"We Persuade Men" -- Anyway

 I am currently preparing a little pamphlet on the so-called "freedom  of the will."  Written for the sake of a dear friend who believes in the freedom of the will, I hope to show him that Bible clearly teaches that the fallen heart is not able to make the choice to repent and believe the gospel and that this is the reason the Lord Jesus said we must be born again.  When I'm finished I'll share it all with you.  Anyway, what follows here is a little extra, a "pastoral application" written for the sake of reminding my fellow Calvinists not to draw the wrong inferences from this doctrine of "inability."  

I.                  A Pastoral Application

There is an important pastoral application to be made from this doctrine as expounded above, i.e., that regeneration must precede faith and repentance.  That is that we do not draw faulty inferences from it and fail to do the part that God has assigned to us as preachers of the gospel. 

A.                 We persuade

One faulty inference is that we preachers are delivered from responsibility when it comes to the unbelief of our hearers.  It is said that all we have to do is present the truth and if a person is elect they will believe it and if not it makes no difference how we present it since they will not believe it anyway.  What I would focus on here is that the means God uses in the conversion of sinners is truth duly presented to the heart.  Regeneration is not faith, it is a prerequisite for faith, the gift of a receptivity to the truth, of a capacity for believing, but it is not believing itself.  Hence, even though regeneration is monergistically taking place, the mind must still be persuaded by truth.  The heart, this “heart of flesh” that now can be moved must still be moved.  By God's ordination it will be, but on our part it must be.

Hence, the due application of the truth will mean that the truth is set forth before the heart in the most persuasive way possible.  Why?  First, simply because whether men will believe it or not, it deserves to be believed because of what it is.  It is truth, sublime, divine, the gospel of the True God, who created the principles of rational thought, and as such deserves, is worthy of, the consent and approval of the mind.  Though it is God's self-authenticating revelation, there is no reason for expecting that the gospel would be believed merely because the preacher says so when the preacher has been lazy in his presentation of it, giving the impression that no thinking person would ever consent to it and excusing his laziness with the thought that nobody will believe it who is unregenerate because, well, after all, it takes a miracle.  No! (Note: I say this as a committed presuppositionalist.)  We are to show  by plainness of speech, by apparent reason, by argument from the data (Acts 9:22; 17:3, 22-31; 18:28; 26:26), that an honest thinking person would certainly believe it were it not for his irrational commitment to the big lie.  We are to do our best to make denial of the truths of the gospel impossible for a truly honest man, so that a man is driven to see that the contradiction lies within himself; i.e., that he is self-condemned, and his choice is contrary to what he knows to be true and right and good.  It is, after all, a “faithful saying, worthy of all men to be received.”  Secondly, it is not merely true, but it is truth of the greatest importance, of the greatest subject matter, calling forth the greatest whole-souled response, and setting before men the greatest of consequences.  As such it deserves to be presented by whole men, men with hearts, who are affected with the conviction -- fully, to the marrow of their being-- that this true gospel is the only salvation for never-dying, ever-suffering souls, and that it is worthy of all men to be received because it is the message of this infinite, eternal and unchangeable God who has brought and wrought amazing salvation through this altogether wonderful Christ. Paul felt the impact of this, and it affected his ministry: “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences.…For whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause” (2 Cor. 5:11-13).    I am not arguing for false dramatics and affectation, but for affected and earnest redeemed sinners to preach affecting, awakening (!) sermons to men who are not, in reality, stones, regardless of how stony their hearts may be.  God would not, by the carless manner of his servants, have men miss the truth that His gospel is not only a “free offer,” but that He is in the greatest earnest about them receiving it, and that they must be desperately evil for hardening their hearts to such a suitor.  All too often, the truth that the gospel is a word of command from the Majesty on high is made an excuse for an dispassionate form of "Reformed" evangelism which bears no resemblance to biblical evangelism or the teary-eyed pleas of Reformers and Puritans of the past who took their stand between sinners and hell and cried with upraised hands and voices, "Turn ye! Turn ye! Why will ye die?  Why will you not have pity on your own souls?"

B.                  We Pray 

 Before I talk about prayer, and as a way of introducing the topic, I want to illustrate the former point with two of the greatest preachers in history, the greatest Calvinistic preachers of the 18^th century, Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield.  They were very different but respectively they illustrate the two points just made. 

 
           
Edwards, more than anyone I can think of, modeled the art and science of constructing a sermon to drive the reason to a conviction of truth.  He labored over his sermons for many hours every week with this goal, to bring every argument, every illustration, building up an intellectual truth battering ram to smash against and break into a truth-resisting mind and heart.  Consequently, whether it is a sermon on the gospel, or the application of the gospel to Christian living, one can’t read his sermons and escape the logical force of them.  One can reject it, but can’t refute it; the hearer or reader can’t honestly provide a rational argument or evidence to justify remaining in unbelief or disobedience to God.  On the other hand, there is Whitefield.  While Edwards has a reputation as lacking in oratorical skill, Whitefield is the most celebrated preacher in history for his oratorical brilliance.  What is not so well known is that he preached the same sermons many times and that, like an actor with his lines, he practiced every phrase of his delivery, over and over, sometimes even in front of a mirror, in order that his delivery would be the well-honed instrument of the Holy Spirit in opening of hearts to attend to his message.  Even so, rehearsed though they were, his sermons were not affectation, but the whole-souled, affection-driven performance of a trained artist, like a disciplined classical musician who pours his heart and mind and body and soul into a given performance for which he has spent countless hours in practice.    Edwards and Whitefield were so different as preachers, but they were alike in three convictions at the heart of genuine biblical Calvinistic ministry: the convictions that God’s Spirit works through men, through His gifts to men, gifts that were to be “stirred up,” and instruments that were to be honed and exercised with diligence for the sake of God’s elect.  The second conviction was that, without, against, or through all their diligence, God was sovereign over all and His will would be done.  Their part was to do their part. 

The third conviction, a conviction that resulted in many hours of earnest application, was that this Sovereign God would have His servants pray to Him for His blessing, and God hears prayer.  They would not preach without prayer.  True Calvinists like Edwards and Whitefield are men who utterly depend on God, believe in God and therefore pray to God.  The idea that “If God is Sovereign, then why pray?” has often been raised by opponents of Calvinism, but its true proponents have always believed and practice the opposite: “Since nothing less than the irresistible grace of the Sovereign God can impart regenerating grace to the heart of the sinner, and since He has told us that it is His will that we ask Him to do it, we dare not presume to raise our voice to sinners on earth without first raising it to God in heaven, with the acknowledgment of our helplessness and our plea that He would thus glorify himself by saving the lost.”  The better question would be, “On Arminian principles, since God cannot overcome the free will of men, why pray for their salvation?"  Perhaps the demise of the prayer meeting and the rise of the seeker-friendly measures is the fruit of such thinking: “Prayer is not the answer, so let’s look for something that works."  The older Calvinists thought differently, stirring themselves up to take hold of God in prayer for the blessing of the Holy Spirit upon their message, that it would go from them with heart-opening power.  “Thus says the Lord God: This also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them: to increase their people like a flock” (Ezek. 36:37).

Calvinism makes no conflict between God's absolute predestination of His elect to salvation and the utmost efforts of His servants to bring that about. As the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, "Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory" ( 2 Ti 2:10). A lazy, prayerless, boring Reformed pastor is a contradiction. May God save the Church from fatalism masquerading as Calvinism and give repentance to the many of us who have by practice denied our confession.