God Is the Initiator
God Is the Initiator
The story of salvation was begun by God Himself, and He explained its means, when He said that the Seed of the woman shall crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15).
And He is the one who prepared the Virgin from whom He would be born. And He is the one who sent to her the Archangel Gabriel to announce to her that she would bear a Son and call His name Jesus. So when she said, “I do not know a man,” he answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore also, the Holy One who is to be born of you will be called the Son of God” (Lk. 1:26–35).
And He is the one who prepared “the messenger who prepares the way before Him” (Mk. 1:2). And He sent an angel to announce him to Zechariah the priest, and to say about him that “from his mother’s womb he will be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Lk. 1:15).
And since He had determined that in His Incarnation He would be “the Son of David, the Son of Abraham” (Mt. 1:1), He therefore also prepared Abraham and prepared David.
So on a day Abraham did not know nor expect, the voice of God came to him—without his realizing from where—saying, “Go from your land, from your kindred, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great. And you shall be a blessing… and in you all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:1–3).
And on a day David did not know nor expect what would happen in it, they called him to the house of his father while he was tending the few sheep in the wilderness. And there the prophet Samuel “took the horn of oil and anointed him (anointed David) in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward” (1 Sam. 16:13).
Thus God prepared all the persons of the Nativity story, thousands of years beforehand… He prepared them and distinguished them with virtues until the “fullness of the time came for Him to be born” (Gal. 4:4).
Abraham and David never dreamed, nor thought, nor sought to be ancestors of Christ. And John the Baptist never dreamed he would be the messenger who prepares the way before Him or that he would be the one to baptize Him. And the Virgin Mary never thought on any day that she would be a mother—let alone the Mother of the Savior of the whole world!
But God is the One who willed, and He is the Initiator of accomplishing this plan, from the moment Adam and Eve sinned until “the fullness of time came”… And God Himself is the One who prepared the fullness of time and determined its appointed hour. “And when the fullness of time had come,” God had prepared everything concerning the divine Incarnation. He prepared the prophecies and the symbols in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms.
He prepared that He would be born of a Virgin, and she shall call His name Immanuel (Is. 7:14). And that “the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Is. 9:6). And that He would be born in Bethlehem of Judea (Mic. 5:2; Mt. 2:5). The prophecies even spoke about His coming to Egypt (Is. 19:1), and about His sufferings in detail (in the story of Redemption) as in (Is. 53) and (Ps. 22).
God is the Initiator in reconciliation, as in the Incarnation in general, and as in personal reconciliation with every human being. He is the one who led the sinful Samaritan woman to faith and repentance when He willed to meet her at the well, and to speak with her about the living water, and worshiping God in spirit and truth, and to draw her to confess her sins (Jn. 4).
And He is the one who led Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector, to repentance. And He said to him, “I must stay at your house today,” and also said, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham” (Lk. 19:5–9).
The Samaritan woman never dreamed of repentance and salvation, nor did Zacchaeus dream that the Lord Christ would enter his house. But God was the Initiator.
The same happened with Saul of Tarsus who was “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” and “dragging them bound to Jerusalem” (Acts 9:1–2). He who said about himself, “I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man” (1 Tim. 1:13)… He also said, “I am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God” (1 Cor. 15:9).
This Saul began his path of repentance—and even his path of calling—when the Lord met him with a great light on the road to Damascus and reproached him, saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4). Yet the Lord had been the Initiator with him long before that—before he was born—according to Saul’s own words: “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood” (Gal. 1:15–16).
So God was the Initiator with Saul in repentance and calling.
The same is true of calling—in many examples—since the One who calls is God, necessarily the Initiator is God. We saw how God called Abraham (Gen. 12) and David (1 Sam. 16). And perhaps one of the clearest examples is His calling of Jeremiah the prophet, as He says to him, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jer. 1:5).
Likewise His calling to Moses the prophet at the burning bush (Ex. 3). Jeremiah and Moses never dreamed on any day that they would be prophets! Moses even said to God, “I am not eloquent, neither before nor since You have spoken to Your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” (Ex. 4:10).
Likewise Jeremiah said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a youth” (Jer. 1:6). The call also came from the Lord to Matthew the tax collector—while he was sitting at the tax office—when the Lord said to him, “Follow Me” (Mt. 9:9).
Also Simon Peter and Andrew, when they were casting their nets into the sea, He said to them, “Come after Me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Mt. 4:18–19). And likewise James the son of Zebedee and John his brother (Mt. 4:21–22)… and the rest of the apostles.
Paul explained this by saying, “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined… and whom He predestined, these He also called” (Rom. 8:29–30). And he said about the rank of priesthood, “No one takes this honor to himself, but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was” (Heb. 5:4). God is the Initiator of calling in the matter of priesthood and in all matters of ministry. And He said to His holy disciples, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain” (Jn. 15:16).
The voice of God comes to whomever God wills among people… The important thing is that we discern His voice and respond to it. The voice of the Lord came to the child Samuel, but he did not recognize it at first and thought it was the voice of Eli the priest. But he eventually realized it was the voice of God and answered, “Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening” (1 Sam. 3:9–10). And he heard the message and delivered it.
The voice came to St. Anthony from a verse in the Gospel in which the Lord says, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me” (Mt. 19:21). So he fulfilled the saying and lived a life of worship. But the rich young man who heard it from the very mouth of Christ “went away sorrowful, for he had many possessions” (Mt. 19:22). Therefore the Apostle rightly said, “If you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” (Heb. 3:7–8).
Even St. Anthony, at the beginning of his life of devotion, while standing at the riverbank, heard advice from the mouth of an immoral woman: “If you are a monk, do not sit here; go to the inner desert.” He considered her words as the voice of God to him, and he went and fulfilled them…
The important thing is to discern the voice of God. For St. John the Beloved says in his first epistle, “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 Jn. 4:1).
Herod the king heard the announcement of the birth of the Lord from the mouths of the Magi. But he did not respond; rather “he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him” (Mt. 2:3). And he resorted to trickery and deception, then arranged how to kill the Christ Child!
And another Herod—thirty years later—heard the word from the mouth of John the Baptist, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife” (Mt. 14:3–4). But he did not respond to the voice; instead, he imprisoned the Baptist and eventually killed him.
The scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the priests heard the word from the mouth of Christ more than once. Yet they did not respond. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it” (Jn. 1:5). “They loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (Jn. 3:19).
They reaped the result of their rejection and perished! Likewise Jerusalem, which Christ lamented, saying, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you! How often I wanted to gather your children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. See! Your house is left to you desolate” (Mt. 23:37–38).
He was the Initiator for their salvation. But He did not force them to accept salvation. And thus they perished because they did not accept this salvation. And thus the Lord lamented this city, saying to her, “Because you did not know the time of your visitation” (Lk. 19:44).
My brother, God may visit you at any time, and His voice may reach you. His voice might come to you during reading the Gospel, during listening to the epistles, during praying the Psalms, during attending the Liturgy, during visiting a sick person, during a quiet time, through the mouth of a preacher, or at any time. And as Scripture says, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation.” But it must come.
The important thing is that you perceive it and discern it and respond to it. Do not be like the Shulammite in the Song who said, “The voice of my Beloved is knocking” (Song 5:2), and yet delayed to open for Him. He was the Initiator, and she was the negligent one. Therefore she finally said in pain, “My Beloved turned away and passed by. My soul failed when He spoke. I sought Him, but I could not find Him; I called Him, but He gave me no answer” (Song 5:6).
Article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – Al-Keraza Magazine – Year 32 – Issues 1,2 (16–1–2004)
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