New Creation, New Vocation?

1:15We laugh when we see animals doing this, but we have to admit that we are prone to do this exact same thing in our own lives. We are prone to believe that the grass is greener elsewhere. And so if we're single, we can believe that getting married. Would be better. If we're married, we can believe that a divorce or a new marriage would be better. If we're in one job, we can believe that another job, a different job, even a different career would be better than what we have.

1:46See, those temptations are simply common to man. And for a lot of Christians, those temptations to think that the grass is greener can actually intensify after we come to faith in Christ. Our word vocation comes from the Latin word vocatio. It means a calling or a summons. And so when we speak of vocation, we're talking about our life's purpose, the reason that we exist, why we do what we do. Before we came to faith in Christ, our priorities, our goals, our ambitions, they were motivated by sinful and selfish desires.

2:25But after we come to faith in Christ, after God transforms us, He transforms everything about us, our goals, our ambitions, our desires, because we have a new master, Jesus, and we want to honor our new master. Well, that's great. But for a lot of believers, we think that because so much of us is being transformed, that also means that God is calling us to a radical reorientation in every part of our life. We conclude that He's calling us to make huge changes to our relationships, to our religious practices.

3:01To our careers. The Corinthians thought those same things. And that's not necessarily true. And that's what Paul is going to be teaching us today in this passage. What we're going to learn this morning is that new creations don't always get new vocations. So let's take a look at the text together. Look again at verse 17. Paul says, Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches.

3:41Friends, this subject could not be any more relevant in our particular context, the home of a major university. Every single person in our church is either asking the question, What should I do with my life? or you are counseling someone who is asking the question, what should I do with my life? What does Paul teach us here? He says that each person should lead the life that God has assigned and called him or her to lead.

4:14So I want to look at those two words, assigned and called. The first word, assigned, in the Greek, it means something like assign a particular task or function or responsibility. And so this particular word is focused on the what. What exactly is God calling me to do? Should I remain single? Should I get married? Should I take this particular job? Should I practice medicine? Should I practice law? Should I be a homemaker? Should I go into ministry?

4:46That word is focusing on the what. The next word in that verse is called. And call, that Greek word means something like to summon a person to accept particular responsibilities. And so the focus of this word is on the who. Who exactly is calling me? And see, church, these are the critical questions, aren't they? As Christians, we want to respond to God's call. We want to do what He is calling us to do, whatever assignment that may be. And so the challenge for us is sorting out exactly who is calling us.

5:26Is this God that's calling me to make a particular decision? Is this what I want? Is this what others want for me? Who is calling me, and what exactly am I called to do? The Corinthians seem to have been wrestling with these very same questions. And praise God, 2,000 years later, His word to them has been preserved for us so that we can benefit from it, so that we can be challenged from it and learn from it together.

5:56And so, beginning in the previous section, Paul helps the Corinthians understand what it means to. To follow Christ socially, religiously, and economically. Socially, religiously, and economically, because he wants them to embrace their calling from God so they can walk in confidence and unity. You see, if you don't understand these kinds of things about who is calling you and what you're called to do, you simply can't walk in confidence as a believer. You're going to spend every day wondering, is this really right? Is God pleased with me? Am I honoring him with my decisions? And we can't walk in unity as a church until we have a good theology of calling and assignments from the Lord because we're tempted and prone to second-guess one another. Is this what God is calling them to do? Are they honoring God with these kinds of decisions? And so, all of this is really critical.

6:47So, Paul wants to address these things. So, what I want to do is begin back in last week's passage in verse 8, where Paul is going to give social counsel to the believers and help them sort out what following Christ means for their relationships. So, as a reminder, in this last section, Paul addressed three groups of people. He addressed first the unmarried and the widows. Second, Christians who are married to other Christians. And then, third, Christians who are married to non-Christians.

7:19And Paul's counsel is very straightforward. Look, if you're single, you can remain single. In fact, Paul went so far as to say, I think that's best because your attention is undivided. But if you're single, You can also get married and honor the Lord that way. He said, if you're married to a believer, you need to remain married and honor God in your marriage. He said, if you're married to a non-believer, you need to remain married and honor God by your commitment to them as long as they're willing to remain married to you.

7:49So the Corinthians are asking the question: how do we think about relationships as followers of Jesus? Well, friends, that's a great question to ask. But as we saw last week, the Corinthians were answering that question in the wrong way. They had started to believe that to honor God, you needed to be single. Or if you were married, you needed to practice abstinence within your marriage. No doubt, there was probably a third subset of people that thought you needed to get married in order to honor the Lord. And so a lot of us have that same question: How do I think about relationships as a follower of Jesus? Let's start off with single Christians. And for you, as a single Christian, we have to go back to verse 17 where he says this: only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him.

8:42And so there are really just two questions, two big questions, anyway, that you have to answer as a single person. The first is, Am I called to a lifetime of singleness? Am I called to a lifetime of singleness? Well, I think the clear implication from Scripture. From Jesus' teaching in Matthew 19, is that most believers will not be called to a lifetime of singleness. Some believers are called and gifted for a lifetime of singleness. That's a gift from the Lord. You can serve Christ faithfully in that way.

9:16And so, if that is you, you are not a second-class citizen in God's kingdom. You are not a second-class citizen in the church. God has a great plan for your singleness, and you will most honor him by remaining single for life and serving Christ out of your singleness. But again, that's not most believers from the implications in Scripture and from Jesus' teaching. And so, the second question is: if I'm not called to a lifetime of singleness, whom should I marry? How should I think about marriage?

9:53Well, friends, as we know here in America, Disney movies and romantic comedies have all painted this picture that there is one perfect person, a soulmate, that is out there just for you. Well, scripture never teaches anything like that. And in fact, Paul is going to go on later in the same chapter to say, look, if you're a believer, you are free to marry anyone as long as they are a believer as well. But by marrying another sinner, this person is not going to complete you.

10:25This person is not going to be perfect for you in the sense that you will live happily. Ever after with no other problems. See, the math in Scripture is not you are half a person, and once you find your perfect soulmate, the other half of you, you are now finally a complete person. That's not what Scripture teaches. Scripture teaches that as a man or a woman, you already fully display the image and the glory of God. You are a whole person. And so the math in Scripture is one whole man plus one whole woman equals one whole person. One and one is still one. You were whole as a single, you will still be whole in marriage, although that looks different. But you don't have to marry or stay single. You can honor the Lord in either way. You don't have to necessarily make a drastic change in your relational status to honor Christ.

11:21Well, now what about married Christians? How should they think about their relationships? I mean, it's obvious from this text last week, verses 8 through 16, that these Corinthians thought they had to make major changes. They thought that they either had to get divorced or they thought at least they had to practice abstinence in their marriage. Well, I think for a lot of married Christians today, we're not thinking about it the same way. We're not so much thinking about it in terms of like, we need to get divorced and possibly remarried in order to honor the Lord. We're just thinking we need to get divorced and possibly remarried because we're not happy in our marriage. And God doesn't want us to be unhappy.

12:01So, the way you fix that is by divorcing the person that you're married to or by remarrying a new person. And it's all tied back to that myth that we talked about: that there is this one perfect soulmate out there for you, and that by marrying that person, you will finally be complete. About 40 years ago, there's a man named Stanley Hauerwass, and he wrote an article on this particular subject, and he challenges that whole thought process. And if this quote sounds familiar to some of you, it's because Tim Keller quoted it at length in The Meaning of Marriage, a book that I highly recommend to all of you to read. Look at what he says: Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become whole and happy. The assumption is that there is someone just right for us to marry, and that if we look closely enough, we will find the right person. This moral assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person. We never know whom we marry, we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while, and he or she will change. For marriage, being the enormous thing it is, means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary challenge of marriage is learning how to love and care for the stranger. to whom you find yourself married.

13:34Amen? Now you can see why Paul writes what he does in verse 17. It's really the conclusion of Paul's teaching in the previous section. Are you single? Well then seek to honor the Lord in that way or honor the Lord by getting married. Are you married? Then seek to remain married and honor the Lord in that way. Live the life that God has assigned you and called you to lead. See, friends, the Corinthians, just like us, tended to overthink and over-spiritualize all kinds of things, especially relational decisions. Their social vocation, we could call it. And so Paul tells them, look, new creations don't always get new vocations. Honor the Lord in your relationships, whether you're single or you're married.

14:34Now, in verses 18 through 20, back in our text for today, Paul gives religious counsel to believers. And in these verses, he's going to help them sort out what Christ means for their religious practice. I think it's so important to remember that only 20 years or so have passed since Jesus was crucified, buried, and raised from the dead. 20 years have passed. And so, only in this couple of decades has everyone begun to sort out what does it mean for Jews and Gentiles together to follow Christ in the same local church. That's why the church convened in Jerusalem in Acts chapter 15 was to sort out this question: Do the Gentile believers essentially have to become Jewish first by keeping the Mosaic law in order to be accepted by God?

15:29The resounding decision led by the Holy Spirit was no. They don't need to become Jewish first. Why would we lay on them the exact same law that we ourselves could not keep? It makes no sense. And so, Paul counsels them in this section: if you're already circumcised, don't schedule some weird operation to reverse that. I can't even imagine what that would entail today, much less 2,000 years ago. He says, Look, if you're not circumcised, don't schedule an appointment.

16:08Why? Look at verse 19. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything but keeping the commandments of God. What matters to God is obedience. See, the Corinthian believers were just like us, they tended to get caught up. In the external things, external observable behaviors of living out the faith. Are you circumcised? Do you drink alcohol? Do you eat certain food? Do you wear chacos? All of these external things. And friends, here's the deal. No matter what camp that you're in, there is a pressure to conform externally. to say the right things, to do the right things, even to believe the right things. And in the 21st century, we would call that virtue signaling. Virtue signaling is where you try to say the right things and do the right things, either to gain the approval of a certain group of people or to keep the approval of a certain group of people. That's one of the reasons that social media has become so caustic. It's because everybody is out there virtue signaling, trying to say the right things and do the right things, prove that they think the right things, so they can gain approval from certain people or keep the approval of certain people. But friends, all we've done in these instances is we've created a new law, a new set of standards to be saved and accepted by God. It's unbiblical. It's impossible. It's exhausting. Who wants to live like that?

17:54Friends, Jesus came to fulfill God's law. He didn't come to burden us with even more. Laws. That's what the Pharisees did. He came to us and he said, Take my yoke upon you, because my yoke is easy. My burden is light. And so by his grace and the power of his Holy Spirit, we are empowered to do what the whole law pointed to: to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. That's the law of Christ.

18:28And so the Corinthians were failing to do the only things they had to do, which was love God and love other people. Some of them were failing to love God because they were living in sin, as we saw in chapter 6. Others were failing to love other people because they were creating division and disunity in the church, as we saw in chapters 1 through 5. And so, if you consider yourself a follower of Jesus, then you have to understand that following Jesus doesn't mean trying harder to keep the Mosaic law. Following Jesus does not mean that you now try to adhere to a new law, a new set of standards that some camp of Christians has imposed upon you, that they've devised to measure holiness. Paul says if you're either trying harder to keep the Mosaic law or you're trying harder to keep some new standard that's been imposed upon you, then you're missing the point. You're missing the point of the whole thing. You're calling your religion. Vocation is to follow Christ. It's to be his disciple and to make more disciples of Jesus. And you can do that whether you're circumcised or uncircumcised, whether you drink alcohol or don't, whether you eat certain foods or don't. It's not about those things.

19:50So, with respect to religious practice, Paul says new creations don't always get new vocations. We mustn't measure holiness by devising new standards of external appearances. And then finally, in verses 21 through 23, he shifts to economic counsel, counseling them about their jobs and their careers. He wants to help them sort out what following Christ means in that important area of life. And you notice in these verses, he's talking to them and he calls them bondservants. Well, many people in the Roman Empire, hundreds of thousands, millions of people at times were bondservants or slaves. And that's a hard word for us to see today because we immediately think of the transatlantic slave trade from the 17th through the 19th centuries, which was an awful, evil institution in every way. There was nothing redeeming about it. But that's not really the best comparison for what's going on here. I'm not trying to say that this bond service or this slavery in the earlier centuries. Was a whole lot better, but it was entirely different. You see, in the ancient world, some people were conscripted into slavery as prisoners of war, for example. But many, many people voluntarily went into bond service, usually to pay off debts. Most of these folks were earning a wage that they could then use to buy their own freedom at the end. These were not uneducated people who were poorly treated. In many cases, they were doctors, lawyers, accountants, school teachers. These were professionals.

21:36And so they seem to be asking the question: if Christ has set us free, is it wrong for us to continue to be in bond service? Is that wrong to stay in that career, so to speak? And so Paul writes to say to them, Listen, you may be perceived at this point in your life as a second-class citizen, socially or economically, or both, but you are not second-class citizens in God's kingdom or in the church. See, as believers, they didn't need to leave the line of work that they were in to honor God. Now, as you saw, Paul tells them very clearly: look, if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity. Paul's not like pro-bond service or pro-slavery. He's like, if you can get out of that, that's great. And my guess is that he thinks about that just like he thinks about marriage. In the sense that a single person or a free person only has to think about what God wants, you don't have to think about what your husband or wife wants, you don't have to think about what your earthly master wants. You're free just to evaluate decisions based on what you believe the Lord wants you to do. And so he tells them, listen, if you can become free, that's great. But just remember that you are free anyway in Christ.

22:58And if you are free, then remember the opposite truth: that you are a bondservant to Christ. You are actually Christ's servant, Christ's slave now. And that's a good thing because he's a good master. So what Paul is doing here in this section is he's making the same point that he did about their relationships and that he did when he talked about religious practice. Just because they're new creations doesn't necessarily mean they're going to get new vocations. You see, provided that the work is not sinful, we can honor God and serve him in any career, any job. And what Paul is saying is that you shouldn't assume that when you come to faith in Christ, you're automatically going to have to change your trajectory, your career trajectory, your job.

23:48So I want to say the same thing that I said with respect to relationships. It is a good thing to ask the question: is God calling me to this career? Is God calling me to this career? Assignment, this job. I think that's a very good question to ask. But I think there's a lot of confusion because the implicit assumption in the church is that there are really two classes of Christians. The first class of Christian are the ones that are really pleasing the Lord because they have gone into ministry. They've become pastors, they've become missionaries, they've become parachurch workers. And then there's everybody else that God is not necessarily mad at, but he's also not really pleased because you've gone into secular employment of some kind.

24:38I went through a crisis of my own when I came to faith in Christ. A lot of you know that I became a believer at the end of my freshman year in college. And my assumption was that, okay, I was in the business school, I was going to go into the business world, so now God wants me to be a Christian businessman. Basically, go into the business world with a new set of ethics and priorities to honor God in all things and not just to do that for myself. I was also part of a secular fraternity. And so my assumption was: okay, I'm going to stay in that fraternity and I'm going to be a witness for Christ. There wasn't another believer in it at the time. And so I decided to do that. And when I got back to school the next fall for my sophomore year, I had this fifth-year senior who was a president of a Christian organization ask me about my plans and whether or not I was going to join his organization. And I told him that I felt like God was maybe calling me to stay where I was in the business school and in the secular fraternity. And he said to me, Do you really think that's a good idea?

25:42And I have to tell you, that really shook me up. Because here I am, a 19-year-old. I've been following Jesus for 10 seconds. And I was thinking that it would be good to stay where I was and honor the Lord where I was. But he basically implied that I wouldn't be honoring God if I did that. Look at verses 23 and 24. You were bought with a price. Do not become slaves of men. So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God.

26:27How much direction, how much comfort does a 19-year-old young man take from those kinds of verses who wants to be a witness for Christ but has had that called into question? Verse 23. You were bought with a price. Do not become bondservants of men. Guys, Jesus was my master now. I had spent my entire life living in the fear of man and what everybody thought about me and my decisions. Why now, as a Christian, would I go back to? Worrying about what everybody thought about what I was doing. I didn't want to become a slave to men again.

27:09Verse 24. So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God. I was called to follow God as a business major. I was called to follow God as an officer in a secular fraternity. And so, my assumption was: if I stay here, I can be a light in the darkness. I can be a witness. And you know what? God was with me. It was hard almost all the time, but God was with me.

27:42And of course, I'm standing here today, pastor of a church. And so, obviously, God had a different plan and a different calling for my life. That does happen sometimes. But I want you to know that very few Christians are called by God to make a huge vocational change. That should not be your first assumption or your first thought as a believer. Your first assumption as a believer should be: if I am here, wherever that is for you, God must intend to use me here with these people in this calling, in this place. Obviously, you have to sort out those things for yourself. I would encourage you to do that by reading the word and praying, but don't do it alone. Do it in counsel with older, wiser, Believers. That's why we have new life set up like it is, so that you can seek wisdom and counsel from older men and women. Some of you do need to get out of the situation that you're in because it's not a good situation for a number of reasons. But for the vast majority of us, we're called to remain where we are. Just because you're a new creation doesn't necessarily mean you'll have a new vocation. So I want to encourage you to hold your career plans with open hands, submit them to God, but don't be surprised if He calls you to stay right where you are.

29:08Friends, following Christ requires big changes for just about everybody because we are called out of serving sin and self to serving God and others. That requires big changes. But that doesn't mean that our callings and assignments will all look identical. Some of us are going to serve Christ as single men and women. Many of us will serve Christ as married men and women. Some of us will have certain religious convictions and others will not. Some will serve Christ in ministry, but most will not.

29:47And the reason that God has orchestrated all of this is to demonstrate the beauty of the gospel to a watching world. Unless we have men and women who are single and Married in all different kinds of fields, all different kinds of callings. The good news of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection can't be proclaimed to all people. But He has called each one of us uniquely. He has assigned each one of us uniquely to best display His glory in and through us.

30:22And so I want you to walk with confidence today that the Lord has called and assigned you to do exactly what you are called and assigned to do. I want us to walk in unity today because we understand that everybody's calling, everybody's assignment is going to be different, whether slightly different or vastly different from other people's callings and assignments. New creations don't always get new vocations. And that is a wonderful thing for the glory of God and for our collective witness to this world.

31:00Let's pray. God, I know that there is so much confusion in the church surrounding calling, surrounding our various assignments. And I know that there's a lot of believers, probably many here today, who just can't walk in confidence. Maybe because of their own misgivings about what they're doing, or because other Christians have dissuaded them from staying in that place. And so I pray, God, that you would bring confidence to every believer. That wherever you've called them, whatever you've assigned them to do, that they would carry it out with joy, with conviction, with purpose, believing that they are best able to further your kingdom and spread your good news through that calling.

32:17I pray particularly for those who are wrestling with relational questions. Would you help them to sort those out in a way that honors you? For those wrestling with religious practice questions, would you help them to study your word, to seek to know your mind and your will, and to live those things out? And for the many, nearly every person here who is asking questions about their career, their job, their trajectory, their major, would you give them a vision?

33:00For how to honor you and spread the glory of your name through the skills and the abilities, the opportunities that you afford them. God, we want you to be glorified. We want you to be magnified. We want to do our work that you've given us of preserving and proclaiming the gospel. And so I pray that we would have confidence and unity in those things that come from you. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.