1 Corinthians 1:1-2, 9, 26-28; Ephesians 4:1; 2 Timothy 1:9-10.
Revised notes of an address by J. Muckle.
The previous speaker has brought before us the Son of God as presented to us by John, Paul and Peter. We have heard of the glory of His Person in the past eternity, of the place He now occupies at the Father's right hand, and of the glory that shall be displayed in Him in His coming kingdom. How great is the privilege given to us of God, to thus view the glories of His dear Son; and I have read these verses that we might consider the blessedness of the place into which the saints have been called, where they are to learn God's wonderful secrets, secrets concerning the unsearchable riches of Christ, and of His counsels of grace.
In our first verse Paul speaks of himself as a called apostle of Jesus Christ by God's will; he realised the divine call, not only as a saint of God, but as a servant. He did not choose this apostleship himself; it was the last thing he would naturally have desired when as a proud Pharisee he persecuted the Church of God. But God called him in sovereign grace to witness to the glory of His Son, and to minister the truth of the Gospel. That Gospel reached the saints now addressed at Corinth, it had brought to them the knowledge of the true God, and on hearing it they had experienced its drawing power. God called them as He has called us, and as He called Abraham of old; bidding them leave the things in which they had lived formerly to be for His pleasure while passing through this world.
Paul, in verse 9, speaks of the faithfulness of God in calling us into the fellowship of His Son. What rest for us to know that the God Who has called us is ever faithful. If men are unfaithful to the call of God, we can always rely on the faithful God to supply all the needed grace and mercy to sustain us in the path to which He has called us. His Son is the bond that unites the saints in the fellowship to which all have been called; it is the only fellowship that is proper to the Christian company on earth; every other professed fellowship really denies the unity of the fellowship that subsists in relation to the Son of God. This is church fellowship, belonging to the one body, where the privileges of the Christian company are enjoyed, and where there is to be the maintenance of all that is due to God in consistency with His holy Name. (John, in his First Epistle, speaks of fellowship with the Father and the Son in relation to the knowledge of the truth of Christianity. It is not church fellowship, but what belongs to us as in the family of God, as knowing God.)
God, in calling by sovereign grace, has silenced the proud boastings of the flesh, for He has not called many from among the great and noble of the earth. Had God called the wise, the intellectuals, the philosophers, the high-born, and such; what manifestations of human pride there would have been; but in calling the foolish, the weak, the despised, and those of no account among men, how God has magnified His grace and made known His wisdom. Those called of God, realising that they owe everything to God, delight to boast in the One Who has called them by His grace, and in His Son in Whom that grace was manifested.
We learn something more of this divine calling in Ephesians 1. According to His eternal counsels, God has marked us out for richest blessing, choosing us in Christ before the foundation of the world, and predestinating us for sonship for His own good pleasure. The church is united to Christ as His body, in view of the display of His glory; and even now we have been raised up and made to sit together in the heavenly places in Christ, form part of the living structure that is to be a holy temple in the Lord, and are builded together for a habitation of God by the Spirit. What a wonderful calling this is; and in the light of it we have access to the presence of the Father. With all this before his mind, the Apostle exhorts the saints, exhorts us, to walk worthy of the calling wherewith we are called. The dignity and heavenly character of God's calling should ever be in our thoughts as we pass through this world; the heavenly light is to illumine every step of our daily walk, and this for the pleasure of God.
Some one may ask, Can we still walk in the light of this high calling in these days of brokenness and ruin? 2nd Timothy shows that this is still God's mind for us. With the last days in view Paul wrote to tell us that "God has called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages of time." The divine standard for our walk must not be lowered because of the failure of men. We are to be engaged with what was made manifest by the coming into the world of the Lord Jesus, and with the life and incorruptibility that have been brought to light by the Gospel. Engaged with these things, and being strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, we shall indeed seek to live in the light of the calling of God, until we arrive in the scene of cloudless bliss, of which we sometimes sing, "Where God alone, in His own rest, is fully known."