Inter-Varsity Press

CONTENTS

Foreword

Before J. I. Packer became an evangelical superstar with the publication of Knowing God in 1973, he had already made important contributions to evangelical readers. Packer had a knack for addressing key topics succinctly and powerfully. What others would do in long and ponderous tomes, Packer would address, fairly and squarely, with a little volume of three or four chapters. The clarion call for “God-centeredness,” long before John Piper’s Desiring God or even Packer’s own Knowing God, was Packer’s little introduction for the republication of John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. The loss of faith in Scripture he met with the little volume “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God. And, in July of 1961 appeared the book you now hold in your hands—Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God.

The title both summarizes the content and invites the reader perfectly. Various people are called to read the book by this simple title. Are you interested in evangelism? This book will address it directly by explaining what it is, and the need for it, in terms that are both simple and theologically careful. It will help you evangelize better.

Are you interested in the doctrine of God’s sovereignty? This book is for you. In the most basic yet informed way, Packer addresses the simple question, “If God is in control, why should we do anything at all? Why should we work? Why should we pray? And especially, why should we evangelize?”

Packer addresses this question so clearly and biblically that this book is good for anyone who is beginning to wrestle with questions of how God’s sovereignty can fit with any area of human responsibility. I’ve often recommended this book to faithful Christians who are confused about how they are to think about prayer, missions, giving—any area in which our efforts could be wrongly pitted against God’s own necessary action. Packer introduces us to clear truths, handles Scripture with exemplary care, and supplies us with just the right amount of illustrations and application.

In this book, an antinomy is helpfully distinguished from a paradox. Opposites are explained. Cheap theological points are never scored. Packer insists that divine sovereignty and human responsibility are doctrines that need no reconciling. Instead, they are, as Packer calls them, “friends.”

Throughout this volume, agreement is graciously assumed as Packer leads us to lay aside old divisions and, again, consider together the Bible, and the Bible’s God. Though written almost fifty years ago, this book is timeless. Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God was written out of a warm Christian experience, and it assumes the reader is reading out of that same affection for God. In this book, speculation fades and trust increases. And as that happens, we find ourselves becoming more faithful—and more frequent!—evangelists.

If you would like to share in that experience, do what so many other readers have done, what I have done, what many I’ve given this book to over the years have done: pray, and read on.

Mark Dever

Senior Pastor, Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, D.C.

Preface

The nucleus of the following discourse was an address given at the Pre-Mission Conference of the London Inter-Faculty Christian Union on October 24, 1959. It has been expanded in the hope of giving it a wider usefulness. Its origin, and the practical nature of its subject matter, accounts for its homiletical style.

Lest its purpose be misconceived, may I say at the outset what it is not.

It is not a blueprint for evangelistic action today, though it sets out relevant principles for determining any evangelistic strategy.

It is not a contribution to the current controversy about modern evangelistic methods, though it lays down relevant principles for settling that controversy.

It is not a critique of the evangelistic principles of any particular person or persons, though it provides relevant principles for evaluating all evangelistic activities.

What is it, then? It is a piece of biblical and theological reasoning, designed to clarify the relationship between three realities: God’s sovereignty, man’s responsibility and the Christian’s evangelistic duty. The last of these is its proper subject; divine sovereignty and human responsibility are discussed only so far as they bear on evangelism. The aim of the discourse is to dispel the suspicion (current, it seems, in some quarters) that faith in the absolute sovereignty of God hinders a full recognition and acceptance of evangelistic responsibility, and to show that, on the contrary, only this faith can give Christians the strength that they need to fulfill their evangelistic task.

It must not be thought that on all the points with which I deal I am trying to lay down some sort of “I.V.F. orthodoxy.” The limits of “I.V.F. orthodoxy” are set out in the Fellowship’s doctrinal basis. Beyond those limits, members of the Fellowship are free, in John Wesley’s phrase, to “think and let think,” and no opinion on any subject can be regarded as the only one permissible. On the subject now to be dealt with, it may well be that some members of the Fellowship will think differently from the present writer. Equally, however, an author has a right to his own opinion, and he cannot be expected to conceal his views when he believes them to be biblical, relevant and (in the strict sense) edifying.

J. I. Packer