The Effectual Call (Rom. 8:28-30)

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I’m not a prophet or the son of a prophet.  However, I believe that sometimes pastors are meant to speak prophetically – not in the sense of giving new revelation or foretelling but in the sense of forthtelling and speaking old truth to those who have forgotten it.  Now I see a lot of men in pulpits today who seem to think they are prophets, but who only speak against people who are not in their tribe.  However, the Biblical prophets spent far less time pointing the finger at the Ammonites and saying, “Badly done, Ammon, badly done!” and spent far more time addressing the problems among their own people.  That’s what I feel called to do today.  

What I mean by that is that this message today is intended to correct what I believe to be some serious doctrinal problems that have for some time been circulating among the Primitive Baptists.  Today I am going to preach what you might call a polemical sermon.  I sort of did that last Sunday when I swung the ax of God’s truth at the root of Arminianism.  But today I am going to swing it in the opposite direction: in the direction of Hyper-Calvinism.  

The word “polemical” comes from the Greek polemos, which means “war.”   Sometimes, it is necessary for a pastor to go to war against false teaching.  Now if that’s all a pastor does, he’s not going to be doing his flock a service. But sometimes it is necessary.  Paul himself did this: “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:3-5).  At the same time, we need to remember that our enemy is not people but the devil and the lies that he spreads: “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12).  This is especially important to remember because sometimes those who teach doctrinal error are not in fact our enemies at all, but our brothers and sisters in Christ.  So this sermon should not be seen as aimed at any individual or church, but rather at what I believe to be a real doctrinal error.  

I’m going to start this morning with a question about the meaning of a doctrinal term.  It’s a Biblical term, and it’s the term regeneration.

So what is it?  What is regeneration?  Paul gives us the Biblical answer when he writes in Titus 3:5, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he [God] saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.”  The word regeneration means the same thing that our Lord was talking about when he told Nicodemus, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”  And then, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again” (Jn. 3:3, 5-7).  Briefly, to be regenerated means to be rescued from a state of death in sin and to be brought into a state of salvation and life in the Spirit.  

Of this reality, there are a number of things we can say.  First of all, it is necessary for salvation.  After all, our Lord explicitly said it: “Ye must be born again.”  It is necessary both to see and to enter the kingdom of God.  Paul says that it is by the regenerating work of the Spirit that we are saved.  

Second, it is an immediate work of the Spirit upon the human heart.  In regeneration, God opens our eyes to see his truth, and our hearts to receive it, so that we actually do so.  He raises us from the dead so that we walk in newness of life.  Now when I talk about an immediate and direct work of the Spirit upon the human heart, I mean what Jonathan Edwards meant when he said that “there is such a thing as a spiritual and divine light immediately imparted to the soul by God, of a different nature from any that is obtained by natural means.”   As we are going to point out, that doesn’t mean that the embrace of the gospel is not necessary for salvation (Edwards didn’t think that, either).  But it does mean that for the gospel to be meaningful to us, for us to have a heart to receive it and eyes to see it, we must first be given a heart to receive and eyes to see.  This is an immediate work of God in the soul.

Third, it is therefore an event that precedes any response on our part.  Regeneration precedes faith and faith is an effect or fruit of the Spirit.  This is what seems clear to me that is taught in 1 John 5:1, in which we read, “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is [or, has been] born of God.”  And John 1:12-13, “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”  

So, here are two questions I want to ask in response to what we have just said about the necessity, immediacy, and priority of regeneration:

• Given the necessity, immediacy, and priority of regeneration, does that mean that faith in Christ is not necessary for salvation?  Does regeneration save a person apart from faith?

• Given the necessity, immediacy, and priority of regeneration, does that mean that the gospel is not necessary for salvation?

I’m asking these questions because a lot of modern Primitive Baptists would answer in a way that is unbiblical.  They would say that a person is saved eternally in regeneration regardless of whether or not a person comes to faith in Christ.  And they would say that the gospel does not save anyone, because a person is already saved before they can respond to the gospel.  Any salvation that comes from the gospel, according to this view, is just time salvation, or temporal benefits that flow from eternal salvation, but are not necessary for it.

Now there are several implications that flow from these theological commitments.  One obvious one is the way they talk (or rather, not talk) to unbelievers.  They would argue that the gospel is not for unbelievers but only for believers.   They would argue that we should never say to an unbeliever that they must believe in Christ in order to be saved, if by “saved” you mean eternal salvation.  The end result is that many of them reduce the gospel to platitudes for the pious rather than as a summons to all men to repent of their sins and embrace Christ as Lord and Savior. 

You may be wondering why I am doing this today and what this has to do with Romans 8:28-30.  I’m doing this because the confusion among modern day Primitive Baptists as regards the necessity of faith and the instrumentality of the gospel in salvation is linked, I believe, to confusion regarding the doctrine of the effectual call.  And that, of course, is very relevant to this passage.  The divine call is one of the things that comes up more than once in these verses.  Paul sees it not only as the evidence that allows one to embrace the promise of verse 28, but also as an inextricable link in the salvific events that brings a sinner from condemnation by God to acceptance with him through Christ and finally to eternal glory.

So I want to take a deeper dive on this crucial doctrine this morning.  In particular, I want to consider the audience, aim, and associations of the effectual call.  At the end, I want to come back and think about these two questions again from the perspective of the Biblical teaching on the effectual call.

The Audience of the Effectual Call

Now remember that we distinguished in our message on verse 28 between a general call that goes out with the gospel to all men and the effectual call that is specific to some.  I think it is important to say that again.  The gospel is addressed to all men.  It is addressed to believers and unbelievers alike.  To be convinced of this, all you have to do is to consider the audiences to which the apostles preached the gospel in the book of Acts.  

To the one who already believes, the gospel is a daily reminder that we are called to trust in Christ all our lives from beginning to end.  We are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed at the last day (1 Pet. 1:5).  To the unbeliever, it is an urgent call to repent of every idol and sin and to believe on Christ for who he is, the Son of God and Savior of the world.

Unfortunately, a lot of PB’s today don’t believe this.  But this was not always the PB stance.  An older generation certainly believed in addressing the lost as well as the saved with the gospel.  In the mid 1850’s, Elder John M. Watson of Tennessee, wrote this in his book The Old Baptist Test: 

“The twelve went out and also preached, that men should repent. It is to be greatly regretted that any of our preachers should have supposed that their commission did not extend to sinners, and that it was not consonant with sound doctrine to exhort them to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. How could this error ever have been entertained for a moment, with the strong bible precept, the plain example of Christ and his disciples before them? The very commission itself assures us that some would not believe, and yet includes them in the gospel address. It is in this and similar ways that the spirit of exhortation has been grieved and lost in our pulpits.”

So we need to say this.  The gospel is for all men.  The gospel is for you, my hearer, whoever you are.  Christ is your Lord and you owe obedience to him.  He is your Maker and he will one day be your Judge.  But the good news of the gospel is that he is also Savior, and he promises that all who believe in him will be saved, will have the forgiveness of all their sins.  He summons you this morning to repent of your sins and believe on him.  In God’s gracious providence to you, I am his ambassador delivering that message and that good news of grace from him to you.

But that is not the summons that Paul is referring to here in Romans 8.  This summons here is a call to those who are foreknown and predestined, and who will one day be glorified, as we see in verses 29-30.  All who are called in this sense can claim the promise of verse 28, which obviously is not the case for those who hear the gospel and yet reject it through unbelief and unrepentance.  In other words, those who are called here are the elect.  Remember what Paul says to the Thessalonians: “But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 2:13-14).  Who is Paul referring to when he says, “he called you.”  Who are the “you”?  They are precisely those whom “God hath from the beginning chosen … to salvation.”  That is, the elect.  It is the same thing here in Romans 8.  Who are the called here?  They are the “called according to his purpose,” a purpose which is filled out in verse 29 in terms of God’s foreknowledge (remember that we saw this refers not to foresight but to God’s covenantal commitment to us in Christ), and predestination to conformity to Christ.  The called are not the many but the few who are chosen.

It is important for us to see this, because the effectual call is not seen here as sometimes linked with election, but as necessarily linked with it.  It is part of the golden chain of salvation in verse 30.  Those who are chosen in Christ will hear his call and will come to him.  It is as bad to think that some of the elect will be lost (not glorified) as it is to think that some of the elect will not be called.  Those who are the objects of God’s predestination will also be the objects of God’s call.  The elect will hear the divine summons.

The Aim of the Effectual Call

What are they called to?  A summons supposes something to which we are called.  Now the important thing to see here is that the general or universal call and the effectual call both come through the gospel.  Look again at Paul’s words to the Thessalonians: “God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: whereunto he called you by our gospel.”  God called them to sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth, and he called them to this by the gospel preached by the apostles.  So the instrument of the effectual call is the gospel.  And that means that God effectually calls his elect to faith in Christ and repentance of sin.

That means that if the call is effectual, if it creates what it calls for, then everyone who is called in the sense that Paul is speaking of here both in Roman and in Thessalonians, will come to faith in Christ and will repent of their sins.  An unbeliever cannot claim to be called by God in this sense.  Those who find the gospel to be a stumblingblock to them or foolishness to them are not called and not saved, for Paul says that “unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24).

Look again at Romans 8:30.  Paul writes, “Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.”  It should seem obvious that all the events here are in a sequence and in the order in which they happen in the salvation of God’s people. Foreknowledge and predestination precede all God’s other saving acts.  Calling happens in time and glorification happens at the end.  What that means is that justification takes place after calling.  Not necessarily in time, but in order.  There is a divine order to things, and the divine order is that God calls us and then justifies us.  

The reason I bring this up is that we have seen that we are justified by faith.  And the faith by which we are justified is not just the principle of faith but the act of faith by which we embrace Christ as Lord and Savior.  I again remind you what the apostle said to the Galatians: “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (Gal. 2:16).  Paul says that “we believed in Jesus Christ that we might be justified.”  Faith, then justification.  This then is another reason why the effectual call must be a summons to faith in Christ.  For apart from faith in Christ there is no justification, but all who are called are justified.

The gospel is a summons to faith.  Remember how Paul began this epistle, how he writes that “By whom [Christ] we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name: among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ” (Rom. 1:5-6).  The called are those who are called to obedience to the faith, or rather, the obedience of faith.  Yes, the gospel is the declaration of what God has done in Christ.  It is first and foremost news.  But it is news that demands a response.  And the response demanded is the response of faith and repentance.  It is why Peter says to the crowds he is preaching to, “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19).  It is why Paul said what he said in the synagogue at Pisidian-Antioch: “Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses” (13:38-39).  It is the reason why Paul said to the Philippian jailor who asked what he must do to be saved: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house” (16:31).  So the effectual call is not separate from the gospel call.  But the effectual call adds to the general call the power of the Spirit of God so that the summons is truly heard and believed and obeyed.

But we shouldn’t just stop at repentance and faith.  We are called to that, but that’s not all.  God calls us to many things as he calls us to himself.  We are called to be saints (Rom. 1:7).  We are called to the fellowship of God’s Son (1 Cor. 1:9).  We are called to holiness (1 Thess. 4:7).  We are called to walk worthy of the calling with which we have been called, which Paul goes on to describe in terms of lowliness and meekness and longsuffering and forbearance, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph. 4:1-3).  We are called in one hope (4).  In other words, what we see is that all the richness of the Christian life has its beginning and its definition in the divine call.  

Associations in the effectual call

By this point we see that there are actually two parts to the call, things that are associated that we should not separate. There is the movement of God to the soul in regeneration and there is the movement of the soul toward God in conversion.  You see both in the experience of the Thessalonians: “For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake. And ye became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost” (1 Thess. 1:5-6).  The gospel came to them, but it didn’t just come to them; it was accompanied with the power of the Holy Spirit.  Here you have the movement of God toward the soul in regeneration.  This then creates the response of faith in conversion: they received the word and became followers of the apostles.  

It is so important to see this.  The divine call is that part of our salvation that brings regeneration and conversion together. You cannot have one without the other.  The purpose of regeneration is conversion, for it is in conversion that we come to conscious faith in Christ, which is when, in God’s plan, we are justified.  Hence we should not expect to have regenerate people who are not converted.  Regenerate people are converted people.  It’s not just that faith is the fruit of regeneration, but that faith is the inevitable fruit of regeneration.  Note what the apostle John says: “For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 Jn. 5:4-5).  Whoever [whatsoever is a reference to people] is born of God overcomes the world, and John makes it clear that we have the victory through faith, and then he explicitly ties this faith to faith in Christ.  All who are regenerate trust in Christ and overcome the world. 

Back to our questions

So given the necessity, immediacy, and priority of regeneration, does that mean that faith in Christ is not necessary for salvation?  Does regeneration save a person apart from faith?  The answer is no.  We see that the negative answer is obvious when we consider it from the perspective of the divine call.  We’ve seen that the divine call includes both regeneration and conversion, the work of the Holy Spirit and the human response of faith.  If you cannot have regeneration apart from faith, the answer is obvious. There is no such thing as an unbelieving regenerate person.  To ask the question, “Does regeneration save apart from faith?” comes from trying to separate what God has joined together.

The second question is this: given the necessity, immediacy, and priority of regeneration, does that mean that the gospel is not necessary for salvation?  Well, we have seen that the divine call comes to us by means of the gospel.  Regeneration itself may be immediate, but the purpose of regeneration is to make the call of God in the gospel effectual.   So we should expect regeneration to occur in the context of the preaching of the gospel.  You see this in the case of Lydia, “whose heart the Lord opened [regeneration], that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul [conversion in response to the gospel preached by Paul]” (Acts 16:14).

Now the question often comes up at this point, “But what about people who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the gospel?”  People are usually thinking in particular of infants who die in infancy here, or people who, like my daughter, have severe intellectual disability.  What about them?  Are they lost because they can’t hear or understand the gospel?  No, of course not.  God is sovereign and is able to create faith in the hearts of the elect apart from the gospel in cases where they are not capable of being called by the outward ministry of the word.  We see this in the case of John the Baptist and in the words of David who said that God had made him hope in him even from infancy. 

But we need to be careful here.  We have to say that the gospel is the normal means by which God calls his elect to faith. And Paul in Romans 10, as we shall see, makes it clear that we should not expect people to call on the Lord to be saved who haven’t heard the gospel.  Paul makes it clear that God sends the gospel to the people he has chosen to be saved.  God’s sovereignty in salvation doesn’t make evangelism or missions unnecessary.  Rather, God’s sovereignty in salvation makes evangelism and missions possible.  Those who remain in unbelief because of ignorance are not saved by their ignorance!  God makes it clear that salvation comes through faith in Christ, and faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God (Rom. 10:17).

So the Biblical doctrine of the effectual call and God’s sovereignty in salvation doesn’t make faith or the gospel unnecessary but establishes the necessity of both.  Rather, in the effectual call, in this divine summons, God works through the gospel to create the faith that is called for.  But God is the one who creates the faith.  Regeneration is an immediate act of God upon the heart.  We must never forget that.  Our confidence in people getting saved is not in our ability to present the gospel, in our intellectual giftedness, in our ability to sway people by our cleverness.  If that’s all you have, that won’t create true disciples anyway.  You might create a lot of fake Christian though.  The apostle Paul was genuinely concerned about this, but what kept Paul from trying to rely on his rhetorical skills was his confidence in the power of God to save.  Listen to what he says and let Paul’s attitude be ours: 

And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”  (1 Cor. 2:1-5)

What Paul is describing there is the effectual call of God in the lives of the Corinthians through the ministry of the apostle Paul in the power of the Holy Spirit.  It’s what I long and pray for to happen in this church and through this church.  

Nothing I’ve said this morning is new or original with me.  When it comes to theology and preaching the Bible, I never want to be original.  Being original is the quickest way to heresy.  Everything I’ve said is simply echoing what our Baptist forefathers said 350 years ago (and, actually, you can go much further back than that, indeed, all the way back to the apostle Paul!).  So I want to end this morning by reading what they said about the doctrine of the effectual call in the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith (actually adopted in 1677 but not published until 1689 due to religious persecution):

“Those whom God hath predestinated unto life, He is pleased in His appointed, and accepted time, effectually to call, by His Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God; taking away their heart of stone, and giving to them a heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by His almighty power determining them to that which is good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ; yet so as they come most freely, being made willing by His grace.

“This effectual call is of God's free and special grace alone, not from anything at all foreseen in man, nor from any power or agency in the creature, being wholly passive therein, being dead in sins and trespasses, until being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit; he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it, and that by no less power than that which raised up Christ from the dead.

“Elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit; who works when, and where, and how He pleases; so also are all elect persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word.

“Others not elected, although they may be called by the ministry of the Word, and may have some common operations of the Spirit, yet not being effectually drawn by the Father, they neither will nor can truly come to Christ, and therefore cannot be saved: much less can men that do not receive the Christian religion be saved; be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature and the law of that religion they do profess.”

If we want to be true to our historic Baptist heritage, these are the truths that we must uphold.  More importantly, these are Biblical truths.  I’m really not at the end of the day so concerned about being Baptist as I am about being Biblical.  But these Baptists were Biblical, and we would do well to follow them in these doctrinal convictions.  

What then should we do with this?  As those who embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace, it should keep us from Hyper-Calvinistic corruptions that keep us from seeing the gospel as the means by which men and women are brought to faith in Jesus Christ by which they are saved.  It should both help us to see our absolute dependence upon the sovereign grace of God in salvation and the responsibility of the church to share the gospel and the responsibility of all men to believe and repent.  It should help us to believe what the Bible says about the gospel, that it is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe.  The gospel is powerful, not because the one sharing it is powerful, but because God is.  The doctrine of the effectual call helps us to see this.  

It should also remind us that if we are believers, we have God to thank for it.  In his providence, God brought the gospel to us.  And in his grace, he changed our hearts and opened our eyes to see the reality and relevance of the gospel to us.  I like the way the apostle Paul put it: “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood” (Gal. 1:15-16).  When it pleased God!  I love that.  Are you a Christian?  Don’t pat yourself on the back; thank God for it.

And if you have unbelieving friends or relatives, for whom, like Paul, you pray that they might be saved (Rom. 10:1), don’t be discouraged.  Pray for them.  For God is able to save the chief of sinners, and the power that brings us to faith and repentance is the power that raised Jesus from the dead.  God is at work.  He calls us by his grace and saves us.  

Finally, this doctrine ought to lead us to further assurance.  We don’t save ourselves; God saves us.  And the God who saves us will keep us.  We see this in the rest of verse 30: “and whom he called, them he also justified, and whom he justified, them he also glorified.”  All the called will be justified and all the justified will be glorified.  We are in God’s hands.  He will work all things for our good, to those who love him and are called according to his purpose.  And that is the very best of news.