Written by Dawn Rutan
It seems to be a trend lately that the Sunday sermons correlate quite nicely with something I’m reading. After hearing “Jesus Calls Ordinary People,” I read the following from J.I. Packer in Never Beyond Hope:
“God, we realize, can get on very well without any of us. So it should give us an overwhelming sense of privilege that not only has he made us, loved and saved us but also he takes us as his working partners for advancing his plans. Thus Paul can call his colleagues and himself ‘Christ’s ambassadors’ and ‘God’s fellow workers’ (2 Cor. 3:20; 6:1), and tell us all to see ourselves in our own sphere as servants, ministers and workmen of God… And none of us is excluded, for Scripture shows God using the oddest, rawest, most lopsided and flawed of his children to further his work, at the same time as he carries on his sanctifying strategy for getting them into better moral and spiritual shape. This is a fact of enormous encouragement to sensitive souls who feel they are not fit to serve him” (18).
It does make you wonder why! When God is all-powerful, why does He enlist the help of failures and bumblers, the naïve and idiotic, self-centered and sinful people He created? I just happened to think of the Island of Misfit toys in the TV story of Rudolph. We’re all a bunch of misfits and nitwits, but for some reason God calls us to follow Him and to join Him in the work He is doing. Perhaps the deeper question is this—knowing that we would all be so flawed, why did He create us to begin with? Elyse Fitzpatrick comments,
“There, in time, before time began, the Trinity existed in perfect happiness within his person. He was not lonely; he never needed anything… But then, in overflowing love, grace, and mercy, God chose to make a covenant within himself… In love God made mankind, knowing what it would cost him, knowing all about Bethlehem and Calvary and all our sins before they even existed” (Found in Him, 30-31).
He created us in love. He redeemed us in love. He called us in love. And He gives us the ministry of loving one another. “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will… as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:4-5,10 ESV). So God’s grand plan, cooked up before time began, was that He would create people who would one day be united with Him in love, even though it takes a rather convoluted path to get us there.
J.I. Packer is right that this should be an encouraging truth for us. It should also be astounding, humbling, empowering, and perhaps even a little frightening to realize that the Creator of the universe created us, loved us, and then called us to follow Him. It’s a distinct privilege, but it’s also an enormous responsibility—one that we would have no hope of fulfilling if it weren’t for the power of God made available to us and through us. On our own we could never please God, but because He has called us, He has also made possible the work He calls us to do. (See Hebrews 13:21.)
I like the prayer with which Packer closes his chapter on Samson (35):
“Holy Father, you know us, you have loved us and redeemed us through the blood-shedding of your Son, and exalted us to the glorious dignity of being your children and heirs. Keep us mindful of our privileged identity, and teach us to live lives that are Christlike in their maturity of faith and hope, their consistency in aiming to please you, and their humility in looking to you for the help we need at all times. Make us honest in recognizing our weaknesses of character and conduct, and in repenting of our sins. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. So may we follow your servant Samson in contending for the welfare of your people, and by your grace go beyond him in self-denial and purity of heart and life. Through Jesus Christ, our Savior and our Lord. Amen.”
