Michael A. G. Haykin on John Gill and the Free Offer of the Gospel

The free offer of the gospel

It should occasion no surprise that Gill’s development of the doctrine of the everlasting covenant, in which he highlighted the role of the Spirit, along with his tenacious commitment to the notion of eternal justification should then lead to the rejection of the free offer of the gospel.⁴⁸ For example, in a tract that he wrote in response to a rejection of predestination by the Methodist leader John Wesley (1703-91), Gill considered biblical verses like Acts 17:30, which states that God "now commands all men everywhere to repent" and Mark 16:15, in which there is a command to "preach the gospel to every creature." Gill did not believe that either of these verses can be used to support the idea of the free offer of the gospel.

He admitted that the "gospel is indeed ordered to be preached to every creature to whom it is sent and comes." But, Gill observed, it needs noting that God has not seen fit to send the gospel to every person in the world: "there have been multitudes in all ages that have not heard it." Therefore, Gill stated, "that there are universal offers of grace and salvation made to all men, I utterly deny." Not even to the elect does God make an "offer" of salvation. Rather, the proclamation of the gospel informs the elect that "grace and salvation are provided for them in the everlasting covenant, procured for them by Christ, published and revealed in the gospel, and applied by the Spirit."⁴⁹ In his systematic theology, Gill suggests another way of dodging the plain import of such verses: they are really only speaking about "an external reformation of life and manners," not "spiritual and internal conversion."⁵⁰ Not surprisingly Gill warns gospel preachers to be careful lest, when they preach repentance, they give their hearers the idea that repentance is "within the compass of the power of man’s will." To preach like this is what Gill calls the "rant of some men’s ministry,…low and mean stuff, too mean for, below, and unworthy of a minister of the gospel."⁵¹
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48. Nettles believes differently; see his "John Gill and the Evangelical Awakening" in Haykin, ed., Life and Thought of John Gill, 131–70.
49. The Doctrine of Predestination Stated, and Set in the Scripture-Light (2nd ed.; London: G. Keith, 1752), 28–9.
50. Cited Oliver, History of the English Calvinistic Baptists, 9.
51. Doctrines of God's Everlasting Love, 79-80. I owe this reference to Garrett, Jr., Baptist Theology, 99.

Michael A. G. Haykin, "Hyper-Calvinism and the Theology of John Gill," A Paper from the True Church Conference (Feb. 2010), 14–15.