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News and views from the German-language region of Europe

June 13, 2014

The Father's call

Filed under Sabbath Thoughts

How do we come to Jesus Christ? Do we just look for Him on our own and then find Him? That's what you hear at times in today's Christianity. But Jesus Himself contradicted this idea: "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:44).

It is our heavenly Father who call us and draws us to His son Jesus Christ. What power does God use to make our calling possible? Our natural human mind with the spirit in man does not understand the things of God. So for us to know God and be called by Him, God utilitzes the holy spirit, which makes it possible for us to understand the things of God: "For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God" (1 Corinthians 2:11).

So we only understand the things of God if our heavenly Father calls us and makes His spirit available to us. This spirit is apparently not available to today's Christianity, since it has a false concept of God being a trinity. From that we can conclude that God is not (yet) calling the vast majority of today's trinitarian Christians.

Jesus called the holy spirit "the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive" (John 14:17). The world cannot receive it, but it was already with the disciples (ibid.) and made possible their understanding of who Jesus was, expressed most emphatically by the apostle Peter: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16). What did the "son of God" mean for Jesus' fellow Jews? To them it meant being "equal with God" (John 5:18), a traditional Jewish viewpoint that Jesus never contradicted. How did Peter know that Jesus was "equal with God"? Did he come to that conclusion because he was searching for Jesus? No! "Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven", was Jesus' response to Peter's declaration (Matthew 16:17).

God the Father works through the holy spirit to call us and open our minds to His truth. We should always be mindful of the exhortation given by the apostle Paul concerning that spirit: "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption" (Ephesians 4:30). Let's always be open for the knowledge that God wants to impart to us via the spirit of truth.

With these thoughts I wish everyone a rewarding Sabbath!

Paul Kieffer's blog with personal insights and news from the German-language region in Europe.

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