Donald MacLean on the Sincerity of the Gospel Offer in James Durham (1622-1658)

Is the Gospel Offer Sincere?

Having considered so far that God earnestly invites all the hearers of the gospel to come to Christ, the question naturally arises as to the sincerity of the gospel offer. That is, does God want all hearers of the gospel offer to accept Christ, or to express it differently and starkly, does God desire the salvation of all hearers of the gospel? This is an important theological question and Professor John Murray states: “It would appear that the real point in dispute in connection with the free offer of the gospel is whether it can properly be said that God desires the salvation of all men.”¹⁰⁶

What does Durham make of this question? Does he teach that God desires the salvation of all men? It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Durham would answer this question in the affirmative¹⁰⁷ given his comments: “God the Father, and the King’s Son the Bridegroom, are not only content and willing, but very desirous to have sinners come to the marriage. They would fain (to speak with reverence) have poor souls espoused to Christ.”¹⁰⁸ This teaching is not simply one isolated slip of the tongue in preaching, as Durham elsewhere notes, “As our Lord Jesus Christ has purchased this redemption and remission, so he is most willingly desirous, and pressing that sinners to whom it is offered should make use of his righteousness and of the purchase made thereby, to the end that they may have remission of sins and eternal life.… He is (to speak with reverence) passionately desirous that sinners should endeavour on ground to be sure of it in themselves. Therefore he…makes offer of it, and strongly confirms it to all who embrace it.”¹⁰⁹ Again commenting on the verse, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37), Durham states:

“The word is doubled in the original: ‘I will not, not [cast him out]’”; to show the holy passion of our Lord’s desire and His exceeding great willingness to have sinners close with Him. In Isaiah 45, salvation is promised even to a look: “Look unto me, all ye ends of the earth, and be saved.”¹¹⁰ Indeed, he can go so far as to say that “I do not know a truth of the gospel that has more confirmations than this has, that Christ the Mediator is very willing and desirous that sinners close with him, and get the good of his purchase.”¹¹¹

Durham is clear that to deny the serious and sincere nature of the gospel is not appropriate: “To have a gracious offer from God, and to fear at it, as if He were not in earnest, is very unbecoming the gospel. Whenever He pipes, it becomes us well to dance, and to believe and credit Him when He speaks fair and comfortably.”¹¹²

Allied to this, Durham speaks of the willingness of God to save sinners, as the following extract demonstrates:

Christ the Bridegroom and His Father are very willing to have the match made up and the marriage completed.… The evidences of His willingness are many…as, that He has made the feast…and prepared so for it, and given Himself to bring it about, and keeps up the offer and proclamation of marriage even after it is slighted…the Father and the Son are most heartily willing; therefore they expostulate when this marriage is refused, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered you, but ye would not!” (Matt. 23:37). “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if thou, even thou, hadst known in this thy day the things that belong to thy peace!” (Luke 19:42). All these sad complaints, that Israel would not hearken to His voice, and His people would have none of Him (Ps. 81:11), that He came to His own, and His own received Him not (John 1:11), and that they will not come to Him that they might have life (John 5:40), make out His willingness abundantly and undeniably.¹¹³

In noting Durham’s teaching on the desire of God that hearers would accept the gospel offer, it is not appropriate to understand him as simply using indefinite terms (such as “sinners”) and by these terms meaning “the elect.” Aside from the strange inconsistency this would create with Durham’s own definition of the gospel offer as a particular invitation to every individual hearer (how could a particular invitation be indefinite in its object?), Durham clearly affirms the willingness of God to save everyone who hears the gospel: “This word we now preach, nay, these stones shall bear witness against you that our Lord Jesus was willing to save you and every one of you.”¹¹⁴

To quote Professor John Murray again: “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 fullness.”¹¹⁵

Connected to this is Durham’s teaching that the gospel offer is an expression of God’s common grace: “(2 Cor. 6:1) We beseech you (he says) that ye receive not this grace in vain; which is not meant of saving grace, but of the gracious offer of grace and reconciliation through him.”¹¹⁶ And again, “Why will God have Christ in the offer of the gospel brought so near the hearers of it?… Because it serves to commend the grace and love of God in Christ Jesus. When the invitation is so broad, that it is to all, it speaks of the royalty of the feast, upon which ground (2 Cor. 6:1) it is called grace, the offer is so large and wide.”¹¹⁷

However, having noted all this, it is important to clarify in what sense Durham spoke of God’s desire for the salvation of the hearers of the gospel and of His willingness to save all. Central to this is Durham’s distinction between the secret will and the revealed will of God.¹¹⁸ Basing his thoughts on John 6:39–40, he states that here we “have two wills to say so.”¹¹⁹ Verse 39 (“This is the Father’s will that sent me that of all that he hath given me I should lose nothing”) refers to “the secret paction [contract] of redemption” while verse 40 (“And this is the will of him that sent me, that everyone that seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life”), refers to “the revealed will, pointing to our duty.”¹²⁰ The secret will is not to be “searched into at the firsthand” but rather “his revealed will belongs to you, and that is to see that you believe.”¹²¹ This revealed will shows what is “pleasing and delightsome” to God — indeed, what God “commands, calls for and approves” cannot be conceived of, but as “pleasing to God.”¹²² It is only in the sense of this revealed will that we can speak of God’s will to save all gospel hearers. As Durham argues, “if the Lord’s willing of men (at least men that are under His ordinances) to be saved be thus understood, as including only the duty that God layeth upon men, and the connection that He hath made between it and Salvation in His word, it may be admitted: but if it be extended to any antecedent will in God Himself, distinct from that which is called His revealed will, this place and such like will give no ground for such an assertion [a universal saving will].”¹²³ Durham rejected any “assertion of the Lord’s having a will and desire of the salvation of all men, besides His signifying of what is acceptable to Him as considered in itself by His Word.”¹²⁴ This also shows that when Durham spoke of God’s desire to save all, he was relating this to the revealed will.¹²⁵ Similarly, in discussing common grace, Durham draws a sharp distinction between saving and common grace, arguing that while common grace is indeed wrought by the Spirit, the difference between the two is “in kind” and not simply “in degree.”¹²⁶

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106. Murray, “Free Offer,” in Collected Writings, 4:113.
107. For the sense in which this is the case, see the further discussion below.
108. Durham, Unsearchable Riches, 44.
109. Ibid., 313–314.
110. Ibid., 329.
111. Ibid., 325. So Durham would confirm Ken Stebbins’ belief that the language of God’s desire for the salvation of all hearers of the gospel has been “used by nearly all reformed theologians from Calvin down to the present day” (Stebbins, Christ Freely Offered, 20).
112. Ibid., 96.
113. Ibid., 55. Again, the similarity of the textual basis here with those used by John Murray in The Free Offer of the Gospel is evident.
114. Ibid., 333 [emphasis added].
115. Murray, “Free Offer” in Collected Writings, 4:114.
116. Durham, Christ Crucified, 79.
117. Ibid., 83.
118. Von Rohr called this distinction a “fundamental factor in Puritan theology itself” and described the difference as follows, “On the one hand there is God’s commanding and forbidding will.… It is the will of God as known in God’s word, the will that prescribes and promises.… It is thus the known will, the will of the conditional covenant, the revealed will of God.… On the other hand there is the will of God’s good pleasure.… This is the predestinating will, the will of God’s private purpose. It is the will of the absolute covenant.… It is the secret or the hidden will of God” (Von Rohr, The Covenant of Grace, 130).
119. Durham, Christ Crucified, 233. Durham also uses these verses to make the same point in Unsearchable Riches, 78.
120. Ibid., 233.
121. Ibid., 233–234.
122. Ibid., 427.
123. Durham, Revelation, 214. In the context here, Durham states he would rather speak of God’s revealed will that all men repent, rather than that all men be saved. However, this statement, occurring again in a polemic against those in the Reformed tradition who were positing universal aspects to Christ’s atonement and God’s saving will, does not seem to have been borne out in Durham’s own sermons.
124. Ibid., 268.
125. R.A. Finlayson’s words, although originally reflecting on the position of Calvin, capture this well: “It would seem clear that God wills with genuine desire what He does not will by executive purpose. This has led theologians to make use of the two terms, the decretive will and the preceptive will of God, or His secret and revealed will.… The position could thus be more clearly put as meaning that God desires all men to be righteous in character and life and to use the means He has appointed to that end. It is in harmony with the revealed will of God that without the use of means appointed by Him the end shall not be attained. As a holy God, the Creator commands all His moral creatures to be holy, and He cannot be conceived as in any way obstructing their pursuit of holiness by His decree” (R. A. Finlayson, “Calvin’s Doctrine of God” in Able Ministers of the New Testament [Papers read at the Puritan and Reformed Studies Conference, 1964], 16).
126. Durham, Revelation, 158.

Donald John MacLean, "James Durham (1622–1658) and the Free Offer of the Gospel," Puritan Reformed Journal 2:1 (January 2010), 112-116. This paper is "is an amended version of a lecture given at the Inverness branch of the Scottish Reformation Society in November 2008." Ibid., 92n1. Dr. MacLean blogs at the James Durham Thesis. The subject of his doctoral thesis is, “Reformed Thought and the Free Offer of the Gospel: With Special Reference to  The Westminster Confession of Faith and James Durham (1622-1658),” which is available to download for free at EthOs (click). Vandehoeck & Rupprecht will soon publish MacLean's dissertation under the title James Durham and the Gospel Offer in Its Seventeenth-Century Context.

James Durham bio:
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