The average American man spends over 50% of his waking hours traveling to and engaging in work. Yet, for many Christian men, their vocational calling seems disconnected to their faith. Most discipleship approaches pay little attention to a man’s vocational calling; yet that is where he spends the majority of his time and energy, and often finds his identity.
Christians’ failure to understand the significance of their “secular” work is often the result of having a truncated view of God’s purposes in history. The story of God’s purpose for man is essentially reduced to a two-chapter gospel. Chapter 1 presents our problem: separation from God because of our sin. Chapter 2 presents the solution: Jesus Christ has come into the world to bring salvation and reunite us to God through his atoning work on the cross.
While sin and salvation are undeniably core foundational parts to the Bible’s story (metanarrative), they are not the complete story, or even the full gospel. The comprehensive grand narrative of the Bible is four chapters: creation, fall, redemption, restoration. Scripture begins with the creation of all things and ends with the renewal of all things. In between is the sin of Adam with its curse upon his race and kingdom, and the incarnation of God himself as the second Adam to redeem Adam’s race and kingdom from slavery to sin and its devastation. Theologian Albert Wolters explains the four-chapter gospel, “What was formed in creation has been historically deformed by sin and must be reformed in Christ,” (Creation Regained.)
A commitment to the four-chapter gospel undergirds this FOCUS approach to discipleship and has many implications. The rest of this article, however, just focuses on fully recovering the first pillar of the gospel: CREATION. Adam and Eve are assigned the primary task of EXERCISING DOMINION over creation.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 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.” Gen. 1:26-28
Later, in the second chapter of Genesis, God gives us a fuller picture of “exercising dominion.” Adam is to work the garden. This Hebrew word, avad, means to cultivate, to discover and bring out the potential of. There is a sense in which God left his creation unfinished. Humankind is now assigned the task of generating life by reproducing, so that the earth is filled.
Adam also continues God’s creative work of ordering, i.e. shaping the material of creation by subduing the earth. To subdue the earth is to explore the created world and harness its laws for the good of mankind. That requires diversification of labor, building an economy, a way of relating to one another—in other words culture. From police officers who keep order in civil society to engineers who harness the laws of creation in order to solve human problems to scientists who discover those laws, the human concept of vocation is rooted in God’s call to mankind to subdue the earth.
God places creation in the care of people who are to develop it. The potential God has created is to be released. The possibilities are to be explored. People are to explore these possibilities with honor and industry…. In fulfilling this responsibility, they found joy, meaning, and identity. It was no token job. They were to rule, fill, subdue, and cultivate as they were empowered by God. (All of Life Redeemed, by Frey, Ingram, McWhertor, Romanowski)
What you do from Monday morning through Friday afternoon is not simply earn money to provide for your family and give to the church. It is not even primarily having some platform for sharing the gospel. It is helping God develop the potential of this earth and that vocational calling is primary.
God wants the potential of this world, including its people, developed. He wants his children enjoying the playground of this world—kicking balls, writing and performing music, using the incredible array of color he built into the light spectrum to make beautiful art, writing and hearing stories, discovering how to make drones work, using FaceTime aps to communicate with loved ones from around the world. Every legitimate vocation has its root in the creation mandate to develop the resources and culture of planet earth. We are to do that FOR God, i.e. in a way that pleases him.
Doing your work well matters to God. Your vocation is not incidental but a primary part of your calling from your creator. He loves his creation and wants it developed and enjoyed.
For Further Thought:
1. How does this view of vocation make a difference in the way you view work?
2. What does God’s command to Adam and Eve to further develop creation tell you about God’s view of the physical world he created?
