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In biblical Christianity, the word vocation, which comes from the Latin word meaning “call”, refers in the original language to a holy calling of a creature by the Creator God, enjoining the creature to accomplish a specific task or to fulfill a definite responsibility.
From the beginning, God assigned to each of His creatures a specific vocation based on the realm of their existence, to the praise of His glory. For instance, all God’s angels are “His ministers, who do His will” (Psalms 103:21); they guard the presence of the Lord and minister to His people, i.e., the saints. “Day and night [the seraphim who stand around the throne of the Most High] never cease to say, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come” (Revelation 4:8), proclaiming His distinctness and greatness. “The heavenly host bows down to [the Lord]” (Nehemiah 9:6). Inanimate objects, such as the mountains, the valleys and the seas, each perform a specific task as to the will of the Creator God; the animals, the birds of the air, sea creatures and all that moves on the earth, the grass of the field, the trees of the forest, the wind, the waves of the sea, every grain of sand, every speck of dust, every microscopic organism, every molecule, the stars, the moon, the sun and the expanse of the heavens, each have a definite vocation assigned by God at creation. Ecclesiastes 1:5-7, “The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.”
Nothing exists in the universe that has no mission. In the beginning, God made the light and caused it to shine in the darkness, and He “separated the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1:3). He made the expanse and summoned it to “separate the waters from the waters” (v.6). As for the stars, the sun and the moon, the Lord God said, “let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness” (v.14-18).
As for man, he is the crowning jewel of God’s creation, a volitional being equipped with a mind and a heart, to whom the Lord God gave the earth as his dwelling place. Moreover, he was chosen by God to reflect His holiness on earth, to act as God’s deputy regent on earth, caring for the rest of God’s creation as God Himself would. Man was designated by God to rule the earth, to fill it and to keep it. This was his original vocation. Of all His creatures, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27). As God’s image bearer, man is a being capable of embodying the communicable attributes of God. In the moral sense, before the fall, man was good and holy like God – as it is written, “God made men upright” (Ecclesiastes 7:29).
On the other hand, among all earthly creatures, man is the only rational being. His natural ability, in addition to his moral purity before the fall, makes him apt to act as God’s representative on earth, unlike other earthly living creatures, namely: animals, birds, sea creatures and every living being on earth – these are creatures of instinct. Because he bears the image of God, man was chosen by God to care for other creatures living on earth. He was called by God to work from the very moment of creation. The first task God commissioned Adam to do was to name the other creatures on earth – “And the man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field” (Genesis 2:20).
The Lord God is Himself a working God. “The LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (Genesis 2:8-9). God created everything in six literal twenty-hour days, “and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done” (Genesis 2:2). This does not mean that God stopped working, but rather that He rested from His work of creation. God is always working. “He upholds the universe by the word of His power” (Hebrews 1:3). When the Lord made man, He entrusted him with the responsibility to keep the earth; He granted man the privilege to steward and care for the rest of His creation.
As it is written, “The LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Genesis 2:7). Then God took one of his ribs, after causing a deep sleep to fall upon him, and made the rib into a woman. Then “God blessed [the man and the woman]. 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 the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (Genesis 1:28).
Thus, from creation, man was appointed deputy regent by God to keep the earth, to the glory of the Lord. As God’s deputy regent, man is to faithfully represent His Maker on earth, so that the glory of God may shine in him. His ways and thoughts ought to be in accord with those of his Maker and Master, the Lord God. He must lead a holy life and rule the earth with uprightness, according to the standard of perfect holiness, which is God Himself. He must be blameless in all his ways and must take care of the earth in the same manner as the Lord would. In other words, man’s character, his manner of life and the exercise of his rule over the earth ought to be a faithful reflection of God’s perfections, a display of the beauty and excellencies of God, a reflection of God’s holiness, springing from righteous living, good stewardship of the earth, perfect obedience to God and conformity to His standard of goodness. Put simply, man ought to be holy in all his conduct, so that the Lord’s glory may shine brightly in him – for God is holy, otherwise man would fall short of the glory of God.