All preachers need to pray that on the day of judgment, like both Paul and Ezekiel’s watchmen on the wall, they may be declared free from the blood of all men because they did not shrink from declaring the whole counsel of God. 

In my 50 years as a preacher my gift in the ministry was being able to go into a non-reformed church and turn it into a congregation where the consensus view of the congregation was Calvinism. My goal was to move them from free-will Arminianism to the Doctrines of Grace (and a proper view of the Covenant).  I tried to be slow, loving, and methodical over a period of years in each church.  Once the elders of the church had made the transition to Calvinism, it was rather easy to transform the congregation.  I took some pride in having taught “the whole counsel of God.”

However, in the midst of all of this, and upon further reflection upon the Scriptures, I concluded that the whole counsel of God was more than just the five points of Calvinism.  I think in Paul’s mind “the whole counsel of God” captured the necessity of preaching to men that they must flee from all sin to Christ.  The man of God must not avoid preaching about repentance from any sin in particular.  In Acts 20:26-28 Paul uses his proclamation of “the whole counsel of God” as a reason for his being free from the blood of all men.

In the Old Testament the same phrase was used to warn the watchmen of the house of Israel to identify all sin, and to preach that all men should flee from their wickedness.  If men failed to repent after hearing the truth, then their own blood was on their hands.  If the watchman failed to warn the people about their sin, then their blood was on his hands (Ezekiel 3:16-21).

So, even though I had a church full of Calvinists, if I had not preached against all sin, I really had not preached the whole counsel of God.  Whether those sins be adultery, fornication, drunkenness, gossip, a lack of male headship in the home, or the sin of sorcery, I must not avoid preaching about any transgression of God’s Law, even if such preaching stirred up the anger of the people against me.

Later, I even expanded my scope of the meaning of the “whole counsel of God.”  If I did not preach about the national sins in our country, then I was failing to preach the whole counsel of God.  Some might say I was messing with politics!  I preached a lot about the sins in our nation, and never really ran into a problem with my Calvinist congregations.

Even now, I preach (and write) on topics like abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, cultural Marxism, identity theology, the social justice gospel, envy, income inequality, Christian education, the nature of a just war, penology and biblical restitution, honest weights and measures (money), and other such topics.  Martin Luther, the great Reformation preacher said, “If you preach the gospel in all aspects with the exception of the issues that deal with your time, you are not preaching the gospel at all.”

All preachers need to pray that on the day of judgment, like both Paul and Ezekiel’s watchmen on the wall, they may be declared free from the blood of all men because they did not shrink from declaring the whole counsel of God.

Larry E. Ball is a retired minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is now a CPA. He lives in Kingsport, Tennessee.