The Bible on Vocation
During the Reformation, the gospel was rediscovered. It completely changed the Church’s understanding of a person’s relationship to God. No longer did the Church teach people to believe they were justified by their works, rather they were justified through faith in Christ. The Church was set free in the gospel, and everything changed.
The gospel became a thread that flowed throughout the Church’s total understanding. As the Church returned to the Scriptures, the reformers realized that how the Church understood Christ, sin, repentance, church practice, the Christian life―everything―was changed by a right understanding of the gospel. Suddenly our works were turned in a new direction. Not directed to God, they were instead directed towards creation.
As a result, justification through faith was not the only major contribution of the Reformation. Joel Biermann, in his book Wholly Citizens, suggests that the second major rediscovery of the Reformation was the doctrine of vocation.[1] Vocation is another outworking of the thread of the gospel. As we are made free by the gospel, we are also given a way to live in the world.
The Second Great Discovery
The word vocation is simply an older word for describing a “calling.” Typically, when we say a person has a calling, or vocation, we have in mind religious work. It’s no accident that it appeals to us as religious language. To be called one must have a caller. At Lutheran Brethren Seminary we attempt to help young men discern if they are called to pastoral ministry. We help others discern the call to missionary work or other ministry paths within the Church. If you go outside the Church this language gets less frequent.
The biblical understanding of vocation expands beyond both the religious and occupational usage, into the entirety of the Christian life. It’s not that the religious or work-based understandings of vocation were wrong, but more they were just parts of a larger whole. A believer has multiple callings all at once. Discussing Luther’s discovery of vocation, Robert Kolb writes, “God, Luther believed, exercises his providential care through human agents performing his will in all the situations or walks of life which the Creator has fashioned for the smooth running of daily life.”[2] So vocation includes all the situations or walks of life in which we participate: in families, our work, our life as citizens, our life in the church. We have callings within all these spheres of creation.
The Bible on Vocation
Scripturally, the doctrine of vocation is laid out most succinctly in 1 Corinthians 7:17, “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.” Gene Veith, in his article “Vocation: The Theology of the Christian Life,” cites the passage and comments, “Thus, God assigns different kinds of life for each Christian and then calls each Christian to that assignment.”[3] Immediately following verse seventeen, in the remaining context, Paul discusses the call in terms of the call to faith in Christ, the call of the gospel.[4] In every situation that a person finds himself, he is relating to the Lord. As we are called by the gospel into relationship with Christ, we are also called and empowered to love and serve our fellow creatures.
Also foundational for a biblical understanding of vocation are passages like Ephesians 5:22-6:9, Colossians 3:22-4:1 and 1 Peter 2:13-3:7. Consistently in those passages, we see the Apostles affirming realities of life in creation, such as marriage, government, and the economic realm. However, their affirmation is not a blanket affirmation, but rather a call to live as Christians within those roles. We see a transformative aspect, and also a cross-bearing aspect, to our life in these callings. In serving our neighbor, we also die to ourselves.
The doctrine of vocation is based on the recognition that God, even after the Fall, relates graciously to his creation. As his image bearers reborn through the gospel, we are called to do the same. In the creation account we see a few places where God’s original intent for human beings is made plain. We begin with the first chapter, Genesis 1:28, “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” We find here the call for humanity to not only subdue and have dominion over the earth but to fill it with other people. Implied is God’s institution of marriage, the family, work, even government. Later God affirms humanity’s call into creation and expands the language in Genesis 2:15, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” The language here is distinct, humanity’s role is that of a servant and guard in creation.
Both of these passages reveal that God’s original good design for human beings includes the mundane work of creation: to keep it, to subdue it, to fill it, and care for it. Part of what the gospel reveals, and sets us free to recognize, is that God loves his creation―it’s his idea. He is a God of the physical. He doesn’t despise mud and sweat and craftsmanship. To build something is a holy thing. To fix something, to care for animals, to plumb, to farm, to lawyer, to change diapers, to govern, to police―all of these endeavors, and so many more, are manifestations of God’s care for his creation. We, as his image bearers, serve creation; we serve one another, and in doing so we serve as the masks of God. For it is God who serves and tends his creation (Job 38:28-41).
The Cross of Vocation
Yet we do not live in the garden. We have been cast out. And while the eyes of faith, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, recognize the gift of a creaturely life of service, the eyes of the old sinful flesh do not. So, while our callings invite us to serve our neighbors, they also expose and impose upon our sinful selfishness.
We had a stomach bug go through our family recently and waking up at midnight to clean up another soiled bed provoked anger in me. Yet, despite my sinful anger, God drove me and called me to serve my child. In my vocation as father, God was providing for my children and disciplining me all in one action.
So, What Now?
The doctrine of vocation teaches us that our life in Christ is not disconnected from our life in the world. We are not a Christian only on Sundays, nor are we being faithful only when we do Christian things. We are called by our Lord into the world. We are set free in Christ to love and serve in and through our families, jobs, and churches. This is holy work, whether we’re covered in grease, chest deep in a ditch, surrounded by papers, or pulling our hair out with kids. So, look around, consider your everyday life. What has God called you to?
Rev. Clint Knutson is Professor of Systematic Theology at Lutheran Brethren Seminary.
Joel Biermann, Wholly Citizens: God’s Two Realms and Christian Engagement with the World (Minneapolis, MN: fortress, 2017), 150.
Robert Kolb, “Called to Milk Cows and Govern Kingdoms: Martin Luther’s Teaching on the Christian’s Vocations,” Concordia Journal 39, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 135.
Gene Edward Veith, “Vocation: The Theology of the Christian Life,” Journal of Markets & Morality, 14, no 1 (Spring 2011): 120.
Douglas J. Schuurman, Vocation: Discerning Our Callings in Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 33.