Do Calvinists Believe in Evangelism?

Evangelism as a Command of Christ, Not a Denial of Predestination

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist. Today we are going to be looking at Romans chapter 10. The question for today is, if Calvinists believe in predestination, does that mean that they don't believe in evangelism?

Now this is a very important question because it is often leveled in the form of an accusation. People will say, well if you believe that God predestines someone to heaven, then you believe that there's no reason to go out and share the gospel.

Because, well, God's going to save whoever he's going to save. And at the heart of it, I understand the objection, but it is not a fair objection. And I want to get into the reasons why. But let's first just look at the heart of the objection and why someone would make this.

The idea is, well, if God has already chosen who is going to be saved, then my going out and sharing the gospel isn't going to make a difference whether or not a person is numbered among the elect. Therefore, why should I go?

And this comes down to the question of motivation. What is my motivation for sharing the gospel? Why do I go out and share the gospel? Well, at the heart of it, I want to see people come to know the Lord Jesus Christ.

But that's not my primary motivation. My primary motivation for sharing the gospel is that it's a command from my King. Jesus tells me to go into all the world and share the gospel with every creature.

Therefore, if I don't do that, then I'm being disobedient to my Master. And if I go and do what my Master tells me to do, I don't have to know the reasoning for it. I just need to be obedient to Him. It's not necessary that He would tell me why I'm doing something.

If He's the King, and I trust the King, and the King gives me a command, then I'm going to obey the command. That's how obedience works, and that's how authority works. I don't have to know why I do something.

But the beauty is, I do understand why I evangelize. And really, the answer is given to me in Romans chapter 10. That's why I'm bringing this out today. Because in Romans chapter 10, the Apostle Paul asks a rhetorical question.

How will someone believe if they've never heard? And how will someone hear if there is no one preaching? And so, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ. And so, the point that Paul is making is that it is necessary to preach the gospel.

Because hearing and believing is part of the plan of how God saves someone. God doesn't simply save someone independently of the gospel. But God saves people with the gospel. And so, within the plan of God to save someone is the plan that they would hear and believe the gospel.

And so, we begin to get to the subject of ends and means. Now, what are ends and means? Well, if God has predestined the end of something, meaning the conclusion or the finality or the purpose of something.

Then that means that God has also predestined what it will take to bring about those ends. And we call those the means. So, for instance, let's say, I heard this illustration many years ago. I've used it a few times.

I think it's very helpful. Let's say that there is a bowl of water in a room. And it is God's desire that that bowl of water be empty. Well, He could certainly miraculously intervene and simply dry the water up.

He could turn the water into a cloud. He could empty it. He could make the water completely go away in a miraculous work. Or, He could orchestrate events in such a way that 11 thirsty football players who just came off the field go into the room.

And that's their only source of hydration is this large bowl of water. And so, that would be the means to bring about the end of that water being dried up. Or that bowl being empty. And so, the question is, what is the means that God uses to bring about the end of saving His elect?

And the Bible is not unclear about this. The Bible is absolutely clear. The ends of someone becoming saved is brought about by the means of preaching the gospel, them hearing the gospel, and them believing the gospel.

And, of course, believing or faith is a gift. Repentance and faith are both talked about in Scripture as something that God enables a person to do. No one can come to me unless the Father grants it to him.

John 6 .65, Jesus said that. So, we know that faith itself is a gift. The Bible says repentance is a gift. It says that we ought to be patient in how we speak to people because God may grant them repentance, which leads to life, showing that repentance is actually something that God gives them.

And so, we understand repentance and faith come from God. But the act of evangelism comes from the mouth of the evangelist. This is what God calls us to do. He calls us to go and evangelize. Now, as Calvinists, I think we should be the most bold evangelists because we know that there's nothing that we can do to manipulate someone into a response.

We can't dim the lights and turn up the music and fill the room with fog and create an emotional challenge that would cause someone to come forward. We can't preach a sermon that builds to a crescendo of some kind of emotional story that forces someone forward or command everyone to close their eyes and raise their hands or come forward.

We can't do that. I mean, we can, but we shouldn't do that because we don't need to be manipulating conversion. And we know we don't need to manipulate conversion because salvation is of the Lord. Conversion is something that only God can do.

So, our role as evangelists, as Calvinistic evangelists, is simply to preach the truth, to proclaim the gospel and know that God will save whom he's going to save. He will open the hearts of whom he chooses.

And for the preaching of the gospel to the elect, it will be a life-giving message. And for the preaching to those who are lost, they will just continue to ignore the gospel to their own detriment. So, that is the great comfort, is that it's not our ability to change someone's heart that is going to bring about someone's conversion.

It's not our ability to do anything that's going to cause anybody to be converted. We are simply to be faithful to the truth, not to use gimmicks, not to use any kind of methodologies that are ungodly, but simply to preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and know that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ.

And so, we preach the Word of Christ. We know that God will save. And so, we are confident. And we know that preaching the gospel is the means by which God saves people. And this is where I'm going to end.

Hyper-Calvinism, Obedience, and the Means God Ordains

Because there are those who are called hyper-Calvinists. And I want to speak directly to that issue right now. Kind of jokingly, we call this coffee with a Calvinist. I say, yeah, I'm caffeinated, but I'm not hyper.

Because I'm not a hyper-Calvinist. Hyper-Calvinists believe that because God has ordained those who will be saved, that there really is no reason to evangelize. In fact, in hyper-Calvinistic churches, there's really a downplay of evangelism.

And I even had a man come to me. One time, I was handing out gospel tracts at the fair. And I had a man come to me, and he said, why are you handing out gospel tracts? Do you believe God predestines? And I said, yeah, but He predestines the means as well as the end.

The means is the sharing of the gospel, so I'm going to share the gospel and pray that God will save whom He wills. And he said, well, if God wants to save these people, He doesn't need your help. And I knew immediately I was talking to a hyper-Calvinist.

And I even said that. I said, so are you a hyper-Calvinist? Are you a person who believes that evangelism is unnecessary? And he essentially said yes. He wouldn't really own up to being a hyper-Calvinist, but eventually he basically said, and he told me the church that he was from, basically said yes, we don't go and proclaim the gospel because God is going to save who He's going to save, and He doesn't need our help.

And no, God doesn't need my help, but He does require my obedience. He tells me to do this. He tells me it's not an option that I go out. And when I say God requires it, I don't mean God needs it. What I mean is it's required of me that I be obedient.

The Bible says it is required of a steward that he be found faithful. And so he tells me to go share the gospel. I go and share the gospel because God commands it. Christ commands it. The captain of my soul commands it.

And I know that God's using that to bring about the salvation of His elect. And I preach the gospel to anyone because no one's walking around, as Charles Spurgeon said, no one's walking around with an E tattooed where I can just go and lift up their shirt and see an E tattooed on their back.

No one has that. We don't know who the elect are. And therefore we proclaim to all men to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 17, God has commanded all men everywhere to repent.

That command is universal. All men have been commanded to repent, but only those who have been given the Spirit of God, who have been given the ability by God to repent, will actually repent. So we preach to all men.

Repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we trust God with the results. Thank you for watching today. This has been Coffee with a Calvinist. If you have liked what you've heard, I want you to know that we have plenty of these episodes on our YouTube page.

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