Chapter 1: Think of What You Were

The more I study the New Testament, the more aware I am of the vast differences between my own cultural assumptions and those of its original inhabitants. Consider the core values that shape us, for example. First-century culture was constructed around four basic values: honor and shame; patron-client relationships; kinship and the meaning of family and household; and purity in relation to the religious laws at the time.

When we take these differences seriously, we become conscious of our need to pay careful attention to the hermeneutical issues that inevitably arise. So with regard to the questions of vocation, work, and ministry, we must ask: How do we translate what we find in the biblical text into our own radically different culture?

The first turning point was the Enlightenment. For our purposes, the significance of the Enlightenment is that it shifted the West’s cultural focus from the community to the individual. This is not to say that in the biblical world there was a lack of concern for the individual, because that simply isn’t true. But in the ancient world, individuals were always understood in relation to their larger group. For Israel, this group was the people of God. In the Old Testament, the idea of “election” was centered on belonging to the elect people, although it’s clear that individuals could opt out for various reasons. In the New Testament, an individual would join the people of God through faith in Jesus and the gift of the Spirit, but the overarching focus was still on the group—that is, the people of God. In other words, the focus was not so much on an individual’s isolated, one-on-one relationship with God; rather, it was on persons as they were part of a community. The Enlightenment taught the church to read the Bible poorly in this regard.

The second important cultural turning point was the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution. What this did was radically shift the focus of work and production from the home to the factory. A single statistic from the United States tells the story. In 1885 , approximately 85 percent of all consumer goods in the United States were produced and consumed in the home. By 1915 —just one generation later—that figure had been reversed: 15 percent of goods were now made in the home and 85 percent were made in the factory. Our society today is the fruit of that thirty-year period. This stunning reversal is now firmly established in modern America, and its effects continue to reverberate throughout our culture’s understanding of the family, home, and church. This period is especially relevant when one considers the deep links between the Industrial Revolution and the individualism of the Enlightenment.

Third, the postmodern revolution took all of this even further by shifting our culture’s understanding of authority from something which was located outside of ourselves (e.g., in religion), to something which now resided in each individual. Today, we live in a society where the only acceptable norm for determining one’s values is to claim that there are none. That’s the only norm. We celebrate the choices of one’s own autonomous self and the assertion of one’s own individual rights. The ability to determine everything ourselves is our highest value. This sort of individualism is played out to the extreme in our culture through every imaginable form of self-centeredness. Take, for example, the arguments for abortion, which make no reference to anything outside of oneself, or to communal values. These arguments are usually only concerned with an individual’s choices and their rights to their own body. Little else is taken into account.

Now my point in all this is not to bemoan these cultural shifts, but to simply lay them out before us, as they will shape how we understand our New Testament texts. These shifts remind us that we are products of our own age.

Now, my hunch is that “vocation” is in fact an elitist word. It’s the kind of word used by professionals, not by the person bucking rivets on airplanes, cleaning kitchens in restaurants, or scrubbing toilets in dormitories. “Vocation” isn’t used to describe those sorts of occupations—those are (supposedly) just “jobs.” Those of us who have the luxury of sitting down to ponder the meanings of words might speak of our “vocation,” while others might simply think of their work as “work.” But the impact of this notion of vocation on our culture is extremely significant, both in the secular and Christian worlds.

Just think about the way that we identify ourselves in our culture today, and how different this is from the way that people identified themselves in the Scriptures. In our world, our identity is completely wrapped up in what we do. Almost always, the first question we ask after being introduced to someone is “what do you do?” This is our first, most natural question after discovering someone’s name. To be clear, I don’t think this is a bad question. I hear it being condemned in our church communities sometimes, but I acknowledge that it’s simply the norm in our society. We’re living in a culture where we are identified by what we do, and on that basis it’s an easy way to get acquainted. The problem is that if we stop there, then this becomes an unhelpfully narrow form of identification.

Let’s recall how people identified themselves in the ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman world. In churches today, people pay barely any attention to the biblical genealogies. Yet do you know how fundamentally important these genealogies were for the people in the Bible? This is what gave them their identity. They belonged to a family, a kinship group. They belonged . The important thing wasn’t what one did, but the kinship group to which one belonged. “My father was named Timaeus and therefore I am Bartimaeus, which means ‘Son of Timaeus.’” You were identified by your father, and that was how your father would have been identified. That’s how their culture understood identity: everything had to do with family kinship, and that in turn shaped their understanding of vocation.

Another example of how identity worked in the Scriptures can be seen in the book of Ezra. In the seventh chapter, a great deal is made of the fact that Ezra belongs to a particular group of Levites, namely, the first of the twenty-fourth order of Levites, who were recognized as the most important in their tribe. This meant that Ezra was a descendant of Israel’s first high priest, Aaron, and came from a lineage that gave him a strong sense of vocational identity. Such is the pattern in ancient biblical culture.

Paul does not think of apostleship as a vocation (i.e., an “occupation”) into which he has been called. He doesn’t say, for example, that “there’s this pre-existing vocation called apostleship, and I’ve been called into it.” Biblically speaking, the vocation doesn’t precede the calling. It’s the calling that shapes the vocation. Paul is simply called to be a messenger of the gospel and a founder of churches. Then, as a result of that ministry, the vocation begins to take shape and eventually becomes titular. He functions as an apostle first, and only later takes on the title. But the title (i.e., his vocation/occupation) wasn’t the first thing to exist—it only came into being after he had begun to live out his calling.

In fact, Paul frames his apostleship as something that emerges from the bottom-up. Listen to his argument in 1 Cor 9 :1 : “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not the result of my work in the Lord?” Those two questions reveal his definition of what it means to be an apostle. He saw Jesus, which meant that he had been commissioned by Christ Himself, the risen Lord. This almost certainly refers to his Damascus experience, but it may also refer to a later encounter where he was commissioned for a second task, which was to take the gospel to the gentiles. He then essentially says, “you, the church in Corinth, are the evidence of my apostleship.” That reflects a functional understanding of apostleship, not a titular one. He doesn’t frame his apostleship from the top-down, as though he were superior. He refuses to say, “I’m a VIP in the church, so you should call me apostle.” Rather, for Paul apostleship comes from below, from his experience of ministry and service for the gospel.

If we’re going to be faithful to the New Testament on this topic, we have to shift our thinking from the world’s interpretation of vocation as “occupation” to a fuller, more biblical understanding of divine calling. The biblical concept of calling had almost no counterpart in ancient Greco-Roman culture, and the same is certainly true today. But the word “calling” needs to be reexamined in light of the Scriptures, since in our evangelical context it has come to be associated with either vocational ministry, or with the will of God. When you start to confuse the concept of calling with the will of God, you’re going to produce what the church in my generation has created: huge numbers of schizophrenic people who live their lives in total anxiety about whether or not they’re in the will of God, and who are therefore obsessed with finding his will in order to live out their calling.

I come from a church tradition where this took place in dramatic ways. I still remember sitting in church as a ten- or eleven-year-old, where my dad was the pastor. We were visited by a missionary family, and one of the women told a story about receiving a vision in prayer that was so vivid that every specific detail was emblazoned in her memory. She knew this was from God. It was a call to the mission field, but she had no clue what the picture meant. The next year, while sitting in a doctor’s office, she picked up a copy of the National Geographic and saw a photo of her exact vision right there on the front cover. It had been taken in Indonesia, so the family moved there and went on to become some of the best missionaries that the Assemblies of God had ever sent. Eventually, the woman even won over the main person in that cover photo to Christ. I grew up with these kinds of stories—this really happened!

But can you understand what this also did to my ten-year-old soul? Having a “calling” felt normal because almost every missionary seemed to speak of one. They weren’t all as dramatic as the above story, but this notion of calling was always present, nevertheless. And then I had to try to fit that concept with the idea of the will of God. I remember preaching in chapel at Wheaton College, where I used to teach. My topic was God’s will, and I suggested to the students that aside from prayer and listening to friends, one finds the will of God by choosing , and then trusting God with your choice. That must have been one of the most discombobulating moments at Wheaton’s chapel services in years, because that was not how one expected to find the will of God! I still believe this is true, however. My colleague Bruce Waltke also believed this and wrote about it more extensively. The point is that when you make a choice, you take stock of who you are—you don’t make a blind choice. If you’re always waiting for a voice from heaven, you may not ever do anything. The biblical view is that the will of God is primarily about walking in Christ, not with some occupation.

Tying the will of God to a specific occupation is a strange misconception to which evangelicals are guilty of subscribing. It’s not based on the Scriptures. Walking in the will of God means being his person in the world, regardless of the occupation that you’re gifted for. Hopefully your occupation and your gifts fit together, although that isn’t always everyone’s experience.

Additionally, there was a third usage which was derived from kaleo ’s second meaning as “invitation.” It occurs within the framework of patron-client relationships, where the patron summons the client. This was a feature of the ancient world, where there were patrons and clients, and where clients’ entire lives were dependent on their patrons. All of the people in a household, for example, were actually clients to the patron—wife, children, and everyone else. This was simply part of the fabric of their culture. And in a patron-client relationship, the patron would “call” (kaleo ) people, which was obviously more significant than a mere invitation; it was closer to a summons. You were being called into the presence of this person with whom you stood in a patron-client relationship.

Think of the story in the Old Testament where Esther doesn’t dare to go into the presence of the king. She has to wait until she’s called or summoned. That’s an extreme form of this relational framework, but it’s deeply ingrained within the entire culture. It’s from within this framework that we get the primary New Testament usage of the verb, kaleo . God calls people to Himself, and his invitation is also a summons.

Paul’s concept of calling in 1 Corinthians 1:1–9

Turning now more directly to Paul’s concept of calling, we begin with the thanksgiving at the start of 1 Corinthians (see above). Paul’s thanksgiving is carefully crafted for a people who are gifted, but who are moving toward dissension rather than unity. He recognizes their spiritual gifts, but doesn’t actually thank God for those gifts in and of themselves. Instead, he thanks God for them , as people. I often advise people who are involved in teaching, guiding, or pastoral ministries to learn from the apostle Paul and to stop thanking God for things . Instead, they should thank God for the very people over whom they have responsibility, precisely because they belong not to them, but to God. They’re God’s people, and because of that Paul could always thank God for them—even for the Corinthians. “I always thank my God for you,” he exclaims.

During my first year in pastoral ministry, I remember struggling with what to preach on Thanksgiving Sunday in the United States. Through the Holy Spirit, this was the text that seemed to burst into my soul, and it changed my relationship with many of the church members whom I felt were giving me grief. I realized that they were God’s people, and I was able to thank God for even the small measure of grace that I sensed they had received.

At the end of his prayer, Paul bursts into doxology: “God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” The word “fellowship” here is the Greek term koinonia , which most likely refers to a close-knit fellowship, relationship, or association with another. In this context, it’s primarily concerned with the Corinthians’ relationship with Christ. God called them into koinonia with Christ, which is a sharing, a fellowship, a relationship. But the apostle picks up this same word in chapter 10 , where he addresses the issue of eating food that was used for worship in pagan temples. He corrects their thinking by beginning with the Lord’s table. “Remember the bread that we break,” he says. “Is it not the koinonia of the body of Christ?” That’s clearly a double entendre. It’s certainly fellowship with Christ himself. But he immediately shifts their attention to the interpretation of the bread that we find throughout the New Testament. “Because there is one loaf, we who are many, are one body.” So the koinonia is not just with Christ. It’s with the body of Christ, the believers, as well.

Believers have been called into this incredible koinonia , and notice that the apostle’s thanksgiving contains a prominent reference to the Son: “God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” Paul doesn’t use the language of sonship very often, so why does he include it here? He’s extolling the faithfulness of God, who calls us into koinonia with his Son. This is relational: Father, Son, and God’s people! And this is about God’s divine calling—it’s not us choosing God because we heard a sermon and received an invitation. This is about calling, which is much more significant than an invitation. It’s a summons. It’s the Spirit pulling, pushing, urging, drawing. We are summoned, so we fall on our faces before a Holy God and confess that we don’t deserve anything but wrath, and yet we experience his grace and mercy. This is all God’s invitation, all his calling. It’s a description of what it means to become a part of God’s family. “God is faithful, who has called you into koinonia with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” And to be in the Son means to be in his people , which is the primary understanding of calling in the New Testament. In fact, this is the only understanding of calling in the New Testament.

For reasons that are not entirely clear, the Corinthian church had succumbed to certain problematic ideas about wisdom. Although they had been called by God, most of them didn’t have status in their society. In their culture, people without status had to be attached to a patron. The majority of these Corinthians didn’t have status, but they had now been called into a koinonia with the Father, the Son, and his people.

In a culture oriented around honor and shame, the Corinthians were embarrassed about this fellowship because it was centered around a Jewish messianic figure who had been subjected to the ultimate form of shame in Greco-Roman culture. He had been crucified as a political insurgent, and now they had become his followers. So the Corinthians attempted to do an end run around the cross. They liked the work of the Spirit because that elevated their status while allowing them to avoid the shame of the Crucified One. Paul takes this head on. In the first chapter, he directly refutes their thinking and argues that if they’re going to be the people of God, then they have to come to terms with the fact that God’s wisdom is found in the foolishness of the cross. Hence in 1 Cor 1 :22 –25 he writes:

From an ancient pagan viewpoint, no god in his right mind would have tried to redeem people with a crucified messiah. That would have been the ultimate oxymoron. Crucifixion was the ultimate expression of shame, whereas being the Messiah was supposed to be the ultimate embodiment of power. The Corinthians were bypassing that shame. Paul, however, argues that that’s precisely where the wisdom and power lie—in the shame and scandal of the cross. In this scandal, the eternal God gets himself mixed up in the messy business of our world by being crucified at the hands of his enemies.

Of course, you and I have no way to feel how utterly shameful this would have been for first-century Christians. It’s easy for us to criticize the Corinthians for their mistakes, but in our own day we’ve created thousands of ways to get around the shame and scandal of the cross. We’re glad it’s there for conversion, but don’t ask us to live this way—don’t ask us to live our lives in ways marked by the cross! That’s what the Corinthians were trying to avoid, so Paul reminds them in 1 Cor 1 :26 : “Think of what you were when you were called.” He’s not referring to vocation as an occupation; rather, he’s pushing them to remember their lives when God called them into fellowship with his Son. Before this calling there were not many who were wise, influential, or of noble birth. This is most likely a play on Jer 9 :23 –24 :

Paul is saying, “not many of you were of status.” They belonged on the lower rungs of the social ladder, yet God chose them in order to bring to nothing those things which do have status in the world.

One of the problems for the church in today’s culture is that it’s constantly trying to make the world think of Christians as people who are powerful. But the New Testament has it right. It’s precisely when we recognize that the power of God lies in the shame and weakness of the cross that we can have hope for our world. God called the Corinthians in their weakness, and they experienced a kind of “transvaluation of values” that radically transformed their status, even as they remained who they were. The call of God imparts value in and of itself, and in doing so it upends our cultural norms. God, we must remember, seldom chooses the same people that we would.

Perhaps we should bear in mind the admonition found in Jas 2 :1 –4 . If a poor person comes to church, we seat them at the margins, but if a rich person enters—“Oh, boy! Let’s sit them over here, in a place of importance.” This is the world’s value system, not Christ’s. Christ chooses the nobodies and makes them somebodies. That doesn’t always change their status in society, but the true change is that they become sons and daughters of the living God. And that is change enough.

Paul’s concept of vocation in 1 Corinthians 7:17–24

This brings us to 1 Cor 7 :17 –24 . I’m struck by the fact that eight of the twelve occurrences of the verb “call” in 1 Corinthians appear in this passage. Let’s start by examining how this paragraph is framed. Verses 17 , 20 , and 24 are almost carbon copies of each other. We’ll focus on verse 20 , which when translated literally from the Greek can be read as follows: “Each in the calling in which he or she was called, let that person remain.”

In other words, remain in the place that you were when you were called. That’s what verses 17 and 24 are also about. Together, these three verses refer to one’s ethnicity (Jew and gentile), and socioeconomic reality (slave and free) to illustrate their point. One’s calling is not to be a Jew or a gentile—that’s not what calling refers to. If you’re Jewish, that’s not a calling; it’s something you’re born into. And slaves aren’t called to be slaves; in their society, a slave just happened to be a slave.

What makes this passage so intriguing is that it appears to have nothing to do with the surrounding topics in chapter 7 , which are all about marriage and sexuality. What is it doing here, then? The answer lies in verses 17 , 20 , and 24 . The Corinthians are looking for change—change in marriage through divorce, or through abstaining from sexual relations because their spirituality has supposedly advanced beyond physicality. When you walk through this passage, you’ll see that the same answer is given in each of its eight paragraphs. Stay as you are. Remain where you are, as you are. Paul’s point is clear.

What is his rationale for this? Paul isn’t sanctioning an extreme, absolute notion of remaining where you are. Rather, he’s sanctifying the place where you were when you received God’s call, and showing that it’s possible to live out this call in every situation. If you were a slave, your call is to Christ. You can outdo all others in service to Christ because you are called to him. Furthermore, it doesn’t matter if you’re Greek or Jewish. God doesn’t care a whit—circumcision and uncircumcision don’t mean a thing to him. What matters is that you walk in the calling of those who have been invited into the koinonia of God, wherever your context may be. This koinonia sanctifies every situation. It doesn’t mean that we’ll always like our current context, but it does mean that we can inhabit it in view of our greater calling to Christ, which far surpasses any “vocation-as-occupation.” Our calling is nothing less than a summons to fellowship with the Son. And no matter what our circumstances are when we receive this call, we’re invited to ask ourselves, “How do I love God and my neighbor in this setting? What does it mean to live fully in God’s calling here?”

For those of you who are in ministry, I would urge you to take Paul’s perspective seriously, and to help people experience their present reality as a place where they can live out God’s call. This calling isn’t necessarily related to a person’s occupation in the regular sense of the word. There is much that we could say about the challenges of our occupations, but in the New Testament, the notion of divine calling is primarily about being the people of God in any and every situation.

In sum, the call to fellowship with Christ transcends the context in which it is received. The point of 1 Cor 7 :17 –24 is that you can walk in that calling regardless of where you are in life, and that it’s therefore acceptable to remain where you are when you are called. Paul insists that there is no inherent virtue in change, although it’s quite clear that there isn’t any virtue in remaining, either. Virtue is found in living out the calling of God, wherever that may be.