This is another repost of an old post in the Called According to Paul series. I’m reposting them all, one per week, so I can link to them in the sidebar under Favorite Posts. An explanation of this series can be found here, and the already reposted pieces are here.
But we ought to thank God always for you, brothers and sisters, loved by the Lord, because God chose you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. He called you to this salvation through our gospel, so that you may possess the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. (NET)
What can we learn about the way Paul uses the word call from this passage? Let’s start with verse 14—that’s where the word call is found—and work backwards from there.
- The call in this passage is to salvation, and it comes through the preaching of the gospel. In some of the earlier passages we looked at, we learned that the call to salvation is a call with divine power behind it, which implies that it is the work of the Spirit. In this passage, while it’s clear that that salvation comes through the Spirit’s work (see verse 13), Paul says that the salvation call also comes through “our gospel.” The powerful call of the Spirit to salvation works in conjunction with (or through) the preaching of the good news.
- The purpose of this call is “so that you may possess the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In other words, God has called particular Thessalonians to salvation so that the character and nature of the Lord Jesus Christ would be displayed in them. We saw in the last two passages (2 Timothy 1:9; Romans 1:1-7. ) that the call to salvation is a call to holiness, and this is at least a similar thought, if not the same one.
- Once again, the call is connected to God’s choice: God “chose you…for salvation” and then “called you to this salvation.” God’s choice precedes God’s call, with the call of God working out in time what the choice of God established “from the beginning.”1 We’ve seen this thought previously, for in 2 Timothy 1:9, the call to salvation is grounded in a choice made “before the ages began.”
- And, as in Romans 1:1-7, the call is linked to God’s love, coming to “brethren loved by the Lord.”
Are you feeling like these are starting to be repetitive? That’s not a bad thing, because it shows that we’re getting down to the center of the way Paul tended to use the word call. We’ve seen the particular nuances he gave to it and the things he associated it with it over and over again. That should give us confidence in our understanding of the usual meaning Paul gives to the word call when he writes about the call of God.
What do you see that I missed? What can you see in this passage about the meaning of the word called when it is used by Paul in regards to the call of God?
1Yes, I know there’s a textual variant here. The verse either reads “as a first fruit” or “from the beginning”. For more explanation, the NET translational notes on this verse.