Redemption Accomplished and Applied: Effectual Calling

I’m participating in Tim Challies’ Reading the Classics Together program. The book is Redemption Accomplished and Applied by John Murray, and this week’s reading is the second chapter of Part 2: The Order of Application.

In last week’s reading, John Murray established an order of the application of redemption: calling, regeneration, faith and repentance, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, and glorification. This chapter examines the very first step on the list—the effectual call.

To start, Murray acknowledges that there is a universal call of the gospel mentioned in scripture, but then points out that in the New Testament, when used in reference to salvation, the term calling almost always refers to “the call which is efficacious unto salvation.”

The author of this efficacious call is God, and God the Father is the specific agent. When Romans 8 says that “whom he did predestinate, them he also called,” it’s the one who predestinates who does the calling, the same one who predestinates people “to be conformed to the image of his Son.” This can be no one else but the Father.

This call of God has strength. It is like a summons, but a summons that doesn’t fail to deliver the one summoned to the intended destination. “God calls the things that be not,” Murray reminds us, “as though they were.” And because God’s purpose is immutable, God’s call is irrevocable. That means that it makes perseverance certain. This call is to holiness, so that those who are called “must exemplify in their conduct the calling by which they have been called.”

The effectual call originates in the purpose of God, so when he calls, it is not arbitrarily or whimsically, but according to his plan. “[T]he moment and all the circumstances are fixed by his own counsel and will.” God’s plan to call is eternal, which is something we can’t wrap our finite minds around. Nevertheless, it is amazing to think that “God’s thoughts and interest and purpose have been occupied from eternity with the grace which is actually bestowed in time”. The call comes to us in Christ, which means, I think, that it is given to us on the basis of Christ’s work.

And the call comes first in the order of application of salvation. Murray gives four reasons for this, including an argument from Romans 8:28-30, which puts calling right after predestination, which would seem to put it as the initial act of application.

The chapter concludes with this summary:

[T]he application of redemption begins with the sovereign and efficacious summons by which the people of God are ushered into the fellowship of Christ and union with him to the end that they may become partakers of all the grace and virtue which reside in him as Redeemer, Saviour, and Lord.

This is a short chapter, but Murray has packed a lot of teaching  in it. Still, I found it easier to understand than some of the previous chapters. This is the first chapter in this book that I’ve read without having to look any words up in the dictionary, so there’s no glossary for this one. 

Comments

[Lisa notes...]

Thanks for your faithfulness in these summaries. This one is helpful to me, as usual. Trying to grasp the concepts in this chapter...I find that I have even more questions after reading it than before reading. But that's a good thing.