Soteriology (Doctrine of Salvation): Calling
1. Calling in Salvation History: From Plan to Personal Summons
In Romans 8:29–30 Paul places calling within God’s golden chain: foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified. “Calling” speaks to God’s action that actually brings a sinner out of unbelief into faith. Scripture presents this in layered ways: a universal call through creation and conscience; the gospel call through preaching, promise, and invitation; and the effectual call by which the Spirit secures a saving response. Each layer is truly from God; only one is saving. The whole movement centers in Christ’s cross and resurrection and issues in the church’s hope of glory.
2. Calling in Creation: The Universal Call and Human Accountability
Creation itself calls. “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps 19:1). Paul adds that God’s “eternal power and divine nature” are “clearly perceived” so that humanity is “without excuse” (Rom 1:20). This universal call is inescapable—every sunrise preaches—but it is not redemptive. It informs, summons, and indicts, yet it does not impart the power to repent or to believe. In Adam we suppress the truth; the result of the universal call, apart from grace, is guilt, not salvation. Still, the breadth of this call underscores God’s generosity: the world we inhabit is filled with gifts that reflect his goodness and restrain our ruin, even as they leave us answerable before him.
3. Calling in Proclamation: The Gospel Call (Plan, Promise, Invitation)
The gospel call concerns God as Redeemer. It is indiscriminate and global, addressing sinners everywhere. Scripture shows three recurring elements:
Announcement of the plan of salvation. Preaching declares what God has done in Christ: the Son took flesh, fulfilled the law, died for sins, rose, and now reigns (Acts 2:22–36; 1 Tim 1:15). The gospel has content—who God is, who we are, and what Christ has accomplished.
Announcement of the promise of redemption. God promises forgiveness, righteousness, the Spirit, and eternal life to all who believe (Gal 3:22; Acts 2:38–39). The promise is sure because God is faithful.
Invitation and command to believe. Preaching presses the hearer to come to Christ now (Matt 11:28; Acts 2:38). Teaching informs; preaching confronts and invites.
This call goes to elect and non-elect alike; we do not (and cannot) sort Christ’s sheep from the pulpit. The command to repent does not presuppose native ability; it reveals our inability and drives us to grace. Yet the gospel itself is “the power of God for salvation” because the Spirit wields it as his instrument.
4. Calling with Authority: Christ’s Own Voice in Gospel Preaching
Scripture attributes unique authority to preaching. Paul argues that people “hear” Christ in the heralded word (Rom 10:14, objective genitive). He can say to a Gentile church, “He came and preached peace to you” (Eph 2:17), though Jesus never visited Ephesus bodily—Christ preached through apostolic proclamation. Jesus told the Seventy that to hear them was to hear him, and to reject them was to reject him and the Father (Luke 10:16). Thus, when Christ’s gospel is faithfully proclaimed by lawfully called ministers, Christ himself addresses the hearers. This grants gravity and hope: gravity, because refusal is refusal of the Lord; hope, because the Savior still speaks peace to rebels.
5. Calling by the Spirit: Revelation, Illumination, and Power
No one comes to the Son unless the Father draws (John 6:44). The Father reveals the Son; the Son reveals the Father (Matt 11:25–27). After Pentecost, Scripture ascribes this revealing work to the Spirit (John 16:13–15): he teaches, illumines, discloses, and anoints (1 John 2:20, 27). Paul’s ministry rested on this reality: not “plausible words of wisdom,” but a demonstration of the Spirit and power (1 Cor 2:4–5). The new-birth “Let there be light” occurs in the heart as God shines “in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). The Spirit does not add extrabiblical truths; he opens blind eyes to the biblical Christ and persuades and enables sinners to embrace him.
6. Effectual Calling: The Summons That Creates the Response
Because we are dead in trespasses (Eph 2:1), enslaved to sin (John 8:34), and hostile to God’s law (Rom 8:7), the universal and gospel calls alone cannot produce saving faith. The effectual call is God’s sovereign summons that actually brings a person to faith in Christ. In the New Testament, when “called” is used in this saving sense, it denotes those who truly belong to Christ (Rom 1:6–7), distinguished from the mass of hearers (1 Cor 1:24; Matt 22:14). Those whom he calls in Romans 8:30 are the very ones he justifies and glorifies—the same people, not a wider circle.
Effectual calling is from the Father, by the Spirit, unto union with the Son. It is immutable (“the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable,” Rom 11:29). It grants fellowship with Christ (1 Cor 1:9), draws us into a holy vocation (2 Tim 1:9), and sets us on the path that ends in glory (1 Pet 5:10). In the call itself, the Spirit awakens faith and repentance; he regenerates so that the gospel invitation becomes gladly irresistible—not by coercion of the will, but by liberation of it.
7. Calling and Common Grace: Wide Mercy, Saving Grace
Creation’s witness, civic goods, moral restraint, skills, and cultural gifts display God’s generosity to the undeserving (Gen 9:1; Matt 5:45). This “common” goodness is not saving, but it is truly good, and it frames the theater in which the gospel call goes forth to all. We should neither absolutize common grace (as if it removes depravity) nor deny it (as if a fallen world knows only wrath). The church therefore preaches Christ to every creature, trusting the Spirit to transform hearers, even as God’s ordinary mercies continue to sustain the world he loves.
8. Calling and Christian Life: Assurance, Holiness, Mission, and Hope
God’s calling grounds assurance: the same Lord who called will keep (Rom 8:30; 1 Thess 5:24). It forms a holy people: “Walk in a manner worthy of the calling” (Eph 4:1). It fuels mission: the church heralds Christ indiscriminately, confident that his sheep will hear his voice (John 10:16) and come. And it directs us to hope: calling aims at an imperishable inheritance (1 Pet 1:4), culminating when the called are glorified with Christ. Thus the pattern is clear—announcement, promise, invitation; Christ’s own voice in preaching; the Spirit’s life-giving summons; a people called out of darkness into marvelous light for the praise of God’s name.
Bible verses about Calling
Romans 8:30 – “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”
Romans 1:6–7 – “Including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints.”
1 Corinthians 1:9 – “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
1 Corinthians 1:23–24 – “But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
Matthew 22:14 – “For many are called, but few are chosen.”
John 6:44 – “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”
2 Thessalonians 2:14 – “To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Ephesians 4:1 – “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”
1 Peter 2:9 – “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
Psalm 19:1 – “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.”
