Effectual Calling
As we now proceed to consider in detail what exactly it is the Holy
Spirit does to us in the application of redemption, I would remind you
that I am not insisting that the order which I shall follow is of
necessity the right one, and certainly not of necessity the
chronological one.
‘So how do you arrive at your order?’ asks someone. My answer is that
I mainly try to conceive of this work going on within us from the
standpoint of God in eternity looking down upon men and women in sin.
That is the way that appeals to me most of all; it is the way that I
find most helpful. That is not to detract in any way from experience or
the experiential standpoint. Some would emphasise that and would have
their order according to experience, but I happen to be one of those
people who is not content merely with experience. I want to know
something about that experience; I want to know what I am experiencing
and I want to know why I am experiencing it and how it has come about.
It is the child who is content merely with enjoying the experience. If
we are to grow in grace and to go forward and exercise our senses, as
the author of the epistle to the Hebrews puts it ( Heb. 5:14 ), then we
must of necessity ask certain questions and be anxious to know how the
things that have happened to us really have come to take place.
My approach therefore is this: there is the truth of the gospel, and
we have seen already that it is a part of the work of the Holy Spirit to
see that that truth is proclaimed to all and sundry. That is what we
called the general call — a kind of universal offer of the gospel. Then
we saw that though the external or general call comes to all, to those
who will remain unsaved as well as to those who are saved, obviously
some new distinction comes in, because some are saved by it. So the
question we must now consider is: What is it that establishes the
difference between the two groups? Continue at Monergism
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