For many years, I found myself in bondage
when it came to preaching evangelistically and offering Christ in his death and
resurrection to my hearers as the only hope of the world. If Christ died only for the elect, I
reasoned, what is the point of offering him to people who might not be the
elect? In fact, what is the point in
evangelising at all, if God has the whole thing sown up nicely? Or, why be involved in mission at all? After all, God “will save his people from
their sins”[1]
in his own way and in his own time![2] Indeed, why bother about ministry? Just go on teaching the saved, and hope that
the unsaved will get some “crumbs from off the masters’ table.”[3]
But all along, I was aware of what I can
now only describe as suppressing God-given, Bible-based urges to tell my
congregations that God loves them and that Christ died for them. My real fear was of drifting into evangelical
Arminianism. Consequently, I withheld
from my hearers, to some extent, God’s remedy for his own wrath against every
man’s sin! I was so afraid of this. In fact, I was so conscious of this at times
that I felt that I was disobeying my conscience every time I preached
evangelistically, which is a thing that my ordination vows prohibited. I came so close at times to saying to my
congregations that “you are so depraved and helpless that you could not come to
Christ even if you wanted to.” What a
travesty of my dear Saviour’s Gospel!
What a travesty of what he suffered for the world on the Cross! A real tragedy.
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