The apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome. His letter is addressed to “all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints” (Romans 1:7). In his letter to the brothers and sisters in Corinth, he wrote, again, to “those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints” (1 Corinthians 1:2). It is a mode of address that gives believers the title of saints, but also as people who are called, called by Jesus Christ, as Paul also calls them. With this the apostle says something that is very fundamental for the church of Jesus Christ. That is what I would like to discuss in this article.

Initiative⤒🔗

The churches in Rome and in Corinth consisted of people called to be saints. This can be said of any church of Christ. It states something about the initiative out of which the church was born. It is not the product of human creativity or of human activity. Today you might get that impression. A lot of attention is paid to human activity centering around the church. You see people taking the initiative to establish a congregation. Or they become members of a congregation of their own choice. It appears that the church is founded when people join together to confess the faith that they have in common and (a thing that raises eyebrows today) to celebrate together the experience of living in the faith which they share. However, the church is not the initiative of people. Scripture speaks about saints who are called. They are holy, separated out of the world to belong to the Lord God. This does not come from themselves. They do not have this holiness from themselves. They are saints who are called. The initiative comes from God.

We see this time and again in the Scriptures. For example, it is clear when we pay attention to the first disciples of the Lord Jesus. He called them in order to make them fishers of men:

Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” Immediately they left their nets and followed him.Matthew 4:19-20

He called them. Had he not done that, undoubtedly they would have continued to work on the Sea of Galilee as fishermen. The Lord took the initiative. The same goes for the disciples who began to follow the Lord in a different manner. Nathanael came to the Lord through what Philip said to him. However it also applies to him when the Lord later says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit” (John 15:16). In whatever manner through which the disciples began to follow the Lord, the initiative was grounded, not in themselves, but in the Lord who called them.

The fact that the initiative for following the Lord originated with God began not first of all with the twelve disciples. Abraham is the father of all believers. He lived in the old city of Ur in Mesopotamia. He would have continued to reside there, without a doubt, had the Lord not said to him, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). We read in Genesis that the Lord said this to him. Still, it was more than just “saying.” In Hebrews 11:8, we read that “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance” (emphasis added). The saying of the Lord was more than saying. It was a calling. It was a speaking that demands listening, to which one gives a listening ear. In this way, the Lord himself established a relationship between him and our father in the faith.

It is the same for the descendants of Abraham. When Israel has dwelt in Egypt for a long time and is oppressed there, the people are freed by the Lord out of slavery. In great detail the Bible tells us how the Lord did that. The history is well-known. Centuries later, the prophet Hosea says about this radical event, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hosea 11:1). Hosea summarizes that whole great operation of freeing his people as a calling by God. Had God not intervened, then all of Abraham’s descendants would have remained slaves in Egypt. But the Lord called. He took the initiative and it was an initiative that had the desired effect. God calls with efficacious energy.

New Covenant←⤒🔗

The histories of Abraham and of Israel took place in the time of the old covenant. With reference to the calling of God, it is no different in the new covenant. It is due to the initiative of the Lord that the first disciples were made fishers of men. He sent them out in Israel. (Luke 6:12-16) Later he sent them to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28; Mark 16; Luke 24). The sending of them to all the nations is also seen as being called. For example, Peter does that in his speech on the day of Pentecost. He speaks about the Holy Spirit, whom the Lord was to give in the new covenant, a promise that he fulfilled on the day of Pentecost. About that promise, Peter says to the Jews who have gathered, “For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” (Acts 2:39). People will share in the indispensable and precious gift of the Holy Spirit by means of God calling them to this. It obviously does not happen by people choosing to receive the Spirit or by people opening themselves to receive the Spirit of God. It happens because the Lord himself calls us. That is the call that belongs to Pentecost. This makes it fundamental to the church of the new covenant.

Seen in this light, it has a deep significance that Paul addresses his letters to those “called to be saints.” It means that through God’s own initiative, all kinds of differences which exist between people are bridged. Thus Paul, who can address the congregation in Corinth as “called to be saints” and as “called by Jesus Christ,” can write, a little further on in this letter, that Christ is the power and the wisdom of God “for those who are called, both Jews and Greeks” (1 Corinthians 1:24). The calling of God bridges the difference between Jew and heathen. In 1 Corinthians 7, the apostle places the fact of being circumcised or not as relative to the call of God:

Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. 1 Corinthians 7:18-19

The social gap between slaves and masters is also bridged by the calling of the Lord:

For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ. 1 Corinthians 7:22

The calling with which God calls us creates a new kind of society. In this society the differences that exist between people no longer create division. Therefore Paul can stress, in Ephesians 2, that Jews and heathens have access to the Father in one Spirit, as a fruit of the peace which Christ has worked for us. With his call, God took the initiative to create a new fellowship, his church.

Heavenly←⤒🔗

Scripture does not tell us in which manner the Lord God called Abraham out of Ur. Did he speak to him directly from heaven? Did he call him in a dream? Did he send an angel? We do not know. How the Lord frees Israel from Egypt is recorded in great detail in Scripture. He uses Moses and Aaron in this. They were to lead the people out of Egypt. The Lord made them his servants. The Lord Jesus does the same when he makes his students into apostles. People are called to call others. Then it is not strange that the Bible book Acts received the name Acts of the Apostles. Meanwhile, this book clearly shows that it is the Lord God himself who, through his Spirit, brings in the apostles and their fellow workers, as seen in the sending out of Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13). God did this. Actually, could we not already see that with Moses? When he, out of his own initiative, stood up for his fellow Israelites, he had to flee and had to wait forty years before the Lord called him. Human activity does not take away the fact that it is the Lord who works in them and through them. He calls his church. Paul writes about “God…by whom you were called” (1 Corinthians 1:9; 7:15, 17); “[God] who calls you” (Galatians 5:8; 1 Thessalonians 4:7, 5:24; 2 Thessalonians 2:14). Peter also speaks about “he who called you” (1 Peter 1:15), “who called you out of darkness” (1 Peter 2:9), “who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ” (1 Peter 5:10) and “who called us to his own glory and excellence” (2 Peter 1:3). We read about the call of God that is “irrevocable” (Romans 11:29), “the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). When Paul speaks about his calling (Ephesians 1:18) or the “one hope” to which he has called you (Ephesians 4), it also refers to the Lord who has called his church.

It is clear that the apostles are thinking about a voice of God that is heard on earth. After all, he is alluding to the proclamation of the gospel through their mouths. However, although it is people who are moved to proclaim the gospel, it is, in this, no less a call from God. It resounds below, but it is from above (Philippians 3:14). It goes out over the earth, but it is a “heavenly calling” (Hebrews 3:1). The writer of Hebrews later returns to the heavenly character of this calling, as he encourages the believers to “see that you do not refuse him who is speaking” (Hebrews 12:25) and for us not to turn away from “him who warns from heaven.” In the gospel, we hear the Lord who speaks from heaven. It is and remains God calling. The preaching by men and God’s grace belong together, as Paul says in his rebuke to the Galatians that they “so quickly desert[ed] him [Paul] who called you in the grace of Christ” (Galatians 1:6; 5:8, 13).

Powerful←⤒🔗

Bringing in people to proclaim the gospel does not take away the heavenly character of the calling. Likewise, it does not reduce its power. We saw that Hosea used the word “calling” to express in one word the operation of liberation whereby the Lord rescued his people out of Egypt. The Lord does not just say words into the open air. When he calls, things happen. His Word never returns empty. It does what God wills (Isaiah 55:6-11). His call causes things to happen. It is effective.

About Abraham, we read that he believed in God “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Romans 4:17). Paul writes this, thinking about the promise of descendants, made by the Lord. In Abraham’s faith, the birth of his descendants, as impossible as that was from a human perspective, was tied to the calling of the Lord. His calling is a speaking that creates. He spoke and it was. He commanded and it existed (Psalm 33). He calls the stars by name (Psalm 147; Isaiah 40:26). What does not exist, comes into being because the Lord calls it. Without his calling that creates, the people of the Lord would never have come into being. That is clear already at the birth of Isaac. Later on (Malachi 2:10), we are reminded that the Lord created his people. He is the Maker of Israel (for example, see Isaiah 44:2). It is a great encouragement that Isaiah may say,

But now hear, O Jacob my servant, Israel whom I have chosen! Thus says the Lord who made you, who formed you from the womb and will help you: Fear not, O Jacob my servant, Jeshurun whom I have chosen.Isaiah 44:1-2

And the Lord will see that the people are not washed away by the rivers they have to cross and are not burned by the fire. The creating power by which the Lord calls his people and brings them back out of captivity holds the elements of God’s own creation in check. Thus the Lord, in Isaiah 48, calls Israel, “Israel, whom I called” and continues with a reminder of his power:

I am he; I am the first, and I am the last. My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I call to them, they stand forth together. Isaiah 48:12-13; emphasis added

The Lord who, in creating, called forth the heavens, also called Israel, and thereby created it.

The apostle Paul refers to the creating Word of the Lord with an eye focused on faith in Jesus Christ. He connects this to himself as a servant of Christ. He preaches the Christ: “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). Thanks to the creating Word of God, we know of God through faith in Christ. The apostle says this about himself, but it is true for everyone who comes to faith in Christ.

We hear this speaking that creates in the gospel. Paul calls this gospel “the power of God for salvation” (Romans 1:16). Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24). Peter also writes in this manner about the working of the Word of God that is the living and enduring Word. He calls this the seed through which we are born anew. It is that seed, that Word, through which we are brought to faith. He is simply alluding to the gospel. He first speaks about “obedience to the truth” through which we have purified our souls (1 Peter 1:22). That truth is nothing other than the gospel, the Word which has been preached to us.

We hear the same message again from the apostle James. He speaks about the Lord God as the source of every good and perfect gift. Therefore also, he calls him the Father of lights. He is the Origin, the beginning, the Creator through which all lights and all things exist. And that Father “of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures” (James 1:18). Also here, we hear about a Word of God that brings something into existence, a creating Word. It is the church that is thereby brought into being.

In agreement with this, we speak about the meaning of the proclamation of the gospel in our confession. In Lord’s Day 7 and Lord’s Day 25 of the Heidelberg Catechism, we confess that faith is worked in our hearts through the preaching of the gospel. In the first chapter of the Canons of Dort, we say that the Lord, in order to bring people to the faith, “sends heralds of this most joyful message to whom he will and when he wills” (Chapter I, Article 3). The Lord has “decreed to give to Christ those who were to be saved, and effectually to call and draw them into his communion through his Word and Spirit” (Canons of Dort: Chapter I, Article 7). In Chapter III/IV the Canons return to this power of God. There we acknowledge that faith is purely and only a work of God’s power. God works true conversion in his elect:

He takes care that the gospel is preached to them, and powerfully enlightens their minds by the Holy Spirit, so that they may rightly understand and discern the things of the Spirit of God. By the efficacious working of the same regenerating Spirit he also penetrates into the innermost recesses of man. Chapter III/IV, Article 11

The following article emphasizes that, in this work, there is absolutely no question of a sharing of the work between God and man, so that, in part, our faith would be thanks to ourselves:

But this regeneration is by no means brought about only by outward teaching, by moral persuasion, or by such a mode of operation that, after God has done his part, it remains in the power of man to be regenerated or not regenerated, converted or not converted. It is, however, clearly a supernatural, most powerful, and at the same time most delightful, marvellous, mysterious, and inexpressible work. According to Scripture, inspired by the Author of this work, regeneration is not inferior in power to creation or the raising of the dead. Chapter III/IV, Article 12

Here the faith of Abraham resounds, regarding “God who raises the dead and brings the unseen into being!”—God, who from heaven, calls his church with effective power.

Isn’t the proclamation of the gospel of fundamental importance to the church?! Without this call from heaven, without God’s powerful speaking that creates, the church would not even exist, nor would it be able to continue.

Being Chosen←⤒🔗

James said that the Lord “of his own will” brought us forth through the word of truth. The calling by God proceeds from his plans.

Paul addressed his letter to those who were called to be saints in Rome. That form of address resounds anew later in his letter. In Romans 8, he says that God causes all things to work together for good, for all who love him and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28). He points out the connection between the call and the plan of God. He refers to this resolution of God as a “knowing beforehand”:  “those whom he foreknew.” At the same time, it is more than that God just knew, from beforehand, who would be his. This is the way in which the Remonstrants narrowed the counsel of the Lord. It was nothing more than just him knowing all things beforehand. But Paul calls this “foreknowing” also a predestining: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29.) Paul writes to the congregation in Ephesus using the same wording: “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). The counsel is a predestining. That predestining truly goes first, before all things, “even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” (Ephesians 1:4-5). Repeatedly, we hear the “before,” which takes us back to before the creation of the world. It reveals to us the marvellous mystery of the decision, destiny, choice and knowledge of God that preceded all things. It is this resolution that the Lord, through the heavenly, powerful call of the gospel, brings to pass: “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” These are the precious words of Romans 8:30 with which Paul points out the steadfast way of God’s grace; from his plans to the glory of Christ. By his powerful call and by his effective bringing us to faith, he moves us along his path.

The church comes forth out of the predestining counsel of God, not out of the choice or will of man. This is also shown in the fact that not everyone who is called comes to faith. The call of the gospel does not automatically work faith. The Lord calls in all seriousness. He seriously means what he says (Canons of Dort: Chapter III/IV, Article 8). But it is through our own fault when we do not believe the gospel or, after first having accepted it, turn away from it (Canons of Dort: Chapter III/IV, Article 9). More can be said about this, but for now, we will leave it. It does emphasize, once again, that the church is not a result of the work of people.

Conclusion←⤒🔗

More can be said about the call from God. Thus, I will not discuss that it demands a lifestyle from us which fits this call (Ephesians 4:1) and that we must “confirm your calling and election” (2 Peter 1:10). The church is called to be free and therefore not live a godless life (Galatians 5:3). The Lord has called his people out of darkness into his light to proclaim his deeds (Isaiah 44; 1 Peter 2:9; 1 Thessalonians 1:8; etc.). That points to the mission task of the church. The point I am making now is that the church consists of saints who have been called. They are people who belong to the church and have been placed within the church. Yet it does not emerge out of the will or choice of people. Neither is its institution thanks to the activity of human effort. The church has come to be and continues to be through the call of God. Through his own calling, the three-in-one God himself creates a holy people. He does that through the power of his Spirit who calls us with the gospel of the Son in order to bring to pass the predestining counsel of God the Father.