Internal Call

(Click on photo if scripture cannot be read)

When God spiritually calls a sinner out of darkness into his wonderful light, it is like coming out of a dark tunnel into God’s glorious creation.
The Holy Spirit makes the external call effective by reviving the spiritually dead, enabling them to see the light! This is the effectual or internal call that the Apostle Peter tells us about in the verse above. Just as a person born blind is not able to visualize the beauty that sun light reveals, a spiritually dead person cannot understand the grace that spiritual light reveals…. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Cor. 2:14). The Bible in many places speaks of people being blind and captive to darkness. But there are also many Bible passages where God promises that he will intervene and make the blind see and free people from their darkness through his grace…. But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth (2 Thess 2:13). Man is not capable on his own to respond, but God makes it happen through this effectual call of the Holy Spirit…. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified (Romans 8:30). Salvation is the free gift of God that he applies, through his initiative, using this effectual call. It does not depend on man at all….It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy (Romans 9:16). This is the amazing grace that we sing about, when we sing, ‘I once was blind, but now I see.’ The external call goes forth and many do not respond because they cannot (Romans 8:7). The internal call makes the external call effective to some, and all of these respond…. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away (John 6:37). Grace is from God and applied by God.