The word vocation comes from the Latin vocatio (summons), from vocare (to call).
Therefore, a vocation is a calling.
In the modern mindset, people often say they are “choosing their vocation,” but this is a misnomer if the word vocation means calling.
If there is a calling, there is a caller!
Who is God calling and to what is God calling them?
Calling in the Bible
R. Paul Stevens explains the biblical concept of vocational call.
“‘Call’ (Qara) language in the Old Testament is used primarily for the people of God who are summoned to participate in God’s grand purpose for the world. It is a call to salvation, a call to holiness and a call to service. In the New Testament it is the same. ‘Call’ (kaleo and klesis) is used for the invitation to salvation through discipleship to Christ, the summons to holy corporate and personal living, as well as the call to serve.” (R. Paul Stevens, Playing Heaven: Rediscovering Our Purpose as Participants in the Mission of God)
In his book, The Call: Finding And Fulfilling The Central Purpose Of Your Life (available from (re)integrate Partner Hearts & Minds Books for 20% off), Os Guinness agrees with Stevens on the vocational meaning of call, which flows from the call to salvation to become “followers of the Way.”
As a response to the call to people to follow Jesus, Guinness says Jesus “also calls them to other things and tasks: to peace, to fellowship, to eternal life, to suffering, and to service. But deeper even than these particular things, discipleship.”
He points to an important verse in the Bible, “As Paul wrote the followers of Christ in the little town of Colosse, ‘Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.’”
Our Various Callings
Guinness states that a Christian’s call should be understood in terms of a primary calling and a secondary calling.
“Our primary calling as followers of Christ is by him, to him, and for him… Our secondary calling, considering who God is as sovereign, is that everyone, everywhere, and in everything, should think, speak, live, and act entirely for him. We can therefore properly say as a matter of secondary calling that we are called to homemaking or to the practice of law or to art history.”
In his book Futureville: Discover Your Purpose For Today By Reimagining Tomorrow, Skye Jethani goes further and delineates three levels of calling. In an excellent article we posted at The High Calling, he wrote,
“First, a Christian’s highest calling is to abide in communion with Christ.
Second, all Christians also share a set of common callings. These are the many commands of Scripture that apply to all of God’s children in every time and place. These include instructions to love one another, pray for those who persecute you, forgive those who wrong you, give to those in need, honor your father and mother, do not steal, do not covet, do not commit adultery, be prepared to share about your hope in Christ, and hundreds of other commands.
Third, each Christian will also have a specific calling that God directs him or her to accomplish…which requires [a Christian] to live in communion with God and discern her call directly. While her specific calling may be blessed and confirmed by members of her community, as Paul and Barnabas experienced in Acts 13, it cannot be discovered without the illuminating role of God’s Spirit in her life.”
It is in Jethani’s third level of calling (and Guinness’s “secondary calling”) that Christians actually do “work” – work that accomplishes the mission God has for his people. Vocation is what humans do, and if humans are to participate in the mission of God, then human work is the means by which we do so.
But the problem, as Jathani sees it, is that church leaders only focus on the second calling (to obey the commands of Scripture) and do not help and encourage congregants discover their specific callings. This needs to change if Christians are to properly shape culture for the sake of the kingdom of God and the common good.
NEXT Calling Part 2: Vocation is not just one aspect of the Christian life, it is the whole of life!
Image by Ed Yourdon. Used with permission. Sourced via Flickr.
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