Evangelism & The Sovereignty Of God Part 3

Here is J.I. third response to the question, "Why Evangelize if God is Sovereign?"

(3) The belief that God is sovereign in grace does not affect the genuineness of the gospel invitations, or the truth of the gospel promises.

Whatever we may believe about election, and, for that matter, about the extent of the atonement, the fact remains that God in the gospel really does offer Christ and promise justification and life to ‘whosoever will’. ‘Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ Rom. 10:13 As God commands all men everywhere to repent, so God invites all men everywhere to come to Christ and find mercy. The invitation is for sinners only, but for sinners universally; it is not for sinners of a certain type only, reformed sinners, or sinners whose hearts have been prepared by a fixed minimum of sorrow for sin; but for sinners as such, just as they are.


Some fear that a doctrine of eternal election and reprobation involves the possibility that Christ will not receive some of those who desire to receive Him, because they are not elect. The words of the gospel promises, however, absolutely exclude this possibility.
As our Lord elsewhere affirmed, in emphatic and categorical terms:
‘Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.’[Jn 6:37]


It is true that God has from all eternity chosen whom He will save. It is true that Christ came specifically to save those whom the Father had given Him. But it is also true that Christ offers Himself freely to all men as their Saviour, and guarantees to bring to glory everyone who trusts in Him as such. See how He Himself deliberately juxtaposes these two thoughts in the following passage:


38For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." John 6:38-40


Packer gives commentary on these verses this way:
1) ‘All which he has given me’—here is Christ’s saving mission defined in terms of the whole company of the elect, whom He came specifically to save.

2)‘everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life’—here is Christ’s saving mission defined in terms of the whole company of lost mankind, to whom He offers Himself without distinction, and whom He will certainly save, if they believe.

The two truths stand side by side in these verses, and that is where they belong. They go together. They walk hand in hand.
Neither throws doubt on the truth of the other. Neither should fill our minds to the exclusion of the other.
Christ means what He says, no less when He undertakes to save all who will trust Him than when He undertakes to save all whom the Father has given Him.

So indeed it is. The invitations of Christ are words of God. They are true. They are meant. They are genuine invitations. They are to be pressed upon the unconverted as such. Nothing that we may believe about God’s sovereignty in grace makes any difference to this.

What do you think of Packer's third point?