Limited Atonement and Preaching

 

Whether or not one believes in limited atonement makes a tremendous difference in the way one preaches the gospel. If the cross is indeed the power of God unto salvation, as the Scriptures tell us it is, then the preaching will be the proclamation of the cross and of Christ’s death on the cross. Then the power by which sinners believe will be the power of God speaking to them through that proclamation and by His Spirit working in their hearts.
If, however, the power of the cross depends on man’s accepting or believing it, the preaching will degenerate into a kind of “sales pitch,” as in many cases it does. One need only witness the various revival meetings that are so popular, the advent of the altar call, and the begging and pleading with sinners that is introduced into the worship of the church and into evangelism. In them one sees what the preaching becomes when the truth of limited, efficacious atonement is denied. It becomes, in the words of another writer, a “hawking” of Jesus Christ and of the cross on the order of, and very much like, what goes on at carnival.
This is not to deny that there must also go forth as part of the preaching of the cross the call to repent and believe, but if one truly believes in limited atonement, that will indeed be a call in the sense of a command and not a thinly disguised offer of salvation to all, or a vain attempt to “sell” Christ by begging sinners. The charisma and oratorical skill of the preacher are not the main thing in preaching, as so many seem to think today, but the fact that the preacher preaches nothing but Christ crucified as the power of God unto salvation. What one believes about the atonement, therefore, has a profound effect on the very nature and manner of gospel preaching.

Ronald Cammenga
Ronald Hanko
Saved By Grace, p. 119

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