Extend the Free Offer - David H. Lauten
Extend the Free Offer
Announcing the gospel without “differentiation or discrimination” (Cannons of Dort, II.5) lies at the heart of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. The founding of the Associate Presbytery at Gairney Bridge, near Kinross, Scotland on December 6, 1733 with Ebenezer Erskine, James Fisher, William Wilson, and Alexander Moncreiff was in a large measure due to a distinction of making the free offer of the Christ and the gospel known. This was set in contrast to a creeping trend toward hyper-Calvinism in the Church of Scotland of their day, in which the offer of the gospel was restricted to the elect. The Seceders, as they became known, affirmed God’s free and sovereign grace in salvation apart from human merit or status. They also proclaimed the gospel freely without distinction or discrimination to all who would hear. They helped establish a Church that was not only thoroughly Presbyterian, but thoroughly evangelical.
The Bible is replete with our privileged duty to proclaim the gospel to all who will listen: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts1:8). This duty is also defined in the answer to our Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 31, "What is Effectual Calling”, which states "he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel". Those who met at Gairney Bridge, and seceded from the Church of Scotland, knew that Scotland and the entire world needed the gospel of Jesus Christ. The same is true today.
The good news of Jesus Christ and the life he brings is the only antidote to the deadly spiritual poisons ingested in our thinking and doing today. Political, educational, and psychological efforts have failed to provide relief from our ills. These surface level efforts to patch up our gaping spiritual problems have left us bereft of enduring help and hope as we face many perplexities. The spiritual wounds of living life apart from God have left us, at best, spiritually anemic.
President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a National Fast Day on March 30, 1863, during a time of extreme difficulty and division. Among his well-spoken words, he exhorts: “And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord…We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
Let us point people to Christ and the forgiveness and gospel transformation found in him alone as the only true balm for our troubled souls. While our God is Sovereign in salvation, he delights to use means; even the testimony of his needy children entrusted with the message of life. He uses the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe (1 Cor. 1:21) and we are commanded as Ambassadors for Christ to proclaim the glorious message, “be ye reconciled to God" (2 Cor. 5:20). This is a message for all the world (Mark 16:15). May our reverence for Christ and the honor of his name outweigh our fear of men and what others think of us, even in Christ’s Church, as we make the everlasting gospel known. Leave the opinion polls to others and let us proclaim God’s gospel to the needy souls of our day.