God Calls Us

God calls us.

Why would anyone would choose eternal separation from God over eternal glory with God, particularly when the only requirement for the latter is to place one’s faith in Jesus Christ? The answer brings us back to Adam and Eve’s first need after they sinned, and our first need as their spiritual children, who come into this world spiritually dead. When Adam and Eve sinned they lost fellowship with God and hid from Him. They needed Him to seek them out and draw them back. Because of their new fallen nature and dead spirits they would have never come back on their own. They would have never had their second need, a covering of their sin, filled.

Likewise, today’s natural man will never seek out God on his own. He’s spiritually dead but doesn’t know it. And, because of his sin nature, his natural inclination is to pursue evil, not righteousness. His first need is for God to call him, to draw him to Himself. Another term for this is “election.” God “elects” some to be His children. Only then, having been drawn by God, can the natural man gain the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice by placing his faith in Him.

Unless God calls us to Himself, as He did to Adam and Eve when they were hiding in the garden, we remain spiritually dead. For reasons only He can know and understand, God doesn’t call all, or even most. He allows the majority to reject Him, living and dying in the same dead spiritual condition in which they were born. They lead lives not only apart from fellowship with God, but at enmity with Him. They don’t know Him or wish to know Him. On the contrary, they reject Him.

Is God unjust for only calling some? No. If only justice were in play, He would call none. All would perish because of their rejection of God and His Son Jesus Christ. That He calls some is evidence of His mercy and grace. His mercy spares us from the punishment we deserve; His grace gives us blessings we don’t deserve.

Those who remain in their natural state, rejecting Jesus Christ, are the ones I refer to by the term “lost.” They have no fellowship with or understanding of God; they aren’t His children. They are dead men walking, having physical life but no spiritual life. They’re under God’s condemnation, but it’s not because of their sin nature, for we all have a sin nature. And it’s not because of their sin, for though we all sin, the penalty for sin was paid by Jesus Christ. Rather, they are under condemnation for not taking advantage of that payment by placing their faith in the one who paid the price for sin, Jesus Christ.