He Comes; He Calls; We Follow
By John Gavazzoni
One of the many fundamental truths hidden in plain sight in the Bible, is the truth that when God calls we come, and when He commissions, we go forth in His name....PERIOD! The general and popular concept that God's call is a matter of an offer to come, and His commission is an offer to go forth serving, each respectively subject to our agreement, is the height of contrariety in respect to how Jesus, as Lord, operates administratively in matters of the kingdom of God. Jesus' choice of a word to indicate the effect of the call of God sets the scene for our understanding: In Jn. 6:44, Jesus testified that, "No man can come unto me, except the Father who hath sent Me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day." (KJV)
Though the Authorized Version (King James Version) makes it clear that the action of coming to Christ is not set in motion by our choice to do so, but by the action of the Father, without which NO MAN can come to Christ, yet it, along with other conventional translations, does not make clear the force of the Father's "call." The "call" is really not merely a "call." The Greek word has a far greater force than "call." The force of the Greek word falls nowhere short of "drag." What Jesus really said, in the choice of His wording, was that no man is able to come to Him unless the Father drags that one.
Jonathan Mitchell's Translation of the New Testament presents to us the full force of Jesus' meaning. Here it is with the Greek extended and amplified: "No man is able (or: is presently having power) to come toward Me unless the Father--the One sending Me--should drag him [as with a net] (or: draw him [as drawing water in a bucket or a sword from its sheath]), and I Myself will raise him up (resurrect him; stand him back up again) within (or: in union with) the Last Day." We're not dependent entirely to Mr. Mitchell's text alone, for many other students of New Testament Greek have noted the same fact. Even Vines (very conservative) Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, is careful to note immediately under listing of "draw," that "dragging" is indicated. The sense is continued on as Jesus says emphatically, "...and I Myself WILL raise him up..." (Emphasis mine) No ifs, ands, or buts.
But we can come to the issue from another perspective---that of the Book of Acts record of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. Toward a major change of mind (repentance), I implore the reader to check out that record again. You see, most Christians, in reading the account, presume things utterly foreign to what went on there on the road to Damascus, when Saul (shortly to become Paul, an emissary of Jesus Christ) is thrown to the ground by a bright light from heaven, followed by a disturbingly-questioning, attention-arresting, Voice of authority. What we have in that scene is the resurrected, glorified, Jesus, with the kind and level of prerogative possessed only by Deity, commanding Saul's recognition of Jesus' lordship. No, no, no, not anything like the popular concept, "will you accept Jesus as your Lord?"
It's the Lord BEING Lord of Saul, because that's who He IS. It's the Lord COMMANDING Saul into a saving and serving relationship with Christ. There's no mere offer of salvation or service. Saul is made to understand that the One he has been persecuting (in persecuting Christians) ---as Saul as Paul will later write-- "IS Lord of all." When Paul would later write in Ephesians, "For by grace are you saved through faith...," he was explaining the nature of his experience theologically.
What happened to him on the way to Damascus was grace in operation---powerful grace, dragging grace, non-negotiable grace, effective grace, stopping Saul in his tracks and bringing to bear upon and within him, that persuasive Power that births saving faith. Saving faith, the faith that trusts God, comes from being completely convinced by the Truth. The process of saving faith is a process of so absolutely impressing the Truth upon the heart that nothing else is possible. It is, ultimately understood, the faith OF Christ. Jesus had intrusively inserted Himself into Saul's life, and did so, as it were, with batteries included, i.e., when Christ comes in, He comes in with His faith included. Faith is a gift, within the supreme gift of God's Son to us. "For by grace are you saved through faith, and THAT not of yourselves, it is the GIFT of God." (Eph. 2: 8, 9 KJV) The Mitchell translation of the last phrase reads, "the gift of and from God (or, reading it as apposition: the gift which is God)."
Later Paul, in writing to the Church in Philippi, summed it up quite nicely for us: "...that I might apprehend that for which I have been apprehended of Christ Jesus." (Phil. 3:12, KJV) Here again we have a case where the Authorized Version blunts the full force of what Paul was saying. "Apprehend" does convey the action, if we think of "apprehend" as police might apprehend a criminal who is attempting to escape, but it is better rendered from the Greek as "seized," or "grasped," or "taken hold of." Paul desired to grasp that for which he had been grasped of Christ Jesus. How perfectly he describes in those few words what happened to him on the road to Damascus. It's so clear: Jesus grabbed him for Himself and for the kingdom of God.
We see the result as recorded in the end of The Book of Acts, with Paul receiving all who came to him in prison, "speaking to them of those things pertaining to the kingdom of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ."
