Everybody receives calls regularly. Obviously, some calls are more important than others. None, however, is more important than the one each of us receives from God – that’s what I said, all of us. In listening to Romans 1:1-7 this morning, and in contemplation on thereon, I am reminded that people are all “called” by God. Paul writes in verse 1, “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God . . .” Notice the word, “called.”
Jesus told us in what is probably the most well-known passage of the New Testament, John 3:16-19.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only [or only begotten] Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
Actually, I would argue that all people are issued three successive calls by God, the latter two being contingent upon successive acceptance of the previous call.
- The call to Salvation,
- The call to Service, and
- The call to sanctification.
The life of the Apostle Paul serves as a singular illustration of the point. Acts 9:1-8 documents Paul’s first call – the Call to Salvation.
Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
“Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
True believers in Christ have responded favorably to such a call – each of us has. Some calls to Salvation have been fairly dramatic, others more of a long progression. In my own life, as a seven-year-old boy, I was called during a church service. God started speaking to me during the sermon telling me that He wanted me. His call didn’t go into much detail – I was seven, remember. The call though was intense. I began, in my spirit, to argue with God, trying to put Him off. However, He was having none of that. He did not relent in His call. I began to bargain. I made Him an offer. I said, “OK if you will send someone else down the aisle at the altar call, I will follow.” I felt safe in this offer as this was a small church in a small town. Few people made “decisions.”
“But God . . .” But God called my hand. I had scarcely gotten the thought out of my mind when a young red-haired girl fairly ran up the aisle towards the pastor. By then, I was in too deep to swim back to shore. I summoned courage from somewhere and took a step into the aisle. After that first step, I felt as though I were floating down the aisle. It was as though my feet didn’t touch the floor. I was riding a cushion of Spirit. Thus, I said, “Yes,” to the Call to Salvation as did the Apostle Paul. My experience was not as dramatic as His, but I was just as received by God that day as was Paul.
In Romans 1:5, Christ issued to Paul the call to service and gave Paul the specific mission to serve as the apostle to the Gentiles, the non-Jews. “Through him we [I, Paul] received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his [Jesus’] name’s sake.”
Answering that second Call to Service, Paul began, as Barclay calls it, “a long road to martyrdom,” as from the outset, Paul was destined for a violent death, the fact of which he was keenly aware and in fact welcomed. Paul states in Galatians 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Unlike Paul, most of us – me included – seek a long life rather than what Pastor Rick calls a “Purpose-Driven life.” Perhaps, when Pastor Rick penned that best-selling book, he was thinking of the Apostle Paul who said of his own life in Philippians 3:7-11
But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Let us not forget now the third call, the Call to Sanctification. “Sanctification” is a theologian’s “fifty-cent” word for “keeping on growing in Christ-likeness.” The word comes from the Latin word, sanctus, which itself is based on the Greek word, ágios, or transliterated, hagios. The concept of ágios is of more ancient origin. It relates back the Hebrew concept of being “set apart” or in the Hebrew, “kodesh.” In the ancient Hebrew worship, the utensils used in the daily sacrifices were used solely and only for purposes of worship. They could not be used for any other purpose regardless of the circumstance.
The word, “sanctified” is used at least nine times in the New Testament. Paul gives a clear command regarding our sanctification in 1 Thessalonians 4:3, “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified . . .”
That is the essence of God’s third call to those who have responded to the first two calls. We are called to live a life that is moving in the direction of being “set apart” for our usefulness to Christ. Whether one ever achieves a state of perfect sanctification in this life is the subject of theological differences among Christian denominations. Scholars and theologians smarter than I have struggled with that question giving me pause in rendering my amateurish opinion.
One might ask at this point, “How does one achieve or progress toward sanctification?” The answer to me is surprisingly simple. In John 14:15, the “Beloved Disciple records Jesus as saying, “If you love me, keep my commands.” And what are His “commands?” Again, the answer is simple. One of the other Gospel writers, Matthew, records an event in Jesus’ life in Matthew 22:34-40.
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Surprisingly easy – to say, but exquisitely difficult to actually do – especially without God’s help. But then again, He is most anxious to “lend a hand.” Romans 8:26 reassures us, “In the same way, the [God’s Holy] Spirit helps us in our weakness. . .”
I submit that we progress to answer the third call by faithfully answering the second call. In other words, we show our degree of sanctification by our response to God’s Call to Service. James 1:22 urges us, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”
Before we get “high and mighty” or “holier than thou” or pick your aphorism, we must remember one critical fact. While God calls us to salvation, service, and sanctification, the “doing” of these is God’s alone. Yet, through Him, we are empowered to do them. Philippians 4:13 blesses us by reminding that “I [we] can do all this through him [Christ] who gives me [us] strength.”
So let it be written, so let it be done.
johnthebaptist15 