3 Mar 2008

It is Christ Not Calvinism that Saves-The Free Invitation of the Gospel-Kevin Williams

How man has watered down the Gospel to take away offence.

Continuing from last week, after we looked What Calvinism does and does not teach, we now go back to John 6:37-40 for another look:

John 6:37-40(2) - It is Christ, Not Calvinism that Saves-You Must Come To Him Alone, The Free Invitation of the Gospel-Kevin Williams - 48 min
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"...some pastors today will only openly preach from half of this text and run scared of openly declaring the other half.
Many will take the first half 'All that the Father gives Me will come to Me', and they will boldly declare the doctrine of election, oh they’d be happy to preach a 150 sermon series on the doctrines of Grace from this, but for some reason and a great shame, be in fear of declaring the free invitation of the Gospel which is in the second half of the text.
I’ve heard countless Gospel presentations were the evangelist is trying to be so careful with his words, so that people don’t get the impression he’s an arminian, that he ends declaring an invitation to believe on Christ and have his sins forgiven, that is so vague that it’s barely the Gospel at all.

Calvinism is good Biblical doctrine, and it’s an important truth, but we need to remember this, Calvinism does not save. Christ does.

But then you get other pastors who will boldly declare the second half of the text, about coming to Christ and how He invites all to come, but they run from the first half and the teachings on election, and some times these pastors are so keen to try and avoid controversy, that the Jesus that they are loudly inviting people to come to is a different Jesus than the one revealed in the Bible.

But we need to just let the Words of Jesus in this text stand as they are. It says what it says, and so we need to just declare it without the fear of man."

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