What is a calling according to the Bible?

We invite the attention of our readers to the very important and comprehensive subject of the Christian calling. In using the term “our calling” we do not mean the general call of God to mankind, sounding loud and clear in the gospel today (see Prov. 1:20-26), nor do we confine it to that effectual call which in the Spirit’s power reaches the souls of God’s elect (see Rom. 8:28), but rather to that peculiar position of relationship and privilege in the divine economy, with its corresponding responsibilities, to which all Christians have been designated by the sovereign will of God.

We cannot but realize the importance of this great truth, when we see from the New Testament that it is still the principle on which God is acting today. The Church is entirely composed of individuals that are called by grace. The Apostle Paul clearly states that God has not only "saved us" but also "called us"; and that this calling is "an holy calling … according to His own purpose" (2 Tim. 1:9). Again, in his epistle to the Romans we are reminded that believers are "the called according to His purpose" (Rom. 8:28). So in writing to the Hebrew believers, the Apostle appeals to them as "partakers of the heavenly calling" (Heb. 3 :1). The Apostle Peter tells us we are "called … out of darkness into His marvellous light," and, he adds, "the God of all grace … has called us to His eternal glory" (1 Peter 2:9; 1 Peter 5:10).

It is clear then that believers are not only "saved" but "called." Naturally the first concern of an anxious soul is, like the jailer of old, "What must I do to be saved?" Having found salvation through faith in Christ and His finished work, we are too often content to rest in the knowledge that our sins are forgiven and that we are sheltered from judgment and saved from hell. We are slow to see that the same gospel that brings the good news of salvation from judgment proclaims the call of God to the glory of Christ. The Apostle can not only say to the Thessalonian believers that "God has from the beginning chosen you to salvation," but immediately adds that "He called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Thess. 2:13-14).

Scripture makes it abundantly clear that believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are both "saved" and "called." We read in 2 Timothy 1:9, God "has saved us and called us with an holy calling." But while every true believer knows something of the blessedness of God's salvation, comparatively few enter into the joy of the calling.

Alas! it is feared, that with many, "calling" is but a term occasionally met with in Scripture, conveying very little definite meaning to the mind, and hence having very little power over the life. Yet nothing will so powerfully affect the outlook of a Christian, the manner of his life, and the character of his associations, as the realization of the call of God.

It must be remembered there is the deeply serious call to the sinner, of which we read in the story of the Garden of Eden when "the Lord God called to Adam … Where art thou?" (Gen. 3:9). This was calling a sinner to account for his sin. Then again there is the important call to the servant as when the Holy Spirit said, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them" (Acts 13:2). Both these calls have their place in the ways of God, but it is neither the call to the sinner, nor the call to the servant to which we refer, but rather the call to the saint. That great call is the common portion of all saints, however slow they may be in responding and entering into the blessedness of it.

One of the most impressive exhortations left us by the Apostle Paul in the pages of Holy Scripture reads as follows:-"I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation [calling] wherewith ye are called " (Eph. 4:1). In every age the call of God has been the governing factor in the life of every saint, who has been consistent with it. It is to be so today for us who are Christians, and therefore it is our solemn responsibility to learn from the apostolic writings what is the nature of the calling, wherewith God has called us and, having discovered it, to walk in consistency with it. We propose to enquire what the Christian calling is, inasmuch as we know that, "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance " (Rom. 11:29); that is, God never "repents," or "changes His purpose." What He purposes, and establishes in His calling, always stands for ever.

The first occasion when God's call appears is in Genesis 12:1, where we read that, "The Lord had said to Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, to a land that I will show thee." The New Testament comment on this is, "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out … he went out … " (Heb. 11:8). Here at once we find a leading feature, which marks the call of God right through Scripture, whatever the nature of the call may be. It involves for those who are called a separation from the mass of mankind. This is so, whether God calls an individual, severing him from country and kindred and father's house, or whether He calls a nation, or still later an assembly composed of individuals, called out from all the nations.

What a transcendent thought! God has a purpose for His people, settled before the foundation of the world, and in order to accomplish that purpose He has called us. He saved us because we needed saving. He has called us because He wanted us. Thus it is the privilege of each believer to say: "Though God is so great, and I am so small, yet God wants me, and wanting me, He has called me."

In spite of Israel's unfaithfulness and apostasy, out of that nation according to the flesh sprang the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet they rejected Him, and this opened the way for the revelation of another calling on God's part. We have been called, "with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began" (2 Tim. 1:9), though it had lain in God's mind undisclosed, and was not revealed until Christ, having died, was risen and ascended to heaven, and the Holy Spirit was shed forth.

Secondly, if believers were chosen in a past eternity, they are called in time, and the call reached them by the gospel which Paul speaks of as "our gospel." We often confine the gospel to the preaching of the forgiveness of sins; but Paul's gospel not only proclaimed the salvation that meets our need, but also the calling that meets the need in the heart of God; for if God calls us it is in order to gratify the purposes of love in His own heart.

It is plain that the fresh appeal is to our state and consequent course and character of walk. The very order of the terms indicates this; for on the side of divine grace election according to scripture necessarily precedes calling. God's choice of the Christian is in eternity; as His calling of us is in time out of darkness into His wonderful light (1 Peter 2:9). So in the opening of the First Epistle the saints were said to be elect according to God the Father's foreknowledge; but it was in virtue of the Spirit's sanctification that they were separated unto the obedience and blood-sprinkling of the Lord Jesus Christ. The well-known summary in Rom. 8:28-30 is still more precise and full. "And we know that all things work together for good to those that love God, to those that are called according to purpose. Because whom he fore-knew he also predestinated [to be] conformed to the image of his Son, that he should be firstborn among many brethren. And whom he predestinated, these he also called; and whom he called, these he also justified; and whom he justified, these he also glorified." Thus the chain of blessing is completed when the many brethren are brought even as concerns the body into conformity with their glorified Lord. The order is as clearly of God's grace; as that in our text, where calling comes before election, is of its actual application to man. And this is in keeping with the context which deals with the present moral government of souls.

(V. 8). Abraham is the main witness to the faith that lays hold of the purposes of God, leading him to look on to another world and walk as a stranger in this world. He was called to go out of the country in which he had lived in view of another country which he would afterwards receive. If God calls a man out of this present world it is because He has a better world into which to bring him. It will be remembered that Stephen commences his address before the Jewish council by saying, “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham.” That is a wonderful statement, but the statement at the end of the address is more wonderful, for Stephen, looking up steadfastly into heaven and seeing Jesus standing on the right hand of God, can say, “I behold the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God.” The beginning of the call is that the God of glory appears to a man on earth; the end is that a Man appears in the glory of God in heaven. Directly the Lord Jesus takes His place in glory we see clearly what Abraham saw dimly — the full result of the call of God. We, like Abraham, have been called according to the purpose of God (2 Timothy 1:9); but this means we have been called out of this present world to have part with Christ in the home of glory where He is, to be actually with Him and like Him — conformed to the image of God's Son (Philippians 3:14; Romans 8:29; 2 Thessalonians 2:14).

We are saved to every blessing that is ours in Christ. And yet, if we carefully follow Scripture phraseology, salvation is mostly, if not always, connected with what we are delivered from; and if it is a question of what we are brought to the word used is "calling." God has "saved us, and called us with an holy calling" (2 Tim. 1:9).