Great Christian Biographies with John Piper: George Whitefield 3

George Whitefield’s Calvinism and Witness to Election

Whitfield said, I embrace the Calvinistic scheme, not because Calvin, but Jesus Christ has taught it to me. And then he wrote to John Wesley in 1740, I never read anything that Calvin wrote. I mean, can you bear witness in such a way?

What an effective way to bear witness to the truth of Calvinism.

That was his way.

He said that in 1740. I don't know if it's true when he died. I never read anything that Calvin wrote.

I love it.

What Whitfield saw when his new eyes were opened were the five points of Calvinism. He was simply blown away. This is just a few months after his conversion and his main helper was Matthew Henry plus his Bible.

He was blown away by election and perseverance and their connection. So E .P. This became for him the rock solid foundation of his life in ministry. Here's what he wrote.

Oh.

The excellency of the doctrine of election and of the Saints final perseverance to those who are truly sealed by the spirit of promise. I am persuaded till a man comes to believe and feel these important truths. He cannot come out of himself.

But when convinced of these and assured of the application of them to his own heart, he then walks by faith indeed not in himself, but in the Son of God who died and gave himself for him. Love not fear constrains him to obedience.

A year later, he wrote to John Wesley, The doctrine of election and the final perseverance of those who are truly in Christ I am ten thousand times more convinced of if possible than when I saw you last.

He loved.

Assurance.

He had a.

Deep.

Love for his safe place in the mighty hands of God.

He said,.

Surely I am safe because put into his mighty arms though I may fall yet. I shall not utterly be cast away. The Spirit of the Lord Jesus will hold and uphold me.

Now, a.

Lot of people kind of quietly are drawn to these things as they see them in the Bible and don't say anything, because they haven't gone deep enough like Whitfield did for them to sound glorious, sweet, precious, good news.

But not so Whitfield. Whitfield was not quiet about these things. They are strewn throughout his preaching. He said to Wesley, I must preach the gospel of Christ and this I cannot do without speaking of election.

In his sermon based on 1st Corinthians chapter 1 verse 30, the sermon was called Christ the believers wisdom righteousness sanctification and redemption. He exalts in the doctrine of election. Now remember he's lifting up his voice to thousands of ordinary people.

For my part, I cannot see how true humbleness of mind can be attained without a knowledge of the doctrine of election. And though I will not say that everyone who denies the election is a bad man, yet I will say with that sweet singer, Mr. Trail, it is a very bad sign.

Such a one, whoever he be, I think cannot truly know himself. For if we deny election, we must partly at least glory in ourselves. But our redemption is so ordered that no flesh should glory in the divine presence.

And hence it is that the pride of man opposes this doctrine. Because according to this doctrine and no other, he that glories must glory only in the Lord. But what shall I say? Election is a mystery that shines with such resplendent brightness that to make use of the words of one who has drunk deeply of electing love dazzles the weak eyes of some of God's children.

However,.

Though they know it not, all the blessings they receive, all the privileges they do or will enjoy through Jesus Christ flow from the everlasting love of God the Father. Now I attempted right there to sustain some level of pitch, and I can't even do it with a microphone.

I feel my head growing faint, pushing like that. I'm gonna faint if I keep doing that. Whitfield reminds Wesley in a letter 1741, though I hold particular election, yet I offer Jesus freely to every.

Individual soul.

Oh, how he believed in the universal offer of the gospel, an authentic offer held out to every.

Soul.

He did.

Indeed, Whitfield does not hide his understanding of definite atonement or irresistible grace as he pleads with men to come to Christ. He preached a sermon on John 10, 27 to 28, called The Good Shepherd.

He speaks clearly of the particular sense in which Christ died for his own. Now, this is an evangelistic sermon preached to thousands. If you belong to Jesus Christ, he is speaking of you. For says he, I know my sheep.

I know them. What does he mean by that? Why? He knows their number. He knows their names. He knows everyone for whom he died. And if there were to be one missing for whom Christ died, God the Father would send him down again from heaven to fetch him.

That's the preaching that drove the Great Awakening and didn't shrink back from limited atonement or.

Particular.

Atonement, that there is a unique sense in which Christ died for his bride, a covenant, bride-winning, getting sense. Then he mounts his passionate plea, all of it based on irresistible sovereign grace.

Oh, come come see what it is to have eternal life. Do not refuse it. Haste, sinner, haste away. Make the great, the Good Shepherd. May he draw your souls. Oh, if you never heard his voice before, God grant that you may hear now.

Come, come, come to the Lord Jesus Christ. To him I leave you. Amen. And that was the end of his sermon. Did you hear it? May he grant you to come. You can do evangelism like that, brothers. Irresistible grace does not get in the way of passionate calls to faith any more than at the tomb of Lazarus his deadness got in the way of Lazarus, come forth!

The Word.

Created life.

There's no contradiction here. That's what the Word is for.

Justification by Faith Alone and Christ Our Righteousness

So.

Among the doctrines of the Reformation that filled the evangelistic sermons of Whitefield, the most prominent was the doctrine of justification by faith alone. His signature sermon, if there could be one, judging by how many times it was referred to, his signature sermon is called, The Lord Our Righteousness, based on Jeremiah 23 6, The Lord Our Righteousness.

He never elevated justification to the exclusion of sanctification or regeneration. He had this phrase, Christ without and Christ within. Christ without and Christ within is essential to the gospel. Here's what he said.

We must not put asunder what God has joined together. We must keep the medium between the two extremes. Not insist so much on the one hand upon Christ without as to exclude Christ within as the evidence of our being His and as a preparation for future happiness.

Nor, on the other hand, so depend on inherent righteousness or holiness wrought in us as to exclude the righteousness of Jesus Christ without us.

Oh.

How jealous he was to refer to this and.

The.

Particularity. This is what's so amazing. You're preaching to masses of people, ordinary people, and you're dealing with the particularities of how justification works. And we have rooms where people are quiet.

There's nobody taking off their clothes in the tree behind me, which happened to him several times. People exposing themselves to try to distract the audience. Peeing on him from the trees. That's not happening here.

And it generally doesn't happen in your church. Nobody barking on the edge. Nobody running horses through the crowd and trampling old women down. And yet we don't talk about the particularities of doctrine.

What's the excuse? You've got a captive audience and and here he is. I fear, he lamented in one sermon, I fear they understand justification in that low sense, which I understood it a few years ago as implying no more than remission of sins.

But it not only signifies remission of sins past, but also the federal right to all good things to come. As the obedience of Christ is imputed to believers, so his perseverance in that obedience is imputed to them also.

Now that's complicated and he's bellowing it out.

To thousands and.

They're weeping for joy. He goes on. Never did a more, never did greater or more absurdities flow from the denying of any doctrine than will flow from the denying of the doctrine of Christ's imputed righteousness.

The world says because we preach faith, we deny good works. This is the usual objection against the doctrine of imputed righteousness, but it is a slander, an impudent slander. So that's the way he preached, doctrinally.

Indeed, it was a slander. It was a slander on him. Because George Whitefield, though he was an evangelist who mainly preached and summed people to repentance and faith in Christ, such that they were experiencing regeneration and owning Christ as their righteousness, though that was his bread and butter, he devoted endless efforts to collecting money to support orphans in Georgia where he had established the Bethesda community.

And other kinds of charities as well. And this was a huge reputation that he had. Franklin, Benjamin Franklin said, Whitefield's integrity, disinterestedness, and indefatigable zeal in prosecuting every good work, I have never seen equaled.

I shall never see.

Excel. So if you say to me,.

That preaching justification by faith alone apart from works of the law, grounded in the imputed righteousness of Christ to me, undermines good works,. I will call Benjamin Franklin to witness against you.

Would that we could all have a Franklin in our lives, to call to witness that we practice what we preach. In other words, his impassioned belief in the imputation of Christ's righteousness didn't hinder the practical pursuit of justice and love, it empowered it.

The connection between doctrine and practical duties of love was, I think, the secret of Whitefield's power in great measure. All the masses in America knew this. They knew this. They knew that he practiced what he preached.

They knew that he was a good.

Man.

Almost. I'm almost done.

Almost was he a good man. It wasn't a perfect man. Justification by faith didn't make him a perfect man. Regeneration didn't make him a perfect man. In fact, the effects of reading history and doing biography over the last years has pressed upon me the persistent discovery that contradictions and paradoxes of sin and righteousness abound everywhere in the holiest of people.

I have no heroes who are flawless, and the better I know them, the worse they are. What do you do with that? He was no exception. So I want to rightly honor him, and I think we will rightly honor him if we're honest about his blindness in spite of his doctrinal faithfulness and goodness.

The most glaring blindness of his life, and there were others, was his support of the American enslavement of blacks. Before it was legal to own slaves in Georgia, and I don't know if you knew it went like this, not legal, legal, not legal.

Before it was legal to own slaves in Georgia, Whitfield advocated for the legalization in Georgia for the sake of his orphanage and making it more affordable. 1748, he wrote to the trustees of Bethesda, which he had founded,.

And said,.

Had a Negro been allowed to, had a Negro been allowed, I should now have had a sufficiency to support a great many orphans without expending half, about half the sum, which had been laid out. Georgia never can or will be a flourishing province unless Negroes are allowed.

I am as willing as ever to do all I can for Georgia and the orphan house if either a limited use of Negroes is approved or some more indentured servants sent over.

If not, I.

Cannot promise to keep any large family or cultivate the plantation in any considerable manner. Close quote. 1752, four years later, George became a royal colony, and now it was legal, and Whitfield joined the ranks of slave owners that he had denounced in his earliest years.

Now that in itself is not unusual. Most of the slave owners were professing Christians, but in Whitfield's case things got more complex. He didn't fit the mold of a wealthy southern plantation owner. Almost all of them resisted evangelizing and educating the slaves.

They knew intuitively education would tend toward equality, which would undermine the whole system, and evangelism would imply that slaves could become children of God, which would mean that they were brothers and sisters, and that would undermine the whole system.

Which, by the way, is why the apparent New Testament tolerance of slavery is in fact a very powerful subversion of the institution.

Now,.

Whitfield, ironically, this is everywhere in history, everywhere in your life and mine, for those who have better eyes to see than we do, ironically, Whitfield did more to bring Christianity to the slave community in Georgia than anyone else in history.

Whitfield wrote letters to newspapers defending the evangelism of slaves and arguing that to deny them this was to deny that they had souls, which many of course were denying. Harry Stout observes rightly, in fact, these letters that Whitfield wrote represented the first journalistic statement on the subject of slavery, and as such they marked a precedent of awesome implications beyond anything Whitfield could have imagined.

In other words, as he defended evangelism and the fact that they are.

Souls.

Had an impact beyond anything he could imagine. Whitfield said he was willing to face the whip of Southern planters if they disapproved of his preaching the new birth to slaves. He recounts one of his customary efforts among the slaves in North Carolina on this second trip to America like this.

I went, as was my custom, among the Negroes belonging to the house. One man was sick in bed, and two of his children said their prayers after me very well. This more and more convinces me that Negro children, if early brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, would make as great proficiency as any among white children.

I do not despair. If God spares my life, I do not spare of seeing a school of young Negro singing the praises of Him who made them in a psalm of thanksgiving to the Lord. Thou has put into my heart a good design to educate them.

I doubt not, but thou will enable me to bring it to good effect. Gary Nash wrote a whole study on the slave trade and slave business in Philadelphia, and he says that the grant of black Christianity in Philadelphia is owing to Whitfield's first preaching tour there.

He estimates that perhaps 1 ,000 slaves heard Whitfield's sermons in Philadelphia, and what they heard was that they had souls. Just as surely as any white man had a soul. Whitfield's work for the slaves in Philadelphia was so effective that Whitfield's most... I mean, Philadelphia's most prominent dancing master, Robert Bolton, sold his old... renounced his old vocation and gave his school over to the blacks for a school.

Quote, by summer's end over 50 black scholars, meaning students, had arrived at the school. All owing to Whitfield, the slave owner. From Georgia to North Carolina to Philadelphia, Whitfield sowed the seeds of equality through heartfelt evangelism and advocacy for education and fundraising.

Blind as he was to the contradiction of buying and selling slaves with that effort. Let me close one of his sermons and close this. Close one of his sermons the way he did. Here then I conclude. But I must not forget the poor Negroes.

No, I must not. Jesus Christ has died for them as well as for others. Nor do I mention you last because I despise your souls, but because I would have what I shall say make the deeper impression upon your hearts.

Know that you would seek the Lord to be your righteousness. Who knows but that he may be found of you. For in Jesus Christ, there is neither male nor female, bond nor free. Even you may be the children of God if you believe in Jesus.

Jesus Christ is the same now as he was yesterday and will wash your sins in his own blood. Go home then. Turn the word of the Lord, turn the word of this text into a prayer and treat the Lord to be your righteousness.

Even so, come Lord Jesus, come quickly in all our souls. Amen, Lord Jesus, amen and amen. That kind of preaching infuriated slave owners. One wonders if there wasn't rumbling around in Whitfield's own soul.

Something's wrong because he really did perceive that such radical evangelism implied things that he didn't stand for. He went public with his censures of slave owners and published words like these. God has a quarrel with you for treating slaves as though they were brutes.

If these slaves were to rise up in rebellion, all good men must acknowledge the judgment would be just. That's incendiary. It's just a hundred years too early. We are strange people. What are my blind spots?

Apparently Whitfield did not perceive the implications of what he was saying, at least not fully. What was clear was that the slave population.

Loved Whitfield.

I'm not making any excuses here, okay? I know how horribly racist it is to say some of my best friends were slaves. They really liked the Massa. I know that. There's no excuse. This is just reality. You need to hear a whole reality.

For all his imperfections and blindness and the contradictions in his life that were all undermining slavery as he evangelized and educated, they loved him. More than any other 18th century figure, Whitfield established the Christian faith in the slave community.

Whatever else he failed in, they were thankful for that.

Whitefield’s Contradictions, Slavery, and Final Assessment

So.

The greatest preacher of the 18th century, perhaps the greatest preacher in the history of the church, was a contradictory.

Figure.

He confessed that there was sin remaining in him. When he died in Newburyport, where he's buried, buried in this country, the slave community were the most prominent grieving people at his funeral. Thousands of them.

He had treated them like people within the cultural expectations that they, on their horizon, could see. He knew that he was a sinner and he would have confessed. If you do your biography, John Piper, year after year after year, what you will find is sinners.

That's all you will find, except for one, Jesus Christ. So grant, O God, that all of our study of history will reveal the goodness of a Whitfield that can only be explained in terms of the transformation that he experienced in the new birth and the sin of the Whitfield, which points away from himself to the grace on which he depended and the righteousness of another, who alone was righteous, that was counted as his.

I close with this quote from Whitfield. I know no other reason, he said, why Jesus has put me into the ministry than because I am the chief of sinners and therefore fittest to preach free grace to a world lying in the wicked one.

Father in heaven, we don't want to be naive about history or about the saints or about ourselves. We are not here to lift up models which save us by winning our imitation. They don't. They save us by pointing us to one who was perfect and whose righteousness by faith is credited to our account.

So even the sin of your servant has directed me to you just like his devotion and just like his unbelievable natural capacities. So I thank you for George Whitfield. I thank you for the grace that saved him.

I thank you for the Christ without and the Christ within. And I grieve that he was not a better man and I am very slow to point my finger because what will be said of my faults when the whole is known.

So.

Humble us under your mighty hand and empower us to be faithful in this glorious gospel for which he lived and in which he died. In Jesus name I pray, Amen.