OUR HIGH CALLING | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Apr 3, 1907

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 14.

OUR HIGH CALLING.

HOW many people there are in this great world who are waiting for calls, for invitations. Glad indeed all are if called to a profitable, pleasant pursuit; glad if it will aid them in obtaining education and experience; glad if it brings them into an association with men who are truly great and in high position.

How proud an Englishman would be to be called to the personal service of King Edward! What an honor he would esteem it to be! How much greater would be the honor and appreciation if the poor man or boy were told that the king had called him with the view of adopting him forever in the royal family, sharer and heir of the royal prerogatives and benefits.

Imagine, reader, the grandest things of earth to which a mortal might be invited, the most coveted positions to which he might be called, and all these are intrinsically nothing compared with the invitation to which we call your earnest attention in this article.

The Caller and the Called.

The One who calls is "the Lord our God" (Acts 2: 39), "the God of all grace" (1 Peter 5: 10). Those who are called are the "sinners," those who have "come short of the glory of God," the "whosoever" of earth. Matt. 9: 13; Rom. 3: 23; John 3: 16. The great God, the Creator of the heaven and the earth, the sin-hating God, loved the poor sinners of earth with such intensity, such depth of love, that He gave His only-begotten Son to save them, to endeavor to tell the lost wanderers that He longed for their return and called them back. "Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth," He cries; "for I am God, and there is none else." The great, infinite, everlasting God calls the poor, dying sinner. Marvelous love!

Men call us here to pleasant pastimes and profitable pursuits; but to accept the call we must leave places more pleasant, pursuits more profitable. But not so God. He calls us, it is true, from things pleasant to the natural heart, but they are in the ultimate the things which curse and crush, bruise and bind, debase and destroy. God calls us from the lust and sin and vice and crime and murk and shame and idolatry of earth; from "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life," all of which shall perish and pass away. "Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate saith the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; and I will receive you." From Babylon, with all its awful corruptions and waiting destruction, God calls. It is the voice of Infinite Love calling us from sure destruction which our blinded, sin-loving heart can not discern.

From this woful condition of bondage and strife we are called to a royal priesthood, to glorious liberty and freedom, to the peace of God that passeth understanding. 1 Peter 2: 9; Gal. 5: 13; Col. 3: 15. And we are called to these conditions because these conditions belong to the character of holiness and sanctification to which He calls us, even His own character. 1 Peter 1: 15; 1 Thess. 4: 7. We are therefore called to be saints, holy ones, separated, sanctified ones, separated from the world, set apart unto God. Rom. 1: 7.

From the blood relationships of this world, dear tho many of them be, unsatisfactory as all of them are, because sooner or later marred by strife, separation, or calamity, and severed by death, God calls us to eternal relationship to high Heaven. "And I will receive you, and will be to you a Father, and ye shall be to Me sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." 2 Cor. 6: 17, 18.

Then "the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord," fellowship "with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ," "fellowship one with another," with all who are in Him! 1 Cor. 1: 9; 1 John 1: 3, 7. What more could we ask than a fellowship which never palls and which leads us on to the eternal heights of God?

The message of the call is indeed rightly named the "Gospel," the "Good Tidings" of God's love. 2 Thess. 2: 14. Another has called it "His own glory and virtue" (2 Peter 1: 3), because the Gospel "is the power of God unto salvation." In it is summed up and revealed the glory and virtue of Jesus Christ.

A Purpose.

In this wonderful invitation God has a purpose. Men sometimes call other men to do this or that because they have some selfish object or purpose in view. God also has a purpose in calling us, but it is no selfish purpose; it is divinely disinterested benevolence. We are "called according to His purpose" (Rom. 8: 28), a purpose of which we will learn more in later studies. Suffice to say that all the power of God is enlisted in the effecting of that purpose. All things will be made to contribute to its success. It can not fail, because God can not fail.

In that purpose there is to the successful one "eternal life, whereunto thou wast called." There is also tribulation, suffering, trial, persecution, but in all this there is blessing, because Jesus Christ is with us in the trial. 1 Peter 2: 19-21; 3: 9. There is God's "eternal glory in Christ, after" the sufferings. There is all that is holy and pure and true and good and worthy of eternal perpetuation in the call of God to the

children of earth. It is well called "the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Who pausing to think of what it means, could refuse to hear the call, the blessed, glorious call of God to the children of earth? Wherefore give diligence to make your calling sure. 2 Peter 1: 10.