Finding God’s Specific Call and Passion

Hence, I want to join Paul (and Jesus, and the Father) in living my life in the service of the most ultimate purposes of God.

Joining God in His Penultimate Purposes

But how shall we do that? Paul not only spoke of pursuing the ultimate purpose of God, but of lower purposes as a means to that ultimate purpose. So did Jesus. Jesus said, “For this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37). “The Son of Man came … to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). “I came that they might have life” (John 10:10). These are glorious, but not ultimate. They serve the ultimate—the glorification of God.

Similarly, Paul spoke of purposes for his life that were not ultimate, but served the ultimate. He said, for example, that the only worth he gave to his life was to “finish the ministry I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24).

Why such a riveted focus on a life devoted to the Word? Because people are born again only through the living and abiding Word (1 Pet. 1:23), and because faith comes only from being born again (1 John 5:1), and because obedience comes only through faith (Gal. 5:6; 2 Thess. 1:11), and because the “obedience of faith” is the only life that glorifies God (Rom. 4:20).

Finding God’s Specific Call and Passion

But for Paul the goal of life became even more specific.

His calling and passion was “to bring the nations to obedience” (Rom. 15:18). And here we circle back to where we started—the second half of the Great Commission. It seems to me that Paul had meditated on Jesus’ Great Commission, specifically the words, “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:20). Not just, “Teach them all that I have commanded you,” but, “Teach them to observe—to keep, obey, do—all that I have commanded you.” Do this as you make disciples of “all nations.”

And Paul knew that the only way to bring the nations to such obedience was to make it his life aim to bring about the obedience of faith in Jesus Christ. In fact, when he paraphrased the Great Commission for his own life, the second half of Jesus’s commission sounded like this: It is “the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith” (Rom. 16:26). That’s Paul’s way of saying, “Teach them to obey all that I have commanded you.” And be sure this obedience is the obedience of faith. Why? Because that is how the obedience happens to the glory of God. Hence he attaches to this “great commission” the words, “To the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ!” (Rom. 16:27).

So here I am, at the outset of my 70th year and eighth decade. And there boils inside of me a zeal to fulfill the Great Commission. Especially the second half—”Teach them to observe all that I have commanded you.” Which means: Bend every effort, use every means, go deep, go broad, pray much, be filled with the Spirit—all to the end that the peoples of the world might obey everything Jesus commanded, by faith in His grace, for the glory of God.

Find your specific calling, and join me. The time is short—”What is your life? A mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). Night is coming when no man can work (John 9:4).

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringgod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.