Vocation

Called where we are

‘Vocation’ comes from the Latin for calling. In the New Testament ‘calling’, klēsis (κλῆσις), is first God's call to come to Christ through the gospel (see effectual calling). Paul urges believers "to walk in a manner worthy of the calling you have received" (Ephesians 4:1). Yet that call comes to people where they already stand. Paul writes, "each one should lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him" (1 Corinthians 7:17), and teaches that slave or free, married or single, that place becomes a place to serve God.

Whatever you do, work at it with your whole being, as for the Lord and not for men, because you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as your reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

Colossians 3:23-24

Work is not a punishment for the fall but a task given from the beginning. God placed the man in Eden "to cultivate and keep it" (Genesis 2:15), and Paul says, "whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). On Adam in the garden Matthew Henry writes that the heirs of heaven have work to do on earth, "and if they do it with an eye to God, they as truly serve him in it, as when they are upon their knees" Matthew Henry.

The calling recovered

In the medieval church ‘vocation’ (vocatio) usually meant a call to the monastery or the priesthood. Some orders and theologians honoured ordinary work, but many saw the life of prayer and contemplation as the higher way. Luther taught that all the baptised are priests before God, and that the shoemaker, the smith and the farmer each serve their neighbour in their own work and office Luther, To the Christian Nobility; this is bound up with the priesthood of all believers. Calvin said that God has appointed each person a station and called it a calling, and that no work done in obedience to that calling is so mean that it does not shine and count as precious before God Calvin, Institutes 3.10.6. In the late nineteenth century Abraham Kuyper declared Christ sovereign over every sphere of human life Kuyper, Sphere Sovereignty.

Where the traditions differ

In Catholic usage ‘vocation’ often means a call to the priesthood or religious life, yet the Second Vatican Council taught that all the faithful, in every state of life, are called to holiness Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 40. Lutherans have stressed vocation above all as the place where we serve our neighbour; the Reformed, as a mandate to show God's glory in every sphere of life.

In Korean churches the word for vocation is often used for a call to be a pastor or missionary. Such callings are precious, but the Reformation tradition widens the word to the calling of every Christian. Vocation shows that our good works are not a way to earn salvation, but the way those saved by grace serve God and their neighbour day by day. See the lesson Vocation: every sphere of life and What is work for?