3. Invitations, Promises and Commands
Rev Keith M Watkins
What gives a sinner the right to believe in Christ for salvation? In his book on saving faith,2 John Colquhoun deals with this question very fully. That is not surprising, given that the warrant for faith was a major point in dispute during the Marrow Controversy in the Church of Scotland in the eighteenth century. In the next century Colquhoun was writing about faith from the standpoint of the Marrowmen, with whom he wholeheartedly agreed. The previous article noted the gospel offer as the first “direct and formal warrant” for sinners to believe. Colquhoun gives three more aspects of God’s Word which expressly assure sinners that they have the right to put their trust in Jesus Christ for salvation. These are the gospel’s invitations, its promises and its commands.
Gospel invitations call sinners to accept the gift of salvation. They are in themselves offers of Christ, or at least they imply the offer. Colquhoun dis-
1This is the third part of a paper given at the 2019 Theological Conference.
2John Colquhoun, A View of Saving Faith from the Sacred Records, Free Presbyterian Publications reprint, 2010, to which all unreferenced page numbers refer.
cusses one invitation after another, demonstrating that they are not limited to those who are qualified in some way, but are made indiscriminately to “unregenerate men without exception” (p 124). In the Book of Proverbs, the invitations in chapters 1, 8 and 9, such as, “Unto you, O men, I call; and My voice is to the sons of man”, are made “to simple ones who love simplicity, to the scorners who delight in their scorning and to fools who hate knowledge” (p 123). The invitations do not depend on whether the sinner is aware of his misery, for “he who is void of a new, a humble, a penitent heart, or of spiritual understanding to discern the evil and demerit of his sins, is invited that he might receive one” (p 125).
At first hearing, the invitations of Isaiah 55 may appear to require qualifications in the hearers, given that they are made to “every one that thirsteth” (v 1). On a more careful reading, they are in fact “applicable to all unregenerate sinners who hear the gospel” (p 125). This is because “they all thirst for happiness of one kind or another. . . . They all seek for happiness, some in secular honours; others in worldly riches; others in sensual gratifications; and others in legal works. They have no money, no moral worth, no stock of laudable qualifications” (p 125).
All are thirsting, but thirsting for the wrong things: “They spend money for that which is not bread and their labour for that which satisfieth not – which are not character[istic]s of such sensible sinners3 as are seeking Jesus. They lay out their gifts and waste their opportunities in the laborious pursuit of self-righteousness and of worldly honour, wealth and pleasure – things which can afford no solid satisfaction to their souls. These persons are earnestly and solemnly invited to receive freely by faith the Person, righteousness and fullness of Christ, set forth under the names of wine and milk” (p 126). Colquhoun summarises the freeness of the invitation to all: “No qualification pleasing to God [is] either required of them or attainable by them” (p 126).
Again, the invitation in Matthew 11:28 sounds on the surface as if it requires qualifications in those who are invited to Christ for rest, for it is made to those that “labour and are heavy laden”. But not from the Marrow’s biblical standpoint. Labouring embraces everyone: not only those “who labour in the barren region of the . . . works of the law for rest to the conscience”, but also those who labour “in gratifying the lusts of profit, pleasure and honour from the creatures for satisfaction to the heart” (p 126).
What of the description, “heavy laden”? Does that mean the sinner must feel the guilt of his sin as a weighty burden before he may believe he is invited? Not at all! That would be to place the warrant for faith in the sinner
3By “sensible sinners” Colquhoun means people who have been brought to their senses and are troubled about their sinfulness and the wrath to come.
himself. Rather, it is to be heavy laden “as sometimes a ship is, which though insensible4 of it, is yet sinking under the burden” (p 127). Colquhoun proves this by referring to the people who are described in Isaiah 1:4 as “laden with iniquity”, but who are expressly said to “not know” and “not consider” their predicament (p 127). Sinners are invited who are “sinking under their burdens, and yet, being dead in sin, are insensible of their dreadful condition. They are laden with a heavy burden of guilt; with an overwhelming load of the dominion and servitude of sin; with a heavy burden of the commandments of the law in its covenant form; with the intolerable weight of Divine wrath; with a galling load of unsatisfied desires; and with the heaviest burden of all – insensibility. All unregenerate sinners thus labour to weariness and are heavy laden. They have a restless conscience and a restless heart. Now these, the Lord Jesus tenderly invites to come to Him for rest” (p 127).
The promises of the gospel are next. In the administration of the covenant of grace, promises are “directed to all the hearers of the gospel and . . . performed to all of them who believe” (pp 129,130). Promises such as, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life”, “Him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out”, and, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved”, are “presented to sinners of mankind in common . . . as a warrant for them to believe” (p 130). Although these promises are “performed to none but such as embrace them” (p 149), they are proclaimed indiscriminately to all that hear them, and therefore form part of a sinner’s warrant to believe in Christ.
Colquhoun’s Marrow standpoint comes to the fore in his insistence that the covenant of grace contains absolute promises “directed in offer to sinners without exception” (p 131). In Ezekiel 36, “the absolute promise of the Holy Spirit is offered to them who have not the Spirit. . . . The promise of a new heart is directed in offer to them who have nothing in them but the . . . stony heart. . . . The promise of remission and purification is left in offer to unpardoned and polluted sinners” (p 131). Acts 2:39 is another example: “The promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call”. Here the promise of the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit is made to those who are altogether without qualifications. The gospel itself, as it proclaims the promise, gives hearers the right to embrace it; that right does not depend on any conditions to be fulfilled by themselves.
How can these be absolute, rather than conditional, promises when some
4By “insensible” Colquhoun means that the ship cannot feel itself to be overloaded. Many sinners are like this: although they are heavy laden with the guilt of sin, they do not feel themselves to be so.
of them are not fulfilled “till after the first acting of faith”? It is because faith is not properly a condition. “Faith does not entitle to the possession of the blessings promised . . . nor does it give possession; but it takes and keeps possession upon the warrant of their being directed, or left in offer, to all who hear the gospel. Faith gives no right to take possession, but it merely receives or takes possession” (p 132). As faith “is the appointed means of attaining the possession of what is promised” (p 150), God performs His promise only to those who believe. God is under no obligation to perform it to those who continue in unbelief.
In another book, A Collection of the Promises of the Gospel, Colquhoun writes of these promises: “They are indeed absolute, in the strictest sense, as to any proper conditionality in sinners; yet not to the exclusion of the use of means. After enumerating some absolute promises, Jehovah saith, ‘I will yet for this be enquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them’. Though the diligent use of instituted means, and the exercise especially of faith and repentance, be required of sinners; yet the absolute promises are so gratuitous, that no acts nor deeds of sinners, are the proper conditions of them.”5 From the Marrow standpoint, faith should be spoken of as the instrument through which salvation is received, not as the condition of obtaining salvation.
The final part of the direct warrant is the command to believe, addressed to all. Examples include: “Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way” (Ps 2:12); “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 16:31); and “This is His commandment, That we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ” (1 Jn 3:23). Colquhoun rightly argues for faith as a duty. “Since then all the hearers of the gospel are expressly commanded to believe in Christ, faith in Him is the duty of all; and unbelief is the sin, the capital sin, and will prove to be the condemnation of all who hear His gospel and yet do not believe” (p 134). It is sin because it is “disobedience to a Divine command” (p 134).
Colquhoun notes that this part of the direct warrant to believe is furnished, not by the gospel like the first three, but by the law. Therefore how good that law is, as well as holy and just! “The very law that wounds [the sinner], forms a part of his warrant for trusting in the heavenly Physician for healing balm” (p 144). He is referring to the First Commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me” (Ex 20:3), which he says is “as if the Lord had said, ‘Thou shalt know and acknowledge Me to be the only true God and thy redeeming God’” (p 133). The only way a fallen sinner can know God as his own God is through believing in Christ the Mediator. This is “the greatest
5John Colquhoun, A Collection of the Promises of the Gospel, Edinburgh, 1825, p 6.
and most momentous command that ever issued from the glorious throne of the Majesty on high. If this be disobeyed, no other can be obeyed; if this be kept, all the others will be pleasant and easy” (p 134).
In sum, when “God’s gracious offer, invitation, promise and command, all addressed to sinners of mankind indefinitely,” are taken together, they “constitute, for every hearer of the gospel, a formal, an authentic and a complete warrant to trust in Christ and rely on His righteousness for the whole of his salvation” (p 135). “They form such an ample warrant as confers on every sinner, how innumerable and aggravated soever his transgressions have been, a right to trust in the Lord Jesus, and by trusting cordially in Him to take possession of Him” (p 135). Let no sinner be in any doubt: he has the unquestionable right to embrace Christ for salvation!
Colquhoun then lists five “additional inducements and encouragements” (p 135) to trust in Christ for salvation. He describes these as “supports of saving faith” (p 136). They are: “the boundless grace, mercy and love of God in Christ” (p 136); “the infinite knowledge and wisdom of a promising God” (p 137); “the infinite power of God in Christ” (p 138); “the immutable veracity and faithfulness of God” (p 139); and “the all-sufficiency and suitableness of God our Saviour and of His great salvation” (p 142).
Colquhoun expressly excludes from the warrant for saving faith the following: election, particular redemption, universal redemption, the Spirit’s saving work in the soul, and any other qualification in the sinner. The whole warrant for saving faith is external to the sinner – it is all in the Word of God. “His whole warrant for trusting in the Saviour lies wholly in the Word without; and no part of it in the heart within” (p 147). With the Bible’s offers, invitations, promises and commands sounding in his ears, the sinner may be fully assured that he has the right to come to Christ for salvation.