CONTENTS
1. The Spirit of God Gives Me Faith
2. True Peace: Jesus Christ Lived For Me
3. True Peace: Jesus Christ Was Forsaken For Me
4. True Peace: Jesus Christ Shed His Blood For Me
5. True Peace: Jesus Christ Gives Me His Complete Righteousness
6. True Peace: Jesus Christ Forgives and Cleanses Me
Chapter 1: The Spirit of God Gives Me Faith
Paul in 1 Timothy 6:12 proclaims:
“Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good confession before many witness.”
The Christian doctrine of the effectual calling of God is essential for our theological understanding and it is fundamental in application to our Christian lives. The call of God is most effective. God called the universe into existence. When God accomplish this, the universe complied. God’s preferred outcome came to fruition. In a similar case, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ called Lazarus into life from the grave (John 11:14). Instantly Lazarus had life within Him when Jesus called him forth, “Lazarus, come forth.” (John 11:43).
The believer of God receives an effectual call from God in the Christian life. The call of God within the believer brings a preferred result. The effectual calling of God is in relation to the utter powerfulness of Yahweh. This relation is with regeneration of the Holy Spirit of the depraved sinner. The regeneration of the depraved sinner is from spiritual darkness into spiritual rebirth. This action of God is appropriately named irresistible grace. This theological terminology comes from the letter I within the Christian essential of the Calvinistic acronym of Tulip.
The effectual call of God refers the sovereign authority of God Himself toward His people which brings forth His intended, appointed and ordained result. The apostle Paul teaches the following: Those God predestinates He calls. Those He calls, He justifies. Those He calls; this is in reference to the effectual calling of God from God Himself.
There is an inward call of God. This is known as His effectual calling toward His people. The effectual calling of God’s chosen people is a classified work of God. The effectual calling of God is the regeneration of the Holy Ghost toward God’s elect people. It is also know as God’s quickening work of the action of the Holy Ghost.
The regeneration of the Holy Ghost is an instantaneous uncanny work of the Spirit of God. The regeneration of God the Holy Ghost acts as an internal transformation of the nature, proclivity and aspiration of the human spirit. Prior to the effectual call of the Triune Lord, now the individual is capable of approaching to Him. All the pre-converted elect are effectually called. All the effectual called individuals respond in true faith. Therefore, faith is a beloved present of God because the effectual call of the Holy Ghost has been given to the individual.
The outward call is the gospel proclamation of God. The outward call is heard by the non-elect and the elect. The outward call may be refused. The outward call will only be accomplished by the individual if the Holy Spirit makes the initial effective inward call a reality. When the inward call is made accompanied with the outward call, the person has faith. The effectual call of God from God Himself is irresistible. God sovereignly brings forth a preferred outcome. Yet, however, fallen creatures do resist God’s sovereign grace. Nevertheless, God’s grace is irresistible in the meaning that God’s unmerited grace succeeds greater than fallen depravity.
God’s creative powerfulness is His effective call. His effective call brings forth spiritual life from spiritual death. To the Ephesians Paul declares:
“And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.” (Ephesians 2:1-3).
The pre-converted elect are those God eventually within time calls out of their spiritual depravity in spiritual light. We all once were children of wrath. We all were once spiritually dead. But by virtue of the internal call of God, through His beloved powerfulness and efficacy, gave us spiritual life. The Holy Spirit provides us with eyes to see. The Holy Spirit provides us with ears to hear.
Chapter 2: True Peace: Jesus Christ Lived For Me
The life of the Lord Jesus Christ was lived in complete sinlessness (1 Peter 1:19), because the burnt offerings of sheep and goats were suppose to be with blemish. Only a Messiah who was perfectly sinless could atone for the sin of His people, because divine justice necessity the love of the Cross. Christ had to be sinless in order to fulfill the demands of the righteous law of God. Christ Himself argued for His own sinlessness as the Divine Redeemer (John 8:46), because He always did what pleased the Father (John 8:29). The Son’s life is meant to replace our lives, because He was sinless but we are sinners (Romans 3). The Son suffered as the Just for the unjust ((1 Peter 3:18), because it was the will of God the Father (John 8:38). This also means that when the Son was tempted by Satan (Matthew 4:1) He did this in our place. It means when we fall in sin like Peter (Luke 22:32) Jesus Christ will pray for us like He did with Peter so we would turn to Him again. It shows that Christ sinlessly fulfilled the details of the exhaustive law of God (Exodus 10), because He was God the Son in His eternal self-existence, and was perfect to take upon flesh to fulfill His holy mission (John 1:14; Matthew 1:21).
“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1).
Chapter 3: True Peace: Jesus Christ Was Forsaken For Me
God the Son was forsaken by God the Father, because He bore the sin of His people. All the sin of the elect were given and implied to the God-man, because divine justice had to be satisfied. If divine justice was not satisfied in the Divine Christ then all sinners would go to hell: sin must be punished if God is a just, holy and righteous God. If God is good He would have provided a redemptive provision to offer a substitute in behalf of His chosen people. All throughout the Old Testament Scriptures God provides a foreshadow of Christ, because He has His people offer burnt offerings as a transference of sin to the sheep or goat (Leviticus 1:10). Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of the burnt offerings in His ultimate sacrifice for sin to God the Father. Christ was forsaken by the Father (Psalm 22:1); that is, the Father hid His face from the complete sin placed upon His Son (Habakkuk 1:13). I mean the term forsaken as God hid His face, but I do not believe it means that He abandoned His Son at His greatest work of glory in behalf of His elect sheep. However, during this redemptive drama the Father and the Son never were divided, but remain in perfect harmony in the highest work of obedience to God the Father. Christ was made a curse for us so that we would not be made a curse by Him (Galatians 3:13). If Christ was not made a curse by the Father, we would not be vessels of honor. Therefore the Father looks at the perfect death of His Son and wholly accepts it as efficacious in behalf of His people, and the only acceptable way to satisfy divine justice was that the Messiah be both God and man. Behold the Christ!
“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1).
Chapter 4: True Peace: Jesus Christ Shed His Blood For Me
The Lord Jesus shed His blood in behalf of elect sinners, because His Cross-work had the intention to save those who went astray. Christ shed His blood to provide forgiveness of sin, because His shedding of blood alone is enough for divine forgiveness in God’s sight (Hebrews 9:22). If you have responded in a constant faith and repentance to this little pamphlet; God has surely made you spiritually alive (John 3; Titus 3:5). That means the redemptive benefits of Christ are applied to your account by the work of the Holy Spirit. That means His divine blood was given to you to wash you of your sins by the grace of consistent repentance (1 John 1:9). The blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7) and washed us by His blood (Revelation 1:5), because God the Father always accepted Him as His Beloved Son (Matthew 3:17). Without the Beloved Son and His shed blood you will not be able to stand before God, because He requires the righteousness most holy, perfect and pure. To this we now turn.
“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1).
Chapter 5: True Peace: Jesus Christ Gives Me His Complete Righteousness
God provides us with His righteousness of His Son, because we would not be able to stand before God without it. The righteous live by faith (Romans 1:17), because the righteousness of God is revealed apart from the Law of Works in the righteousness of His Son (Romans 3:21-22). "...But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works…" (Romans 4:5-6). Only the righteousness of Christ avails before God the Father: "...and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith..." (Philippians 3:9). The spiritual riches of His imputed (or accounted) righteousness to me by grace of faith alone are essential for standing before God.
“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1).
Chapter 6: True Peace: Jesus Christ Forgives and Cleanses Me
The Father through His Son forgives and cleanses His people, because the Triune of God is the true God (Deuteronomy 6:4; Matthew 28:16-20). He is able to forgive and cleanse us from sin, because He provided a way for atonement through the Blessed One: the Lord Jesus Christ. The reason why forgiveness and cleansing cannot come to the who worships the true Allah is because the God of the Bible provided redemption through the cross of His Son, and if hearers respond with confessions of sin through their daily lives, forgiveness and cleansing will truly occur (1 John 1:9). All of the elect will respond in faith and repentance, because God has chosen them unto eternal life (Romans 8:30-35, 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. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?).
“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1).
