The human experience is a
sometimes beautiful, oftentimes maddening array of relationships. No one exists
in isolation, divorced or apart from relationships. In fact, no one can exist apart from relationships.
Essential to being human is existing relationally—with God, with one another
and with creation. Yet our present experience of this tri-part relational
tapestry of our existence is marred by frustration and strife. It is at times
more chaos than harmony, more disorder than accord, more disconnected than
cohesive. But it was not always so, nor will it always be so.
God designed our
vocations to be the thread that weaves these relationships into a beautiful,
harmonious tapestry of the human experience. In other words, in and through our
vocations we relate to God, to other image bearers and to creation. To
understand how we relate and to
discern why we relate, we must
journey back to the beginning to God’s work of creation.
Creation as the Work of God
Creation is God’s acting to make
himself known by his word that purposes, makes, orders and blesses all that
exists. There are three critical conclusions of understanding creation this
way. First, all that exists except God is not God. Bartholomew and Goheen note:
The idea of creation
by the word preserves first of all the most radical distinction between Creator
and creature. Creation cannot be even remotely considered an emanation from
God. It is not somehow an overflow of his being, his divine nature. Instead, it
is a product of his personal will. The only continuity between God and his work
is his word.[1]
The Creator stands distinctly
separate from and supremely sovereign over his creation. This is the second
conclusion of understanding creation in this way—God is King over the cosmos.
From the microscopic to the galactic, the physical to the spiritual, the
potential to the actualized, the whole of the created order to the whole of the
human experience, God is the great Creator King, and all that exists or can
exist owes its allegiance to him. However, this does not mean that God is
entirely absent and removed from creation. God’s creative activity was stirred
and compelled only by the internal, personal will of God. As such, God is
deeply and personally concerned with his creation. He is not simply the
clockmaker of the deists. “The fact is that the same Creator God and the same
sovereign power that called the cosmos into existence in the beginning has kept that cosmos in existence from
moment to moment to this very day.”[2]
This is the inescapable testimony of the entirety of Scripture—all of creation
is not only created by God but also maintained and sustained by God. As Wolters
concludes, “The created order is in every instant unimaginable without the creating
activity of God.”[3]
Third, creation is the work of God. In the creation account of
Genesis chapter one, God spoke (v. 3), separated (v. 4), called (v. 5) made (v.
7) and set (v. 17)—all language of work. It has been proposed that God’s work
of creation was aimed at disclosing and revealing himself. While it is
important to hold this aspect of God’s creative work in a position of primacy,
the narrative of the first two chapters of Genesis makes it clear that God also
worked for the benefit of man. In the work of creation, the blessing of God’s
creative activity overflowed to the benefit of man. There were not only
pleasing aesthetics and pleasurable experiences in the garden. There was order
and sustenance and provision to support and sustain life. It is into this
paradisiacal garden that God placed the crown jewel of his creative work.
The Crown Jewel of God’s Creation
Unique among his creative acts,
humanity is created in the image and likeness of the Creator himself. Genesis
1:27 declares, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he
created him; male and female he created them.” The crown jewel of God’s
creation is the creature upon whom he bestows his own image and likeness. As
Adam and Eve lived in the garden, they found themselves in a beautiful array of
relationships—creatures imaging the Creator, lovers of their fellow image
bearers and cultivators of the created order. The connecting thread of this
tapestry of relationships is humanity’s vocations.
As creatures imaging the Creator,
humanity is inherently disposed to work. In fact, as creatures imaging the
Creator, humanity must work. The
first word man hears spoken to him is a command of the Creator to work. Genesis
1:28 recounts, “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 the birds of
the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”” God’s
bequeathing dominion to humanity is admittedly mysterious and often times
misunderstood, but this endowment of dominion is a critical intersection of the
doctrine of creation and the doctrine of vocation. A failure to biblically
understand the nature and purpose of humanity’s God-given dominion will
ultimately give rise to a sub-biblical or extra-biblical understanding of
humanity’s vocations. Shrouded in the first two chapters of Genesis are clues
to help unfold this mystery.
According to the first chapter of
Genesis, God created the realms of creation—the firmament, sea/sky and earth—in
three days and filled those realms in three days with greater and lesser
lights, fish and birds, animals and humanity. The language of “God called” in
the creation narrative ceases after the third day. God’s calling or naming is
connected to his dominion. The dominion God has over the creation that fills
and inhabits the realms, he bequeaths to man by leaving them, in a sense,
without a name that man might rule on his behalf. This is the point of Genesis
2:19 when God brings the animals to Adam to see what he would call them. “The fundamental
similarity between God and humanity is humankind’s unique vocation, its calling
or commissioning by God himself. Under God, humanity is to rule over the nonhuman parts of creation on land and in sea and
air, much as God is the supreme ruler over all.”[4]
Humanity has been entrusted by the Creator King with vice regency. And humanity
assumed this role with joyful obedience that was worship of the Creator. But to
what end is humanity to exercise dominion, to wield authority, to direct
creation? As image bearers of the Creator, their authoritative creational vocations
are to be aimed outward—in the same manner as the Creator’s—at blessing others.
This is the second component of
humanity’s creational tapestry of relationships. Image bearers exist in relation
to other image bearers. And the mark of these relationships is to be a
reciprocal love for one another. This love is on display in poetic fashion at
the end of the second chapter of Genesis as Adam and Eve unite in the first
marriage. But this love is not to mark the marital relationship alone. Jesus
declared that the whole of the Law and Prophets are aimed at love of God and
love of neighbor. Humanity’s exercising dominion over and subduing the earth is
to be aimed at loving and blessing others just as the Creator worked to benefit
those outside himself. “In God’s own creative work, he acts for the good of
what he has made and not for his own selfish pleasure.”[5]
But man cannot, like the Creator, create out of nothing. So how is man to work and create for the
benefit of fellow image bearers?
The third component of humanity’s
web of relationships is stewardship of creation. As image bearers humanity is
to bring out the potential of God’s creation and place it in the service of
others. We are to be creators and cultivators for the benefit of our fellow
image bearers. “As we take God’s creative commands of “Let there be…” and
develop the potentials in them, we continue to spread the fragrance of his
presence throughout the world he has made.” It should be noted that humanity’s
image bearing is not restricted to certain aspects of creation but encompasses
the whole of it. Whether agriculture or arts, commerce or community, economics
or ecology, finance or friendship, humanity is to develop and work in God’s
world in a way that blesses others. Bartholomew and Goheen summarize this well:
“Humans are made for God, and also for one another and for the creation, to be
at work within it.”[6]
This post is the first part of a continuation of the Doctrine of Work series. Read the first post here and the second post here.
This essay was originally published in fulfillment of coursework for Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary's Th.M. program, THE6960 Doctrine of Vocation, Spring 2015.
[1]
Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen, The
Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story (Grand Rapids:
Baker Academic, 2004), 33.
[2]
Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005), 13.
[3]
Wolters, Creation Regained, 14.
[4]
Bartholomew & Goheen, The Drama of
Scripture, 36.
[5]
Bartholomew & Goheen, The Drama of
Scripture, 37.
[6]
Ibid., 38.
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