What is meant by an “effectual call”?
Effectual calling is a theological term referring to the sovereign, internal act of God’s Spirit drawing specific individuals (the elect) to salvation in Christ and cutting them off from the world, then having them brought into God’s family. Unlike a general gospel call [external call which can be ignored], this effectual calling is irresistible, regenerating the heart to ensure a willing response, enabling sinners to believe, always achieving its purpose of redemption. A call that has an effect – hence “effectual”.
This call is sovereignly decreed by God from eternity and rooted in God’s Grace and Predestination.
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When we speak of the effectual call, we must define two words here: Predestination, which is the work of God from eternity to order all things and their courses by His decree. There is not one thing that escapes His decree. The second word is Election, the active Will of God to choose those whom He would give to Christ as the heirs of salvation. As with the angels, the number of the elect is set in eternity past, and not added to nor is it diminished.
Election is unto eternal life and from damnation and eternal conscious punishment, because by nature, man is the enemy of God. His nature is counter to everything that God is by His divine nature.
This Effectual Call happens perfectly timed by God, and set out in such a way that they work on behalf the best for the elect and for the glory of God. He is pleased – meaning it is in His good pleasure to do these things – because they are pleasing to Him.
The process is referred to as the “Ordo Salutis”, or the “Order of Salvation”. The process is logical and not necessarily chronological as some parts happen simultaneously. It is all of God:
- Election/Predestination
- Effectual Calling (as compared to the “general call”)
- Regeneration
- Conversion (Faith & Repentance)
- Justification
- Adoption
- Sanctification
- Perseverance
- Glorification
In no way do any of these steps violate man’s will, as they are designed and decreed by God for the benefit of the elect.
Some complain that the Reformed position / Calvinist position violates their “free will”. “You’re a Calvinist! You believe man is a robot”… say the opposers…
In the Pelagian / Arminian “libertarian free will” position, meaning that man has an ability to make choices freely and free from outside influence. At the root of this is the concept that God provides “prevenient grace”, akin to a starter / yeast in baking to make the bread rise. The implication is that inside man a spark of something exists that – if encouraged – can generate into saving faith. This position disagrees with scripture.
Either God is sovereign in the effectual call or man is sovereign. They cannot coexist.
When the Confession states that “He renews their will” doesn’t eliminate the will, but reconstitutes it with the ability to please God along with their choices.
Adam: able to sin / able to not sin. He became fallen
Fallen man before salvation: not able to not sin because the will is in bondage to sin
After salvation: able to not sin due to a renewed will
Jesus Christ: not able to sin
Glorified Christians: not able to sin and free from the presence and stain of sin
God does not violate the will of man, but enables it to please Him.
What is Concurrence? [queue next slide with stream] Louis Berkhof: “Definition and explanation. Concurrence may be defined as the co-operation of the divine power with all subordinate powers, according to the pre-established laws of their operation, causing them to act and to act precisely as they do.” God acts 100% and the creature acts 100%, without removing human freedom or moral responsibility, ensuring everything happens according to His sovereign plan.
Aspects of Divine Concurrence (Compatibilism) include:
- Cooperation of Causes: God is the primary cause (first cause) that sustains and moves all secondary causes to function. God moves you into a position to make a choice in His time with a mind renewed by the Holy Spirit
- Simultaneous Action: God works concurrently with creatures; every event is simultaneously an act of God and a free act of the creature, therefore not violating your free will. You choose Christ because you want to choose Christ because your will is now renewed and changed.
- Different Intentions in Sin: When sinful actions occur, God works through the act for a good purpose, while the human agent acts with an evil intention. [Recall Romans 6:1-2 “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid.”]. EX Joseph – you meant it for evil and God meant it for good.
- Not Passive Permission: God is never a passive spectator; He actively concurs with free creatures, ensuring that events occur as He has decreed. [Cooperation in the Christian- Proverbs 13:15 “the way of transgressors is hard.” Make it easy on yourself and be obedient to God’s Word]
In the Effectual Call of the elect, God enables you to choose in agreement with His will and purpose as moved by the Holy Spirit. Those not elect cannot choose [Christ] in agreement with God’s will. This doctrine maintains both the absolute sovereignty of God and the genuine responsibility of human beings.
In reference to the sinner, God’s sovereignty is not lost – He is still sovereign over all primary and secondary causes with the sinner’s choices being a matter of privation and not the Holy Spirit.
Romans 8:28 is true even in “contraposition” [“all things work to the good of those…”].
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There is nothing in the sinner that makes him able or willing to come to Christ as He indicates in John 5:39 “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. 40 And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.” As man is ruined by sin, he has no power to come to Christ because he is dead. Dead in sin.
In the example of the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37 and Lazarus in John 11, the dry bones cannot live until God breathes life into them. Lazarus is dead in the tomb four days without life. In both cases, God makes the first move. Specifically with Lazarus, the Holy Spirit has to regenerate him in order for him to hear the voice of Jesus – who calls specifically to Lazarus to come out of the tomb [LBC – “Neither does the call arise from any power or action on their part; they are totally passive in it. They are dead in sins and trespasses until they are made alive and renewed by the Holy Spirit”]. The sinner is dead in sin until the Holy Spirit enables him to hear the voice of Christ (the external call), awakens him (the specific / particular internal call), quickens him to move toward Christ out of his tomb of death. [“This response is enabled by a power that is no less than that which raised Christ from the dead.”]. The Heart of Flesh is Ezekiel 36…
The enablement is of God. The enabling to choose is of God. The enabling to answer the effectual call is of God. The embrace of the Gospel is of God. I am no longer a “natural man”, but a “new creature” with a renewed heart and made free from my sin – and free to chose the things of God. Willingly. Because God made me able.
Never minimize your salvation. You have the same power that saved you as the One that raised Christ from the tomb!
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[Streamline this while delivering it. All the thoughts are here in case I need them.]
Every time the doctrine of predestination, election, the effectual call comes up, it is inevitable that the issue of infant salvation and the unborn comes up. “Elect infants” – the divines that authored the 1689 London Baptist Confession leave sufficient daylight in this section as not to hinder one position against another.
In this section, they use John 3:5 “Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” This is a direct reference back to Ezekiel 36:25–27 “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.” Water = cleansing from sin. Spirit = inward renewal. Nothing to do with the water in the birth canal, baptism, nothing. It is the work entirely of God – the cleansing from sin and the renewal of the spirit by the Holy Spirit. You cannot enter heaven uncleansed. No one unclean can stand before God.
All good so far.
See who is doing all the action, and upon whom it is being done. By God to me. It comes from God to the regenerated. God washes from sin to make one clean. The “incapable” stated in the LBC would be those developmentally incapable persons that are elect.
Often the example of David is cited from 2 Samuel 12:23 “But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” as the singular example of a child of the redeemed being in the immediate presence of God. [David’s son died only 7 days old. Jews were circumcised on the 8th day, therefore that child was outside of the legal position of the covenant] … but it must also be said that Ishmael [according to Genesis 17:23-27, Abraham circumcised his son Ishmael] and Abraham’s six other sons are not accounted as being redeemed [and Midian became evil]. Esau was a child of the patriarch Isaac [and circumcised], yet God hated him in the womb [Malachi 1:2-3 and Romans 9:13]. Judas – as a Jew – would have been circumcised. These examples show those that circumcision was not a guarantee of being a child of the covenant. And the daughters? Were they eternally lost because they could not be circumcised?
There are several views on this paragraph, and the authors of the London Baptist Confession wisely leave an opening for grace and mercy. The operative words are “elect infants”. The following confessions deal with this matter the same way:
The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 10.3
The Savoy Declaration, Chapter 10.3
The Canons of Dort, The First Head, Article 17
The Philadelphia Confession of Faith, Chapter 10.3 unchanged
The Charleston Confession, unchanged
The Helvetic Confession, similar but vague
The New Hampshire Confession of Faith, similar but vague
The Abstract of Principles, similar but vague
Another position would be similar to John MacArthur stating that every infant dying in infancy is of the elect, and that God in His wisdom has already determined all the elect, and that the circumstances that bring about the death of an infant or unborn child do not hinder election, and that all of those babies are taken into the presence of God.
A dissenting position from MacArthur is similar to Dr. John Gerstner – the mentor and professor of Dr. R.C. Sproul. Gerstner states that “even though John Calvin himself, when he treats of this passage, he acts as if all these children were little Jacobs, and there wasn’t an Esau among them.” Judas Iscariot was reprobate in the womb in the same way that John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit in the womb.
We have the command to Samuel exercised by King Saul in 1 Samuel 15:3 “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” God determined that infants and sucklings were to be destroyed along with the animals to bring a complete end to the Amalekites. This utter destruction is judicial. That just doesn’t sound fair? In all this, God is still wise, yet is holy and just. The fairness is God’s business, and the pot does not have the right to question the potter.
The Amlekites’ infants were reprobate and God decreed them to die in judgment. I don’t know how else you can make this verse say anything than it states plainly. It is not an obscure doctrine either that some who hold that some infants dying in their original sin to be damned, do yet acknowledge that it is (as Augustine called it, and from where Gerstner and Sproul derived their position) mitissima omnium poena—the mildest of all punishments – because they have no actual sins joined with their original to increase the torments of hell.
A final position would be universalism – where everyone goes to heaven – and that position is error and not supported by a plain understanding of scripture.
Here is where we need to rest on Deuteronomy 29:29 “ The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.” There are questions we will have until we get to heaven, and God has withheld this knowledge from us here. Additionally, we can find ourselves in the same situation as Eve when she expands on God’s original command “not to eat” and adds “nor touch” – as this subject has been the center of great and hot debates for centuries, and does not fall into critical central doctrinal issues that are cardinal to the faith.
This business is God’s business, and we should exercise caution about building an entire structure around one verse and make a categorical statement.
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“Those who are not elected will not and cannot truly come to Christ and therefore cannot be saved, because they are not effectually drawn by the Father. They may even be called by the ministry of the Word and may receive some ordinary working of the Spirit without being saved. Much less can any be saved who do not receive the Christian religion, no matter how diligently they live their lives according to the light of nature and the teachings of the religion they profess.”
Summary of this paragraph- only the elect CAN get saved.
On the reprobate / those that lack the “Effectual Call”: The Arminian insist that God decrees salvation and reprobation based on antecedent knowledge based on the creature’s determination. In another word, God saw that a man would respond to the Gospel, therefore He (God) elects him unto salvation. This makes salvation consequent and dependent to the actions of the man.
Man is reprobate simply because God has not chosen Him from the foundation of the world. The mediatorial ministry of Jesus Christ was active also in eternity past – He always was our mediator for thousands of years before our own live birth. The Father gave the elect unto the Son from eternity, and Christ’s ministry was also from eternity.
They simply cannot get saved, no matter how many sermons they hear, prayers they say, aisles they walk, times they get baptized. God in His goodness and general mercy extends common grace to them, as God is a benevolent God even to His enemies. They can be “good people” and model citizens, but without regeneration, they are vessels of wrath. It bears with noting that five foolish virgins in Matthew 25 had every appearance of being Christian: they were diligent about their religion to the point of believing that they were going to the feast, but being bankrupt of oil, they were turned away, and eventually are in the category of goats that Jesus references later in Matthew 25:31-33… “When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.”
Men may go far in their exercise of religion and be almost, and not altogether a Christian:
- A man may know and command scriptures
- One may exercise spiritual gifts
- They can be opposed to and hate sin
- They be regular members of the visible church participating in worship, ordinances, service
- They may love the people of Christ, embrace a call of ministry, appear in the process of sanctification
And yet in the end not be a member of the invisible body of Christ.
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What are “Practical Applications” from Chapter 10 (Effectual Calling)?
1. Cultivate Humility Before God. You did not awaken yourself spiritually, God called you. Begin each day acknowledging that your faith is not your achievement, but God’s mercy. Pride has no place in the heart that remembers it was once dead in sin.
2. Rest in Assurance, Not Anxiety. If God has effectually called you, His work is not fragile. When doubts arise, do not look inward first, but upward. Your salvation rests not on the strength of your will, but on God’s unchanging purpose.
3. Pray with Confidence for Others. Since calling is God’s work, even the hardest heart is not beyond hope. Pray earnestly for unbelievers, trusting that the same God who called you can call them. This fuels persistence in prayer rather than despair.
4. Respond Actively to the Gospel. Though God calls sovereignly, He calls through means… the Word specifically. Attend diligently to Scripture. When you hear or read it, do not remain passive. Ask: “Is God calling me to repent, to obey, to trust more deeply?”
5. Walk in New Obedience. Effectual calling does not leave a man unchanged… it transforms his will. Examine your life. Are you pursuing holiness? Not to earn salvation, but because you have been made willing by grace. Are you further in your walk than you were ____ months, years ago?
6. Be Patient with Spiritual Growth. The Confession acknowledges that some are called in ways mysterious—even those unable to outwardly hear the Word. Do not measure all believers by identical experiences. God works diversely, yet truly, in all His elect.
7. Reject Self-Reliance in Evangelism. You are not the one who converts souls… God is. Share the gospel faithfully, but leave the results to God. This frees you from both pride in success and despair in rejection.