17Nevertheless, each person should live as a believer in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to them, just as God has called them. This is the rule I lay down in all the churches. 18Was a man already circumcised when he was called? He should not become uncircumcised. Was a man uncircumcised when he was called? He should not be circumcised. (1 Corinthians 7:17-18, NIV)
Many of us grew up in a Christian tradition that emphasized “accepting Jesus into your heart.” That is the way of talking about the first time we received God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ, the moment of our conversion. So, on August 17, 1979, when I went forward during an altar call at the end of a service, that’s the time I “accepted Jesus into my heart.” The Apostle Paul uses different language to refer to that experience of saying “yes” to the gospel for the first time. We find an example of this usage in 1 Corinthians 7:17, though the NIV translation makes it difficult to see. A more literal and, I believe, more accurate translation is found in the Common English Bible, “Each person should live the kind of life that the Lord assigned when He called each one.” Whereas the NIV has God calling us to a distinctive life, the CEB sees calling as God’s act of bringing us to faith in Christ in the midst of our distinctive life. In other words, calling refers in this case to God’s action of summoning a person to faith in Christ through the Gospel. Whereas I might say that I accepted Jesus into my heart in August 1979, Paul would say that was the time of my calling or even just “my calling.” Why is this important? There are many reasons. I’d like to mention two here. First, thinking about our experience of coming to faith in Christ as God’s calling us reminds us that we are responding to God, not initiating a relationship with God. From one perspective, on a cold winter evening in Sao Paulo, Brazil, I decided to follow Jesus. Yet, from another perspective, I was not so much deciding as responding to God’s call. The initiative was God’s as He called me through the preaching of Pastor Felix Liu and through the internal stirrings of the Holy Spirit. Second, when we recognize that our conversion was an experience of calling, this underscores the fact that all Christians are called by God, not just those with particular callings to various kinds of church and missionary work. When you felt drawn to “accept Jesus into your heart,” or to “confirm your baptism by confession of faith,” or however you might say it, you were in fact hearing and responding to the call of God on your life. God was calling you into relationship with Him and into a life of sharing in His work in the world. Gracious God, thank You for calling me into relationship with You through faith in Jesus. Thank You for helping me to understand, believe, and respond in trust to the Gospel. Comments are closed.
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