Now the call of God is described in two ways in Scripture. In our great confessions, our forebears spoke of the general call of the gospel and the effectual call of the gospel. The gospel is address to all men, without any discrimination. The wonderful tender of salvation is proclaimed far and wide to as many as we can reach, and in a sense people are generally called to come to Jesus Christ. But nobody would respond to that general call, absolutely nobody. We are all so fixed in our sin. We are all so prejudiced against God. We are all so foolish and ignorant of our eternal destination in judgement away from God. Therefore God has done a wonderful thing. Not only does he with great passion call men indiscriminately to respond to the gospel, but he specially calls many, many people, countless millions down the history of time, and he so works in their hearts that they cannot resist the call. They are the people who are effectually called, the elect of God.
Thomas Goodwin, the great Puritan, put it like this. Here is the effectual call of God, he says. It is like a nurse, teaching a little child to walk. ‘Come on,’ says the nurse. ‘Come over here. Take a few steps. You can do it, come to me.’ But then the nurse goes to the child, and places her fingers, and the child gets hold of them, and the nurse coaxes the child to walk, step by step until eventually the child is walking alone.
That is the effectual call. We hear the call of the gospel, and in our stubbornness and foolishness, we would never respond, but God touches us. God works a work within us. We call it regeneration, or the beginning of regeneration. He somehow puts a spark of life within us, and makes us willing to listen, and willing to think. He enables us to see our great need, and to see Christ suffering and dying for sinners. Little by little we see that we must run to him, and trust him, and depend upon him. But he did it all.
We think when we are saved, ‘I heard the gospel. I came to Jesus Christ. I rejected my old life and threw myself into his arms.’ And so we did. The little child, maybe thought he walked all by himself. But it was God from beginning to end.