God’s Calling is According to His Purpose in Christ through the Gospel to be Holy

The Old Testament is a book of pictures, types, figures, and signs; the New Testament is a book of the spiritual reality of the signs and types in the Old Testament.

If we have a bird’s-eye view of the whole Bible we will realize that many truths and principles are sown as seeds in Genesis, developed throughout the Bible, fulfilled in reality in the New Testament, and consummated in the book of Revelation.

The purpose of God’s calling is sown as a seed in Genesis (with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), developed and shown further with Moses in Exodus, and fully revealed in the New Testament.

Since Moses is the first complete, perfected, and qualified servant of God in the Bible, God’s calling of Moses is a pattern to our calling, and in the New Testament we see a full revelation of all the details of God’s calling.

The purpose of God’s calling of Moses was to deliver the people of Israel out of Egypt and bring them into the good land that they may serve God, build up His habitation, and become His kingdom on earth.

In the New Testament we see a complete revelation of the purpose of God’s calling. The New Testament tells us that God’s calling is according to His predestination, His purpose, and His grace. God predestinated us from eternity past, choosing us according to His purpose and His grace. Everything was initiated before the foundation of the world, when the Lord predestinated us, the church, unto sonship.

In time, God called us in Christ through the gospel, and we have received God’s calling when the Lord appeared to us through the faithful preaching of the gospel of some saints.

Furthermore, the New Testament reveals various aspects of the purpose of God’s calling:

• God has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9).
• God’s calling is that His chosen ones may be separated and made holy unto God, to be the holy ones, the saints (Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2).
• God has called us so that we may enter into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, to partake of and enjoy His all-inclusive riches (vv. 9, 30).
• God has called us into the sufferings of Christ (1 Pet. 2:20-21).
• For the Body of Christ, God has called us into the peace of Christ (Col. 3:15).
• God has called us for the purpose of obtaining the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ; He has called His chosen ones unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit
• and belief of the truth so that they might obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thes. 2:13-14).
• God’s calling is by His own glory and with the goal of our entering into the eternal glory of God (2 Pet. 1:3; 1 Pet. 5:10).
• God has called us into His kingdom (1 Thes. 2:12).

There are at least eight aspects of God’s calling, and today we will focus on the first two of them. Praise the Lord for opening up the matter of God’s calling in the New Testament!

God’s Calling is According to His Predestination, His Purpose, and His Grace

Those whom God predestinated, these He also called, and those whom He called, these He also justified, and those whom He justified, these He also glorified (Rom. 8:30). God foreknew us in eternity past; it was then that He chose us and predestinated us (see 1 Pet. 1:1-2; Eph. 1:4-5). According to His predestination, in time God called us, justified us, and glorified us.

Hallelujah, even before we were born God foreknew us and chose us, and in time He called us, justified us, and is now glorifying us! This is according to God with whom there’s no variation or change; He has done this, and He will do this all the way to the end!

God called us according to His purpose (see Rom. 8:28; 2 Tim. 1:9). God’s purpose is His plan according to His will to not only save us from sin but redeem us, regenerate us, and place into Christ to make us one with Him so that we may share His life and position and become His expression and testimony on earth. God’s purpose is great, vast, and beyond our human comprehension, but according to what the New Testament reveals, God called us according to His purpose.

God calls us according to His grace: He saved us and called us with a holy calling not according to our own works but according to His own purpose and grace (2 Tim. 1:9-10). Before times eternal we were given grace in Christ by God, in time Christ came as the manifestation of grace, and He nullified death and brought life and incorruption.

Hallelujah, we have been called by God according to His predestination and foreknowledge, according to His great and marvelous purpose, and according to His grace!

Thank You Lord for calling us according to Your predestination in eternity past. Thank You for calling us, justifying us, and even glorifying us in time. Thank You for calling us according to Your purpose, Your plan to place us in Christ and make us one with Him to be God’s expression and testimony. Praise the Lord, we have been called by God according to His grace given to us in Christ Jesus, our Savior, who nullified death and brought life and incorruption to us!

God’s Calling is Time, in Christ, and through the Gospel

The sphere of God’s calling is Christ – the God of all grace has called us into His eternal glory in Christ Jesus (1 Pet. 5:10). In Christ the God of all grace has gone through the processes of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension to accomplish a complete and full redemption so that He may bring His believers into an organic union with Him, even to be In Him!

God’s calling is in Christ, who is the embodiment of the Triune God (Col. 2:9) who became the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor. 3:17) to be our bountiful life supply (Phil. 1:19). Because we are in Christ, God can be the God of all grace to us to call us into His eternal glory, and in Christ He will perfect us, establish us, strengthen us, and ground us in the Triune God as our solid foundation so that we may enabled to attain to His glorious goal. Hallelujah!

God’s calling is through the gospel – in time, in our particular situation, God came to call us through the faithful preaching of the gospel of some of His sent ones (2 Thes. 2:14). When we heard the gospel, we saw a vision of Jesus Christ the Son of God with His person and al that He has accomplished.

The gospel is the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:1-3; Acts 5:42) with His person and all that He has accomplished, attained, and obtained – together with all that He is accomplishing in this age and will accomplish in the coming age and in eternity.

When we heard the gospel preaching and saw such a Christ, we believed into Him and received Him (Rom. 10:14-15). Now as believers in Christ owe others the gospel, and we can cooperate with the Lord to preach Christ with all He has accomplished as the gospel for others to hear God’s calling and believe into Him.

God Called us Out of Darkness into His Marvelous Light that we may be Separated and Made Holy Unto Him

The New Testament reveals many aspects of the purpose of God’s calling; in 1 Pet. 2:9 we see that God called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people acquired for a possession, so that we may tell out the virtues of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.

We were in darkness, in the sphere and expression of Satan, and God came to call us even when we were dead in our sins and offenses (Eph. 2:1). When God called us, He opened our eyes and turned us from darkness to light and from the authority of Satan to Himself (Acts 26:18).

In Ephesians we see how God calls us from being dead in sins and offenses all the way until we enjoy the unsearchable riches of Christ. Hallelujah, God called us to deliver us out of the death-realm of Satan’s darkness and bring us into the life-realm of God’s marvelous light!

God called us so that we may be separated and made holy unto Him; as those called by God, we are the holy ones, the called saints (see Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2). Our God is holy, and we should be holy as He is holy (Lev. 11:45). To be holy means that we are separated and sanctified unto God to be saturated with His holy element.

As the church, we are a holy nation, a group of people who are separated from the world unto God for His purpose. In degraded Christianity today the words “holy” and “saints” have been misused and spoiled; according to the New Testament, all believers in Christ as those called by God are called saints, the holy ones. Hallelujah, saints!

Thank You Lord for calling us out of darkness into Your marvelous light so that we may tell us the virtues of Him who called us! Thank You for coming to call us out of the death-realm of Satan in darkness to Your life-realm in light! Hallelujah, we are a holy nation, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a people acquired for a possession, a group of people sanctified and separated unto God for His purpose! Praise the Lord, we are the called saints, holy ones as the God who calls us is holy!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. Andrew Yu’s sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, Truth Lessons — Level One, vol. 3, lsn. 27, as quoted in, the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Exodus (1),  week 3 / msg 3, The Purpose of God’s Calling (you can buy this morning revival book here via LSM and here via Amazon).
• Hymns on this topic:
  # For God had predetermined, by His counsel and His will / That man might be a vessel, which He Himself would fill / And so for this He chose us, back in eternity / And He predestinated us His very sons to be. (Song on being Chosen by God)
  # Christ calling yet! shall I not hear? / Earth’s pleasures shall I still hold dear? / Shall life’s swift passing years all fly, / And still my soul in slumber lie? / Christ calling yet! I cannot stay; / My heart I yield without delay; / Vain world, farewell! from thee I part; / The voice of Christ has reached my heart. (Hymns #1029)
  # I’ve turned my back upon the world / With all its idle pleasures, / And set my heart on better things, / On higher, holier treasures; / No more its glitter and its glare, / And vanity shall blind me; / I’ve crossed the separating line, / And left the world behind me. (Hymns #438)