Kootenai Church Morning Worship

Before our baptism services, we always ask those who have requested baptism to write out their testimony and then come into an elders’ meeting with at least two of us elders and explain to us their testimony, how they got saved, how they came to know Christ. And then when we have our baptism service here, you get a little glimpse of that as each person who comes up shares with you the basic outline of the testimony that they share with us. The purpose for doing that for us as elders is so that we can make sure that we are not baptizing people who are unbelievers, people who have thought that they had a religious experience, maybe even an emotional experience at some point, and think that coming to church is all that Christianity is about and that all that's necessary to enter into the kingdom of God is just to be here, to be part of us.
We want to make sure that they have turned from their sin and trusted Christ for salvation. And so we ask some pretty standard questions of people and walk them through the gospel to make sure that they understand the gospel, that they have embraced the gospel, at least as much as we are able just through the interview process because it is still always possible that somebody can make a seemingly legitimate profession of faith in Christ and come in and answer the questions and repeat back to us everything that they think that we want to hear and still remain an unbeliever. But at least through the vetting process of that, we can seek to weed people out maybe who are not ready to be baptized or maybe that we're not even convinced are saved.
And every story of God's grace is as unique as the person who tells it. I always love to sit and listen to the testimonies of people who have come to faith in Christ because I like to hear how it is that God has drawn them and used circumstances in their lives to bring them to His Son. It's always intriguing to me. Some people we find are just tripping through life and suddenly come across the gospel. They have never heard it. They've never been exposed to it. They've never entered into a church. And there they are flipping through late night television, and they stumble across some Christian program where the gospel is being explained, and that is their first exposure to it. And it sparks something in them, and that begins a pursuit of trying to find out what is the truth and intrigues them enough.
Some people are tuned into a radio program and hear the gospel explained or sung, and that is where the spark sort of lights a fire that gets them to pursue Christ and Christianity. Some people were just invited to attend church, never considered it, and thought, Why not? I'll go. And they go and they stumble into a good church and they hear the gospel presented and that's how they come to faith in Christ.
Some people are engaged in a conversation by their neighbor. Some people grow up in a Christian family and then realize later on in life that growing up in a Christian family and participating in family worship and going to church with the family is not at all what Christianity is about, and they come to understand that “Here I've been going to church all this time and I've been with all my Christian friends, but I myself have never actually repented of my sin and placed my faith in Christ.”
Some people come to faith early in life when their mom and dad or a grandma or a grandpa shares the gospel with them and they come under conviction and they trust Christ and understand their need for the gospel. Some people come to faith much later in life after years spent in vanity and pride, as the old hymn says, before they come to realize that they were the sinner for whom Christ has died. Coming to Christ can sometimes happen suddenly. Coming to Christ can sometimes happen slowly.
For me, it was spurts, and it was really slow and then all of a sudden. I know that I had people at this very church, a couple who are sitting here even today, who shared the gospel with me on more than one occasion as a young teenage boy, and I had no interest in it. I thought that I understood it, but it wasn't until the gospel came to me in a camp setting on the last night of camp that I understood that I was a sinner and that if I didn't have Christ, I was going to perish everlastingly.
For some people, it happens slowly. For some people, it happens quickly. Some people are exposed to years of nonsense and bad churches and false teaching and false religions. Some people just happen to stumble into it overnight, seemingly.
But in all of these circumstances and with all the various timing and events and methods that vary from person to person, there are always certain things that are true of every last person who comes to faith in Christ. They were a sinner under the judgment of God and they came to understand that they needed a Savior. And then they came to see in Christ that He was everything that they needed, and there came a point where they knew that they needed to bow their knee and surrender to Christ or they would perish everlastingly. And so they turned from their sin and they trusted their soul to the only One able to save them and went, in many cases, from hating Christ and wanting nothing to do with Him to loving Christ and wanting to have Him and Him only. That's true in every single case. Through all the various circumstances, salvation can be attributed to one thing and one thing only, one Person and one power only, and that is God. Every testimony can be summed up in this one sentence: God saves sinners. Every testimony is a testimony of this, that God saves sinners.
Peter describes some of these common features of all of our salvation in the opening verses of 2 Peter 1:1–3. We've seen that God grants faith for the believing sinner to believe. We have received this faith that saves. The same faith that saves me is the same faith that saves you. The same faith that saves us is the same kind of faith that has saved believers in every era of church history. It's the same faith that the apostles were saved by. They believed in Christ, trusted in Him, cast their hope upon Him. It's the same faith. God gives this faith to sinners. God grants that you would be turned from your sin, that you would repent, and God grants that you would believe.
God laid all of your sin upon your Substitute and then took all of that Substitute's righteousness and credited it to your account. And all of that great exchange came to you on the basis of faith. When you repented of your sin and placed your faith in Christ, you were born again. He has brought you to a knowledge of Jesus Christ, and the Lord has called you to salvation. The Lord has called you to salvation.
And it is that element of our common salvation that we're going to be looking at in depth today—God's calling us to salvation. Look at 2 Peter 1:3: “Seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the full knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.” The Christian is one who is called to Christ by Christ's glory and by His excellence. This is part of what God has provided for us, a sufficient provision for our salvation.
Now, in verses 1–4—just to remind you of sort of our outline for chapter 1—in verses 1–4, we are looking at the sufficiency of God's grace in salvation, that God in Christ has provided everything we need to live an obedient, holy, and God-honoring life in this world. Last week, we saw that His power supplies us with everything for holiness. His divine power has granted to us everything that pertains to life and godliness. There is nothing that God has called us to, no act of obedience, no act of submission, no pursuit of holiness, no pursuit of godliness, no act of service that He has called us to, that He has not at the same time already in Christ provided everything that we need to be obedient. He's given to us everything we need to live holy and obedient, God-honoring lives in this world.
Today we're looking at the second aspect of God's provision, and that is His summoning us by His Person. In verse 3, we come to a full knowledge of Him who has called us by His own glory and excellence. The glory and excellence of Jesus Christ has called us. God calls us to salvation. This truth is all over the New Testament, what it means to be called. We are the called ones. Today we're going to give our time and attention to this very special blessing, what it means to be called, because God has not only given to us everything that we need, He has called us to Himself. What does it mean to be called? Who are called? What is that experience? What does it look like? What does that calling actually do? How is it that believers are called to salvation?
We're going to dive into this this morning for a number of reasons, first because it's right here in the text, and if I skipped over it, you'd say, “Hey, preacher boy, you skipped something I think that is important there in verse 3.” Second, because it has been a while since we have covered this doctrine, and it's been a while not because I have tried to avoid it. This is one of these truths that I love. I love this truth. So I haven't been trying to avoid this. I try and kind of weave this in every once in a while, subtly. You may notice it or may not. I'm not trying to avoid it, but it has been a while simply because it has not come up explicitly anytime recently in the passages of the books that I preached through. In fact, it may have come up or I may have brought it up in Hebrews at some point, but I think, if memory serves, we'd have to go back to the gospel of John before we really ever address this in any detail. And if the little survey that we did at the end of the book of Hebrews is any indication, the Gospel of John was half a church ago, meaning that less than half of you were here when we went through the gospel of John.
The third reason is that this is a major theme in Peter's Epistles. This calling is mentioned by Peter five times in 1 Peter and twice in this book, meaning that on average he mentions this calling almost once per chapter in his two books that he has written. And it is not an insignificant thing in the New Testament. Paul mentions it frequently. In almost all of his Epistles, Paul makes reference to this. Peter makes reference to it in both of his Epistles, and Jesus spoke of it as well.
So we're going to answer this question: what is this calling? How does it relate to gospel proclamation? How do I know if I have been called or not? Verse 3—let's look at how He has summoned us to holiness by His Person. “Seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the full knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence” (2 Pet. 1:3). God has provided for us sufficient grace in our salvation and sufficient grace in this life through the knowledge of the One who has called us. Now there is a difference between knowing about someone and knowing someone, right? We understand that. I know a lot about Ronald Reagan. I have a shelf in my house with this many biographies and books about Ronald Reagan. I know a lot about Charles Spurgeon. I’ve read a number of his books. I read almost a sermon a week of Charles Spurgeon's on average. I know a lot about him, but I've never met either Ronald Reagan or Charles Spurgeon. I know a lot about them, but I can't really be said to know either one of those men.
So it is with Christ. If you know a lot about Christ, congratulations, you and the demons share something in common. But it's one thing to know about Him, it is another thing to know Him savingly. To know Him and to have a full knowledge of Him is to see and to behold and to know the goodness and the glories and the excellence of His Person. It is to know Him. Not just to know that He is good and glorious, not just to know what Scripture says about Him, but to be in a personal relationship with Him. That is saving knowledge. That is salvation knowledge. To know Him is to see His glory and His excellence and to be drawn to it and to embrace it and to love it and to love Him. It's not to grow up in a Christian family. It is not to hear preaching about Christ. But it is to know Him and be in a personal relationship with Him, the kind of knowledge that is described by Jesus in John 17:3: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”
Now notice in verse 3 all the pronouns that are there. We come to a full knowledge of Him who has called us by His own glory and excellence. Now who is the Him and the His? We know who the us is in that passage, but who is the Him and the His of the calling? In verse 2, Peter says, “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the full knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” Notice in verse 2 that Peter distinguishes between the Persons of the Trinity—God, which references there the Father, and Jesus our Lord. These are two separate and distinct Persons. In verse 1, he calls Jesus our God and Savior, meaning that he identifies Jesus as Deity, as God, in verse 1 but then distinguishes between the Persons in verse 2. It's that type of precise and nuanced language that we see throughout the New Testament that makes us conclude that there is one God, and that Christ is God, who shares the essence, the nature of the Father, but He is not the same Person—two distinct Persons in the Trinity, three distinct Persons, though they share fully the divine essence.
So the one whose “power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness” I think could refer to Christ or the Father. I'm inclined to think that the His there is the Father, that the Father has granted to us by His power that we may come to a “full knowledge of Him,” and the Him there being Christ. It is Christ that we come to know, and it is Christ then who draws us to Himself by His—that is Christ’s—glory and His excellence. So the glorious one and the excellent one described in verse 3 is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. By that means, God grants to us everything that we need for life and for godliness, when Christ calls us to Himself by His own glory and excellence.
Now, in one way, it's kind of pointless to try and distinguish who does the calling. And here's why. Does Scripture say that the Father calls us to Himself? It does. John 6:44: “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.” That’s Jesus speaking. So the Father draws us. Does the Son draw us to Himself? Yes, He does. John 10:16: “I have other sheep, which are not from this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd.” So the good shepherd calls to His sheep and draws and calls His sheep to Himself. Does the Holy Spirit call us to Himself? He does. Second Thessalonians 2:13–14: “We should always give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. It was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And there, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit can all be identified as the agents of this calling.
1 Peter 1:2 says we're chosen “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to the obedience of Jesus Christ and the sprinkling of His blood.” The sanctifying work of the Spirit calls us out, separates us apart, and brings us to Himself. So the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all involved in this calling. So what we attribute to any one of the Persons we can say is true of all three Persons. And anything we can say, in regard to our calling, is true of all three Persons, the Trinity, is also carried out by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So the Trinitarian God—all three of the divine Persons—is instrumental in your salvation and bringing you out of darkness and into light.
Now we must make a distinction between two different kinds of call or calling. If we don't make this distinction, then when we read of this calling in Scripture, we're going to be a little bit confused as to what it is and what it accomplishes. There is what we would refer to as a gospel call or a general call, sometimes referred to as an external call. This is what you hear me do when at the end of a sermon or at some point in a sermon I will make an appeal to any unbelievers who are listening to me who might be here or listening online to come to an understanding of who Christ is, that He is the Savior for their sins, and that they can have their sins forgiven if they will repent and believe. This external gospel call, as it were, is the proclamation of the gospel to people indiscriminately. It is to offer to sinners God in Christ and salvation in Him.
So when somebody stands up and preaches or shares with you that you have sinned, that you are under the judgment of God, and that there is a Savior, one Savior and one Savior alone who you must turn to for redemption to have your sins forgiven, and it's the one who died on a cross and rose again and is now ascended to the Father's right hand, and He is coming again to judge the living and the dead, and He demands of you that you repent and that you believe the gospel and be saved, that universal, general, external gospel call is to go out to all men indiscriminately. We call upon men to respond to that truth. We proclaim the truth and call people to a response to that truth. That's a general call.
Most will reject that. Most of the neighbors that you share your faith with will reject it. Most of your relatives will reject this. Most of the people who hear gospel preaching will reject that. “Narrow [is] the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Mark 7:14 NIV). But we see examples of this indiscriminate and wide, general gospel call in the Gospels and in the book of Acts. In Matthew 11:28–30, listen to what Jesus said: “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” That is an invitation, a command. It is an invitation to people to come to Him for relief, for relief of their burden.
But did everybody who heard Jesus preach believe? No, the Pharisees heard Him preach and plotted His murder. Most people who hear the general call will not believe. Paul in Acts 17 preaching in front of the Areopagus in Athens said,
30 Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now commanding men that everyone everywhere should repent,
31 because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He determined, having furnished proof to all by raising Him from the dead. (Acts 17:30–31 LSB)
So there's a demand. God commands you this day to repent. Paul had preached the gospel to them, brought them to understand that the God that they worshipped, who they did not know, is the God of Heaven, and they needed to bow their knee to Christ, repent of their sins, and God now commands all men everywhere—see, that's universal, indiscriminate—to repent. But did everybody who heard Paul that day believe? A couple of them did. A few of them said, “We'll entertain this another time. We’d like to hear you more.” But most people walked away and scoffed at Him.
In Isaiah 45:22, Yahweh says, “Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.” There is a call or an invitation in God's Word that all of the world should turn to Him and be saved. In Luke 24, that same proclamation is to go out through us, “that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” That's Luke 24:47.
So that's the general call. Come to Yahweh for salvation, all the ends of the earth. Doesn't matter what your skin color is. Doesn't matter what your background is. Doesn't matter how much sin you have sinned. Doesn't matter what your lineage is. Doesn't matter where you exist on the face of the planet or what your ethnicity is. All of that is irrelevant. Come to Yahweh and be saved, all you ends of the earth. That's the general call.
But here's the thing. That call to salvation is powerless in and of itself to save anybody. It's powerless to save anybody. Most people who hear that will reject it. Multitudes hear that general call and reject God's sincere offer of salvation and instead continue in their sin and their rebellion and leave this earth into eternal perdition and judgment because they reject that message. It is a sincere offer that Yahweh proclaims to all men that they should repent. He has provided a Savior whose death is sufficient to atone for the sins of any and all who will believe, and it has atoned for the sins of any and all who will believe.
So the sincere offer goes out, but people will reject it because something else is necessary, not just that general call but a call that is more specific and more powerful, a call that actually results in salvation, and that's what we call the effectual call. First Thessalonians 1:4–5, the apostle Paul said this: “Knowing, brothers beloved by God, your election, for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full assurance.” See, most people here probably heard the gospel a number of times before you ever responded to the gospel. Because that gospel came and fell on deaf ears. The glory of Christ came and was in front of blind eyes. The message came and landed on a stony heart. Most people will reject the general call. Something else is necessary. The Spirit of God must take that call to repentance and use it in the heart of a person to bring them to faith in Christ. That is what results in salvation, the effectual call.
And in the New Testament, when the New Testament Epistles speak of this call, every time it is referring to this divine summons to salvation. This is the call, the effectual call, that summons the sinner out of darkness and into light. This is the work of God. This is by the power of God. This is a work whereby sinners are drawn irresistibly and effectually to salvation in Jesus Christ. And that is what is meant in our text by “Him who called us by His own glory and excellence” (2 Pet. 1:3).
Notice in 2 Peter 1 that these ones who are called are those who have been granted everything for life and godliness. It's not everyone who hears this call. This call results in salvation, in God granting to the one who is called by the effectual call everything pertaining to life and godliness. The ones who hear the effectual call, they are the ones who are granted the faith to believe (v. 1). They are the ones who are turned from their sin and whose ears are opened. They are the ones who become partakers of the divine nature. Those who hear this call are the ones who escape the corruption that is in the world through lust in verse 4.
So what is being described in verses 1–4? This word called is true of only those to whom all of these other blessings are given and all of these other things are true. In the New Testament, believers are those who have not only been called generally, externally, vocally through a proclamation of the gospel, but the believer is one who has been drawn effectually to God in salvation. That is the internal call. That is the effectual call. That is the call that always results in what God intends—that is, the salvation of the one who hears it.
Now, to give you an idea, I'm just going to read you a selection of passages where this word called is used, and I want you just to observe as I read them—and I’ll do this with not very much commentary. Otherwise our time will be gone. But just observe how it is that this term called is used and to whom this calling is given. Romans 8:29–30:
29 Because those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers;
30 and those whom He predestined, He also called; and those whom He called, He also justified; and those whom He justified, He also glorified. (LSB)
Now, notice not everybody is called. But who are called? The predestined ones. There is a group—it's not everybody—that are predestined to salvation. Those are the ones that are called. All of them are called. And all of those who are called are what? They're justified. And all of those who are justified are what? They are glorified. That's the golden chain of redemption, from predestination to glorification. He doesn't call a bunch that He loses along the way and gets just a few by the skin of their teeth into Heaven and says, “Well, You know, Father, I did My best to save as many of those that You gave to Me as I possibly could, but You know those rascally sinners, always doing their own thing. They managed to jump out of My hand before we could really get them to glory.” That's not how any of this works. I said I was going to do this without any commentary. From here on out, there's no more commentary.
Romans 9:11: “For though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, so that the purpose of God according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls.” What's the difference maker? Him who calls.
Romans 9:24: “Even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles?”
First Corinthians 1:9: “God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Galatians 1:6: “I marvel that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel.”
Galatians 1:15: “But when God, who had set me apart from my mother's womb and called me through His grace . . .”
Galatians 5:8: “This persuasion is not from Him who calls you.”
Galatians 5:13: “For you were called to freedom, brothers; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.”
First Thessalonians 2:12: “So that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.”
First Thessalonians 4:7: “God did not call us to impurity, but in sanctification.”
First Thessalonians 5:24: “Faithful is He who calls you, who also will do it.”
First Timothy 6:12: “Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”
2 Timothy 1:9: “[He] has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus from all eternity.”
Now you can see that this calling is not merely an audible proclamation that goes out. This is describing something that is true of believers. It is something that is true of every believer and only believers. This is a call that results in salvation. It is a divine work of grace. It is the resurrecting of the spiritually dead, hardened, blind, deaf, stony-hearted sinner that results in their faith, their repentance, their holiness, their salvation, and ultimately their eternal glory. This is the call that awakens dead sinners to their need for a Savior. It's the call that makes Christ precious. When the conscience is awakened and the spirit is quickened, that is the internal call. The sinner is made to feel the weight of their sin and their guilt. They seek a Savior and pursue a balm for their soul.
And this is a precious truth, a precious doctrine that Peter himself gloried in. It's one that the apostles gloried in. We should glory in it. Now I'm going to read to you where Peter uses this word. I read to you where Paul uses it. Here are Peter's references to this. First Peter 1:15: “But like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your conduct.” Notice how Peter couples calling with holiness just as he couples calling with godliness here in chapter 1 of 2 Peter.
First Peter 2:9: “You are a chosen family, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” This is a calling that results in one coming out of darkness and coming into light.
First Peter 2:21: “For to this you have been called, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps.” There, we are called into Christ so that we may suffer like Christ.
First Peter 3:9: “Not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but giving a blessing instead, for you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing.”
First Peter 5:10: “And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, strengthen, confirm, and ground you.” You've been called to eternal glory.
So notice how this is used. What are the results of this calling? Those who are called with this call receive eternal life. Nobody not called in this way receives life. Everyone who has received life has been called in this way, quickened. This is a call that summons the spiritually dead sinner out of sin to salvation. It is the call that opens blind eyes, gives the ability to spiritually hear the voice of the Savior, and allows the sinner to behold the excellencies of Christ. It is this call that quickens the conscience and alerts the sinner to their rebellion and to the danger that confronts their soul. This is the call that summons the sheep to the Shepherd. When you heard the voice of the Shepherd and you looked up and you beheld the glories and the excellencies of Jesus Christ, that is that call of God, and it will always result in salvation.
Charles Horne, in his book Salvation, says this: “The effectual call is efficacious. It always results in salvation. This is a creative calling which accompanies the external proclamation of the gospel. It is invested with the power to deliver one to the divinely intended destination.” Do you hear that? It is a creative call. It is the voice of the Shepherd that calls to His sheep and creates within the sheep a willingness and ability to believe and to turn from sin and to behold Christ and to lay hold of Christ. And you know why that call is necessary? Because we are spiritually dead sinners who are unable to hear any voice of the Shepherd without a sovereign work of God and His grace. That's why. Without that we would be eternally lost. We need to hear that call.
John Murray, in his book Redemption Accomplished and Applied, says this: “It is very striking that in the New Testament the terms for calling, when used specifically with reference to salvation, are almost uniformly applied not to the universal call of the gospel but to the call that ushers men into a state of salvation and is therefore effectual.” Now the general call is what you and I do when we preach the gospel. The effectual call is what God does when He takes that gospel proclamation and puts it right on the heart of the sinner. Those are two different calls. God does one, we do the other. The external or general call is the call of the preacher. The effectual call is the call of God. The general call is external. The effectual call is internal. The general call from the preacher is heard by physical ears. The effectual call by God is heard by the heart. The one, the external call, is powerless to save. The call of God always saves. The call of the preacher is resistible. The call of God is irresistible.
Now, how do they go together? Well, there must be that general, outward proclamation and sharing of the gospel for God to use what is shared to quicken and effectually call His people to Himself. That is why we are told to go into all the world and to preach the gospel. Our responsibility is to proclaim to the ends of the earth, “Turn to Yahweh and be saved, for He is a gracious and good God and there is no other.” It is God's responsibility, and only He can quicken the heart and enliven the conscience and spiritually raise the spiritually dead sinner back to life. This is God's work. When He does it, He always does it successfully, He always does it perfectly, and He always does exactly what He wants to do. He doesn't try to save sinners. He's not attempting to do that. We proclaim the gospel, and God takes that and uses it effectively to call the sinners to Himself.
You and I needed this because of our fallen condition. We were lost, spiritually dead, wicked, and depraved. We loved our rebellion and lived in our rebellion. We loved our sin, we drank it like water. We were hostile to the law of God and to truth, Romans 8 says. We were slaves to sin, Satan, and self. So you and I don't wander into the fold of God. We don't stumble into His family. We don't fall into His kingdom unawares as if something happened and we just happened to—like we fall off the edge of a cliff.
But rather, Jesus, like He called Lazarus out of the tomb, beckons and calls us to come to Him and breathes spiritual life into us, causing our regeneration, causing our spiritual awakening, quickening the heart, replacing the heart of stone with a heart of flesh, opening spiritual eyes, opening spiritually deaf ears, and making alive the sinner who was previously dead. That is the effectual call. Jesus said in John 3 the Spirit moves where He wills and you must be born again. So the Spirit does this work, regenerating and causing the spiritual new birth, and He does this as a member of the Trinity in conjunction with the Father and the Son.
It was Jesus in John 5:21 who said, “Just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes.” The Son doesn't give life to all, He gives life to His sheep. John 10:27–28: “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish—ever; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.” So how many of His sheep does He lose? It's a low number, rhymes with hero. Zero! He loses none of His sheep. And every last one that He calls follows Him, comes to Him, because His sheep, those whom the Father has given to Him, they hear His voice, they know His voice, they follow Him, He gives them eternal life, and He promises their everlasting glory and loses not a single one.
You had as much to do with God's sovereign regenerating of your heart that resulted in your new birth as you had to do with your first birth, which is to say nothing. The same thing is true with the second birth. This is why regeneration is likened to the second birth. You were stumbling through life, and you heard the gospel, and suddenly the Christ whom you once hated you now cherish. That is the work of God.
How does He do this? Second Peter 1:3: He calls us by His own glory and excellence. I'll cash this out for just a moment. Glory is just the common word for glory. It's applied here to Christ, meaning that since God shares His glory with no one, for Peter to speak of the inherent glory of Christ is for him to describe one who Peter regards as Deity, as God. The word excellence here is a word that describes moral goodness, valor, virtue, and outstanding goodness. It's a word used five times in the New Testament, four times by Peter, once by Paul. Once by Paul in a familiar passage, Philippians 4:8, where he says, “Whatever is true, whatever is dignified, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, consider these things.” Something that is morally good and valorous, that's what Paul's describing there.
All the other times that this word excellence is used, it's used by Peter—twice more here in our context. Look down at 2 Peter 1:5: “Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge.” That's the same word that's used there. And then it's used by Peter over in a passage I've already read to you. 1 Peter 2:9: “You are a chosen family, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”
So all the people who say that Peter doesn't use the same language in both Epistles and therefore the same person couldn't have written both Epistles, what did I just read to you? You and I are to proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into light. You have been called out of darkness into light by those excellencies (2 Pet. 1) so that you may proclaim those excellencies (1 Pet. 2). Why? So that in the proclaiming of those excellencies, God would use His effective call to bring others to that same excellent Savior, right? That's what Peter is saying.
So let's bring it all together. The effectual call of God causes the sinner to see what he could not see before, namely the majesty and the glory of Christ, the goodness of his Savior-King, and the valor and virtue of God made flesh. The effectual call of God causes the sinner to hear what they never heard before—the voice of the Shepherd summoning them to salvation. The effectual call of God causes the sinner to be attracted to what he was never attracted to before—a crucified King, a resurrected Savior, and a coming Judge. And the effectual call of God causes the sinner to desire what the sinner never desired before—forgiveness, mercy, redemption, holiness, righteousness, truth, worship, humility, grace, love, fellowship, to be a slave of Christ.
Who wants that in the natural man? At no point prior to your salvation did you desire to be a slave to Jesus Christ, but those who have been called want to be slaves of Christ. The glories and excellencies of God in Christ are made attractive to the sinner. Better said, the sinner is made to be attracted to the glories and excellencies of Christ.
Now, some people would object to this and say, “It sounds to me as if you are describing God doing violence to the human will.” I don't know any Christian, and I've met a number of them, who came to Christ against their will. Not a one of them. I’ve never met one who said, “I hated Him, I still hate Him today, but I'm going to be in His kingdom, and I'm going to hate it for all of eternity.” I've never met a believer who said that. But if it were true that He did violence to my will to deliver me from depravity and destruction and the power of sin and eternal damnation in order to give me an eternal kingdom, and with it joy and pleasures at His right hand forevermore, so what? Why do I care? He can do violence to every aspect of me. I don't care, if that's what it results in.
But the truth is that God does this without doing violence to the human will. In fact, those who have been called and are called, they go from being repulsed by Christ to being inexorably attracted to Him and the very virtues that at one time they hated. They go from using His name as a swear word to express disgust and contempt to trusting in that name for their eternal joy and glory and deliverance. That is a sovereign work of God.
We come to a knowledge of this Christ and see Him for who He is. And the one who's being called out of darkness and called to glory and called into His kingdom, to that one, Christ is irresistible in the same way that a person diagnosed with a terminal disease finds the cure irresistible, in the same way that one who is falling in an airplane from thirty thousand feet finds the parachute irresistible, and in the same way that one on a sinking ship sees in the lifeboat an excellency and a valor and a virtue that they must have at all costs, and so it is to the believing sinner. Christ is for us that parachute that saves us from our plunging into eternal ruin. He is the cure to our terminal disease, which is sin, and He is the lifeboat that saves us from the sinking world that is going down into destruction and into depravity. And to the one called by God to His eternal glory, Christ is precious.
I can't tell you exactly how it happened. I know that it happened. But one day I was using His name as a swear word and the next day I was praying to Him and praising Him for His grace. That's a work of God.
Now to you, unbeliever, if you are here, I'm asking you, have you been born again? I'm not asking you if you have walked an aisle, had a religious experience, grown up in a Christian family, attended church all your life, or if you were baptized so that you could be married to the person you're sitting next to. I'm not asking you any of that. Have you been born again? Have you gone from hating Christ to loving Him? Have you had the regenerating work of God done in your heart and in your soul so that you are a new creation? Or do you continue to sit there in sin and to join us for worship? You can sit here in one of these chairs Sunday after Sunday after Sunday until I preach my last sermon and still go straight to Hell from the chair that you're sitting in. If you have not been born again, you will never see the kingdom of God.
You must come to Christ in repentance and faith. He commands you this day to repent, not to look back on a day when you wrote a date and a time and a place in your Bible as some symbol of false assurance but to look back upon a point in your life where you came to understand that Christ is not only what you have, what you need, but the very thing that you must have if you are going to escape the wrath of God for all of eternity. Have you been born again? God commands you this day to turn from your sin and trust in the sufficient Savior who shed His blood on a cross, rose again, and ascended to the Father's right hand. He intercedes for us now and He is coming again to judge the living and the dead. You do not want to be the object of His judgment.
Now, believer, you and I can have great confidence in a God who saves sinners because our job is to proclaim the gospel and to share the gospel, not to convert the heart. So I can have confidence that when we share the gospel with somebody, God is able to use that to accomplish His purposes, and that in the indiscriminate appeal of the gospel, like, for instance, the one I just gave, we can have utter confidence that God will take that and use that to regenerate the heart, to create faith within, and call His sheep to Himself. And so we can preach the gospel with confidence.
We can also have confidence that the God who calls us also keeps us. He preserves us. Jesus coupled these two truths together in John 10 when He said, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish” (vv. 27–28). The very God who calls us to Himself keeps us with Himself until that final day. Those whom He foreknew, He called. Those whom He called, He justified. Those whom He justified, He also will glorify and has glorified them. The God who calls us also keeps us.
And the second thing I just want to remind you of is the depth of love and humility and obedience and affection that we owe to Him who has dug us out of such a deep pit and brought us to Himself. We ought to gladly be slaves of Christ, to gladly humble ourselves, to gladly give our love, our affection, our adoration, and our worship to a God who would do that, to not only bring us to Himself but also promise us eternal glory. Never forget the pit from which you were dug. And never forget the fact that you were not only lying in that pit, you were dead in that pit, you were buried, and God reached down, brought you up out of that, and breathed into you spiritual life, turned you from your sin, gave you the faith to believe, and with all of that gift, promises you not only eternal glory but everything you need to live a holy, obedient, and God-honoring life in this world, all to the praise of His glorious grace.