Reflections on John Murray's “Some Necessary Emphases in Preaching”

James Ritchey

There are many books written on the subject of preaching, and it seems that there are countless ways to improve one’s preaching. One excellent, short and overlooked essay is John Murray’s “Some Necessary Emphases in Preaching.”1 I’d like to recount Murray’s emphases and offer a few brief reflections.

The first emphasis Murray highlights is “The Ministry of Judgment.”2 Murray explains, “By this is meant particularly the proclamation of the judgment of God upon sin. There is, of course, no preaching of the gospel, even in the broadest evangelical sense, that does not involve some proclamation of this judgment.”3 In order to properly understand the Gospel message, in other words, we must understand the “demands and terrors of God’s law.”4 It is the case that understanding the weight of sin enables us to understand just what it is we have been freed and delivered from. And it is important to highlight the reality of the law of God and the judgment of God toward sin and lawbreaking in order that those outside of Christ may truly have a sense of their need of the Gospel. Crucial to the task of preaching is emphasis on the gravity of God’s holiness and justice. In grasping this truly, we can highlight the beauty of the free grace of God the Gospel and the wonder of Christ’s active obedience and His substitutionary death for sinners.

The second emphasis to which Murray directs his readers is “The Free Offer of the Gospel.”5 Surely as ARP ministers, the free offer is of great importance to us as it is at the very foundation of our denomination. But far too often, it is our temptation to leave evangelistic preaching to the side and to shy away from the free offer of the Gospel. We need to be constantly urging and pleading with men and women and children to take hold of Jesus Christ. There is nothing about our Calvinism that gravitates against the free Gospel offer.6 We adhere to divine sovereignty, and that ought to embolden us all the more to hold out the offer of Christ to all within our midst. Murray writes, “It is a grave sin against Christ and his gospel not to realize that it is precisely the definiteness of the redemption which he accomplished that grounds and validates the fulness and freeness with which he is offered to all men in the unrestricted overtures of his grace. And if we have any reserve or lack of spontaneity in offering Christ to lost men and in presenting the claims which inhere in the glory of his person and the perfection of his finished work, then it is because we have a distorted conception of the relation which the sovereignty of God sustains to the free offer of Christ in the gospel. It is on the crest of the wave of the divine sovereignty that the full and free overtures of God’s grace in Christ break upon the shores of lost humanity. But not only so. If we fail to appreciate what the free offer of the gospel is, and if we fail to present this free offer with freedom and spontaneity, with passion and urgency, then we are not only doing dishonour to Chrsit and his glory but we are also choking those who are the candidates of saving faith.”7 May we be Calvinists in the truest sense of the word, and may we never be held back from proclaiming the offer of Christ for fear due to distorted understandings of election.

The third emphasis is “Self-examination.”8 Murray notes that there is a “danger of morbid introspection,”9 and that “Piety feeds on Christ,”10 rather than self. While we should heed this warning, nevertheless Murray writes that this “does not eliminate the necessity or rightness of self-examination.”11 We must fix ourselves first and foremost on Christ and His finished work, but we must also examine ourselves and our hearts. And according to Murray, we need to have a keen awareness of the grace of God that has been shown us in Jesus. He writes, “The low ethical and spiritual plane on which true Christians often live finds its explanation in the failure to bring within explicit consciousness the status that belongs to them by God’s grace in Christ and the hope of the promise in the gospel.”12 As we examine ourselves, we must keep an eye toward the Gospel. A greater understanding of the Gospel will fuel holy lives and lead to a greater self-awareness.

And this leads us into Murray’s fourth emphasis, which is “The High Demands of the Christian Vocation.”13 Oftentimes there is confusion regarding the Christian life and personal holiness, but this can and should be addressed in our pulpits. Never shrinking back from the Gospel of God’s free grace in Jesus Christ, we ought to demonstrate also how the grace of God changes His people and helps them in their calling to live as His people. Murray writes, “The vocation with which believers are called is a high, holy, and heavenly vocation in its origin, character, and destiny.”14 If there is a high calling placed upon us to live before the face of God, then we must seek to present before our people an understanding and awareness of how the Christian life is to be lived. Our pulpits must ring loud and clear with the reality of the gracious redemption found in our Savior Jesus Christ, and we ought to long and pray that lost sinners be saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. And as Christ redeems sinners, we ought to seek to help His redeemed people understand the grace of God at work within them to make them more like Jesus. We should be encouraging our people to lives of holiness lived in dependence upon the Spirit of God.

Murray concludes his essay by highlighting the unity of these four emphases: “The first is directed to the end of inducing that conviction of sin which is the prerequisite of faith, the second to the eliciting of faith itself as an act of commitment to the proffered Saviour, the third to the end of making believers self-consciously so, and the fourth to the end of cultivating the duties and virtues of the high and holy and heavenly vocation.”15 If we maintain these notes in our preaching, it will be both evangelistic and edifying; it will be both aimed at an understanding of justification and of sanctification. May we always seek to proclaim the full counsel of God and to do so with the aim of God’s glory and the edification of Christ’s church.

1 John Murray, Collected Writings of John Murray Vol. 1: The Claims of Truth (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1976, 2015), 143-151. 2 Ibid, 143.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid, 145.
6 For more full treatments of this subject, see Donald Macleod, Compel Them to Come In: Calvinism and the Free Offer of the Gospel (Fearn: Christian Focus Publications, 2020) and Donald John Maclean, All Things Are Ready: Understanding the Gospel in its Fullness and Freeness (Fearn: Christian Focus Publications, 2021). 7 Ibid, 146-147. 8 Ibid, 147. 9 Ibid.
10 Ibid, 148. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid, 149. 13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid, 150.