth quite sharply a certain implication of the full and free offer of the gospel to all. This implication is that in the free offer there is expressed not simply the bare preceptive will of God, but the disposition of lovingkindness on the part of God pointing to the salvation to be gained through compliance with the overtures of gospel grace. In other words, the gospel is not simply an offer or invitation, but also implies that God delights that those to whom the offer comes would enjoy what is offered in all its fulness. And the word ‘desire’ has been used in order to express the thought epitomized in Ezekiel 33:11, which is to the effect that God has pleasure that the wicked turn from his evil way and live.”
The objection to such reasoning that naturally arises in the mind of some Calvinists would be, how can God be said to desire what he hasn’t decreed? If God truly desired the salvation of all men, then he could have decreed the salvation of all men. And yet, no one would go so far as to suggest that all men are saved universally. The Scripture plainly reveals that there will be many Christ rejecters that in the end are lost forever (cf. Revelation 20:15). At the end of the day, the desire of God and the decree of God are matters that fall into the category of the secret things of God. “The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 29:29). The sovereignty of God in salvation is not revealed in Scripture in order to dampen or discourage the free offer of the gospel to all. It is revealed, rather that the saved sinner may learn to glory in the Lord for every part of his salvation (Jeremiah 9:23–24).
In truth, the free offer of the gospel ties directly into the Christian’s sanctification or conformity to God and Christ. In Matthew 5, Christ speaks of God’s blessings upon the just and the unjust: “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?” (Matthew 5:44–46).
The thing to note from this passage is that Christ calls on His disciples to love their enemies and the reason for doing so is that they may the more resemble their Father in heaven. Such a statement makes it plain, then, that God’s attitude toward His enemies is one of benevolence or love. It is from this love that the gospel must be offered to sinners who are at enmity with God. It would be very difficult to envision the Christian having a burden for lost souls, if he didn’t believe that God Himself had no burden for the lost, but only for the elect. Such reasoning makes a mockery of Christ weeping over the city of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41). Calvin remarks on this verse: “As there was nothing which Christ more ardently desired than to execute the office which the Father had committed to him, and as he knew that the end of his calling was to gather the lost sheep of the house of Israel, (Matthew 15:24) he wished that his coming might bring salvation to all. This was the reason why he was moved with compassion, and wept over the approaching destruction of the city of Jerusalem.”
It is incumbent, upon every true preacher of the gospel and upon every Christian that he imitates the compassion of Christ by desiring the salvation of all. And when it comes to sharing the gospel, Christ-likeness should compel every Christian to be like His Lord and offer the gospel to whomsoever he will. We don’t know who the elect are, so we offer the gospel to all. We also know that God has the power to save anyone, even the hardest of sinners; therefore, we offer the gospel to everyone. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). That’s Christ’s invitation and He opens it to all. “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink” (John 7:37). Let us then be imitators of Christ by extending the invitation of the gospel to all and to any.
Rev. Geoff Banister | Minister, Indianapolis FPC, IN