“Who has saved us and called us with a holy calling” (2 Timothy 1:9)

The apostle uses the perfect tense and says, "Who has saved us." Believers in the Lord  Jesus Christ are saved. They’re not considered tentatively saved, or hopefully saved, or ultimately to be saved, but they’re already, saved. Salvation isn’t a blessing to be only sung about in Heaven, but a matter to be obtained, received, promised, and enjoyed now. The Christian is perfectly saved in God's purpose; God has ordained him unto salvation, and that purpose is complete. The price has been paid for him: “It is finished” was the cry of our Savior just before He died.

Salvation is a holy calling, always bearing good fruit. “But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness” (Romans 6:22). Saints choose holiness, not out of any compulsion, but from the desire of the new nature, which leads them to rejoice in holiness just as naturally as before they delighted in sin.

God didn’t choose them, or call them because they were holy, but He called them that they might be holy. The good fruit of saints is as much the work of God as the atonement itself. The grace that saves the guilty continues the process of sanctification, but our own righteousness is forever excluded.

“It is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12). “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God” (2 Corinthians 3:5).