GRACE AND THE EFFECTUAL CALL OF GOD IN JESUS

I will explain now what Jesus is teaching in John 3:16.

For God so loved His people to be chosen in all nations of His world, that He, God the Father, gave His One and Only Son that each one, each elect who believes, that is given faith and given by the Father to the Son – who truly believes in Jesus, shall not perish but will have eternal life.

Remember from John 1:12 the word ‘received’ is mentioned.  Before you receive you must be given something.  This something for the new born-again Christian is faith – faith – saving faith in Jesus.  Faith and new birth – first breath in a new life.  Remember physically you have to be born before you can begin to breathe.  Regeneration is instant.  Conversion then begins as the new Christian knows more and grows more in his or her knowledge of Jesus.  Knowing and growing by always reading the Bible, praying in the Holy Spirit  – and having real life in truth (John 4:24).

John 20:31

31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Ephesians 2:5-10

5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,

7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith— and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—

9 not by works, so that no one can boast.

10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Notice in the above verse 8 there is a compound condition – Faith given and not of us.  This is simply that God chose you in Jesus before you knew and before you were given Faith – before you were given by the Father to the Son for all glorious eternity.

Ephesians 1:1-14

1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus:

2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love

5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—

6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace

8 that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.

9 And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ,

10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

11 In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,

12 in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.

13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit,

14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession — to the praise of his glory.

John 5:24

24 “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.”

John 6:37-44, 65

37 “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.

38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.

39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.

40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”

41 At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”

42 They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”

43 “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered.

44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.”

 

65 He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.”

In John 6:39, Jesus makes it totally clear that the Father gives the elect, those chosen before the foundation of His world, gives them to His Son.