Effectual Calling and New Creation

Like any other six-year-old, I lived life to the fullest. I climbed the cherry trees, played on the playground with my sister, and built my Legos. One day, a sense of dread and sadness began clouding my carefree days. I didn’t know what was wrong. I explained how I felt to my mom. She gently said, “You need Jesus.” At that moment, something extraordinary happened. I believed in Jesus. I did not have all the theology worked out in that moment of newfound belief. But I knew I needed Jesus. Desperately.

There is nothing more beautiful in the world than a person trusting and clinging to God for grace. True belief is the result of God’s effectual calling. And this effectual call is the dawning of new creation life.

It is often thought that systematic theology is abstract and theoretical. This is far from the case. The great truths of theology help us make sense of everyday life. We experience the truths of theology in life. Theology is systematic because each doctrine is dynamically connected. Effectual calling is organically related to the Trinity, election, creation, the doctrine of sin, atonement, eschatology, and all the other doctrines. Two theological relationships that continue to capture my attention are effectual calling and the new creation.

God’s Call and New Creation

God’s work in the heart is nothing less than a new creation. If God doesn’t do this work, people hear of the death and resurrection of Jesus and respond with anything but saving faith. Apathy, curiosity, mockery, or hostility are common responses to the gospel. But a person will only respond in saving faith if God calls that person and opens the heart to believe.

Just as God spoke and created the universe and everything in it, God speaks to the human heart and creates something new (2 Cor. 4:4). The God who said, “Let there be light!” says, “Let there be faith!” While the gospel is preached or shared, God creates something new in the heart of the person who responds in saving faith.

In systematic theology, the effectual calling, this new creation call, is also known as new birth or regeneration. Jesus taught that people must be born again to believe the gospel with saving faith (John 3:3–8). The Holy Spirit was active in the creation of the world. He formed it, brought order from the chaos, and made it beautiful (Gen. 1:2). The Spirit is also active in the new creation of the believers. Through the power of the gospel, the Spirit causes them to be born again, bringing order to their chaotic and dead hearts and making them spiritually beautiful.

God will one day restore the cosmos and make all things new. This new creation call to the individual through the gospel is the downpayment of resurrection life that will one day overtake all creation.

Resurrecting Call

This is a mystery and hard to believe for people who like independence and self-sufficiency. We naturally want to be the master of our fate and the commander of our destiny. Unfortunately, though, our spiritual state makes God’s new creation action necessary. The One who knows everything looks at each of us and gives an assessment: dead in trespasses and sin (Eph. 2:1–3). We need to be brought back from the dead. That is precisely what God does in his new creation work through the gospel. 

A good analogy for this is in John’s gospel when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus had been dead and in the tomb for four days. He was dead. Not just a little dead, but really dead. Jesus commanded the stone to be rolled away from the tomb, and Lazurus’s sister responded, “He has been dead too long. The body will stink.” After removing the stone, Jesus called with new creation power, “Lazarus, come out.” The heart that stopped four days before pulsed with new life. Lazarus walked out of his grave.

Lazarus’s resurrection and gives a picture of what it is like for God to resurrect people who are dead in their sins spiritually. God takes what is dead and morally repugnant from sin and makes it into something alive and beautiful.

Another picture of God’s new creation and resurrection calling is Ezekiel’s valley of bones (Ezek. 37:1–14). The prophet Ezekiel sees a vision of a valley filled with bones. My family once stayed in a medical doctor’s house, and my children were terrified when they found a complete skeleton model in the closet. This sense of terror and despair captures Ezekiel’s feeling as he looks out on this valley of bones.

God tells Ezekiel to prophesy over the bones. Ezekiel obeys and speaks to this congregation of the dead, “Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live . . . I will open your graves and raise you from your graves.” As Ezekiel preached, the breath of the Lord resurrected these bones. God used the prophet’s words to bring about a rebirth and new creation. In the same way, God calls to the person as the gospel is shared and creates new life in them. Those who hear his effectual call are drawn to his beauty and life.

This truth explains why people from all over the world are coming to Christ. Living overseas, I have had a front row seat to see the fruit of God’s new creation call in the lives of people from Mongolia, China, Korea, India, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, Pakistan, Kosovo, and many others. Apart from God’s resurrecting call, ministry would be impossible. But as he brings people to himself and new life shines from them. The Lion of Judah is on the move, singing over his people and calling them to life.

The General Call and the Voice of Jesus

God’s new creation call has implications for sharing the gospel. He uses mothers telling their children, “You need Jesus.” The general call of evangelism and gospel preaching is God’s instrument for his new creation call to individuals. This is not abstract theology. It is personal and intimate, and we experience the fruit of it in our lives. The God of the universe calls his people by name through the gospel. We know his voice if we hear him speak our name (John 10:3–4). His voice is etched on our souls, and we follow where he leads. And he leads his own to eternal life (Rom. 8:30).

Because it is an echo of new creation, the effectual call is a foretaste of the New Heavens and New Earth. Those who have been born again through this call have a small taste of the brilliance of the New Earth even now. It is as if Jesus called us from wide open spaces of the New Earth and we are following his voice. He has spoken the believer’s name and is calling them out of death and into life. The spiritual life he has given now will find its completion in resurrected bodies. In the New Earth, the believer will forever hear his voice.