Called to be Saints - 1/2 November

Human beings choose because there is something good and desirable already there, we encounter it and we decide we want it. God’s choice however creates things. Because God chooses, something good and desirable comes into being.

We can therefore say that creation itself is God’s original choosing. God is completely free in his decision to create the world. Nothing obliges God to make a world. He simply says ‘let there be light’ and light is. He simply chooses to create human beings, and so it is. Our being, and the being of all the world, originates in a love beyond anything we can imagine or experience. God’s love calls something out of nothing and this is God’s absolutely free choice.

‘God saw all he had made and found it very good’ (Genesis 1.31). This applies to everything God had made: the moon and the stars, oak trees and tulips, cows and sharks. But among the creatures God has made, the human being has a special place. There is plenty of evidence that the human being has powers and abilities way beyond anything other animals have. On top of that, all the great religious traditions regard the human being as a spiritual being. We have capacities for knowledge, for love, for language, for social life, for creative and artistic work, for religion – all this is special to humanity.

For Jews, Christians and Muslims these capacities and powers are evidence that the human being is created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1.26). Humans are created to represent God in creation. They are to use their intelligence and freedom as God’s stewards or delegates in the management of the world.

For Christians there is a further dimension. We believe that the image of God in us has been damaged and distorted by sin. But we believe that Jesus, the eternal Word of the Father, who bears the very stamp of God’s nature (Hebrews 1.3), heals us and restores that image of God in us. We believe that he is the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. We believe that in Christ we are called to a level of living that God always wanted us to have. We are adopted as God’s children, chosen to share in the love that is God’s own nature. This is the fullness of life that Jesus says he has come to bring (John 10.10).

‘Before the world was made, he chose us in Christ’, the letter to the Ephesians says (Ephesians 1.4). And the beginning of the gospel of Saint John teaches us that ‘through him all things came to be … they all had life in him … a life that enlightens all human beings coming into the world’ (John 1.3-4).

What we believe about ourselves and the dignity of all other human beings can seem incredible, especially when we see our own selfishness and the evil things human beings do to each other. But in spite of so many weaknesses and failures, we believe that we are created in God’s image and have been chosen to share God’s life. ‘To all who did accept him’ – who accepted the call – ‘he gave power to become children of God … and from his fullness we have all received’ (John 1.12,16).

The letter to the Ephesians seems to realize that we will need help to accept this extraordinary teaching, that God chose us in Christ before the world was made and predestined us for eternal life. Paul there prays that 'our minds may be enlightened so that we see what hope God’s call holds for us, what rich glories God has promised the saints will inherit’ (Ephesians 1.18). The ‘saints’ are you and I (believe it or not), individual and ordinary human beings, whose lives fade like passing shadows but who have been chosen and called to share God’s eternal life of love.