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In this lesson we shall continue to see God’s calling.
God’s calling is a holy calling (2 Tim. 1:9a). God has called the believers that He may separate them from all the common things and sanctify them unto Himself for His own purpose. Hence, God’s calling is a holy calling.
God’s calling is a heavenly calling (Heb. 3:1), the high calling (Phil. 3:14). The Greek word for “high” literally means above. Hence, the high calling is the calling from above, from the heavens, by God. It is equivalent to the heavenly calling. God’s calling to the children of Israel was a low calling, an earthly calling, to receive the earthly blessing for the possession of the physical land. God’s calling to the believers, however, is a high calling, a heavenly calling, to receive the heavenly blessing for the possession of the all-inclusive Christ and all His riches.
This heavenly calling is a calling of the divine hope (Eph. 1:18a; 4:4). As God’s called people, we are full of hope. Colossians 1:27 says that Christ in us is the hope of glory. Hence, our hope is Christ Himself. We are called with a calling of the divine hope to possess, partake of, and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ, who is the embodiment of the processed Triune God. Today He is our life and hope (Col. 3:4; 1:27; Eph. 4:4); in the future He will be our glory and inheritance (1 Pet. 5:1; 1:4). In this age we live by, experience, and enjoy the life of Christ, and we also pursue diligently the growth and development of life unto maturity. When Christ our hope comes again, He will redeem our fallen and corrupted body (Rom. 8:23) by transfiguring it and making it the same as the body of His glory (Phil. 3:21). He will conform us to His glorious image (Rom. 8:29), making us holy and absolutely like Him in our regenerated spirit, transformed soul, and transfigured body. He will glorify us (Rom. 8:30), immersing us in His glory (Heb. 2:10) that we may enter into His heavenly kingdom (2 Tim. 4:18; 2 Pet. 1:11), the kingdom into which He has called us (1 Thes. 2:12). He will enable us to inherit the inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, kept in the heavens for us (1 Pet. 1:4). He even will cause us to reign together with Him as kings and to share His joy (Matt. 25:21, 23). This is the calling of the divine hope which we have received.
We were called with the heavenly calling to walk worthily in the church (Eph. 4:1). Our walk in the church should be worthy of the calling with which we were called. Hence, we need to be transformed that we may have a proper, normal humanity, living a life of lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, bearing one another in love, and being diligent to keep the oneness of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace (Eph. 4:2-3). Furthermore, we need to have seven things as the base of our oneness: one Body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God (Eph. 4:4-6). Thus, we can live a life that is worthy of the calling with which we were called.
The heavenly calling also supplies us with the reality of the Triune God, which is the unsearchable riches of Christ (Eph. 3:8b) and His immeasurable dimensions (Eph. 3:18), that we may be filled unto all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:19b) for God’s expression (Eph. 3:21). The riches of Christ are what Christ is to us, such as light, life, righteousness, and holiness. These riches are unsearchable and untraceable. The immeasurable dimensions of Christ are the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth of the universe (Eph. 3:18), that we may experience Christ in His breadth, length, height, and depth, without limit.
To walk in the church worthily of God’s calling, we need to enjoy continually what Christ is and has, allowing Him to impart God’s riches into us, that we may be filled even unto the fullness of God for the expression of God. This is the proper condition of the church; this is also the proper living of the called ones.
God’s calling is that He may bring man out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9b). Due to man’s fall, sin and death came upon all men and caused them to fall into darkness. Darkness is a sign of sin and death; it is the expression and sphere of Satan in death. The fact that mankind is in darkness proves that mankind is under the authority of Satan and dead in offenses and sins (Eph. 2:1). When God comes to call man, He opens man’s eyes and turns man from darkness to light and from the authority of Satan to Himself. Light is a sign of righteousness and life; it is the expression and sphere of God in life. To be turned to God means to be turned to the authority of God, which is God’s kingdom of light. God has called us that He may deliver us out of the death-realm of Satan’s darkness into the life-realm of God’s marvelous light.
God’s calling is that His chosen ones may be separated and made holy unto God, to be the holy ones, the saints. Both Romans 1:7 and 1 Corinthians 1:2 reveal that the believers are the called saints. The saints are produced through the calling of the sanctifying God, who called them out of the world unto Himself. Hence, God’s calling is a separation and a sanctification. Therefore, not only Peter and Paul were saints, but all God’s called ones are saints, holy ones.
God has called us that we may also enter into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord (1 Cor. 1:9), to partake of and enjoy His all-inclusive riches. This all-inclusive Christ is the embodiment of the processed Triune God (Col. 2:9). According to the revelation in 1 Corinthians, Christ is the portion of the saints (1:2); He is God’s power and God’s wisdom as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption to us (1:24, 30); He is our glory (2:7) and the Lord of glory (2:8); He is the depths of God (2:10); He is the unique foundation of God’s building (3:11); He is our Passover (5:7), the unleavened bread (5:8), the spiritual food, the spiritual drink, and the spiritual rock (10:3-4); He is the Head (11:3) and the Body (12:12); He is the firstfruit (15:20, 23), the second Man (15:47), and the last Adam (15:45b); and as such He became the life-giving Spirit (15:45b). We were called by God into the fellowship of such an all-inclusive Christ that we may enjoy Him as our God-given eternal portion.
God not only called us out of darkness into His marvelous light and into the fellowship of His Son, our Lord Jesus, but He also called us to the suffering of Christ. First Peter 2:20 and 21 say, “For what credit is it if sinning and being buffeted you shall endure it? But if doing good and suffering you shall endure, this is grace with God. For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered on your behalf, leaving you a model that you should follow in His steps.”
For our sake Christ humbled Himself to become a man, being born into a poor family. He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief (Isa. 52:14; 53:2-3). He was without sin and had never sinned (Heb. 4:15; 1 Pet. 2:22), yet He was oppressed and afflicted. Being reviled, He did not revile in return; suffering, He did not threaten (1 Pet. 2:23). He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows; He was wounded for our transgressions and was bruised for our iniquities (Isa. 53:4-5). Finally, He Himself carried up our sins in His body onto the tree (1 Pet. 2:24). He suffered on our behalf and left us a model so that we should follow in His steps.
Literally, the Greek word for “model” means an under-writing. The Lord Jesus has set His suffering life before us as an under-writing for us to copy by tracing that He may be reproduced in us. This is spiritual xeroxing: Christ Himself is the original copy, the Spirit is the light, the divine life is the ink, and we are the paper for Christ to be reproduced in us. While we are bearing sorrows, suffering unjustly, we experience the grace of God, enjoying the motivation of the divine life within us and its expression in our life, that in our behavior we may become a reproduction of Christ, suffering as He suffered and living as He lived. This is God’s calling us to the suffering of Christ.
For the unique Body of Christ God has called us also to the peace of Christ. Colossians 3:15 says, “And let the peace of Christ arbitrate in your hearts, to which also you were called in one Body.” This indicates that for the proper Body life we need the peace of Christ to arbitrate, to adjust, to decide, all things in our hearts in the relationships among the members of His Body. Because the church life has been invaded by the differences of races, religious observances, cultural backgrounds, and classes and by the various philosophies and isms, there is a lack of the peace of Christ in the believers’ experience. They even have disputes with one another and are divided into parties, so that eventually there is a loss of the oneness of the Body of Christ. At this time an arbitrator is needed. This arbitrator is not any brother in the church; it is the very peace of Christ. We should allow the peace of Christ to arbitrate in our hearts. We all must take heed to the word of the arbitrator, allowing the presiding peace of Christ to rule within us and settle all the disputes among us, thus maintaining the oneness of the Body of Christ. This is the peace to which God has called us in one Body.
After Paul wrote in the book of Colossians concerning the all-inclusive Christ and concerning the new man in whom Christ is all and in all and where there is no room for Greek, Jew, or other cultural distinctions, he charged the saints to care for the peace of Christ. This is the peace of which Paul speaks in Ephesians 2:15, where we are told that in Himself Christ created one new man out of two peoples, thus making peace. In the new man there is no Greek, Jew, circumcision, or uncircumcision, and there are no different races, classes, or nationalities. Rather, there is oneness because Christ is all and in all. The peaceful oneness in the new man is simply the peace of Christ.
God has called us also for the purpose that we may obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thes. 2:14). Man was created in the image of God and after the likeness of God that man might contain God and express God. After man sinned and fell, God’s original purpose in creating man was lost; man could no longer contain or express God. God, however, accomplished redemption for man, and He called His chosen ones unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth that they might obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thes. 2:13-14). The glory of the Lord Jesus Christ is that Christ is the Son of God the Father, possessing the Father’s life and nature to express Him. To obtain the glory of Christ is to be in the same position as sons of God to express Him.
In John 17:22 the Lord said in His prayer to the Father, “And the glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, even as We are one.” The glory which the Father has given the Son is the sonship with the Father’s life and divine nature (John 5:26) to express the Father in His fullness (John 1:18; 14:9; Col. 2:9; Heb. 1:3). Through His death and resurrection the Son has given this glory to His believers that they also may have the sonship with the Father’s life and divine nature (John 17:2; 2 Pet. 1:4) to express the Father in the fullness of the Son (John 1:16). This is God’s calling us unto the obtaining of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.
God has called the believers not only unto the obtaining of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, but also into the eternal glory of God (1 Pet. 5:10). For this, the God of all grace is ministering to us the riches of the bountiful supply of the divine life in many aspects and in many steps of the divine operation on and in us in God’s economy. The initial step is to call us, and the consummate step is to glorify us. Between these two steps are His loving care while He is disciplining us and His perfecting, establishing, strengthening, and grounding work in us. In all these divine acts, the bountiful supply of the divine life is ministered to us as grace in varied experiences, that we may enter into His eternal glory and express the God of all grace.
God has called us also into His kingdom (1 Thes. 2:12). The kingdom of God is an organism constituted with God’s divine life as the realm of life for His ruling, in which He reigns by His divine life and expresses Himself in the divine life. This kingdom began with the saints in the Old Testament and is realized in the church in this age, and it will be completed in the New Jerusalem in the millennium and ultimately consummated in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth.
Before we were called we were outside the kingdom of God, having nothing to do with God. However, God called us to partake of His divine life and nature that we may enter into the kingdom of God. Today we, the called ones, must live in the church that we may grow and develop in the life of God unto full maturity. Thus, we shall be richly and bountifully supplied with the entrance into the millennial kingdom in the coming age and into the new heaven and new earth in eternity within the kingdom of God, in which we shall reign as kings (Rev. 22:5b).
Therefore, the purpose of God’s calling is that we may come out of darkness and enter into God’s marvelous light, become those who are sanctified unto God, enter into the fellowship of the Lord Jesus Christ, endure the suffering of Christ, enter into the peace of Christ, obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, enter into the eternal glory of God, and be richly and bountifully supplied with the entrance into the kingdom of God.
God’s calling is a holy calling as well as a heavenly calling. The believers were called with the heavenly calling to possess, partake of, and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ, who is the embodiment of the processed Triune God. Today He is our life and hope; in the future He will be our glory and inheritance. This Christ supplies us with His unsearchable riches and immeasurable dimensions that we may live in the church life and have a walk which is worthy of the heavenly calling. The purpose of God’s calling is that we, the believers, may come out of darkness and enter into the marvelous light of God, out of the death-realm of Satan’s darkness into the life-realm of God’s marvelous light, and be made holy unto God; that we may enter into the fellowship of Christ to enjoy Him as the eternal portion given by God to us; that we may endure the suffering of Christ to follow in His steps and live the life that He lived; that we may enter into the peace of Christ to allow Him to be the Arbitrator for the keeping of the oneness of His Body; that we may obtain the glory of Christ to express the Father in Christ in His fullness, that we may enter into the eternal glory of God to express the God of all grace; and that we may enter into the kingdom of God to reign in it and enjoy the eternal blessing of the eternal life of God to the uttermost.
