by Paul Helm
What made the difference? What explains the division between those who accept and those who reject the preaching of the good news? It is tempting to look for an explanation of the difference in the way we explain other differences between people, in terms of class, or occupation, or age or personality. But the evidence provided by the New Testament does not lend any support to such an approach, for an examination of the lives of those who became Christians reveals a great variety of backgrounds, not one common factor. Some Christians were rich (Luke 19:1-10) and some were poor (I Cor. 1:26). Some were free (Gal. 3:28), others were slaves (I Pet. 2:18). There were young and old, men and women, Jews and Gentiles. Besides, there is not the least suggestion that the apostles thought that their message was for a particular group or type, nor that they believed that what they said was tailored to be more acceptable to some than to others.
So what makes the difference? Why is it that some believe the good news and some do not? What explanation does Scripture itself offer?
Scripture teaches that besides the general ‘call’, the preaching of the gospel to all alike, there is a further ‘call’, a call from God which itself brings a response from those who are called, the response of repentance and faith in Christ and of sincere obedience to what God requires. Not all who are called are called in this sense. Not all who are called by the general preaching of the gospel are called by God in such a way as to ensure the appropriate response.
This further call, the call that brings a response, comes directly from God. It is true that the general call of the gospel is from God as well, since God authorises and empowers men to preach, and they speak at His command. But the further, inward call is more immediately the work of God. One way that the New Testament has of making this clear is to say that while a preacher or teacher can teach the gospel to others, and encourage and warn them, only God by His grace can secure the acceptance of the good news. No matter how eloquent or clear or winsome a human preacher may be, what he says will not, by itself, bring hearers to faith in Christ. God alone can do such a thing. No doubt with Christ’s teaching in the parable of the sower in mind, Paul reminded the Corinthians that while one man may sow the seed, and another man may water, none but God can make the seed spring to life and bear fruit (I Cor. 3:6).
God’s effective call, the call which brings a response, is more than the general call of the gospel through preaching. And yet it would be misleading to leave the impression that when a person is converted through the preaching of the good news, when he is called by God, he experiences two separate calls, one from the preacher and another from God. It is not so. God’s direct call does not involve the person who is called in receiving another message, through a vision or voice or an inner prompting, besides the good news that he hears in common with all the others who hear it. There is one message of good news, exactly the same for all. A person is not converted by receiving an additional ‘secret message’.
But if the call from God which secures a response is not an additional teaching, what is it? It is the activity of God who makes a person receptive and responsive to the truth which he hears. The inward ‘call’ is not more information, it is the clearing and renewing of the mind of the one who hears so that he understands the good news. It is also the removing of the prejudice which all people have to the authority of God, and it is the renewing of the will in order that the response of faith and obedience may be made as the good news is announced.
For illustration, consider the difference between a skilled engineer and a novice. Both may listen to the idling of an engine and the skilled engineer may at once be able to tell what is wrong, what is causing the vibration or unevenness. Yet both the engineer and the novice hear the same sounds. What is a puzzle to one is immediately clear to the other. The difference is due to the training and experience of the engineer. But in the case of the effectual call of a sinner by God, the difference is not that the one called has certain aptitudes or abilities which the one who is not called lacks. Emphatically not. The difference is due to divine grace alone. And this grace shows itself in a difference in appreciation, a difference which is brought about by a change in the person’s innermost dispositions and attitudes, a change which only God can make.
Hence, in the conversion of a person through the proclamation of the Christian good news, there is a two-fold call. There is the general call of the gospel through preaching and there is the particular, effective call of God working a change in a person’s inner character to make him appreciative of the gospel and responsive to it.
If this double sense of ‘call’ is borne in mind then certain parts of the New Testament which are otherwise difficult to understand, and which may even seem to be contradictory, become clear. When Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says ‘But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God’ (I Cor. 1:24), he is referring to their effectual calling, their calling by God through the preaching of the good news and their divinely-empowered response to it. That empowering took no account of wisdom or natural birth, and it was certainly not because of such matters. Paul says that, in general, God had called the poor and foolish among men in order to show that coming to Christ was nothing to boast about. It was certainly not due to greater natural intelligence or insight.
On the other hand, consider Christ’s words ‘Many are called, but few are chosen’ (Matt. 20:16). Here Christ is referring to the general call of the gospel, and teaching that while many are called outwardly through preaching, comparatively few are called effectually, are ‘chosen’. So Christ uses ‘chosen’ here to describe the effective activity of God in conversion, while Paul uses ‘called’. And yet the contrast is not as great as it may seem, for Paul also, in the passage already considered, writes of the ‘called’ as those whom God has chosen (I Cor. 1:27). And clearly the idea of choice, God’s choice, is very appropriate to describe the unilateral, effective way in which God makes His grace known to sinners in their conversion.
The fact that the effective call (or choice) of God is not a separate message or revelation from God, but that it accompanies the exposition of the gospel of grace in preaching, underlines the fact that conversion always occurs in circumstances in which the good news is made known. No one is converted who is ignorant of the way of salvation through God’s mercy in Christ. How could they be? To suppose such a thing would mean that such a person knew nothing at all about God’s mercy in Christ. But how could they go to God for mercy if they knew nothing about God’s mercy, and had no idea that they were warranted to go to God in their need? A person may be prepared by God for conversion at a time when he is ignorant of the good news. Such a person may come to experience an unaccountable need, a profound dissatisfaction with himself, an unnamed longing which he is unable fully to understand, or to satisfy, until Christ is preached to him and he comes to Christ for mercy. But this is unusual. Ordinarily it is as the good news is proclaimed that all the phases of effectual calling take place.
Why, in conveying His mercy to sinful people, does God work effectively, unilaterally, in the way described? Because there is no other way for Him to work. Such an answer is not meant to reflect unfavourably upon God, as though He was limited in power and goodness. It is not so much a comment on the power or goodness of God as upon the plight or need of mankind. Man’s plight is such that to suppose that he could be encouraged or cajoled into the kingdom of God would be to mock him. People in need of God’s mercy, with their faces turned away from Him, and in a condition which the New Testament describes as death (Eph. 2:1) and enmity (Rom. 8.7), will not respond even to the sweetest and most persuasive reasonings of God Himself until they are given strength to do so. The idea that people are neutral, and that they need someone or some influence to tip the balance in God’s favour, betrays a deep misunderstanding of the spiritual condition of mankind. Sin makes men hostile to God. Sin is hostility to God. Unconverted people live in opposition to Him. The only way in which they can be changed is to be turned about, to be given new life or recreated. The New Testament does not hesitate to use such radical language —the language of creation, new birth and resurrection — to describe how a person is brought to Christ.
So while the call of the gospel through preaching is general, without restriction, in accordance with Christ’s command to His servants to proclaim the good news in all the world, yet the inward, effectual call of God which makes the good news intelligible and acceptable, is particular. This effectual call does not come to classes of people as such, or to nations, but to individual people within classes or nations. This distinction between the general and the particular call applied equally well to Israel in the Old Testament era. And even if large numbers of people in a society become Christians at one and the same time it is not valid to infer from this that it has happened because they were somehow fitted or entitled to receive God’s mercy.
The character of the effective call of God shows more clearly than anything else that salvation comes to individual men and women only as a result of God’s mercy. When Paul preached at Athens (or Jesus preached in Galilee) why was it that some scoffingly rejected what he said and others received it? The explanation cannot be that God is not sufficiently powerful or wise effectively to call an Epicurean or a Stoic philosopher. Nor does the explanation lie in the fact that one person is naturally more inclined to be converted than another. Rather, conversion is explained by the fact that God sees fit to grant His saving grace.
Perhaps nothing highlights more clearly the sovereignly merciful character of the effective call than the fact that, while all need salvation, only some receive it. It could never be argued that people are converted because they deserve to be converted. If this were so why are not all converted, since all are equally needy?
Paul argues along these lines in Romans 9, where he discusses the case of Jacob and Esau. God had mercy on Jacob, while Esau was denied mercy. Paul shows that God’s treatment of them cannot have been on account of anything either of them did, since God had determined how to act before either of them had been born. But if God had mercy on Jacob and rejected Esau, could He not have had mercy on both, or rejected both? Why did He not treat them alike? Paul gives the unanswerable reply that God chose to distribute His mercy in the way He did, and not in some other way, simply because He is God. It is His right to dispense mercy as He pleases because He has dominion over all his creation, and all that He does is based upon perfect wisdom.
So the effective call of God, the call which secures a response, is not due to human goodness or human preparedness of any kind which might be thought to predispose God to favour one individual instead of another. Conversion has its source not in any qualifications which a person may have, but in the eternal election of God. Paul brings this out vividly when writing to the Thessalonian church. He says that when they were converted the good news came powerfully to them because of God’s prior choice of them. Because of this eternal choice, when the appropriate time came, God effectively called them as the good news was preached to them (I Thess. 1:4-7).
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This article is taken from his book, The Callings: The Gospel in the World, published by the Banner of Truth, 1987