3. Everyone can afford free.
This point is another angle on the previous one. The focus there is on the whosoever-ness of faith. The present point is the free-ness of grace.
If grace is free, then it is the market for everyone who can’t pay, and everyone cannot pay. Every human being fits that bill. And, therefore, because every human owns the criterion of emptiness, every human is in the condition to hear the offer of free grace. Every soul is thirsty, every soul is broken, and so it goes for every soul when God says, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price” (Isaiah 55:1).
Grace, in this sense, is the great equalizer. It is the only way that anyone can be reconciled to God. The kid who grows up in church, nourished by a gospel-centered stay-at-home mom, and the strung-out crack addict downtown—if they will belong to God, it will happen by the same way: grace, grace, grace.
We Invite Everyone
These three reasons explain why we invite everyone to believe the gospel. But the root of these reasons is in what Jesus did. We offer this news to everyone because of the foundational certainty that Jesus accomplished. John Piper captures it well:
By his death and resurrection, Jesus has acted out God’s discriminating, definite electing, regenerating, faith-creating, every-promise-guaranteeing, new-covenant love, and thus has purchased and secured irreversibly for his elect everything needed to bring them from deadness in sin to everlasting, glorified life and joy in the presence of God (Does God Desire All to Be Saved? 54).
Because we don’t know who will or won’t believe, because Jesus can save anybody, because everyone can afford free, today this gospel goes to everyone.
