Our Calling in the Workplace #1

Vocation

I. Introduction

Good morning! According to the Department of Labor, Americans spend more

time working than any activity other than sleeping. For something so central to our

daily lives, so central to our lives in general, it’s important to ask the simple

question, “Why do I work?” Not “How do I work?” or “Where should I work?” The

most fundamental question is “Why do I work?” That’s our focus for the next six

Sunday mornings.

But before we dive in, let’s get our bearings for the material over the next few

weeks. We’ll start out the class this week by backing out from the workplace to the

broader doctrine of “vocation” or “calling.” Why do that? Because so many of our

difficulties with our jobs stem from the fact that we have confused them with

callings—and haven’t understood how they fit with all the callings God has given

to us. Then over the next four weeks we’ll focus specifically on one specific

calling: paid employment, or the work we do in the workplace. So in our second

lecture, we’ll consider the purpose and danger of employment. Then how

redemption impacts our employment. Fourth, we’ll talk about how the Bible calls

you to choose a job, and then in the fifth, how we can live as Christians in the

workplace. Week six, we’ll circle back around and consider how all of our

vocations fit together, answering the question you might have thought of in terms of

finding “balance”—really by turning that idea on its head. Christians are not

balanced people. And we’ll end with a panel discussion.

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So, back to today’s class on calling. Two topics I’d like to cover: first, I want to

take a giant step backwards and discuss what every person is called to be. Only

after we understand our calling generally can we possibly understand what we are

called to be in particular, like in the workplace. So we’ll talk about general, or

primary, callings, and particular, or secondary callings. Second, I want to discuss

how the doctrine of calling, or the doctrine of vocation, has been distorted over the

years. That’s left most of us without guidance on why we work, much less how to

work or how to choose a job. Those are our two points for this morning: first, the

basic principles of calling; and second, recapturing the doctrine of calling from

common distortions.

II. The Basic Principles of Calling

A. Defining some terms

So first, the basic principles of calling. And as always, it’s helpful to begin by

defining our terms. The word “called” comes from the Greek word that we see in

Romans chapter 8, verse 30: “And those he predestined, he also called; those he

called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” This is calling in its

most comprehensive sense: this is calling by God of all those predestined for glory.

And “vocation” simply comes from the Latin translation of the same word: vocare.

(“vo-KAR-a”) Think of calling and vocation as synonymous. Same word, different

languages. So then, what is our calling according to the Bible?

B. Primary Calling

First, let’s talk about our primary calling. Os Guinness has a great working

definition of “primary calling” from his book The Call. In his words: “Our primary

calling as followers of Christ is by him, to him, and for him.” “By him,” “to him,” 2

“for him.” Second Thessalonians 2:14 explains that we are called by Christ: “He

called you to this salvation through our gospel, so that you may possess the glory of

our Lord Jesus Christ.” And Romans 1:6 shows that we are called “to him”: “And

you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.” And finally, for

him: Ephesians 2: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do

good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”1 This calling on all

Christians: by Christ, to Christ, that we might do good work for Christ. It’s our

primary calling both because it happened first and because it supersedes every other

calling on our lives. “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these

things will be given to you as well.”2

C. Secondary Callings

Now that we’ve firmly planted in our minds the truth that all Christians share the

same primary calling—the calling to new life in Christ—we can begin to think

about the other secondary call-ings in our lives. Guinness once again poses a

helpful definition of secondary callings. He writes: “Our secondary callings,

considering who God is as sovereign, is that everyone, everywhere, and in

everything should think, speak, live, and act entirely for him. They are our personal

answer to God’s address, our response to God’s summons.” As we read in

Colossians 3:22–24: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working

for the Lord, not for men . . . . It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” “Whatever you

do.” Those are our secondary callings.

If you’re a mother, “work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord.” If

you’re a student, “work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord.” If you’re

a wage-earner, “work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord.” If you’re 1 Eph. 2:102 Matt. 6:33

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retired, if you’re unemployed, if you’re a pastor, if you’re a husband—you get it.

This is the essence of secondary callings: that we are called to do things “as

working for the Lord.” And in that, we bring glory to him. So what exactly does

that mean? Let’s use as our lens what Jesus in Matthew chapter 22 described as

“the greatest commandments”: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and

with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest

commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Love

God. Love your neighbor. Through that we can see how our secondary callings

ultimately serve to bring glory to God, which is our primary calling.

1. Love of God

First, our secondary callings are a major way in which we love God. How do we

love God through our work? By working as if we are working for him. Because we

are. Do you feel that your work is drudgery and toilsome? Love the one who

created you in Christ by doing that work cheerfully and with excellence. Scripture

itself makes that demand in Ephesians chapter 6. “Obey your earthly masters with

respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. . . .

Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know

that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does . . . .” We love God

when we work “with all our hearts.”

If the Lord was your boss, or even more intimately, if the Lord was your master and

you were an apprentice, how would you work? Wouldn’t you always use the right

tool for the job? Wouldn’t you always take an extra moment to make sure that line

is straight, those numbers are correct, those double hyphens are converted to em

dashes? Would you ever hand in a document with typographical errors? Would you

ever be tardy, or take a “surf the internet against your boss’s wishes” break? Would 4

you leave those dishes in the sink for your wife or roommate to do, or let the leaves

remain unraked?

If we truly are to “work at it with all ours hearts, as working for the Lord,” our work

will be dramatically different. I try to encapsulate this notion in one word:

excellence. Our Lord deserves no less. The Bible calls us to no less a standard.

Ecclesiastes 9:10 challenges us to excellence like this: “Whatever your hand finds

to do, do it with all your might . . . .” We love the Lord through our secondary

callings when we perform them with excellence, “as working for the Lord.”

2. Love of neighbor

But secondly, we bring glory to God through secondary callings as we love our

neighbors. The Lord taught us to pray: “Give us this day our daily bread.” But it

has been some thousands of years since bread has rained down from heaven.

Instead of making a daily miraculous provision for us, God gives us our daily bread

through the work of others to which he calls them. God calls the farmer to farm; the

miller to mill; the baker to bake; the trucker to deliver; the shopkeeper to stock; you

to purchase and prepare. These are all secondary callings by which God through his

providence causes us to love our neighbors.

Do you see how God gives each person a specific set of talents that are to be used to

love our neighbors? Any lawful occupation is worthwhile, and fits in to God’s

providential care for people and creation. All lawful occupations have dignity

before the Lord, and are useful to him. Consider the meditations of some of the

Reformers as they explored the biblical doctrine of callings. Martin Luther wrote:

“The works of monks and priests, however holy and arduous they be, do not differ

one whit in the sight of God from the works of the rustic laborer in the field or the

woman going about her household tasks, but that all works are measured before 5

God by faith alone . . . .” William Perkins, the English Reformer, wrote: “The

action of a shepherd in keeping sheep, performed as I have said in his kind, is as

good a work before God as is the action of a judge in giving sentence, or of a

magistrate in ruling, or a minister in preaching.”

So there is value in all of our secondary callings, no matter how mundane they may

seem to us. But it’s important to note that that value is found as our secondary

callings line up with God’s purposes, not our own. This view of secondary callings

should humble us. Instead of being self-satisfied in our education, or training, our

abilities, or even our successes, we must realize that our sovereign Lord equipped

us for our particular callings to please him and to love our neighbors through our

work—in fact, He prepared these good works in advance for us. If you work only

for yourself, or only for your boss, or only for your clients or employees, you are

missing the point of your secondary callings. You are called to what you do for

God’s purposes. Next week Sebastian will take us through God’s purposes for our

work. And you’ll see that no matter the specific calling at hand, they all line up

under these two headings. Love for neighbor and, more ultimately, love for God.

There’s one final thing to keep in mind as we think about secondary callings—

which we’ll hit in greater detail later on in this course. Secondary callings all stem

from commands in Scripture, and secondarily, according to God’s providential

working of our circumstances—in that order. For example, back when I worked in

business, I knew that I had a secondary calling to that company. Why? Because I

received a missive from heaven with that company’s name on it? No! Because in

Genesis 2 I read that the man was assigned to work, and in 1 Timothy that I’m to

provide for my family, and in Ephesians that the normal way to do that is through

the money I make at a job. Those were the commands from Scripture that guided

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me to my calling to the workplace. And only then, secondarily, do I know I was

called to that specific company, because in God’s providence that was the job I was

given. In the same way, mothers, wives, the unemployed, and the retired can all

look to Scripture for their specific secondary callings. As you read through the

general commands in Scripture that relate to your secondary callings according to

your design as a man or a woman, you can be confident that if you have a specific

workplace—inside or outside the home—that fits within those general parameters,

you are called to be there, at least for now, and to work hard as unto the Lord.

So, some of you may be called to a specific line of work. That’s entirely possible.

God sometimes does lead subjectively. But aside from truly unusual circumstances,

it’s impossible to know for sure. So when people say things like “But I feel called

called me to be a lawyer” as if that’s the end of the matter, they are almost elevating

a subjective reading of their experience to the level of a calling in Scripture—and

making it very difficult for a Christian friend to ever question whether or not that

line of work is in fact the best way to fulfill God’s calling to work. My subjective

view of my specific calling is controlled by the objective commands of Scipture.

D. Multiple callings

So now we’ve explored primary and secondary callings. And we’ve explored

something of what we are meant to do through our secondary callings. At this point,

it should be obvious, but it is important to be clear. We are not called to a single

calling. As God’s workmanship, new creatures in Christ, we all have multiple

callings. A Christian man is called primarily to salvation and discipleship—to new

life in Christ. He may also be called secondarily to be a husband, a father, an elder,

an accountant, and a voting citizen in a nation. He is called to all those things. And

in all those things, he should strive to love God and love his neighbor.7

Think how freeing it is that you have multiple callings in your life, all from one

Boss, who sets standard for faithfulness in all of them and gives you that standard.

It’s not as if he’s given us an impossible mandate for every area of our lives—

though in this fallen world it may feel that way at time. Rather, he’s given us a

specific standard of faithfulness in each of our callings and then one goal for all of

our callings. For example, believers are called to be church members. Christ’s

standard of faithfulness is the commands in Scripture summarized in our church

covenant. If you’re called to be a father, Jesus’s standard is that you instruct your

children in the discipline of the Lord and provide for your family. Because we know

that Scripture is sufficient, you should be able to find Christ’s standard of

faithfulness for every calling in your life. And, as I said, across all these callings,

there is one goal: to “do all to the glory of God,” to “make the most of every

opportunity because the days are evil” to quote Paul in Ephesians and Colossians.

So, should you spend more time at work, or at church, or caring for your aging

parents, or caring for your indigent neighbor, or signing up for a family camp with

your kids? You should use immerse yourself in the Word so that you can fully

understand Gods’ standard of faithfulness for each of these multiple callings and

feel the urgency of your one goal: to bring him glory. And then you have

tremendous liberty in Christ to trade off across these different callings in order to

accomplish that goal, something you’ll do prayerfully as you seek wise counsel

from others.

So as we finish this part of the lecture on basic principles of calling, let’s recap. We

know now that “calling” and “vocation” are one and the same. We know too that

believers share a primary calling to salvation and discipleship. We know as well

that all people enjoy secondary callings, though which we love and glorify God and

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love and care for our neighbors. And we know now that we have multiple callings.

Let’s turn now in the time left to us to a couple of distortions of these truths that

have left the modern church in disarray when it comes to understanding God’s

calling in our lives.

III. Distortions of the doctrine of calling

This distinction between primary and secondary callings carries great challenges

that have been misunderstood historically by the church. The first challenge is that

we must keep the two categories of calling in the right order: primary calling first,

and secondary callings second. The second challenge is that we must keep the two

categories of calling together: we must make sure that the primary calling leads

inexorably to the secondary callings. The church’s failure to rise to these challenges

has led to two great distortions of the doctrine of calling. We will call the first the

Catholic distortion, and the second, the Protestant distortion. Not that either is

always true of either school of thought, but historically because of correlations of

error with different types of people, this is what historians have called them. Let

me also preempt some confusion by telling you that while I’m going to treat these

two distortions as equally harmful, I in no way want to suggest that being Protestant

or Roman Catholic is basically the same. The Roman Catholic Church condemned

the Biblical gospel; Protestant Christians at the Reformation recovered it. And we

teach at this church the gospel we see in Scripture, in line with the heritage of the

Protestant Reformation.

A. The Catholic distortion

The Catholic distortion is so called because it arose in the Roman Catholic Church.

This distortion fails the first challenge of primary and secondary callings: making

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sure that the primary calling comes before the secondary. Instead of considering

these callings in order, Rome separated them completely, and believed that some

were called to a primary calling of ministry, and others were called only to

secondary callings of work. So Eusebius, the Bishop of Caesarea, wrote that there

are two ways of life in the church: the perfect life and the permitted life. The perfect

life was spiritual and was reserved for priests, monks, and nuns. The permitted life

was secular and was reserved for maids, soldiers, and kings.

This distorted dualism affected later church thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas,

who elevated the contemplative life over the active life. The active life—while

praised—was viewed as second-class; the contemplative life was the life of

freedom, and was to be preferred. But this view is not biblical. Look to the account

of creation to see that God had secondary callings—before the Fall—to tasks other

than “the contemplative life.” God called Adam and Eve to marriage in Genesis

3:24, to parenthood in 1:28, to collection of food from the bounty of creation in

1:29, and to stewardship of all creation in 2:15. Remember, these are all pre-Fall

directives and secondary callings. Of course, the Fall resulted in these callings

becoming toilsome and corrupted. But that does not mean that secondary callings

are inherently toilsome or corrupted.

And while we call this the Catholic distortion, it has had impact far beyond the

Roman church. Consider the account of William Wilberforce, who as a Member of

Parliament led the abolition of the slave trade through the Slave Trade Act of 1807.

When he was first converted at the age of 25, his first thought was to leave politics

for the paid ministry. Like many, Wilberforce believed the life of the ministry to be

more important than so-called secular work. Happily, John Newton—the celebrated

composer of “Amazing Grace”—persuaded Wilberforce otherwise. In 1788

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Wilberforce wrote in his own journal: “My walk is a public one. My business is in

the world; and I must mix in the assemblies of men, or quit the post which

Providence seems to have assigned me.” If Wilberforce had left politics for the

pulpit, he would have “quit the post” God assigned him for the abolition of a great

evil.3

Our callings are not divided into spiritual and secular: the callings of a believer are

all spiritual. A secondary calling to be a priest or a pastor is not inherently superior

to a secondary calling to be a dishwasher. William Tyndale wrote “that if our desire

is to please God, pouring water, washing dishes, cobbling shoes, and preaching the

Word ‘is all one.’”4 And Luther—in his typical earthy style—once wrote “God and

the angels smile when a man changes a diaper.”5

Please don’t misunderstand me on this: I am not suggesting that paid ministry is not

a worthy calling. What I am saying is that if a man is called to the ministry as his

paid occupation, he is called to a great and sober task with eternal rewards. But if a

man is not so called—and self-evidently not all believers are so called—he should

not view his actual calling with regret, or consider it “second-rate,” or “secular.” As

believers, our primary calling to salvation and discipleship should flow naturally

into our worthy and spiritual secondary callings, whether they are paid ministry or

motherhood paid in the laughter of children. In all our secondary callings, we work

for God’s glory and the love of others.

B. The Protestant distortion

Now, on to the so-called “Protestant distortion.” “Whereas the Catholic distortion

is a spiritual form of dualism, elevating the spiritual at the expense of the secular, 3 Cf. II Cor. 7:17.4 Guinness at 34 (paraphrasing Tyndale).5 Id. (paraphrasing Luther).

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the Protestant distortion is a secular form of dualism, elevating the secular at the

expense of the spiritual.”6 The early Reformers and the Puritans had a clear

understanding of the doctrine of calling. They did not confuse primary and

secondary callings. But slowly over the course of time, the celebration of the

spirituality of secondary callings became imbalanced. Words like “work,” “trade,”

“employment,” and “occupation” came to have the same meanings as “calling” and

“vocation.”

Os Guinness puts it well when he writes: “Eventually the day came when faith and

calling were separated completely. The original demand that each Christian should

have a calling was boiled down to the demand that each citizen should have a job.”7

And then work itself was made sacred. President Calvin Coolidge once declared:

“The man who builds a factory builds a temple. The man who works there worships

there.” And Henry Ford said: “Work is the salvation of the human race, morally,

physically, socially.”

This is the distortion in which many of us find ourselves in today’s world,

especially here in DC. Few of us give a thought to calling in the biblical sense. We

don’t understand why we work, though we can appreciate why we may need to

work. We give little thought to what work we should do, other than what seems

enjoyable to us, or something for which we might have an aptitude—and sometimes

declare that because we enjoy something or are particularly good at it, we are called

to it. And then when work and other duties (or callings) collide, say a difficult job

and caring for a family, we don’t have frame of reference to resolve the competing

imperatives. Worse, we can become defined by our jobs, not our Caller, and so

6 Guinness at 38.7 Id. at 39.

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when we are unemployed, underemployed, or unsuccessfully employed, we can

face an existential crisis.

Thank God, there is a way forward, and it is simple. We must at all times recognize

that we are not primarily called to do something or go somewhere: we are instead

primarily called to someone—to our creating God. Our first vocation is our primary

calling of salvation and discipleship as new creatures in Christ. The primary call

requires us to be devoted to no one more than God; to desire nothing more than

God; to glorify nothing but God; to enjoy nothing beyond God.

IV. Conclusion

Well we should wrap up. I hope that you’ve come to understand today that all

believers are primarily called to salvation and discipleship as new creatures in

Christ, and that God’s work in his primary calling spills over into our secondary

callings. Our secondary callings are our personal response to God’s primary call—

the ways in which our own particular skills, talents, and gifts as His workmanship,

are put to work providentially to love God and our neighbors. I hope that you have

understood—and perhaps identified in your own thinking on work—the great

historic distortions of the doctrine of calling. Above all, I trust that you are now

beginning to get a Christ-centered focus for your work, because only in Christ will

you be able satisfactorily to answer the question “Why do I work?”

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