Love to Our Neighbors, the Doctrine of Vocation

In the ancient world and the middle ages “calling” or it’s Latin form “vocation” referred to a sacred calling of God toward men serving in the church. Therefore if you were not a priest or a monk you were not “called”. But with the dawn of the reformation and primarily through the work of Martin Luther that thought changed. Vocation began to be referred to as the calling of God upon every one of his creatures to carry out the works of God toward man. In regard to the family Luther suggested that God could populate the earth by creating each generation of people from the dust the earth. However, he ordained that children and generations would be brought up by families carrying out their various vocations as fathers, mothers, husbands, wives and children. It is in these various callings that man and woman become the “the masks of God” or the means by which God cares for all his creatures. As Luther said, “Therefore I advise no one to enter any religious order or the priesthood, indeed, I advise everyone against it – unless he is forearmed with this knowledge and understands that the works of monks and priests, however holy and arduous they may 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 God by faith alone.” (The Babylonian Captivity of the Church 1520). And again he said, “All our work in the field, in the garden, in the city, in the home, in struggle, in government-to what does it all amount before God except child's play, by means of which God is pleased to give his gifts in the field, at home, and everywhere? These are the masks of our Lord God, behind which he wants to be hidden and to do all things.” (Exposition of Psalm 147).

When we consider this doctrine of vocation we recognize that through our callings God is showing the blessings of his love upon his creatures. In the gospel we recognize that God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us (Rom.5:8). And now those who are alive in Christ have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (Eph.1:3). However, we must also look at how he blesses us and others with his love through us each day in our various vocations. A Swedish theologian, Gustaf Wingren, wrote a book entitled, Luther on Vocations. He summarizes this idea in this way; “In his vocation man does works which effect the well-being of others; for so God has made all offices. Through this work in man's offices, God's creative work goes forward, and that creative work is love, a profusion of good gifts. With persons as his "hands" or "coworkers," God gives his gifts through the earthly vocations, toward man's life on earth (food through farmers, fishermen and hunters; external peace through princes, judges, and orderly powers; knowledge and education through teachers and parents, etc., etc.). Through the preacher's vocation, God gives the forgiveness of sins. Thus love comes from God, flowing down to human beings on earth through all vocations, through both spiritual and earthly governments.” Therefore the love of God is demonstrated to every creature in our dependence upon the Creator and also through his callings in his creatures lives. Gene Edward Veith says, “The picture is of a vast, complex society of human beings with different talents and abilities. Each serves the other; each is served by others. We Americans have an ideal of self-sufficiency and often dream of being able to grow our own food, build our own homes, and live independently of other people. But our proper human condition is dependence. Because of the centrality of love, we are to depend on other human beings and, ultimately and through them, on God. Conversely, other people are to depend on us. In God's earthly kingdom, we are to receive his blessings from other people in their vocations.” (Modern Reformation "By the Sweat of Our Brow" May/June Vol. 8 No. 3 1999 Pages 4-7, “Doctrine of Vocation”). The churches call to love our neighbor in good works so that others may glorify our Father who is in heaven takes place when we change a diaper, empty the dishwasher, arrive to work on time, teach a class, pick up trash or go to the grocery store. The Christians life is based upon grace, but the outworking of that grace is the work of love carried out through various vocations. This does not mean that only when the Christian carries out his vocation with complete unabated love that our neighbors receive the love of God through our work. A person may bake a loaf of bread or love his wife or make laws for purely selfish motives. However, God uses those vocations and the work in them as his means to work his sovereign will in showing love to his creatures. But for the Christian who is being sanctified in Christ it is a great joy to hate sin and love holiness and watch God love our neighbors through the outworking of faith in Christ in our various callings.

The doctrine of vocation allows the Christian to be identified not by “what he or she does” but by whose he or she is and what God is doing everyday though their life for his glory and the good of his creatures. When our joy is in God who made, sustains, and redeems us, then we will be glad in the callings of God in this life. It is the glory of God that brings us joy and dignity in our callings. And in that joy and dignity in him we can take up our crosses and follow him wherever he calls us through whatever vocation toward our neighbors in love.

Singing Hymns to the Glory of God

Does the Scripture contain hymns that we should sing or are we commanded in Scripture to sing hymns? We would all readily argue that it contains psalms. In the book of Psalms there are 150 songs of prayer divided into 5 different books (Bk.1: 1-41; Bk.2:42 – 72; Bk.3: 73-89; Bk.4: 90 – 106; Bk.5: 107 – 150). These psalms are categorized and are the churches primary source of praise, prayer and lament for God’s worshiping community. However in Paul’s letters to the Ephesians and Colossians he commands them to sing “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” (Eph.5:19; Col.3:16). Some have argued that these three words are used to define the canonical psalms. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, uses these three words in psalm subtitles and therefore they would be familiar to the New Testament writers. But there are others who argue that the use of these words suggest that the church encouraged a variety of music and poetry in its song expressions in corporate worship. In studying these verses there are those who hold to the exclusive singing of psalms in worship and there are those who hold to the inclusive singing of psalms in worship. I would argue for the later that we must sing God’s inspired song book, the Psalms, but not to the exclusion of singing biblical and historical hymns. Hughs Oliphant Old comments, “The doxology of the earliest Christians kept psalmody and hymnody in a dynamic balance.” The psalms are a complete song book but not fully realized until they are seen in light of the complete work of salvation for God’s people on Calvary. Therefore in the Scripture we have both Psalms and hymns.

One of the earliest hymns we find in Scripture is the Song of Moses from Exodus 15. This is a hymn of praise expressed in strength and joy (Ex.15:2) by Moses and the Israelites as they were delivered by God from their enemies. In this hymn Moses recounts the attributes and work of God that are revealed in his delivering his people from Egypt that they may worship him. It is a hymn that gives glory to God sung in a spirit of joy. These hymns were written down by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and passed down to the peoples of God for generations. This and other hymns like them would be sung by the people of God who had experienced God’s salvation in a response of joy. We are given other biblical hymns in Judges 5, 2 Samuel 22, Luke 1 and 2. These biblical hymns are called Canticles. This is the plural of the Latin word canticulum meaning a little song. There are other works of hymnody or portions of hymns in the New Testament that we would call “Hymns of Christ.” These passages (John 1:1-5, 9-11; Romans 10:9-13; 1Corinthians 12:3; Ephesians 5:14; Philippians 2:6-11; Colossians 1:15-20; 1Timothy 2:5-6; 3:16; 2Timothy 2:11-13; Hebrews 1:3; 1Peter 3:18c-19, 22) are christo-centric poetry that are sometimes portions or whole hymns directly about Christ. Where the Psalms and Canticles point the way to Christ these biblical hymns are directly about Christ. These hymns would be the singing of what the church preaches; God’s salvation or deliverance by sovereign grace through Christ alone. The church must sing the bible. This does not mean that we only sing psalms or only hymns from the scriptures but our singing ought to be biblical, “shot through with the language, categories, and theology of the Bible” with Christ and his redemption at the center.

The church sang the psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. We also must value and practice the same in our day. Paul Jones says, “We find evangelicals slipping away from biblical worship and justifying their practices on the basis of the Zeitgeist. A hedonistic, narcissistic, relativistic, “me focused” age, though, is hardly one that should inform and define our approach to God. And yet it does. We measure our success by numbers, our relevance by how technologically integrated and up to date we are, and our worship by how good it makes us feel. In the minds of contemporary saints, hymns clash with spontaneity, simplicity, and style that have come to rule in the modern evangelical church.” Psalm and hymn singing must be the churches practice as she studies, prays, teaches, preaches and lives the Scripture. They are avenues of our prayer, praise and proclamation in personal and corporate worship. They speak what we need to hear and believe, they are expressions of what we need to think and feel, and they are a trumpet to a church and a world of the glory of God in Christ. They may be the direct words of the Scripture or a paraphrase, they may unfold a particular doctrine or attribute of God, or they may trace his creative, sustaining or redemptive acts. But they are the truth about God and about his image bearers taken from his Word. Therefore, they make demands on the whole of our being to sing them. They must be engaged with the mind and the heart not only in the words that are sung but in the music or tune that fits the words. They must be drawn out and dusted off from antiquity and they need to be written and sung in the present. Whether we sing the song of Moses or of the Lamb (Rev.15:2-3) the church of the living God will sing to the Lord.