Chapter 3: A Theology of Sovereign Grace
Whitefield possessed a very real understanding of the doctrines of grace, not as an abstract system of thought, but as the teachings of the Scriptures and as the basic principles of his daily Christian life.1
—Arnold Dallimore
George Whitefield was arguably the most prolific evangelist since the time of the Apostles. Yet, at the same time, he was also a staunch Calvinist. Undergirding his passionate gospel preaching was an unwavering belief in God’s sovereignty in man’s salvation. It was the doctrines of grace that ignited his soul with holy compulsion to reach the world with the message of Christ. Some argue that these two realities—sovereign grace and evangelistic zeal—cannot co-exist. But nothing could be further from the truth. They meet perfectly in Scripture, and they existed side-by-side in Whitefield’s ministry. No preaching can be any stronger than the doctrine upon which it is based, and the truths of sovereign grace proved to be the sturdy foundation in the ministry of this prolific evangelist.
Whitefield possessed, according to J. I. Packer, a “classic Augustinian frame of sovereign grace.”2 Historian Lee Gatiss, a compiler of Whitefield’s sermons, wrote that he was “a firm believer in the Reformed doctrine of salvation and Reformed biblical theology.”3 Another church historian, Mark Noll, concurred: “He preached on the bound will, the electing power of God, and the definite atonement—all themes of traditional Calvinism.”4 Though a strict Calvinist, Whitefield nevertheless derived his theological convictions, not from reading John Calvin, but from studying Scripture itself. The hours he spent poring over the Word led him to passionately embrace the clear teaching of sovereign grace in Scripture.
“I embrace the Calvinistic scheme, not because of Calvin, but Jesus Christ has taught it to me,”5 Whitefield said. In fact, he rarely mentioned Calvin in his letters or sermons. Rather, he relied, first and foremost, upon the plain testimony of Scripture. In an early letter to John Wesley in 1740, Whitefield wrote, “Alas, I never read anything that Calvin wrote; my doctrines I have from Christ and His apostles; I was taught them of God.”6 Whitefield read and studied God’s Word, and from it drew these deep convictions—the very same core beliefs that Calvin also upheld.
According to E. A Johnston, “To understand George Whitefield and what made him tick, we need to know his theology.”7 Further, “It is the motive which moved him.…The doctrines of grace gave him fire in the pulpit to cry out and warn men of the wrath to come and to flee from it into the loving arms of a wonderful Savior.”8 The theological convictions of Whitefield emboldened him in all that he practiced and proclaimed. From the beginning of his ministry, his adherence to the doctrines of grace laid the cornerstone upon which he built his entire ministry.
Contrary to the popular Calvinistic stereotype, Whitefield was not a stale, stoic intellectual with a dour approach to Christianity. He was fervently enlivened by the sovereign grace of God, which sparked an intense urgency in his gospel preaching. It was his belief in the doctrines of grace that propelled his gospel proclamation far and wide. The deeper Whitefield plunged into these sacred truths, the higher he ascended in his declaration of them. Writing to Howell Harris, a leader in the Welsh revival, Whitefield spoke of the need to preach God’s free, electing grace to his listeners, especially to the unconverted:
Put them in mind of the freeness and eternity of God’s electing love, and be instant with them to lay hold of the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ by faith. Talk to them, oh talk to them till midnight, of the riches of His all-sufficient grace. Tell them, oh tell them, what He has done for their souls, and how earnestly He is now interceding for them in heaven.…Press on them to believe immediately! Intersperse prayers with your exhortations, and thereby call down fire from heaven, even the fire of the Holy Ghost.…Speak every time, my dear brother, as if it were your last. Weep out, if possible, every argument, and as it were, compel them to cry, “behold how He loveth us!”9
Standing in strictest solidarity with the Reformers and Puritans, Whitefield asserted, “You know how strongly I assert all the doctrines of grace, as held forth in the Westminster Confession of Faith and the doctrinal articles of the Church of England. These I trust I shall adhere to as long as I live because I verily believe they are the truths of God, and have felt the power of them in my own heart.”10 In this, we see that Whitefield’s preaching was firmly rooted and grounded in the absolute supremacy of God in the salvation of fallen sinners. It was these towering truths, sometimes identified as the five points of Calvinism, that ignited his soul and empowered his history-altering preaching on two continents. To remove the doctrines of sovereign grace from Whitefield’s life and ministry would have been to extinguish the very fire in his bones.
In the centuries before Whitefield, Calvinistic theology dominated the landscape of English Christianity, from the reign of Elizabeth I until the end of the Commonwealth. However, by the eighteenth century, Reformed doctrine was in sharp decline. J. I. Packer explained, “Following the Restoration, many Anglican minds, recoiling from all things Calvinistic, took up with a moralistic, indeed legalistic, recasting of justification by faith.”11 Even the new colonies were already suffering from the plague of Arminianism and antinomianism. Harvard University, once a bastion of Calvinistic truth, had already succumbed to these debilitating, man-centered doctrines.
Whitefield is to be credited with assuming a leading role in the Calvinistic resurgence on both sides of the Atlantic. Instead of retreating into the shadows of a lifeless Christianity, Whitefield boldly promoted biblical Calvinism, which produces sound conversions, genuine revival, and authentic godliness. He maintained, “These are the doctrines which, when attended with a divine energy, and preached with power, always have, and always will…make their way through the world, however weak the instrument that delivers them may be.”12 Calvinism, Whitefield asserted, is that truth which propels God’s work in the world, wherever it is proclaimed.
In this chapter, we will consider Whitefield’s commitment to each of the five doctrines of grace. Whitefield drank deeply from the well of the doctrines of grace, and it proved to be the spring of all he believed and preached. Each tenet of Calvinism shaped and molded him into a zealous evangelist. When Whitefield stood to preach, he was gripped with an enormous confidence in God, believing His eternal purposes were moving forward with unalterable certainty.
Total Depravity
Whitefield held to the biblical doctrine of total depravity. This is the scriptural teaching that the original sin of Adam was imputed to the entire human race, condemning all subsequent generations. Likewise, the sin nature of Adam was transmitted to every person at the moment of their conception. Every faculty of every person—mind, affections, and will—is fatally plagued by sin. The entire fallen race cannot, by its own moral efforts, save itself. Neither does any sinful creature have faith to believe in Christ. Whitefield believed that man is utterly dead in sin, and his will is held captive in bondage.
R. Elliot, a prominent minister converted under Whitefield’s early ministry, outhned the great evangelist’s theological stance on total depravity: “He taught the Scripture doctrine of original sin, which consists in these two things: First, Adam’s personal offense imputed; and, second, the entire depravity of his fallen nature, imparted to all his seed.”13 Whitefield insisted upon the imputation of Adam’s sin to the entire human race: “By original sin I mean nothing less than the imputation of Adam’s first sin to all his posterity by ordinary generation…the consequence of which is, that inherent corruption of nature, and those sinful propensities, we are now born with into the world.”14 Whitefield considered this truth to be so important that he called original sin “the very foundation of the Christian religion.”15 He further affirmed that it “can never be denied by anyone who believes that St. Paul’s epistles were written by divine inspiration; where we are told that ‘in Adam all died,’ that is, Adam’s sin was imputed to all.”16 Precisely as Scripture teaches, Whitefield believed all people are, by nature, “sinners and children of wrath.”17
Whitefield maintained that original sin leaves the human race spiritually dead. Sinful man is morally incapable of eradicating himself of the sin that clings so tightly to his fallen nature. Man is radically depraved and unable to raise himself from the ash heap of his fallenness. To deny this biblical teaching, Whitefield held, “is nothing but a want of being well grounded”18 in Scripture. Those who refuse this truth may “call themselves Christians,”19 he said, but they are “so very lukewarm in their love and affections to Jesus Christ.”20 Whitefield believed that man rejects the teachings of original sin and total depravity due to inherent pride. Man does not like to be painted in such black colors or to be told he is incapable of lifting himself up if he so chooses.21
By their fallen nature, sinners rebel against the truth of original sin, Whitefield said, because they “obstinately shut their eyes against the light of the glorious gospel of Christ.”22 He explained:
That little children are guilty, I mean, that they are
conceived and born in sin, is plain from the whole
tenor of the Book of God. David was a man after
God’s own heart, yet, says he, “I was conceived in
sin.” Jeremiah, speaking of everyone’s heart, says “The
heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked above
all things.” God’s servants unanimously declare (and
Paul cites it from one of them) that “we are altogether
now become abominable, altogether gone out of the
way of original righteousness, there is not one of us
that doeth good (by nature), no not one.”23
Whitefield’s understanding of total depravity indelibly marked his preaching. Virtually every sermon Whitefield preached pointed man to his desperate condition in sin. He confronted his unconverted listeners: “You are in a state of damnation.…I tell thee, O man; I tell thee, O woman, whoever thou art, thou art a dead man, thou art a dead woman, nay a damned man, a damned woman, without a new heart.”24 He preached that man must acknowledge his utter helplessness before he can recognize the need to embrace Christ as his only hope.
Whitefield boldly pressed this truth upon his hearers. He reiterated that fallen man is born spiritually dead, estranged from Christ, and under the judgment and wrath of almighty God. “I affirm that we all stand in need of being justified, on account of the sin of our natures: for we are all chargeable with original sin, or the sin of our first parents,”25 he maintained. This sobering doctrine of total depravity loomed large within the theological framework of George Whitefield.
Unconditional Election
Whitefield likewise embraced the biblical doctrine of sovereign election. He maintained that before time began, God the Father freely chose those whom He would save out of the whole of the fallen race. These chosen ones were elected not on the basis of anything good foreseen in them, and certainly not for any foreseen faith in Christ. God chose to set His sovereign love upon certain individuals for reasons known only to Himself. Whitefield speaks of this truth as “a doctrine whereby God is eminently glorified and His people greatly edified and comforted.”26 He believed God has chosen a people by Himself and for Himself who are predestined to be saved by Christ.
Whitefield firmly held to the Reformed position on predestination. In this biblical view, from all eternity God decrees some to election and intervenes in their lives to work regeneration and faith by a divine act of grace, bringing them all to Himself in eternity future. Whitefield saw election as “the fountain from which all blessings flow.”27 He maintained that election “shines with such resplendent brightness that all the blessings they [believers] receive, all the privileges they do or will enjoy, through Jesus Christ, flow from the everlasting love of God the Father.”28
In a sermon titled “The Good Shepherd,” Whitefield preached, “We are His by eternal election: the sheep which Thou hast give Me, says Christ. They were given by God the Father to Christ Jesus, in the covenant made between the Father and the Son from all eternity.”29 Whitefield believed of this eternal contract, “that if He would obey and suffer, and make Himself a sacrifice for sin, He should see His seed, He should prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord should prosper in His hands.”30 This covenant is so immutably fixed in eternity past that all individuals elected by the Father to salvation were given to the Son to be His possession, never to be cast away.
In Whitefield’s day, as in ours, the doctrine of unconditional election remained a doctrine of disdain. However, Whitefield viewed this teaching with sheer delight and pleasure, seeing within it the shining of the glory of God. Rather than seeing it as an irrelevant detail, Whitefield believed election is a life-altering truth that produces humility: “I cannot see how true humbleness of mind can be attained without a knowledge of it; and though I will not say, that every one who denies election is a bad man, yet I will say…it is a very bad sign…for, if we deny election, we must, partly at least, glory in ourselves.”31 Those who do not adhere to this precious truth risk finding themselves in the dangerous bog of self-love and self-glory. Yet, Whitefield asserted, the one who embraces unconditional election relishes the glory of his sovereign Redeemer.
Whitefield was also convinced that the doctrine of election has great converting power. Far from seeing election as a stumbling block to evangelism, he said, “The Scriptural doctrine of election and predestination as we believe and preach it is no discouragement to sinners, no bar to any one’s conversion: for our warrant to come to Christ, is not God’s secret decree and purpose concerning us; but His inviting, calling and commanding us in His Word to repent and believe on Christ.”32 Whitefield certainly rejected the excuse “I cannot come to Christ and be saved, because I am not one of the elect.” God’s election, he affirmed, does not negate man’s responsibility to hear the countless invitations in Scripture to come and believe in Christ. Quite the contrary, sinners find great confidence in unconditional election because the one who believes and comes to Christ is found among God’s chosen ones.
God withholds from the non-elect this work of saving grace, passing them by and leaving them to themselves, a biblical truth known as reprobation. In an extended letter to John Wesley from Bethesda, Georgia, on December 24, 1740, Whitefield wrote, “Without doubt, the doctrine of election and reprobation must stand or fall together.…I believe the doctrine of reprobation, that God intends to give saving grace, through Jesus Christ, only to a certain number; and that the rest of mankind, after the fall of Adam, being justly left of God to continue in sin, will at last suffer that eternal death which is its proper wages.”33
Definite Atonement
Whitefield also championed the doctrine of definite atonement, also known as particular redemption. Lee Gatiss wrote, “Whitefield gloried in…particular redemption, or as it is sometimes known, definite or ‘limited atonement.’ This is the teaching that the Father’s election, the Son’s redemption, and the Spirit’s application of salvation are all coextensive; that God planned to save a certain people, His sheep…and sent His Son explicitly to achieve this goal.”34 God the Father designed the death of the Lord Jesus Christ with the specific purpose of saving His elect. Christ laid down His life for those whom the Father had given Him in eternity past. Simply put, Jesus died for His sheep, the chosen bride of Christ.
Definite atonement was an essential element in Whitefield’s explanation of the gospel. Whitefield declared, “There was an eternal compact between the Father and Son. A certain number was then given Him, as the purchase and reward of His obedience and death. For these He prayed, and not for this world. For these and these only, He is now interceding, and with their salvation, He will be fully satisfied.”35 His preaching flourished with such references to the eternal purpose of Christ’s death. In describing the cross, Whitefield proclaimed, “[Christ] was about to offer up His soul an offering for the sins of the elect.”36 Whitefield believed the extent of Christ’s death did not include the whole world, but only those whom the Father had chosen out of the world.
This remained Whitefield’s firm conviction to the end. In what would be his final sermon delivered on English soil, the great evangelist stated, “Christ purchased those whom He calls His own; He redeemed them with His own blood, so that they are not only His by eternal election, but also by actual redemption.”37 Whitefield grasped the indivisible union between sovereign election and particular redemption, a core belief he upheld throughout the entirety of his preaching ministry.
Conversely, Whitefield warned against a belief in a universal atonement, which inevitably leads to belief in the libertarian free will of man. He held that these two positions—universal redemption and free will—are inseparably bound together: “If universal redemption, taken in a literal sense, be admitted, the equally unscriptural notions of universal salvation, or justification by works, and salvation by man’s free will, together with that of the possibility of falling away from a state of grace, totally and finally, must unavoidably follow.”38 Whitefield insisted that preaching universal redemption causes a lost world to be hypnotized into a false sense of security and lulled into an unwarranted peace.
Many argue that definite atonement drains the energy out of evangelism. They contend that it makes gospel preaching meaningless. But a cursory examination of Whitefield’s sermons reveals the opposite. It is a false assumption to presume one cannot believe in the definite atonement of Christ and be a passionate gospel evangelist. Far from undermining his evangelism, particular redemption stoked the flames of Whitefield’s evangelistic zeal.39 He asserted, “[Christ] knows every one for whom He died; and if there were to be one missing for whom Christ died, God the Father would send Him down again from heaven to fetch him.”40 Whitefield freely offered the glorious good news of the cross of Christ as a sufficient sacrifice for all who would believe.
Such an unwavering belief did not annul Whitefield’s sense of responsibility to proclaim the gospel to everyone without discrimination. We can almost see his cheeks streaming with tears and hear his dramatic voice pleading with the throngs to come to Christ. In his sermon on the conversion of Zaccheus, Whitefield exclaimed:
There, there, by faith, O mourners in Zion, may you
see your Savior hanging with arms stretched out, and
hear Him, as it were, thus speaking to your souls;
“Behold how I have loved you! Behold My hands and
My feet! Look, look into My wounded side, and see
a heart flaming with love; love stronger than death.
Come into My arms, O sinners, come wash your
spotted souls in My heart’s blood.”41
Unquestionably, George Whitefield presented the atoning sacrifice of Christ as applicable to all who would come to Him for salvation.
Efficacious Call
Whitefield further preached that all those chosen by the Father and redeemed by the Son would be regenerated by the Holy Spirit. The saving work of Christ on the cross is applied by the effectual call of the Holy Spirit. He held that the third person of the Trinity would convict the elect sinner, efficaciously draw him to Christ, and grant the gifts of true repentance and faith.
As Whitefield preached the gospel, he believed certain listeners would be divinely enabled to respond to the gospel call. He maintained that “they must be regenerated, they must be born again, they must be renewed in the very spirit, in the inmost faculties of their minds, before they can truly call Christ, ‘Lord, Lord.’”42 Whitefield believed that regeneration is monergistic, an exclusive work of God in the human heart that both precedes and produces saving faith. When God exercises this sovereign grace in the human soul, Whitefield understood, the Spirit always secures the effect that He intends.
According to R. Elliot, Whitefield believed “man has no power or will at all to effect his own conversion, it being the entire work of God’s Spirit.”43 Since man is born spiritually dead, there is absolutely nothing he can do to bring salvation to his soul, independent of the Spirit. The will of every man is imprisoned in sin and bound by Satan, and cannot break free unless the Holy Spirit liberates him to believe in Christ. Therefore, the beginning, middle, and end of the new birth are entirely the work of the triune God, for which He is to receive all honor and glory in salvation.
Elliot continued, “Whitefield also very consistently maintained that the grace of God in the conversion of a sinner is irresistible; and indeed he who denies it cannot truly believe that man is entirely fallen.”44 As Whitefield preached to the unconverted masses, he acknowledged that the Spirit must cause sinners to believe: “O that He may call you by His Spirit, and make you a willing people in this day of His power! For I know my calling will not do, unless He, by His efficacious grace, compel you to come in.”45 Whitefield was not saying that man cannot resist the outward call to come to Christ in salvation. The history of the world is filled with the story of man’s opposition to the call of the gospel. But he nevertheless believed that God by His inward call can overcome such resistance within the heart of the elect. The Spirit must open their ears to the Savior’s effectual call to faith.
Knowing that no sinner can cause his own regeneration, Whitefield would urge the unconverted to pray that God would give them a new heart and the faith to believe: “O that I could see some of you sensible of this, and hear you cry out, ‘Lord, break this hard heart; Lord, deliver me from the body of this death; draw me, Lord, make me willing to come after Thee; I am lost; Lord, save me, or I perish!’”46 He asserted that unbelieving sinners must ask God to make them willing to believe in Christ.
Likening the unregenerate man to the lifeless state of a corpse, Whitefield declared, “The sinner can no more raise himself from the deadness of sin than Lazarus, who had been dead four days, until Jesus came and cried out, ‘Lazarus, come forth.’”47 When the Holy Spirit calls sinners to come forth from the dead, they are made new creatures in Christ. Resurrected from their fallen state, their hearts of stone are supernaturally re-created as hearts of flesh.
Preserving Grace
Finally, Whitefield upheld the biblical doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. The work of sovereign grace does not end at conversion. What God in the corridors of eternity past had predestined to take place, He will bring to completion in eternity future. Whitefield was convinced that God brings all His chosen ones to future glory. Those whom God elects and brings to salvation will be preserved by grace, both in time and eternity. Those whom God saves, He saves forever. They will never fall away. They will never perish.
Elliot articulated Whitefield’s position on this doctrine of preserving grace: “He taught and maintained the final perseverance of the saints: not indeed by the power of their own free will, nor by virtue of their own faithfulness, but by the power and faithfulness of God; for whom He justified, them He also glorified, Romans 8:30.”48 This final link in the golden chain of salvation ensures the eternal security of all elect believers.
This doctrine brought great joy to Whitefield throughout his Christian life and ministry. In addressing John 10:28—“I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand”—Whitefield exhorted, “O that the words may come to your hearts with as much warmth and power as they did to mine thirty-five years ago.”49 To Whitefield, the perseverance of the saints is the grand crescendo in the symphony of God’s plan of salvation: “Some talk of being justified at the day of judgment; that is nonsense; if we are not justified here, we shall not be justified there.”50 He believed justification by faith alone is a finished transaction, settled forever at the moment of conversion.
To those who said that justification is finalized on the last day, Whitefield replied that they built on shifting sand: “Because the creature thereby is taught, that his being kept in a state of salvation is owing to his own free-will. And what a sandy foundation is that for a poor creature to build his hopes of perseverance upon!”51 Eternal security is the bedrock truth upon which all true believers build. “He holds them in His hand, that is, He holds them by His power; none shall pluck them thence,”52 he said. This was the strong gospel message Whitefield offered the multitudes, a gospel that justifies immediately and forever.
Whitefield was bewildered that any believer could doubt or deny the final perseverance of the saints: “I am astonished any poor souls, and good people I hope too, can fight against the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.”53 Such a doctrinal fallacy stands in direct contradiction to the larger body of biblical truth. With a sense of finality, Whitefield said, “The gifts and callings of God are without repentance. Whom He loves, I am persuaded, He loves to the end.”54 This deep conviction and sure confidence in Whitefield empowered his preaching.
On December 24, 1740, while in Bethesda, Georgia, Whitefield answered his friend John Wesley regarding their controversy surrounding the doctrines of grace. In addition to promoting a synergistic regeneration, where God and man must cooperate in the new birth, Wesley explicitly denied the perseverance of the saints. In his famous letter, Whitefield countered, “This doctrine is my daily support: I should utterly sink under a dread of my impending trials, was I not firmly persuaded that God has chosen me in Christ from before the foundation of the world, and that now being effectually called, He will suffer none to pluck me out of His almighty hand.”55 This is the great significance Whitefield placed upon the eternal security of all believers, a doctrine of foundational importance.
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The evangelistic zeal of George Whitefield was securely anchored to the doctrines of grace. Whitefield understood that he stood in a long line of godly men who down through the centuries held to divine sovereignty in human salvation. In his biographical account of Whitefield, Stephen Mansfield wrote of such convictions, “Whitefield felt himself standing with Paul and Augustine, Calvin and Luther.”56 Regarding these biblical doctrines, Whitefield knew he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with such other notable figures as John Knox, John Owen, Matthew Henry, John Bunyan, and his contemporaries Jonathan Edwards and John Newton. This great evangelist spoke with one voice alongside these luminaries and countless others down through the centuries.
These grand truths came with great sanctifying power within Whitefield’s own soul. Mansfield noted:
For Whitefield, predestination was the greatest reason
for humility, obedience, and gratitude.…How glorious that preaching is the privilege of harvesting what
a man has not planted and cannot grow! This was the
glory of Calvinism and Whitefield reveled in it: the
freedom from works, the assurance of grace, and the
boldness of a man held by God.57
It could be said of what Whitefield believed and preached, “It was Calvinism aflame and Whitefield carried it passionately to the nations.”58 This he did perhaps better than any who ever lived.
With ardent desire to see Christ exalted, Whitefield wrote a letter to a friend that best summarized his deep convictions:
The doctrines of our election and free justification in
Christ Jesus…fill my soul with a holy fire and afford
me great confidence in God my Saviour. I hope we
shall catch fire from each other and that there shall be
a holy emulation amongst us who shall most debase
man and exalt the Lord Jesus. Nothing but the Reformation can do this.…I know that Christ is all in all.
Man is nothing: he hath a free will to go to hell, but
none to go to heaven, till God worketh in him to will
and do of His good pleasure.59
May God restore these transcendent truths in His church again. May He usher in another Great Awakening in these days. As Whitefield stated, nothing but the biblical doctrines of the Reformation can do this.