Jesus Saves! But How? PART 11 Effectual Calling

Andrew Grey continues with the adult Sunday School teaching on salvation. This topic is on Effectual Calling, and is from Sunday 1st March 2026.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

How did you become a Christian? And it's a really encouraging thing to think about the circumstances in which you came to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, maybe the humans, the human agents that the Lord used in your life, what you were moved to do, how you were moved to turn from sin to Jesus and place your faith in him. Different ones of us, we will kind of have different memories of that. Some of us will remember a very distinct period in time, moving from disbelief and rebellion against Christ to faith and repentance. For others of us, you know, for example, me, I am a covenant child, I grew up in a Christian family, I grew up in the grace of God, I can't remember the moment when I crossed from death to life. I don't have a conscious remembrance of that, though I know that happened at some point or other. If when we were when we were talking about how we became a Christian, if we only talked about, if you like, the human agents in that, so people who shared the gospel, who witnessed with their lives, if we only talked about or reflected on our work in that, you know, repenting and believing, we will have missed the ultimate reason behind how I became a Christian. That's what we're thinking about today. So the handout uh it's headed Irresistible Grace and Effectual Calling. Now it's a bit it's a bit of a mouthful, but it's actually a really wonderful mouthful. Hopefully a really encouraging one as we can continue to unpack the Bible's story of salvation. So Jesus saves, but how? So I'm gonna pray and then we'll get going. Uh Father in heaven, we thank you for a wonderful saviour and a wonderful gospel. Uh we ask that you would both uh teach our minds and encourage our hearts as we learn and reflect on your wonderful deeds in bringing people from death to life in Jesus. Amen. Amen. In your Bibles, please would you open Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8. And in our Black Church Bibles, if you've got one of them, we are on page 944. Thank you. Page 944. So let me read from Romans chapter 8 and verse 28 down to the end of the chapter. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died more than that who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written, for your sake we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor anything present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Well, thanks be to God for his wonderful word to us. Before we dive into our specific topic, I want us to think for a moment about how God applies the salvation that Jesus has won to his people. In that reading, if we particularly look at just verses 28, 29, and 30, we can see in there what is sometimes called the golden chain of salvation. It ranges from eternity past to eternity future. So here we read, you know, foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified. It's like a complete package deal of salvation. So for the one who is in Christ, well, God is committed to you, and you are bound to him from eternity past to eternity future. And salvation, it's a wonderful series of acts and processes in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. And there is an order to it. And from this passage and from others in the Bible, we can kind of list the different elements in God's great salvation. And I put them down there on the handout. So this is this is thinking about how God applies to a person, a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, all that Jesus won in his obedient life, in his dying on the cross, his rising, his ascension, and his heavenly rule. So there's predestination, effectual calling. That's what we're thinking about today. Regeneration, conversion, justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification. Now there are lots of long words there, lots of long words that end in shun. Now we have a our children grew up singing a wonderful song. It's called Big Words That End in Shun. Tell us what the Lord has done. And so much is packed into each of these words. They're like a zip file, and you press on them, and there's a different aspect of God's glory and God's goodness, which He gives to us. When you look at that list, there is a chronological aspect to it, you know, time. Predestination obviously happens at the beginning, you know, in eternity past. Glorification happens at the end. So there is a time aspect. But when you look at all of those words that come in the middle, they're actually very difficult to distinguish chronologically. Pretty much they happen simultaneously when a person is converted, when God saves a person and converts them. We can distinguish a logical order in them, though we're not really going to talk about that, but not really a chronological one. Last time we thought about predestination, and our topic today is God's effectual call. Now, when we talk about God's call or a call, what are we talking about? We're not talking about naming someone. No, he's called Fred. Not talking about that. We're not talking about vocation. God has called me to be an accountant. We're talking about the call to salvation. But even here, the Bible distinguishes two different calls. There is an external call. So God issues a call upon people through the proclamation of the gospel. This is a call that comes to our to our ears. So imagine a preacher addressing a crowd or a friend sharing the gospel, speaking the good news of Jesus to someone, and that call it comes to their ears. It's an external call, and not everyone who hears with their ears exercises faith in Christ. We know that, don't we? So Jesus will say things like Matthew 22, many are called, few are chosen. So many hear with their ears, not everyone hears with the ears of their hearts. Because actually, our hearts have got eyes and ears as well. We're talking about an internal call, and one that cannot be resisted. Sometimes it's called irresistible grace. And it's this that we're thinking on this morning, what it means and why it matters. So there at the bottom of the first page of the handout, there's a definition from a guy called Robert Raymond, which we'll put on the table. It's quite a lot of bits to it, but we'll kind of work it through and uh flesh it out as we go along. So, by the regenerating work of his spirit, God the Father irresistibly summons, normally in conjunction with the church's proclamation of the gospel, the elect sinner into fellowship with and into the kingdom of his son, Jesus Christ. His call is rendered effectual by the quickening, the enlivening work of the Spirit of God, as the Father, as God the Father and God the Son work in the hearts of the elect. So this thing, effectual calling, it's connected to regeneration. That's our topic for next week: being born again. It's so important, we're going to spend a session on it next week. This is the irresistible summons of God the Father to fellowship with Christ, and that call is rendered effectual, it actually works because of the Spirit. And it's usually achieved through certain means. So the way that God brings people to Himself is through the proclamation of the gospel. So it's as the gospel is preached by the church and by Christian people in different contexts that God works inside of people to call them to himself. Now, usually that's the case. So, for example, God is free to do things in other ways. What about, for example, elect infants dying in infancy, or elect people who are mentally unable to understand the gospel? Well, God is free. The Spirit can blow wherever and however he wills. But this is how he ordinarily brings people from death to life. And this call, it is an enacting of God's decree of predestination. So the elect sinner was chosen in Christ before the creation of the world. Which is another way of saying that when God plans something, all of his plans actually come to fruition. I mean, there is another one of the wonderful differences and glories between us and him. We plan and, well, who knows? God plans, his plans come to fruition. He decides in his mysterious and sovereign will, I'm going to save such and such a person, and I'm going to do it on such and such a day in such and such a way, and that happens always. So, turn over to the second side of the handout. Let's think a bit a little bit more about this call. We should think of God's call, this internal call, as being like a summons. So that is the action by which God makes his people receivers or sharers in the redemption that Jesus has won. It's through a summons. Now I don't know if any of you have ever been summonsed to court. Don't put your hand in the air. A court summons will not necessarily get us physically into court. Whether you turn up, it depends on your own strength or will. Maybe whether the summons was accompanied by a large policeman, that would help as well, wouldn't it? God's summons is different, it has a built-in effectiveness. So when God summons a person, it cannot fail to achieve its purpose. So when that call is issued to a person, he or she will receive the blessings of salvation. Now remember some of the things that we've learned so far in our studies. God's call, it must be effective, mustn't it? Because of the state that we are in. God summons, it must be efficacious because we're dead in sin. So if we're if we're dead in sin, I don't know, imagine a dead dog floating in a river downstream. That dog cannot just sort of uh enliven itself and swim upstream against the current. That's that's kind of our spiritual plight. Uh it must be efficacious. Uh, we cannot do anything to save ourselves. But wonderfully, the will of God cannot fail. I've put on the handout there a couple of verses from Isaiah chapter 55, which are just wonderful, both as you reflect on what has happened to you, if you're a Christian person, but also as we think about the work that God is doing in the world. Just listen. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. So maybe we sometimes feel discouraged as we see the external call, and we are involved in the external call, but there is also an internal call, an absolutely certain, assured, and powerful work which God, the Holy Spirit, is doing as his word goes out. He summons men and women and boys and girls to himself. And what what they, what we are called to, well, I've just listed some of the things that the call achieves from the pages of the New Testament, fellowship with Christ. We're called out of something and into something, out of darkness and into his marvelous light. We're called into his kingdom and into his glory. We're called to the final marriage supper of the Lamb. So that's where all things are going. When we get to see Christ face to face, we get to see our God, it's in the context of a celebration and a feast and of everlasting joy. We are called to eternal life. And at its very root, eternal life, it's not just existence, it is a knowing God perfectly and forever. And once a person is called, so once a person, um, so when when you when you experience that golden chain, if you like, from Romans 8, you cannot be decalled, if I can put it like that. You cannot fall out of fellowship with this sovereign God once he has called you to it. So a little bit later on in Romans, Paul says this, he says, God's gifts and God's call are irrevocable, cannot be revoked. And that is a joyous thing. Who calls us? We've sort of said this already, but it's worth spelling this out explicitly. We do not call ourselves any more than we predestine ourselves or adopt ourselves into the family of God or we justify ourselves. No, salvation is God's sovereign work, it's his powerful work. And that's true at the moment of its planning in the past, in eternity, when it's objectively accomplished through the work of the Saviour as Jesus lives and dies and rises, and it's his sovereign work in application. Um, he does it all. It's really clear, isn't it, in Romans 8 29. Who is the actor in this verse? Who is the doer? Well, it's he, isn't it? It's the Lord who foreknows and predestines and so on. So, with respect to God's call, we are altogether passive. He is active, we are altogether passive and completely passive until God does a work in us that enables us to respond to his call. We're going to think a little bit more about that in just a moment. And this work, it is a work of God, the Holy Trinity. We've seen that already. It's all of God's works, actually. They're undivided, they are done by the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. They may be done in slightly different ways. Each person of the Trinity has a proper work to do. But they are a united work. So the Father, he calls us into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. 1 Corinthians 1, verse 9. And he does so through the Spirit. 2 Thessalonians 2, 13 and 14. But we are always to thank God for you, brothers, loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. You can see there, really, all of the elements of God, Father, Son, and Spirit in His work of calling people to Himself through the gospel. Now, a question that this might prompt us to ask. When we're talking about God effectually calling someone, or we're talking about the irresistible grace of God. So this is grace that cannot be resisted, that a person cannot say no to. Is God forcing a Christian to do something against his or her will? You might be able to see why someone might ask that question, because it's an effective call. It's a call that actually does not have rejection as an option. It's irresistible grace. Is it a kind of coercion, therefore? God is forcing someone, kicking and screaming, into salvation with Christ. Now, to some of us, I suspect many of us, when you put it like that, that might almost seem like a ridiculous question. You've been brought from death to life. We've been learning, actually, that we, as human beings, we don't have absolutely free will and orders God for that matter. And in a sense, who cares how we have come to be a Christian? I mean, it's just that it's just such a wonderful and a joyous thing. Well, who cares really how we got here? However, it is worth just dwelling on this just for a moment. Um, both for the sake of our minds and our understanding, but also just as we reflect on other corners of the wider church. Sometimes reformed doctrine or Calvinist doctrine is caricatured a bit as I've kind of just described it. You know, someone is dragged, kicking and screaming, into the kingdom of God and being compelled to do something they don't want to do, or kind of turned into a robot. Now, the Bible does not teach that at all. We thought about that a little bit last week in our question time when we thought when we thought about the kind of free will that humans do and do not possess. But when it comes to God's effectual call, the key thing to remember is this God transforms the human will. God transforms the Christian's will. So he comes to a person in saving grace, and we are dead, we are enslaved, we are condemned, and in his kindness, his saving grace penetrates our will and regenerates it. And the Christian goes from being enslaved, unable to choose Christ, unable to repent and believe, very content in unbelief and sin, and he frees our wills. So the Christian has a born-again will. Now, what do we mean when we talk about the word will? We're talking about our choosing and our desiring faculty. So when you go over to the cake table in a few minutes' time and you think to yourself, I like the look of that, I will choose it, or I would have liked the look of that, but the children have eaten it all. So what is going on there? That is our choosing and desiring faculty at work. That is our will. And that's actually how God has built us. You know, to desire things and to act upon our desires. Now, obviously, sin screws all of that up. We have the wrong desires or overmuch desires, or we act in the wrong way. And actually, until you get converted, you can't act fundamentally toward Christ as we ought. But wonderfully, that slavery to sin is undone in the work of conversion. So God's powerful grace penetrates our wills and recreates us. We're going to think about that so much more next week when we think about regeneration. Or what it means to be born again. It is not a small thing when God makes someone into a Christian. But the simple point I want us to see here is that God's irresistible grace changes the human will. And if you just flip over to the back of the handout, just a next kind of stage building on this, through the Holy Spirit's ongoing work, the regenerate person therefore chooses to believe. So the born-again will is enabled by God to believe. All of a sudden, we see the goodness of the gospel. We see that Christ is wonderful, his person and his work, he is lovely and he is desirable, and we desire him. And in this, we are not passive. So the only part of the work of salvation where we do something, it's here. It's in repenting and believing. And again, we're going to think about that in two weeks' time. Repentance and faith. But this is the work of the Holy Spirit in us. It's the work of the Spirit who enables us to do this, to choose Christ. And then the born-again person carried along by the Spirit will continue to believe and trust and follow the Saviour. It's actually a really encouraging thing when we just reflect on well, what is the origin of my repentance and belief? The life of repentance and faith is a hard life, isn't it? There are ups and downs. You feel your own weakness in it. You sometimes wonder to yourself, will I keep repenting and believing? Well, this actually assures us that the work of repentance and faith, though we are utterly active in it, it is an empowered work. And it does not, and it never happens independently of God. I think sometimes, uh Christian people, we probably get this wrong. We maybe imagine a cooperation with God, whereby we think maybe it's 50% God and 50% us. Or maybe it's 90% God and 10% us, and we quite rightly think to ourselves, well, in that in that bit of our work, there is every possibility that it's going to go wrong. And if that was me, independently of the work of the Spirit and the work of God, it would inevitably fall and fail. But our repenting and believing does not happen independently of God's. Now, I hope that's really encouraging for us as we just think about our own repenting, believing, and persevering, but also as we think about our gospel sharing. So when we involve ourselves in that external call, you know, when we we try and show to someone from the Bible how good and true and powerful uh the Lord Jesus is, and we we tell them, you know, with the authority of Christ to repent and believe, well, we can be encouraged mightily with the preaching of the gospel, the sharing of the gospel, that is the way that the Lord has chosen to do the internal work. So we are involved at the level of the external call. We cannot change other people's hearts, not our business, not our power, but he has chosen in his goodness to kind of join these two things together, and we wonderfully share in that. On the bottom of the uh handout, I've put uh the chapter from the Westminster Confession, which is called Effectual Calling. Now that the term effectual calling, it comes from uh the 16th century, and when the Westminster Confession were writing about this, this is what they titled chapter 10. Let me just read this, it's a really good summary. All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, he is pleased in his appointed and accepted time effectually to call by his word and spirit out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ, enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God, taking away their heart of stone and giving unto them a heart of flesh, renewing their wills, and by his almighty power determining them to that which is good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ, yet so as they come most freely being made willing by his grace. It's wonderful, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 27:16

A really nice example of this. Sometimes it can feel a bit theoretical. Um I love in Acts chapter 16 where Paul goes to Philippi and he chapter Lydia and she becomes a Christian, and this verse, um, Acts 16, verse 14, just says, The Lord Jesus opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul and she becomes a Christian. And in that one verse, you've got Paul's job, which is confirmation. Lydia's job is to pay attention, but actually it's God's Jesus' work opening our hearts to three actors in one sentence, kind of showing us this stuff going on. Everyone has a role to play, but actually Jesus is behind it.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Should we just have a really quick look at that verse? Thank you so much for sharing that. Yes, that's such a lovely example. Just let's just look at that verse, read it, and it's all boiled down into about 20 words. So Acts 16, 14. So uh, one who heard us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshipper of God. That is to say, she was a she was uh Jewish or a gentile follower of the Jewish faith. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. Yeah, so Paul speaks, she pays attention how the Lord opened her heart. Yeah, it's good news, isn't it? Anyone else want to chip in? Abraham. How do we think about the works of the Trinity in salvation? What are their distinct works? The works of God the Holy Trinity reflect the being of God the Holy Trinity, so how he is affects what he does. So God is one and his works are one. So we should think about the inseparable works of the Father, Son, and Spirit. So that's one thing. When we then go to think about the proper works, so for example, the Father is thought of as the agent of adoption, he is the one who sends the Son into the world. Um, the Lord Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, is the one who accomplishes redemption, you know, the business of uh living as an obedient second Adam, dying on the cross, being raised, uh, and so on. That's the work of God the Son. God the Holy Spirit is uh particularly associated with the work of applying redemption and you know regenerating people. So there are certain works that scripture would seem to associate with particular persons of the Trinity, but we should never think that they are working independently. So even when we read about God the Father doing something, he is not doing that apart from God the Son and God the Spirit. Even when the Lord Jesus, so when God the Son in his human nature was crucified, um he was not on the cross suffering and dying without the Father and without the Spirit. So I think those are just two principles which you have to hold together. I can say it's say a little bit more, I'll give you a book to read, but I think those are probably the key principles to hold together. God does a work, and there is work that we do. I guess what's your your question, in a sense, all we're thinking about here is how do those two things work together? Um one of the wonderful things, being in a relationship with a sovereign God, the Christians is not left passive. There is so much that we do. So the preacher, be it from a pulpit or trying to share the gospel around the table with a friend, we are active in that. But I guess where where does our desire to share the gospel come from? Answer, God gives that to us, he enables that. Uh, when it comes to someone responding as a non-believer to the gospel and coming to repentance in faith, they must repent and believe. It's a command and an obligation, they must do it. But I think what I'm trying to try to help us understand is that that ability and desire does not come from within ourselves. God has to give us that desire. So the confession, chapter 10, was quoting Ezekiel, has that wonderful illustration of a heart of stone being turned into a heart of flesh. I think maybe if we just remembered one thing today, it would be that image and that scripture. Human beings, we have stony hearts. We are absolutely impervious to the gospel, and we have no ability or desire in and of ourselves to respond to it. We are that dead. We have hearts of stone. And what God wonderfully does in the gospel is actually give us hearts of flesh. That is truly spiritually living, beating, and responding hearts. Um, so I guess that you know this the sovereignty of God and the activity of man, they're not they're not opposed to each other, but we would I think we'd do well just to realise just quite how binary this is. Heart of stone to heart of flesh. It's not a bit of God and a bit of me, it's it's all of God enabling me to respond with all I am to him. It's it is quite a hard thing to wrap our heads around, but it's also a wonderful thing. I reckon we should uh pause there. Can I just encourage us where we are with your neighbour? Turn and pray. There are big things here too, chiefly I think, to thank and praise God for. It'd be good to just respond in twos and threes in praise and thanksgiving. Go pray.