Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley on the Objection Against the Gospel Call

2. The Objection against the Gospel Call

Just as some people have so emphasized the general gospel call as to severely downplay God’s sovereign election, others have so emphasized election as to minimize the gospel call. The various forms of this error are often called hyper-Calvinism. However, we must acknowledge that this label has difficulties. Often it is wrongly applied to legitimate forms of historic Reformed doctrine, such as unconditional election or eternal reprobation. The term is also misleading because, as Iain Murray writes, “Too often it has been supposed that the difference between Calvinism and Hyper-Calvinism is simply a question of degree.”⁵⁸ The problem is not too high a view of divine sovereignty but the denial of other biblical doctrines.

Some advocates of sovereign grace deny that the gospel call is an offer of Christ. The most relevant meaning of the verb offer in this case is “to present for acceptance or rejection.”⁵⁹ John Gill wrote, “The gospel is indeed ordered to be preached to every creature to whom it is sent and comes”; however, he also said, “That there are universal offers of grace and salvation made to all men I utterly deny; nay, I deny that they are made to any; no, not to God’s elect; 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.”⁶⁰ Yet we note that Gill could preach as follows: “Come to the Lord as humble penitents … let sensible sinners come to the person, blood and righteousness of Christ for justification and salvation.”⁶¹ Gill also encouraged preachers “fervently” and “boldly” to “set forth the lost and miserable estate and condition of men by nature, the danger they are in, the necessity of regeneration and repentance, and of a better righteousness than their own, and of faith in Christ; which things are blessed for the turning of men from darkness to light.”⁶² He commended preaching that is “very moving … striking … spiritual, savory, and evangelical having a tendency to awaken the minds of sinners to a sense of sin and danger, and to relieve and comfort the distressed.”⁶³ However, it does appear that Gill held to a mild form of hyper-Calvinism that discouraged churches from freely calling and commanding lost sinners to come to Christ, believe in him, receive him, and be saved.⁶⁴

The language of the free offer expresses biblical truth. Faith is receiving of Christ (John 1:11–12; Col. 2:6), but it is difficult to understand how Christ could be received if he were not offered to people in the gospel. Grace is a gift that must be received for salvation (John 1:16; Rom. 5:17). Christ offers the Spirit to the thirsty, and sinners receive the Spirit by faith in Christ (John 7:37–39; Gal. 3:1–2). The Spirit in his operations upon the believer is a “gift” that repentant sinners “receive.”⁶⁵

The free offer is affirmed in Reformed confessional statements. Calvin’s Catechism of 1537 (Art. 12) says, “Just as the merciful Father offers us the Son through the word of the Gospel, so we embrace him through faith and acknowledge him as given to us. It is true that the word of the Gospel calls all to participate in Christ, but a number, blinded and hardened by unbelief, despise such a unique grace. Hence, only believers enjoy Christ; they receive him as sent to them; they do not reject him when he is given, but follow him when he calls them.”⁶⁶ The Genevan Confession (Art. 11) states, “We believe the promises of the gospel and receive Jesus Christ as He is offered to us by the Father and described to us by the Word of God.”⁶⁷ The Canons of Dort (Head 3/4, Art. 9) say, “It is not the fault of the gospel, nor of Christ offered therein, nor of God, who calls men by the gospel and confers upon them various gifts, that those who are called by the ministry of the Word refuse to come and be converted.”⁶⁸

The Westminster Standards affirm the same. The Shorter Catechism (Q. 31) says that Christ is “freely offered to us in the gospel.”⁶⁹ The Larger Catechism (Q. 68) speaks of how God justly leaves in unbelief the wicked for “their willful neglect and contempt of the grace offered to them.”⁷⁰ The Westminster Confession of Faith (7.3) says, “The Lord was pleased to make … the covenant of grace; wherein He freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ; requiring of them faith in Him, that they may be saved.”⁷¹

The free offer of the gospel expresses God’s sincere desire for sinners to repent and be saved. Another relevant meaning of the word offer is “to declare one’s readiness or willingness.”⁷² The Word reveals the goodness of God to all people. God “is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil” because of his “merciful” character (Luke 6:35–36; cf. Matt. 5:44–48).⁷³ When the gospel comes to people, he expresses his good desires for them in saying, “O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!” (Deut. 5:29).

In Ezekiel 18:23, we read, “Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?” The words “have I any pleasure at all” render a grammatical construction that repeats the same Hebrew root for emphasis. Calvin said, “God desires nothing more earnestly than that those who were perishing and rushing to destruction should return into the way of safety.… And this is the knowledge of salvation, to embrace his mercy which he offers us in Christ.”⁷⁴ This is a revelation of the heart of God. Johannes Polyander said, “The impelling cause [of the gospel call], whereby God is moved internally by himself, is God’s grace, his good pleasure and favorably-inclined will to offer, in Christ, his salvation to wretched sinners.”⁷⁵

Does this teaching overthrow the Reformed doctrine of election? Herman Hoeksema said that to teach a “general love of God and desire to save sinners” is “Arminianism and Pelagianism.”⁷⁶ There is some tension in the Bible at this point, but no surrender of the doctrines of sovereign grace. In one sense, God desires all men to repent. In another sense, he desires to punish the wicked, and he sometimes gives them up to a hard and unrepentant heart. When Eli corrected his wicked sons, the Scriptures say that they did not listen and repent “because the Lord would slay them” (1 Sam. 2:25). Literally the verse says the Lord “was pleased to cause them to die,” using the same verb translated as “please” (khapets) as is used in Ezekiel 18:23.

Therefore, one text says that God is not pleased that sinners do not repent and so die; another text says that some sinners did not repent because God was pleased that they should die. How can we understand both of these texts together?

The answer lies in the manifold and complex display of God’s goodness to fallen sinners. God’s gracious character shows itself in his goodness and compassion to all his creation (Ps. 145:8–9). Therefore, he calls all who hear the gospel to repent and live, and desires that they do so. As John Murray said, “The full and free offer of the gospel is a grace bestowed upon all. Such grace is necessarily a manifestation of love or lovingkindness in the heart of God.”⁷⁷ However, God is also the sovereign and righteous King (vv. 13, 17). He is free to work as he sees fit (115:3) and always works consistently with his righteousness (33:4–5). The same goodness by which he delights in mercy (Mic. 7:18) is that by which he delights in justice (Jer. 9:24). In his sovereign freedom, he has chosen to be good to all people in temporal blessings, to graciously call many people to eternal joy, and to actually save only some (Matt. 22:14). He is patient and good to many in this life whom he has destined for destruction for their sins (Rom. 2:4–5; 9:22). This is the doctrine of reprobation.⁷⁸

Moïse Amyraut (1596–1664) misunderstood this to indicate two wills in God,⁷⁹ but Calvin spoke more wisely when he said that “his will is one and simple; but since our minds do not penetrate the abyss of secret election, in accommodation to the capacity of our weakness, the will of God is exhibited to us in two ways.”⁸⁰ Francis Turretin explained, “Now in calling God indeed shows that he wills the salvation of the called by the will of precept and good pleasure (euarestias), but not by the will of decree.… It teaches what is pleasing and acceptable to God and in accordance with his own nature (namely, that the called should come to him); but not what he himself has determined to do concerning man.”⁸¹ Therefore, we do not preach a two-faced God or a God of duplicity, but one God whose wisdom and will are infinitely beyond our understanding (Rom. 11:33–34), knowable only in part and then by his revelation alone.⁸² God’s purpose is not to confuse us but to assure us that he gladly receives every repentant sinner (Luke 15) and to call us to praise him for our salvation, for it is entirely of his gracious will (Eph. 1:3–6).

The combination of human responsibility, divine sovereignty, and the free offer of the gospel appears most beautifully in Jesus Christ, the perfect Image of God. The Lord Jesus Christ said of the Jews in Jerusalem who would soon kill him, “How often would I have gathered [you] together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not” (Matt. 23:37). Both occurrences of “would” translate the same Greek verb (thelō), which means to desire, to will, or to decide.⁸³ Christ was willing, but they were not willing.

Again, Christ said to a group of Jews, “These things I say, that ye might be saved” (John 5:34). The grammatical syntax (hina plus a subjunctive verb) indicates purpose. Hence, the Son of God made known his desire and the intention behind the message he communicated: that those who heard him would come to him by faith and have eternal life (v. 24)—though they were not willing to do so (v. 40). Christ’s words clarify matters for everyone who hears the gospel. Jesus wants them to be saved by faith in him; if they are unsaved, it is because of their unwillingness to come to him.⁸⁴

Similarly, in Matthew 11 we hear that Christ condemned the cities of Galilee for their rejection of the gospel and called everyone who was burdened to come to him and find rest (Matt. 11:20–24, 28–30). Yet sandwiched between these declarations of human responsibility and the free offer, we read that God has hidden the truth from some people according to his good pleasure, and that no one can know the Father except those to whom Christ chooses to reveal him (vv. 25–27). The Lord Jesus shows us that man’s responsibility for his sins, God’s sovereignty in saving whom he chooses, and the free offer of the gospel belong together.

The Canons of Dort (Head 1, Art. 5) say, “The cause or guilt of this unbelief, as well as of all other sins, is no wise in God, but in man himself; whereas faith in Jesus Christ and salvation through Him is the free gift of God.”⁸⁵ Calvin said,

If we see and acknowledge, therefore, the principle on which the doctrine of the Gospel offers salvation to all, the whole sacred matter is settled at once. That the Gospel is, in its nature, able to save all I by no means deny. But the great question lies here: Did the Lord by His eternal counsel ordain salvation for all men? It is quite manifest that all men, without difference or distinction, are outwardly called or invited to repentance and faith. It is equally evident that the same Mediator is set forth before all, as He who alone can reconcile them to the Father.… The mercy of God is offered equally to those who believe and to those who believe not, so that those who are not divinely taught within are only rendered inexcusable, not saved.⁸⁶

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58 Iain H. Murray, Spurgeon and Hyper-Calvinism: The Battle for Gospel Preaching (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1995), 40.
59 Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, s.v. “offer.”
60 John Gill, The Doctrine of Predestination Stated, and Set in Scriptural Light: In Opposition to Mr. Wesley’s Predestination Calmly Considered, in Sermons and Tracts (1815; repr. Streamwood, IL: Primitive Baptist Library, 1981), 3:117–18.
61 John Gill, The Watchman’s Answer to the Question, What of the Night?, in Sermons and Tracts, 1:59; cf. John Gill, The Glory of God’s Grace Displayed, In Its Abounding over the Aboundings of Sin (London: Aaron Ward, 1724), 38.
62 Gill, Body of Divinity, 931–32.
63 John Gill, Funeral sermon for Samuel Wilson (1750), cited in S. H. Cone, “Biographical Sketch of the Author,” in Samuel Wilson, A Scripture Manual or a Plain Representation of the Ordinance of Baptism, in The Baptist Library: A Republication of Standard Baptist Works, ed. Charles G. Sommers, William R. Williams, and Levi L. Hill, 3 vols. (Prattsville, NY: Robert H. Hill, 1843), 1:29–30.
64 Gill said that the gospel obligates men to historical faith—that is, to assent that the historical events reported in the gospel are true—but does not obligate them to saving faith in Christ. John Gill, The Cause of God and Truth (1855; repr., Paris, AK: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1992), 31–32. Therefore, it is not man’s immediate duty to trust in Christ upon hearing the gospel. “Though I think the judgment should still be surrounded with cautions and caveats, there may be compelling evidence that Gill held to the distinctive hyper-Calvinist tenet.” Tom J. Nettles, “John Gill and the Evangelical Awakening,” in The Life and Thought of John Gill (1697–1771): A Tercentennial Appreciation, ed. Michael A. G. Haykin (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 153n60. “Gill was shaped by the rationalism of his day.… Gill’s theology did hamper passionate evangelism and outreach.” Michael A. G. Haykin, “Remembering Baptist Heroes: The Example of John Gill,” in Ministry by His Grace and for His Glory: Essays in Honor of Thomas J. Nettles, ed. Thomas K. Ascol and Nathan A. Finn (Cape Coral, FL: Founders, 2011), 29.
65 Acts 2:38; 8:19–20; 10:45, 47; 11:17.
66 Reformed Confessions, 1:365–66.
67 Reformed Confessions, 1:397–98.
68 The Three Forms of Unity, 143. On the meaning of offero in the Canons of Dort and other Reformed orthodox writings, see R. Scott Clark, “Janus, the Well-Meant Offer of the Gospel, and Westminster Theology,” in The Pattern of Sound Doctrine: Systematic Theology at the Westminster Seminaries, Essays in Honor of Robert B. Strimple, ed. David VanDrunen (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2004), 169–73.
69 Reformed Confessions, 4:357. See also Q. 86 on “faith in Jesus Christ” (4:365).
70 Reformed Confessions, 4:312.
71 Reformed Confessions, 4:242–43.
72 Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, s.v. “offer.”
73 See chap. 2.
74 Calvin, Commentaries, on Ezek. 18:23.
75 Polyander, Walaeus, Thysius, and Rivetus, Synopsis Purioris Theologiae, 30.12 (2:213).
76 Hoeksema, A Triple Breach in the Foundation of the Reformed Truth, 32.
77 Collected Writings of John Murray, 4 vols. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1982), 4:132. This article (pp. 113–32) was a committee report authored by Murray for the General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. It is available at http://www.opc.org/GA/free_offer.html.
78 On God’s good delight in repentance and retribution, see RST, 1:845–46. On reprobation, see RST, 1:989–97.
79 On Amyraldianism, see RST, 1:1024, 1026.
80 Calvin, Commentaries, on Matt. 23:37. On Calvin and Amyraut’s misinterpretation of him, see Muller, Calvin and the Reformed Tradition, 107–25.
81 Turretin, Institutes, 15.2.15 (2:507). On God’s preceptive will and decretive will, see RST, 1:764–67.
82 On the importance of recognizing the vast difference between God’s theology (archetypal) and our theology (ectypal) as image bearers, particularly our theology as pilgrims on earth who have not arrived, see Clark, “Well-Meant Offer,” in The Pattern of Sound Doctrine, ed. VanDrunen, 149–68, 174–79.
83 TDNT, 3:44–46.
84 Willard, A Compleat Body of Divinity, 438. On John 5:34, see Samuel E. Waldron, The Crux of the Free Offer of the Gospel (Greenbrier, AR: Free Grace Press, 2019), 19–34.
85 The Three Forms of Unity, 121.
86 John Calvin, On Eternal Predestination, in Reformed Confessions, 1:751, emphasis original.

Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology: Spirit and Salvation, vol. 3 of Reformed Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 299–305; italics original.

Two Podcast Interviews on the Theology and Varieties of Hyper-Calvinism

Back in July, I participated in a video interview on “The Protestant Perspective” channel, with Oz and Austin Brown, on the subject of hyper-Calvinism. We had a lot to cover, and so did 2 very long recordings on the history and theology of hyper-Calvinism, with its variations, etc. Here are the two videos:

Part 1 Streamed live on Jul 16, 2024:



Part 2 Streamed live on Jul 20, 2024:



To study the issue further, and to see some of the sources I quoted in these interviews, see my posts here (click) on the topic of hyper-Calvinism.

Curt Daniel on the Four Main Issues Regarding Hyper-Calvinism

The Issues
The controversy [about hyper-Calvinism] revolves around four main issues. First, all Hyper-Calvinists reject the idea of the free offer (of the gospel, grace, and/or Christ). All Calvinists before 1700 and the vast majority since then have accepted the free offer. Hyperists sometimes claim Calvin for their cause, but the evidence is heavily against them. This is the main distinctive tenet of Hyper-Calvinism and has been identified as such by mainline Reformed writers for centuries.

Hyper-Calvinists argue that free offers are Arminian and contradict Reformed teaching on total depravity, limited atonement, and unconditional election as well as other teachings. They say we can preach but not offer. The Gospel Standard Baptists say that we can invite only ‘sensible sinners’ who have been convicted of sin to come to Christ. The word offer is never used in the Bible of preaching the gospel, they say, and the practice implies that salvation is for sale and is not free. They often say free offers make salvation conditional upon man rather than God. Some agree that the Latin word offero was used by Calvin and others as well as the English word offer by the Puritans and others, by then say that the word underwent a change and came to mean something different, so it should not be used today.

Mainline Calvinists respond as follows. First, the teaching of the free offer is indeed biblical. The word offer is used in several reputable translations of 1 Corinthians 9:18 (e.g., the NIV and NASB). We offer by presenting and setting forth the gospel to lost sinners in general with the call for them to repent and believe in Christ. We invite all lost sinners, not just ‘sensible’ sinners. The offer is free. God both offers and gives; the two are not contradictory. Lost sinners are unable to accept the offer, but this in no way contradicts either election or particular redemption. There has been no substantial change in the meaning of the words offero or offer. By far most leading Reformed theologians and preachers have believed in free offers — Calvin and all the Reformers, the Puritans, the Reformed Scholastics, the Nadere Reformatie divines, Jonathan Edwards, the Princetonians, Spurgeon, and thousands of others. It is the non-offer men who are out of step with historic Calvinism, not those who believe it.

Second, John Murray and Ned B. Stonehouse wisely note: “It would appear that the real point in connection with the free offer of the gospel is whether it can properly be said that God desires the salvation of all men.”⁶ Mainline Calvinists almost unanimously say yes; all Hyper-Calvinists say no. The free offer expresses a universal saving desire in God as part of His revealed will. It is well-meant and sincere. This does not nullify or contradict the secret will, for as Calvin said, it concerns the will of God in the gospel and not that of predestination.⁷ Calvin certainly taught the universal saving desire of God. For example: “God declares that he wills the conversion of all, and he directs exhortations to all in common.”⁸

Hyper-Calvinists deny that God desires all men to be saved, for that would include the reprobate and would contradict the doctrine of election. But mainline Calvinists argue that Scripture portrays God as holding out His hands all day long to sinners in general (Romans 10:21; Isaiah 65:2; Proverbs 1:14). He takes no pleasure in the death of the lost sinner but rather desires that he repent and be saved (Ezekiel 18:23, 32; 33:11). Paul echoes this in Romans 10:1: “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they many be saved” (see also Acts 26:29). God commands faith unto salvation (Acts 16:31), and that certainly indicates a well-meant desire. The eternal decrees never fail, but the revealed will of law and gospel are usually rejected by sinners. Lastly, historic Calvinists differ on the interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:4 and 2 Peter 3:9. Some apply both to predestination, others to the gospel. But even so, the vast majority of historic Calvinists believe in the universal saving will of God. In this the Hyper-Calvinists are in the tiny minority and go beyond biblical truth.

The third issue is Duty Faith. The English Hypers usually reject it, but it appears that the PRC tends to accept it in some form. The state of the question, known as the Modern Question, is this: “In the preaching of the gospel, do all lost sinners have the duty to savingly [i.e. evangelically] believe in Jesus Christ?” [John] Gill and [John] Brine said that sinners have only the duty to believe the report of the gospel, not the duty to savingly [i.e. evangelically] believe personally in Christ. [Evangelical] Faith is a gift, they contended, and therefore [that sense of faith is] not a duty. ‘Duty faith’ implies that sinners are able to [evangelically] believe, for responsibility assumes ability.

Historic Calvinists have replied that saving [i.e. evangelical] faith is both a duty and a gift. Spiritual inability does not negate one’s responsibility. Sinners are commanded to both believe the report of the gospel (Mark 1:15) and savingly believe in Christ (Acts 16:31). First John 3:23 clearly states, “And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ.” A commandment is a duty on us. Christ commanded saving faith in John 12:36, 14:1, and 20:27, as did John the Baptist (Acts 19:4). God commands all men to believe (Isaiah 45:22). Paul commanded that we obey the gospel in “the obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5; 6:17; 10:16; 16:26). The same goes for duty repentance — which is both a duty and a gift (see Acts 2:38; 3:19; 17:30). Failure to repent and believe [in an evangelical sense] is a great sin (Mark 16:16; John 3:18, 36; 5:38; 16:8–9; Romans 14:23; 1 John 5:10; Hebrews 3:12). Unbelief would not be a sin if faith were not a duty, contrary to [W. J.] Style’s extreme notion. Therefore, the Hyper-Calvinists who deny Duty Faith are both unbiblical and out of the mainstream of Reformed teaching.

The fourth point in dispute is common grace. Hoeksema and the Protestant Reformed Church utterly reject it, but some others such as Gill accept a modified form of it. Mainstream Calvinists before and after Kuyper have taught that, yes, God does indeed have a general love, mercy, and favor for all men (e.g., Psalm 145:8–9), including the reprobate. Out of this general love, God gives good gifts to all men (Acts 14:17; James 1:17), even to the reprobate who end up in Hell (Luke 16:25). Christ, the perfect revelation of God, had compassion on the multitudes of thousands, not all of whom were elect (Matthew 14:14). This was not just in His humanity, as argued by some Hyper-Calvinists, for His holy humanity was in perfect harmony with His deity. He “loved” the lost rich young ruler (Mark 10:21). God commands us to imitate Him by loving all men in general, even our enemies (Matthew 5:43–48; Luke 6:35–36).

Contrary to Hoeksema’s contention, historic Calvinists have taught the Three Points of 1924, namely: (1) out of general mercy God restrains sinners (Genesis 20:6); (2) God enables the unconverted (including the reprobate) to do outwardly good things such as giving good gifts to their children (Matthew 7:11); and (3) God has a general love for mankind and provides for the development of culture, science, medicine, government, and the family (Acts 14:17). Out of this common grace there is a delay of judgment, as it were — anything short of Hell is a mercy. Referring to these and other verses, Louis Berkhof commented: “If such passages do not testify to a favourable disposition in God, it would seem that language has lost its meaning, and that God’s revelation is not dependable on this subject.”⁹

Those such as Herman Hoeksema are well out of the mainstream of the Reformed tradition to deny that God has any love, grace, mercy, kindness, or favor of any kind on all men in general, including the reprobate. Some Hyperists say that God is only fattening the reprobate up for the slaughter and has no remorse whatsoever for their lost state. That is supralapsarianism with a vengeance. It implies that the reprobate are never under grace but only wrath, and conversely, the elect are always under grace and never under wrath (contrary to Ephesians 2:3).
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6. John Murray, The Free Offer of the Gospel (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2001), 3.
7. John Calvin, The Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews and the First and Second Epistles of St. Peter (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 364 (on 2 Peter 3:9).
8. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeil, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 3:3:21, (p. 615).
9. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 446.

Curt Daniel, The History and Theology of Calvinism (Darlington, UK: Evangelical Press, 2019), 104–107.

Tom Nettles’s Summary of John Gill’s (1697–1771) View on the Love of God

The love of God, according to Gill, foundations all theology. God’s principal object of love is Himself. This is right and good, for He contains all excellence and perfection and worth. Second, God loves all that He has made, declares it very good and rejoices in His works. Because rational creatures are the particular objects of His care, love and delight, God supports, preserves and bestows the bounty of His providence upon all of His creatures.

To the elect, however, the Triune God bears a special love. Gill identifies this with the “great love” spoken of in Ephesians 2:4. The love of the Father is demonstrated toward the elect by His devising and effecting a plan whereby they might be reconciled to Him through Christ. The Father chose the elect in Christ from the beginning and, in Him, has bestowed upon them all other blessings. The Son’s love for the elect appears in His becoming a surety for their salvation by actually giving Himself as a sacrifice for them, laying down His life on their account, and shedding His blood for the remission of their sins. The special love the Spirit exhibits toward the elect appears in His convincing them of sin and righteousness, shedding abroad the love of God in their hearts, and implanting every grace in them.⁶
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6. John Gill, Body of Divinity, 2 vols. (n.p. Tegg & Co., 1839; reprint ed., Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1978), 1:112–115.

Thomas J. Nettles, By His Grace and For His Glory: A Historical, Theological and Practical Study of the Doctrines of Grace in Baptist Life. Revised and Expanded 20th Anniversary Edition (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2006), 25.

Note: One should not think that Gill is altogether orthodox or within the boundaries of mainstream Reformed thought on the universal love of God. In classic Calvinistic and Puritan thought, God’s love for all men, including the non-elect, involves His benevolent desire for their ultimate well-being, and His beneficent love or kindness is given with a view to bringing men to evangelical repentance (Rom. 2:4). In Gill’s theology, however, God simply has a regard for the temporal/physical well-being of the non-elect, and a kind of passive delight in them as a part of His good creation as such (which is what Nettles outlines above). It is a “love” that is totally devoid of any willingness or desire on God’s part to bring them to evangelical repentance, though at times he may want to bring them to external, civil repentance, so as to get them to avoid some physical calamity. Nevertheless, at least Gill, unlike other hyper-Calvinists, acknowledges a sense of love in God for all men, and Nettles’s brief summary is basically correct, though it lacks nuance.

David Mark Rathel’s Critique of Tom Nettles on John Gill (1697–1771)

Baptist historian Thomas Nettles remains an influential exponent of the idea that Gill did not deny duty faith, and his work has influenced other Gill researchers.³⁵ One can center Nettles’ research on Gill around two key publications. In By His Grace and For His Glory, a work that features his first significant published work on Gill, Nettles rightly acknowledges that Gill did not believe in the free offer of the Gospel.³⁶ However, he claims that Gill ‘affirmed that it was the duty of all men to repent of sin and the duty of all who heard the Gospel to believe it.’³⁷ He contends that this fact frees Gill from the charge of hyper-Calvinism.

In claiming that Gill did not deny duty faith, Nettles unfortunately does not sufficiently explore Gill’s soteriology. Though he surveys some aspects of Gill’s thought – Gill’s ordering of the divine decrees, his understanding of sanctification, and his pastoral ministry practices – he fails to probe Gill’s desire to frame salvation as an eternal act of God that requires minimal human participation. Most notably, he does not address the doctrine of eternal justification in a significant manner even though it was a key component of Gill’s theological project.

This neglect causes Nettles to misrepresent Gill on the matter of duty faith. For example, Nettles cites a passage from Gill’s Cause of God and Truth that he admits prima facie appears to deny duty faith. Gill wrote, ‘God does not require all men to believe in Christ; where he does it is according to the revelation he makes of them.’³⁸ Nettles tries to soften the implications of this statement by arguing that Gill intended only ‘to highlight man’s responsibility for that which is available to him.’³⁹ Per Nettles, Gill wrote merely about those who have no access to the Gospel. He argued that such people are responsible only for what they receive through general revelation.

Though Gill indeed addressed this topic in this passage, Nettles leaves unaddressed the next sentence in Gill’s work. There Gill wrote, ‘Those who only have the outward ministry of the word, unattended with the special illuminations of the Spirit of God, are obliged to believe no further than the external revelation they enjoy, reaches.’⁴⁰ Put simply, Gill indeed stated that people only have a responsibility for the revelation that they receive; those who receive no access to the Gospel are accountable only for the general revelation that they have, but those who receive only the external call are obligated only to perform legal repentance and not trust in Christ for salvation. Gill makes this point even more explicit in the subsequent sentences in which he contrasts the mere legal obligations attending the external call with the salvific obligations attending the internal call. Nettles’ argument, then, takes Gill out of context. It does so because Nettles has not sufficiently explored Gill’s work on the external and internal callings as well as the soteriological convictions that undergird them.

In a subsequent publication, Nettles attempts to associate Gill with those who participated in the Evangelical Revival. A lack of adequate attention to Gill’s soteriology also appears here, however, when Nettles implies several times that Gill held to the traditional understanding of justification by faith rather than the more eccentric position of eternal justification. This fact is troubling given Gill’s repeated protestations against justification by faith.⁴¹

Most interesting is the fact that in this publication Nettles nuances his earlier defense of Gill. He admits, ‘There is a central point, however, in which he [Gill] appears to hold the Hyper-Calvinist view [regarding duty faith].’ He offers as evidence a quote from Gill’s sermon entitled Faith in God and His Word in which Gill claimed, ‘Man never had in his power to have or to exercise [faith in Christ], no, not even in the state of innocence.’ Nettles then admits, ‘Theoretically, Gill held that the non-elect were not obligated to evangelical obedience, because the necessity of such obedience did not exist in unfallen humanity as deposited in Adam.’⁴²

Surprisingly, despite this admission, Nettles remains cautious about labeling Gill a hyper-Calvinist, and he does not retract his earlier claim that Gill affirmed duty faith. He even continues to praise Gill, arguing that Gill’s works exhibit ‘the central concerns and zeal of the Great Awakening.’⁴³

Nettles does so because he claims that Gill was only theoretically a hyper-Calvinist. He argues that in Gill’s scheme ‘while many [people] exhibit…only a legal repentance and a historical faith, and the non-elect may not be theoretically obligated to the “faith of God’s elect,” ministers of the Gospel preach repentance and faith in a Gospel way.’⁴⁴ Nettles’ argument reduces to the contention that, even though Gill denied all people have an obligation to respond to the Gospel, at the practical level he still preached the Gospel, and this fact means that his hyper-Calvinism was merely hypothetical.

I have the utmost respect for Nettles and his contribution to Baptist scholarship, but I find this argument is unpersuasive. As noted, Gill’s commentaries and sermons reveal that his soteriological convictions often caused him to interpret Scripture in such a way that he minimized universal calls to respond to the Gospel. Such an act displays that he held his principles at more than just a theoretical level; they regularly affected his preaching and exposition of Scripture.

The differences between Gill’s ministry and that of the evangelists of the Evangelical Revival, those to whom Nettles wishes to compare Gill, are therefore stark. Gill constructed a ministry philosophy that emphasized encouraging only sensible sinners to respond to the Gospel and often eschewed giving Gospel exhortations to all people. The evangelists of the Evangelical Revival did not.

With Nettles, then, readers find a contradictory portrayal of Gill. In one work, Nettles claims Gill did not deny that all people have an obligation to respond [to] the Gospel. In another, without retracting this claim, he admits that Gill likely held to the hyper-Calvinist tenet of denying duty faith but deems this point irrelevant because he does not believe it affected Gill’s ministry. Both claims are incorrect, and Nettles could have avoided these errors by more completely examining how deeply Gill’s soteriology shaped his thought and practice.
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35. Nettles’ research has influenced two other defenses on Gill. These two works, coupled with those works already mentioned in this paper, constitute the entirety of contemporary defenses of Gill. See Jonathan Anthony White, ‘A Theological and Historical Examination of John Gill’s Soteriology in Relation to Eighteenth-Century Hyper-Calvinism’ (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010). White surveys Gill’s soteriology but relies on the work of Nettles, his supervising professor, when interpreting Gill. As I demonstrate here, Nettles does not interpret Gill correctly, and this fact hinders White’s argument. In addition, Timothy George offers a very cautious defense of Gill. He rejects Gill’s soteriology – especially eternal justification – but relies heavily on Nettles when assessing Gill’s ministry practice. The incorporation of the Nettles material, material that does not examine Gill in light of his soteriology, gives George’s argument an unbalanced feel. Readers are warned of the dangers of Gill’s soteriology but do not see how that soteriology shaped Gill’s understanding of Gospel offers or duty faith. This is an unfortunate occurrence in an otherwise excellent essay. See George, ‘John Gill,’ pp. 26–9.
36. Thomas J. Nettles, By His Grace and For His Glory: A Historical, Theological and Practical Study of the Doctrines of Grace in Baptist Life, rev. ed. (Cape Coral: Founders, 2006), pp. 27–8, 47–8.
37. Ibid., p. 42.
38. Ibid. This quotation originally appears in The Cause of God and Truth, p. 307.
39. Nettles, By His Grace, pp. 42–3.
40. Surprisingly, Nettles quotes this sentence but does not address it. See Ibid., pp. 42–4.
41. See Tom J. Nettles, ‘John Gill and the Evangelical Awakening,’ in The Life and Thought of John Gill (1697–1771): A Tercentennial Appreciation, ed. by Michael A. G. Haykin (New York: Brill, 1997), pp. 136–7. Here Nettles praises Gill for defending the doctrine of justification by faith, but the form of justification Gill emphasized in the work which Nettles cites is eternal justification. See Collection of Sermons and Tracts, vol. I, pp. 200–16. Furthermore, when comparing Gill to John Wesley, Nettles associates Gill’s understanding of justification with that of George Whitefield. See Nettles, ‘John Gill and the Evangelical Awakening,’ 137n, 163. While Whitefield, like Gill, would have rejected some of Wesley’s convictions, Nettles makes no mention of the unconventional aspects of Gill’s theology of justification. Whitefield would have brokered no agreement with those. E.g. Gilbert Tennent, an occasional critic of Whitefield, once correctly noted Whitefield’s rejection of eternal justification. Thomas S. Kidd, George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Founder (New Haven: Yale, 2014), pp. 196–7.
42. Nettles, ‘John Gill and the Evangelical Awaking,’ p. 153. Italics added. Proponents of the no-offer position – men such as John Brine – denied that prelapsarian Adam had an ability to believe the Gospel. Gill’s position on this matter is rather complex, though there is no doubt that he did at times affirm Adamic inability. C.f. Cause of God and Truth, 307; Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, ed. by Joseph Belcher. (Harrisonburg: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), vol. II, p. 421.
43. Nettles, ‘John Gill and the Evangelical Awaking,’ p. 170.
44. Ibid., p. 154.

David Mark Rathel, “Was John Gill a Hyper-Calvinist? Determining Gill’s Theological Identity,” Baptist Quarterly 48.1 (2017): 56–59.

Update on 9-10-22: The above article was updated and expanded by Rathel in the following article:

Assessing recent defenses of Gill—Thomas Nettles
Several noteworthy scholars attempt to defend Gill from the charge of hyper-Calvinism. The most significant are Thomas Nettles, Timothy George, and George Ella.³⁴ While their works display many commendable qualities, their contributions do suffer from a failure to appreciate just how Gill’s soteriology shaped his understanding of Gospel preaching.

Nettles’ research on Gill centers around two key publications. In By His Grace and For His Glory, a work that features his first significant published work on Gill, Nettles rightly acknowledges that Gill did not believe in the free offer of the Gospel.³⁵ However, he does claim that Gill “affirmed that it was the duty of all men to repent of sin and the duty of all who heard the Gospel to believe it.”³⁶ He contends that this fact frees Gill from the charge of hyper-Calvinism.

In claiming that Gill did not deny duty faith, Nettles does not sufficiently explore Gill’s soteriology. Though he surveys some aspects of Gill’s thought—Gill’s ordering of the divine decrees, his understanding of sanctification, and his pastoral ministry practices—he fails to probe Gill’s desire to frame salvation as an eternal act of God that requires minimal human participation. Most notably, he does not address the doctrine of eternal justification in a significant manner even though it was a key component of Gill’s theological project. This neglect causes Nettles to misrepresent Gill on the matter of duty faith. For example, Nettles cites a passage from Gill’s Cause of God and Truth that he admits prima facie appears to deny duty faith. Gill wrote, “God does not require all men to believe in Christ; where he does it is according to the revelation he makes of them.”³⁷

Nettles tries to soften the implications of this statement by arguing that Gill intended only “to highlight man’s responsibility for that which is available to him.”³⁸ Per Nettles, Gill wrote merely about those who have no access to the Gospel. He argued that such people are responsible only for what they receive through general revelation. Though Gill indeed addressed this particular topic in this passage, Nettles leaves unaddressed the next sentence in Gill’s work. There Gill wrote, “Those who only have the outward ministry of the Word, unattended with the special illuminations of the Spirit of God, are obliged to believe no further than the external revelation they enjoy, reaches.”³⁹ Put simply, Gill indeed stated that people only have a responsibility for the revelation that they receive; those who receive no access to the Gospel are accountable only for the general revelation that they have, but those who receive only the external call are obligated only to perform legal repentance and not trust in Christ for salvation. Gill makes this point even more explicit in the subsequent sentences in which he contrasts the mere legal obligations attending the external call with the salvific obligations attending the internal call. Nettles’ argument, then, takes Gill out of context. It does so because Nettles has not sufficiently explored Gill’s work on the external and internal callings as well as the soteriological convictions that undergird them.

In a subsequent publication, Nettles attempts to associate Gill with those who participated in the Evangelical Revival. A lack of adequate attention to Gill’s soteriology also appears here, however, when Nettles implies several times that Gill held to the traditional understanding of justification by faith rather than the more eccentric position of eternal justification. This fact is troubling given Gill’s repeated protestations against justification by faith.⁴⁰ Most interesting is the fact that in this publication Nettles nuances his earlier defense of Gill. He admits, “There is a central point, however, in which he [Gill] appears to hold the [h]yper-Calvinist view [regarding duty faith].” He offers as evidence a quote from Gill’s sermon entitled Faith in God and His Word in which Gill claimed, “Man never had in his power to have or to exercise [faith in Christ], no, not even in the state of innocence.” Nettles then admits, “Theoretically, Gill held that the non-elect were not obligated to evangelical obedience, because the necessity of such obedience did not exist in unfallen humanity as deposited in Adam.”⁴¹ Surprisingly, despite this admission, Nettles remains cautious about labeling Gill a hyper-Calvinist, and he does not retract his earlier claim that Gill affirmed duty faith. He even continues to praise Gill, arguing that Gill’s works exhibit “the central concerns and zeal of the Great Awakening.”⁴²

Nettles does so because he claims that Gill was only theoretically a hyper-Calvinist. He argues that in Gill’s scheme “while many [people] exhibit … only a legal repentance and a historical faith, and the non-elect may not be theoretically obligated to the ‘faith of God’s elect,’ ministers of the Gospel preach repentance and faith in a Gospel way.”⁴³ Nettles reduces his argument to the contention that, even though Gill denied all people have an obligation to respond to the Gospel, at the practical level he still preached the Gospel, and this fact means that his hyper-Calvinism was merely hypothetical. I have the utmost respect for Nettles and his contribution to Baptist scholarship, but I find this argument is unpersuasive. As noted, Gill’s commentaries and sermons reveal that his soteriological convictions often caused him to interpret Scripture in such a way that he minimized universal calls to respond to the Gospel. Such an act displays that he held his principles at more than just a theoretical level; they regularly affected his preaching and exposition of Scripture.

The differences between Gill’s ministry and that of the evangelists of the Evangelical Revival, those to whom Nettles wishes to compare Gill, are therefore stark. Gill constructed a ministry philosophy that emphasized encouraging only sensible sinners to respond to the Gospel and often eschewed giving Gospel exhortations to all people. The evangelists of the Evangelical Revival did not.

With Nettles, then, readers find a contradictory portrayal of Gill. While throughout his works Nettles maintains that Gill denied Gospel offers, in one work he claims that Gill did not deny that all people have an obligation to respond to the Gospel. In another, without retracting this claim, he admits that Gill likely held to the hyper-Calvinist tenet of denying duty faith. He deems this point irrelevant, though, and incorrectly believes that it did not shape Gill’s ministry. Nettles could have avoided these errors by more completely examining how deeply Gill’s soteriology formed his thought and practice.
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34 I select these historians and theologians because they have published significant pieces on Gill. Three noteworthy research projects that have not yet received publication do merit brief comment, however. Clive Jarvis provides a defense of Gill in his doctoral thesis on Particular Baptist life in Northamptonshire, and his analysis of Gill’s contribution relies heavily on the work of George Ella. By critiquing Ella’s convictions in this article, I can also interact with many of the claims made by Jarvis. See Clive Jarvis, “Growth in English Baptist Churches: With Special Reference to the Northamptonshire Particular Baptist Association (1770–1830)” (PhD diss., The University of Glasgow, 2001), 53–60; idem, “The Myth of Hyper-Calvinism?,” in Recycling the Past or Researching History?: Studies in Baptist Historiography and Myths, ed. Philip E. Thompson and Anthony R. Cross, Studies in Baptist History and Thought, vol. 11 (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2005), 231–263.
Hong-Gyu Park offers hearty praise of Gill, but he focuses his research on such matters as Gill’s doctrine of revelation. He does not consider Gill’s soteriology or Gill’s understanding of evangelism at length; it is therefore difficult to consider his research a full defense of Gill against the charge of hyper-Calvinism. See Park, “Grace and Nature,” 30–74, 286–287. Park does fleetingly address Gill’s doctrine of the pactum salutis. For my interaction with his work on this topic, see David Mark Rathel, “John Gill and the History of Redemption.”
Jonathan White analyzes Gill’s rather complex relationship with hyper-Calvinism in his doctoral dissertation. Regrettably, White employs an unnecessarily limited definition of hyper-Calvinism. He defines it as “the denial of the duty of unregenerate man to believe the gospel for salvation based on man’s original lack of ability to believe the gospel for salvation.” See Jonathan Anthony White, “A Theological and Historical Examination of John Gill’s Soteriology in Relation to Eighteenth-Century Hyper-Calvinism” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 50. With this definition, White refers to the belief held by some early hyper-Calvinists that alleged that prelapsarian Adam possessed no ability to believe the Gos­pel. White’s willingness to presuppose this definition when approaching Gill is unhelpful. Adamic inability was at best tangential to Gill’s theological system; yet, Gill did passionately argue against Gospel offers and duty faith. Doctrines such as eternal justification—not an Adamic inability—motived Gill’s understanding. White’s thesis unfortunately does not take this fact into account. For more information on Gill and Adamic inability, see footnote 41 in this article.
35 Thomas J. Nettles, By His Grace and For His Glory: A Historical, Theological and Practical Study of the Doctrines of Grace in Baptist Life, rev. ed. (Cape Coral, FL: Founders, 2006), 27–28, 47–48.
36 Nettles, By His Grace and For His Glory, 42.
37 Nettles, By His Grace and For His Glory, 42. This quotation originally appears in Gill, The Cause of God and Truth, 307.
38 Nettles, By His Grace and For His Glory, 42–43.
39 Surprisingly, Nettles quotes this sentence but does not address it. See Nettles, By His Grace and For His Glory, 42–44.
40 See Tom J. Nettles, “John Gill and the Evangelical Awakening” in Haykin, ed., The Life and Thought of John Gill, 136–137. Here Nettles praises Gill for defending the doctrine of justification by faith, but the form of justification Gill emphasized in The Law Established by the Gospel, the sermon that Nettles cites, was eter­nal justification. Indeed, The Law Established is one of the strongest sermons on eternal justification in the Gill corpus. See Gill, Collection of Sermons and Tracts, 1:200–216. In addition, when comparing Gill to John Wesley, Nettles associates Gill’s understanding of justification with that of George Whitefield. See Nettles, “John Gill and the Evangelical Awakening,” 137, n.163. While Whitefield, like Gill, would have rejected some of Wesley’s convictions, Nettles makes no mention of the more unconventional aspects of Gill’s theology of justification. Whitefield would have brokered no agreement with those. For instance, Gilbert Tennent, an occasional critic of Whitefield, once correctly noted Whitefield’s rejection of eternal justification. See Thomas S. Kidd, George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Founder (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 196–197.
41 Nettles, “John Gill and the Evangelical Awakening,” 153. Italics added. Some proponents of the no-of­fer position claimed that prelapsarian Adam had no ability to believe the Gospel. Gill’s position on this matter is rather complex, but there is no doubt that he did at times affirm Adamic inability. See Gill, Cause of God and Truth, 307. Nevertheless, Gill’s belief in an Adamic inability did not profoundly shape his con­victions about Gospel offers and duty faith—his views on salvation in eternity did. Andrew Fuller offered helpful analysis of Gill’s rather contradictory statements concerning Adamic inability in The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, ed. Joseph Belcher (1845, Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 2:421.
42 Nettles, “John Gill and the Evangelical Awakening,” 170.
43 Nettles, “John Gill and the Evangelical Awakening,” 154.

David Mark Rathel, “John Gill and the charge of hyper-Calvinism: assessing contemporary arguments in the defense of Gill in light of Gill’s doctrine of eternal justification,” The Journal of Andrew Fuller Studies 1 (September 2020): 11–29.

Bio:
David Mark Rathel is presently a PhD candidate in systematic theology at the University of St Andrews under the supervision of the Rev. Dr. Stephen R. Holmes. He is the author of Baptists and the Emerging Church Movement: A Baptistic Assessment of Four Themes of Emerging Church Ecclesiology (Wipf & Stock, 2014).

See also Robert W. Oliver on Tom Nettles and John Gill.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1981) on Rom. 2:4 and the Will of God; With Reference to Ezek. 33:11, Matt. 5:45, 23:37, Acts 14:17, 1 Tim. 2:4–6, and 2 Pet. 3:9

There, then, is our second term, leadeth, and here we arrive at what has often proved to be a very difficult statement, which has often led to a good deal of discussion and debate and confusion. The Apostle’s statement is that God’s goodness leads them to repentance, and we need to know what he means by this. Why does he use this particular term? In Romans 8:14, he says, ‘For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God’, and that is exactly the same word as we have here, where we are told that the goodness of God ‘leadeth thee unto repentance’. Now this term does not, of course, mean forcing; it does not mean driving or bludgeoning. What is obviously means is a constraining influence. That is what you do when you lead a horse, or a dog, or any other animal. You are bringing to bear a constraining influence if you are holding the reins or the halter, or whatever it may be. There is no force of necessity, but there is a sense of constraint, there is an influence, a constraining influence, and what the Apostle says is that God’s goodness exercises this kind of constraining influence on men to bring them to repentance.

In view of that, then, we again have to ask what exactly he is teaching here. It is important that we should be clear about our terms, and the first thing we notice is that he is talking about unbelievers. These are the people who are not brought to repentance, therefore they are the unbelievers. And what the Apostle says is that they are without excuse because they are despising the goodness of God which was meant to bring them to repentance.

Now you see where the difficulty arises in the realm of theology. Here are unbelievers who die unrepentant, and yet the Apostle says that the goodness of God leads them, exercises this constraining influence upon them, to bring them to repentance. And it is not surprising that this has often been a bone of contention, and has engaged the attention of those who desire to have a truer understanding of God’s way of salvation and of how any single one of us ever does come to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

So what do we make of this? We must go back again to 2 Peter 3, this time to verse 9. Is it not interesting to notice the parallel between these Apostles? Always where you come across a difficult place in Scripture the thing to do is to compare Scripture with Scripture, to find another one, a parallel statement, something that is similar, and here it is: ‘The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance’. You notice it is saying almost precisely the same thing. And do you know that there are other statements in the Scriptures which speak to the same effect. You will find in Ezekiel 33:11, for instance, that God says, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked’. And you will find other statements in the Scriptures in which God, as it were, appeals to them, to the nation of Israel, and beyond the nation of Israel to all people, with the word ‘Oh!’ And you remember how our Lord Himself wept over Jerusalem and said, ‘Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how often would I . . . and ye would not!’ [Matthew 23:27].

Now all these statements are parallels with the statement in this passage and therefore I must ask this question: What, then, is God’s goodness meant to do with regard to the unbeliever? For it is the unbeliever with whom we are dealing. There are people who have tried to evade this difficulty by saying that this statement means that God has shown His goodness to the unbeliever to render him without a single excuse; that He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends His rain on the just and the unjust, so that at the day of judgment they will have nothing to say. God’s goodness will be the answer to their every excuse. And yet, you see, we cannot accept that as an explanation, because if the Apostle had meant to say that, he would have put it in that way, and he would never have used the word ‘leadeth’. This word is too active and positive a word for that. If that had been merely God’s object, it would have had no effect upon them, it would not have been designed to have an effect upon man. But you cannot use the word ‘lead’ without getting the idea of a constraining influence. When you talk about somebody leading somebody else or of being led by a truth, it is very positive. That other idea just leaves it there on the wall, as it were, passive and negative, there merely to rob me negatively of any chance of excusing myself. But this is an active word.

What then, does it mean? It seems to me that there is only one conclusion we can come to, and that is that God’s goodness is meant and designed to bring men to repentance and salvation; and when I say ‘men’ I mean all men, unbelievers as well as believers. We are dealing with unbelievers here. The Apostle is arguing with men who will not repent and he says, even to them, that God’s goodness leads you, was meant and designed to lead you, to repentance. So the Apostle here is teaching that God manifests a positive favour even to the unbeliever – and that is where the importance of being clear about these matters comes in.

It is, as I have shown, a parallel with what our Lord teaches in the Sermon on the Mount: ‘. . . for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust’ [Matthew 5:45]. At this point, you remember, the Lord is talking to the disciples, and He tells them that they are to be perfect even as their Father which is in heaven is perfect; He tells them to love their enemies, and to do good to them that hate them. He says, you should do it because God does it. So we are to love our enemies as God loves His enemies. He loves the unbeliever and He shows that love in this goodness through the sun and the rain. There is the parallel.

We find the same again in Paul’s sermon at Lystra in Acts 14. But indeed it seems to me to be parallel also with what the Apostle has already been saying in chapter 1:20, where he says, ‘For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse’. So the teaching must be that this goodness of God is a manifestation of God’s grace to all men, sinners and unbelievers included. By these things He would lead all men to repentance and therefore to salvation. For as I have already quoted from 2 Peter 3:9, He does not wish that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.

Now then, where have we landed? ‘Does that mean’, says someone, ‘that  you are completely denying the doctrine of predestination and election?’ It sounds like it, does it not? But I am not. How, then, you may ask, do you reconcile these things? In this way: this is the manifestation of a grace of God, but it is obviously not efficacious grace; it is not effectual grace; it is not a constraining grace; it is not the irresistible grace. Because, although God manifests this grace to these people, it does not lead them to repentance. It is mean to, and it is designed to, but it does not do so. Why not?

Well, the answer is – and here we come up against a great mystery which we shall never solve in this world – there is clearly a difference between what God desires and what God wills and brings to pass. What God wills He performs and brings into being. But – and this is the astounding things that we are told – God does not wish that any should perish. He wishes that all should come to repentance. There are some who are brought to repentance, there are some who are not. It is God who brings to repentance, for no man left to himself would repent – this text proves that once and for ever with an unusual clarity. Though God manifests His goodness and His forbearance and His longsuffering, men despise it, they use it to serve themselves, their own ends, and their sins. They pass it by, they do not trouble to look at it. Though God has manifested His grace, and though He meant it to bring them to repentance, it does not do so. No one would repent if God did not bring us to repentance by an act of His will and by His constraining and effectual grace.

Now let me try to elaborate that a little, because it is important if we want to be clear about the Scriptures we are studying. We shall find the same thing again as we go on in this Epistle – it is at the very heart of chapter nine. It is there, as we have seen, in 2 Peter 3:9, it is in 1 Timothy 2:6, and so on. It is in many places in the Bible, and it is our business as Bible students and those who are anxious to glorify God, to come to an understanding of these things.

So consider yet another example of this in Acts chapter seventeen. The Apostle Paul, preaching at Athens, said, ‘The times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent’. That is an absolutely universal statement; you cannot imagine anything more all-inclusive than that. In other words, the gospel is to be preached to all creatures. The offer of salvation is to be made to everybody. Not to some, but to all.

Now if you want to know what hyper-Calvinism means, it is the teaching which says that the gospel is only to be offered to some. And I have had the distinction of being called a dangerous Arminian by people who hold that belief, because I say that the gospel should be offered to all. God commandeth all men everywhere to repent, which means that if you repent, then you come to salvation, it is the first step in it. Yes, and therefore the offer of salvation, the offer of Christ and His perfect work, should be preached to all men without distinction. And that message is to be preached in order that men may come to know God’s goodness and in order that they may yield to it. I say, therefore, that God wishes that all men should come to repentance and to salvation, but it is equally clear that He does not will it. Then that leads me to say that this extraordinary statement here in the second half of Romans 2:4 gives the lie directly to all who try to argue that what the gospel does it persuade us to repent. It is an absolute proof that we cannot be persuaded. God has manifested His goodness, His forbearance, His longsuffering. He has commanded that all men everywhere should repent. There is all the moral suasion that you can ever get.

But what is leads to in the case of the unbelievers is that they despise it. That is what the natural man does with it. Moral suasion will never save anybody. No man is saved simply by the influence or the general effect of the appeal of the gospel upon him. No man can repent or believe until he has a new nature. He must be born again, because ‘the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned [1 Corinthians 2:14]. The natural is enmity against God; it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So when God commands such a man to repent, he defies God and says he does not want to repent. When God showers His goodness upon him to lead him to repentance, he despises it. It is God alone who saves, by the mighty operation of His Holy Spirit in the depth of the soul and of the personality.

If ever a text, which on the surface seemed to be saying the opposite, proved that, it is this text – the goodness of God is designed to lead men to repentance. It does not do so. It never has done so. Man will always use God’s goodness to serve himself. He will trade on it. He will make merchandise of it. The last thing he does is so to see it that he repents. That is not what makes a man repent. It is the operation of the Holy Spirit in giving a man a new mind, a new outlook and a new understanding. The first proof that a man has been born again is that he repents and believes the gospel. That is the order of salvation. I commend to you the wisdom of working out this text again. Study it, take it with its parallels, and I think you will see that it will bring you to that inevitable conclusion.

D. M. Lloyd-Jones, Romans: An Exposition of Chapters 2:1–3:20, The Righteous Judgment of God (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1989), 51–56.

In studying this verse, we have not only been handling a rather difficult subject, but have been looking into something marvelous and wonderful, something inscrutable, something, I take it, that we will never fully understand throughout eternity, and it is this: how God, being who and what He is, could ever show any grace or love or kindness to those who have not only sinned and rebelled against Him, but whom He knows will remain finally impenitent. But He does so, and He addresses them like this, ‘Oh that ye had known!’ I do not pretend to be able to put these things into such intellectual order that no difficulties are left. There are difficulties. But, my dear friends, we are talking about God and we are but human beings! We are looking into the eternal, the character of God, and our business is to accept our Scriptures, not to try to evade a problem like this by saying, ‘Ah, it is just there in order to render them without excuse’. No. The word ‘leadeth’ is active and positive, we have had to face it. And there, it seems to me, is the only answer – He wishes the salvation of all, but He does not will it, for what God wills He brings to pass. But here, to me, is the mystery – that He wishes this, that He wishes their salvation and proves it by His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering. He wishes that even those who are impenitent should finally have repented and come to salvation. ‘Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!’

Let us therefore, my dear friends, tread carefully. Let us approach these high and great and abstruse matters with reverence and with godly fear. Above all, let us be careful of passing judgment upon God and what He does. That is what these people do who are without excuse, these despisers of His goodness. Let us, then, in a spirit of adoration and worship look at the words that the Holy Spirit gave to the Apostle, let us give them their full content, and let us always beware of pressing any statement by our own logic beyond its own meaning and its own context. But above all, let us always be careful to compare Scripture with Scripture, lest in our ignorance and haste we be guilty of so describing God as to make Him contradict Himself, and, indeed, of having a contradiction at the very center and heart of His own life and eternal being. What a privilege to be allowed to look into these things! Let us thank God.

Ibid., 57–58.

The original audio of this sermon may be heard here (click).

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Cornelis Venema on Three Views of the Gospel-Call

Three Views of the Gospel-Call

To clarify what is at stake in the debate among Reformed believers regarding the so-called “well-meant offer” of the gospel, it may be helpful to distinguish three different views of the gospel-call.

The first of these views I would term a strong form of what is often called hyper-Calvinism. Though there are not many advocates of this view, it teaches that the call of the gospel addresses, strictly speaking, only the elect. Since gospel ministers are unable to discern infallibly who are and who are not elect, they should honor this restriction so far as possible by calling to faith and repentance only those who give outward evidence that they are being spiritually enlivened or illumined. This strong form of hyper-Calvinism actually denies the legitimacy of a general call of the gospel to all sinners without distinction, since the call properly invites only the elect to faith and repentance. Not only is the gospel-call not intended for the non-elect, but it is also misleading to address sinners indiscriminately with the call to faith in Christ and repentance. Such an indiscriminate call invariably leads sinners to conclude that they have the ability to do what the call demands. In a not-so-subtle manner, an indiscriminate preaching of the gospel to sinners leads them to the improper inference that they have it within their capacity to believe and repent as the gospel-call demands.

The second of these views I would term a mild form of hyper-Calvinism. In this view, the general call of the gospel is affirmed, though it is not regarded as a “well-meant offer.” When the gospel-call is preached, it must be preached indiscriminately to all sinners, summoning elect and non-elect alike to believe and repent. No limitation is placed upon the preaching of the gospel to all sinners without distinction. However, this general call of the gospel may not be presented in a conditional form. To say to sinners, “if you believe and repent, then you will be saved,” is to imply that the gospel promise is conditional. Whenever the gospel is presented as an “offer,” inviting sinners to do something in order to be saved, rather than as an “unconditional promise of salvation” to the elect alone, an Arminian doctrine of conditional election is either wittingly or unwittingly assumed. In the strictest sense, the promise of the gospel is unconditionally addressed to the elect alone. Great care, therefore, must be exercised in preaching not to suggest that the recipient is obligated to do something, with the promise of salvation hanging upon his performance of this obligation. Furthermore, in this milder form of hyper-Calvinism, the idea that God expresses any favorable disposition or desire that all sinners believe and repent is strongly resisted. The call of the gospel declares objectively that all sinners must believe and repent. But it does not spring from any good will or benevolent attitude on God’s part, or on the part of His human ambassador, toward all sinners. It does not express any desire for the salvation of its recipients, when those recipients are non-elect sinners. The call of the gospel is “good news” for the elect alone.

The third view of the general call of the gospel, which I regard as the more classic or historic view of the Reformed churches, does not merely insist that the gospel-call be indiscriminately extended to all sinners. It also insists that the call expresses something of God’s good will or desire with respect to lost sinners. In the call of the gospel, God declares what is, according to His benevolence and good will, genuinely pleasing to Him, namely, that sinners believe in Christ and turn from their wicked way. John Murray, in his essay, “The Free Offer of the Gospel,” clearly summarizes this view of the gospel call:

The question then is: what is implicit in, or lies back of, the full and free offer of the gospel to all without distinction? 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 fullness.

According to this view, the gospel call is born from and expresses a compassionate disposition on God’s part toward sinners. It sincerely summons all sinners to embrace Christ for salvation, promising all those who believe and repent that God stands ready to show them mercy. In this view, those who minister the gospel should do so out of a heartfelt desire for the good of all sinners, seeking to secure their salvation by an urgent and compassionate ministry of the Word of God.

Cornelis Venema, “Election and the ‘Free Offer’ of the Gospel (Part One),” The Outlook 52.3 (March 2002): 18–19. The other four parts can be found in the 2002 (April–July) archive here (click). In part 4 of his five part series (on pp. 14–17), he argues that both Calvin (in his comments on Rom. 5:18; Matt. 23:37; Ezek. 18:23, 32; and 2 Pet. 3:9) and the Reformed confessions teach a well-meant gospel offer.

The full series:

“Election and the ‘Free Offer’ of the Gospel (Part One),” The Outlook 52.3 (March 2002): 16–20.
“Election and the ‘Free Offer’ of the Gospel (Part Two),” The Outlook 52.4 (April 2002): 16–19.
“Election and the ‘Free Offer’ of the Gospel (Part Three),” The Outlook 52.5 (May 2002): 20–22.
“Election and the ‘Free Offer’ of the Gospel (Part Four),” The Outlook 52.6 (June 2002): 14–17.
“Election and the ‘Free Offer’ of the Gospel (Part Five),” The Outlook 52.7 (July 2002): 26–29.

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Dr. Cornel Venema is the President of Mid-America Reformed Seminary where he also teaches Doctrinal Studies. Dr. Venema is a contributing editor to The Outlook.

Joel Beeke and Mark Jones on the Universal Invitation to Come to Christ in Puritan Theology

The Universal Invitation to Come to Christ

William Ames (1576-1633) wrote that the redeeming work of Christ is applied through "union with Christ," and God accomplishes this union by "calling," which has two components: "the offer of Christ and the receiving of him."² He then explained, "The offer is an objective presentation of Christ as the sufficient and necessary means to salvation. 1 Cor. 1:23, 24, We preach Christ...the power of God and the wisdom of God."³

Puritan ministers taught that Christ's call to come to Him is universal, that is, addressed to the whole world, to every human being. Christ says, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28). Whether you are young or old, rich or poor, male or female, Christ calls, even commands you, to come to Him. As Thomas Boston (1676-1732) said, "This I will ever preach, that all, under pain of damnation, are obliged to come to him, and that they shall be welcome on their coming, be their case what it will."⁴ God commands all people everywhere to repent and come to Christ (Acts 17:30). Thomas Shepard (1605-1649) wrote that as surely as Christ the King has authority over all nations and all places, so also all persons are called to submit to Him and serve Him (Matt. 28:18-20).⁵

The Puritans represented God as lovingly and sincerely calling sinners to come to Him. Joseph Alleine (1634-1668), a Puritan minister with a great heart for evangelism, wrote, "The God that made you most graciously invites you. His most sweet and merciful nature invites you. O the kindness of God, His boundless compassion, His tender mercies!"⁶ Richard Baxter (1615-1691) thundered, "Shall the living God send so earnest a message to his creatures, and should they not obey? Hearken then all you that live after the flesh; the Lord that gave thee thy breath and being, hath sent a message to thee from heaven, and this is his message, 'Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?'"⁷ The Puritans therefore called everyone to come to Christ. They preached evangelistic sermons.⁸ They wrote long evangelistic tracts.⁹ They wrote manuals for ministers on how to direct people anxious about their salvation.¹⁰ James Janeway (1636-1674) and Cotton Mather (1663-1728) each published a book of stories about children coming to Christ and walking with Him faithfully to encourage children to embrace Jesus Christ offered to them in the gospel.¹¹

The terms labor and heavy laden in Matthew 11:28 are universal in scope. Jesus is not saying that only those who have awareness of their sin are invited to come. He is not saying, as some hyper-Calvinists teach, that only sensible sinners are welcome to fall at Jesus' feet. He is not saying that only those in whom the Holy Spirit has begun to stir the waters of soul-interest are invited to come. Christ calls all people who are weary of toil, all for whom life is but a heavy burden (cf. Eccl. 1:8; Isa. 55:2), to come to Him for rest. Shepard imagined men's objections and answered that Christ offers Himself even to those who feel no need for him:

If I was willing to receive Christ, I might have Christ offered to me; but will the Lord offer him to such a one as desires not to have Christ?
Yes; saith our Saviour, "I would have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and you would not" [Matt. 23:37; Luke 13:34]...
O, I fear time is past! O, time is past! I might once have had Christ, but now mine heart is sealed down with hardness, blindness, unbelief. O, time is now gone!
No; not so. See Isaiah 65:1-3, "All the day long God holdeth out his hands to a backsliding and rebellious people." Thy day of grace...still lasts.¹²

God has issued a universal call to come to Christ because all men, no matter how depraved and disabled by sin, possess an understanding and a will. As we will see, the Puritans denied that the fallen human will had the power to choose God, but Puritans such as Stephen Charnock (1628-1680) also insisted that a sinner is not "a beast"; instead, "man hath a faculty to understand and will, which makes him a man." Therefore, "the commands and exhortations are suitable to our nature."¹³ The Puritans did not treat men like blocks of stone or wood. They evangelized them as men with minds and wills, and thus with responsibility for their actions. This explains why, when the Puritans called men to come to Christ, they reasoned with lost sinners and exhorted them.¹⁴ The universal call dignifies its hearers as human beings endowed with intelligence, personality, and moral accountability.

Do you realize how this universal call magnifies the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ? Do you see how willing Christ is to save sinners? He calls sinners to Himself to receive His rest with this promise: "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matt. 11:29-30). Christ calls sinners to Himself because He alone is the willing Savior—not because of our good works, our righteousness, or anything else. He calls sinners to Himself as the exclusive way of coming to God (cf. John 14:6). He is willing to save us, and we must come to Him to be freed from our burdens and enter into His rest.

Some might question this, saying, "If the call is universal and goes out to everyone, and not everyone comes, then the invitation must be insufficient." This is false reasoning. Think of Christian fleeing the City of Destruction in the tale of John Bunyan (1628-1688). Christian spoke earnestly to his family and neighbors, warning them of the wrath to fall upon their city. Most people responded to the warning by mocking Christian, but their refusal to listen did not make Christian's invitation to go with him insufficient or insincere. The warning itself was not insufficient or insincere.¹⁵

When you invite someone to a wedding reception and they decline to come, does that mean the invitation was not sufficient? Does it show insincerity on the part of the people who issued the invitation? No, the insufficiency in Christian's case was not in the warning but rather in the people who refused to heed the warning. So, too, there is no insincerity in the wedding invitation; the fault lies in those who refuse to come.

So it is with the call to come to Christ. There is no fault, insufficiency, or lack of sincerity in Christ's invitation; all blame rests upon those who refuse to come to Him for eternal life. This is clearly taught in the Canons of Dort. William Ames, an English Puritan, played a significant role in defending the Reformed faith in the Netherlands during the debates leading up to the Synod of Dort (1618-1619) and served as a theological consultant to the synod's moderator.¹⁶ The Canons of Dort explain the international Puritan and Reformed perspective well in head 3–4, articles 8–9:

As many as are called by the gospel are unfeinedly [sincerely] called. For God hath most earnestly and truly declared in His Word what will be acceptable to Him; namely, that all who are called, should comply with the invitation. He, moreover, seriously promises eternal life, and rest, to as many as shall come to Him, and believe on him.... It is not the fault of the gospel, nor of Christ, offered therein, nor of God...that those who are called by the ministry of the word, refuse to come, and be converted. The fault lies in themselves.¹⁷

The Canons make plain that there is no insufficiency in God's willingness to save sinners. The invitation does not lie or deceive; it is a true, rich, full, free invitation. The gospel is a well-meant offer. Christ has declared Himself ready and willing to receive all who come to Him and to save them. This is what Bunyan referred to as the conditional promise.¹⁸ This call is based on the condition of faith, but it is a true invitation. To all who come to Him, Christ freely gives eternal life, "even to them that believe on his name" (John 1:12c). Nonetheless, no one comes to Christ simply because of this universal calling. In our fallen, helpless condition, we cannot and will not respond as we should. Our persistence in unbelief and sin keeps us from responding to Christ's call—the blame is wholly on us. Jesus said, "Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life" (John 5:40).

Judgment day will confirm this truth. No one will stand before God on the last day and say, "I did not think that the invitation was addressed to me, and therefore I did not come," or "I received the invitation, but did not think it was sincere." The call to come to Christ is a well-meant offer of salvation addressed to every human being.
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2. William Ames, The Marrow of Theology, trans. and ed. John D. Eusden (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1968, 157 (1.xxvi.1, 3, 7).
3. Ames, The Marrow of Theology, 157 (1.xxvi.8).
4. Boston, The Beauties of Thomas Boston, 263.
5. Thomas Shepard, The Sincere Convert and the Sound Believer (Morgan, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1999), 49.
6. Joseph Alleine, An Alarm to the Unconverted (Evansville, Ind.: Sovereign Grace Publishers, 1959), 97.
7. Richard Baxter, A Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live, in The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter, ed. William Orme (London: James Duncan, 1830), 7:395.
8. Cf. Joel R. Beeke, "Evangelism Rooted in Scripture: The Puritan Example," in Puritan Reformed Spirituality (Darlington, England: Evangelical Press, 2006), 143–69.
9. Such as Alleine's Alarm and Baxter's Call—see notes 6 and 7.
10. Solomon Stoddard, A Guide to Christ, ed. Don Kistler (Morgan, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1993).
11. James Janeway and Cotton Mather, A Token for Children (Morgan, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1994).
12. Shepard, The Sincere Convert and the Sound Believer, 51.
13. Stephen Charnock, "A Discourse of the Efficient of Regeneration," in The Complete Works of Stephen Charnock (1864–1866; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1985), 3:227.
14. E. F. Kevan, The Puritan Doctrine of Conversion (London: Evangelical Library, 1952), 7–13.
15. John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1997), 1–2, 4–7, 51–52.
16. John D. Eusden, introduction to The Marrow of Theology, by William Ames, 6–7.
17. Joel R. Beeke and Sinclair B. Ferguson, eds., Reformed Confessions Harmonized (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 88.
18. John Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, in The Works of John Bunyan, ed. George Offor (1854; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1991), 1:255.

Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012), 508–510.

They [the Puritans] took care to show that coming to Christ is possible because Christ is not only willing but also able to save sinners. Not only does He hold out His hands, but He also takes sinners into His arms. Not only does He offer salvation, but He also secures salvation.

Ibid., 510.

Despite the freeness and graciousness of the gospel offer and Christ's willingness and ability to save sinners, many people do not come to Him.

Ibid., 518.

Preaching Christ with winsomeness and grace was the greatest burden and most essential task of the Puritan evangelist. “Christ crucified” must be “the subject matter of gospel-preaching,” Robert Traill said. “Two things ministers have to do: … 1. To set him forth to people; to paint him in his love, excellency, and ability to save. 2. To offer him unto them freely, fully, without any limitation as to sinners, or their sinful state.”¹³ Robert Bolton agreed: “Jesus Christ is offered most freely, and without exception of any person, every Sabbath, every Sermon.”¹⁴ The Puritan evangelists repeatedly presented Christ in His ability, willingness to save, and preciousness as the only Redeemer of lost sinners. They did so with theological articulation, divine grandeur, and human passion. They extolled Christ to the highest as both an objective and a subjective Savior, and abased man to the lowest.
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13 “By what Means may Ministers best win Souls?,” in The Works of Robert Traill (1810; Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1975), 1:246.
14 A Treatise on Comforting Afflicted Consciences (1626; reprint Ligonier, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1991), p. 185.

Joel R. Beeke, Puritan Evangelism: A Biblical Approach, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2007), 21–22.

Curt Daniel on Loving Our Enemies and a Hyper-Calvinist Error

On 06/29/2014, Dr. Curt Daniel preached on Luke 6:27-36 and the topic "Love Your Enemies." Around minute 30:40-33:10, he took some time to speak against a variety of hyper-Calvinism that denies God's universal love (Note: not all varieties deny it). He said:

"We at this church believe in the 5 points of Calvinism; we would be mainstream Calvinists. But there is something called hyper-Calvinism, and I've read some of their books, and they go beyond this [the mainstream teaching on God's love]. And they say God does not love everybody; he has only love for those that are Christians, that he has chosen [the elect]. They misunderstand this. The bible says God has a general love for everybody, even though He reserves a special love for the elect, His children. But this movement goes beyond that and says, 'No, no, no. God loves only the elect.' And then I say to them, and I've had to say to some of them, I say, 'Well if God only loves Christians, then we should only love Christians, and not love non-Christians.' And I've seen them, where they bite their lips, because they see the logic of this and they change the subject. And I say, 'Well what do you do with Jesus? He loved the Pharisees; He prayed for those that were killing Him; and He gave us the example. He healed people that never even said thank you!' And one of them [a hyper-Calvinist] had the audacity to say, 'Well that was Jesus, not me, and that was in His humanity and not in His deity.' And I said, 'You missed the whole point! We're to imitate Jesus. He is showing us, not just perfect humanity, but He is showing us the heart of God! God has a general love for all people, and when we show that love, even to ungrateful, God-hating people that hate us too, we're imitating God.' So, brethren, let's not be like the hyper-Calvinists who are imitating the Pharisees. Let's imitate the Lord Jesus Christ by loving and doing good to those that are unthankful; they'll never say thank you to us or to God, and in that we are being merciful like our heavenly Father is.

Let me boil it down to this: it's not just showing mercy and kindness; we are showing grace! What is grace? It's God's undeserved kindness! Yes, [to] that person that hates you. He doesn't deserve a good response, but do it anyway. And by showing love, you are showing undeserved grace! And in no other way, dear brethren, can we so imitate God as when we show grace to those that hate us and despise us and don't deserve love. So go to that enemy that I asked you to think about this morning, and do good to him, and show him the love of God."