Jeremy writes in to ask, "In light of the doctrine of predestination, how are we to go about day-to-day evangelism? I used to tell people that they are dearly loved by God, that Jesus loves you, but if they are not one of the elect, then is it honest or right to tell them this?" So Pastor John, here's a question.

How do you handle the language of God's love for sinners generally in light of Reformed soteriology? It is honest to say to the world, "God loves you," because I think that's what John 3:16 says and means. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes, so that the love of John 3:16 is a indiscriminate love that consists in a bona fide offer of his Son to every person for their receiving." And Matthew 5, "Love your enemy and you will be like your father who makes the sun rise on the evil and the good." So there are numerous places where God's universal love is spoken, and it's not wrong therefore to say to people, "God loves you." But here's what has to be clarified as far as biblical soteriology goes.

He doesn't love everyone in the very same way. He has set his electing love on some freely without any of us deserving it, and these will believe. Acts 13, 48, "As many as were appointed to eternal life believe." So the love of God in their case is a specific and particular love of drawing them to himself.

He doesn't have that love for everybody or everybody would be saved. So in view of those distinctions, my answer to how we evangelize is this. We love people by telling them the best news in all the world. And what is that? God, the God against...you look at...so you're meeting with somebody and you want to tell them the good news, you want to evangelize them.

You say, "The God against whom you have committed treason offers complete amnesty freely. He will commute your death sentence. He will forgive your treasonous intentions and actions and feelings. He will put away his just and holy anger against you. And not only that, he will adopt you into his royal family, make you an heir with his son, and unless you doubt that this is possible for him to do this, just simply justify the wicked, he put forward his son to bear the death sentence and perform every duty that you have failed to perform if you would have this.

He raised him from the dead to show that the death of his son was sufficient. He offers you now all of this through his son. It's all free. You can't earn it. You can't deserve it. The condition is to lay down the arms of treason, the arms of rebellion, and bow in humble, helpless dependence on free mercy from the King and receive his full pardon and amnesty and acceptance.

So we preach, Tony, we preach indiscriminately to everybody. We say that to everybody. We don't try to figure out who the elect are and preach to them. That's the error of Hyper-Calvinism historically. We offer Christ. We offer Christ and all that Christ is. We say, "If you will have Christ, I'm offering you Christ and all of his benefits," and then we pray for the people that their hearts would be opened and the heart of stone would be taken out and the heart of believing flesh would be put in.

We plead with them, "Be reconciled to God," and then God does the calling. God gives the faith. God overcomes the resistance. God takes out the heart of stone. It's our job to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ and to offer them freely to everybody. Yes, amen. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast.

Please email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. At DesiringGod.org you will find thousands of free books, articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper. I'm your host Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening.