Christ Methodist Church Memphis
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Christ Methodist Church Memphis
Living as You Were Called | Grant Caldwell
In this week’s message from The Prodigal Church series, Pastor Grant Caldwell dives into a rich and often overlooked truth in 1 Corinthians 7: your vocation is not a detour from your discipleship—it’s part of your calling.
Whether you’re a teacher, artist, stay-at-home parent, accountant, or student, this passage affirms the sacredness of your everyday work. Paul reminds the Corinthian believers—and us—that while our faith changes everything, it doesn’t always mean changing jobs. It means changing how we view and do those jobs, living out our calling in view of the One who bought us with a price.
This sermon explores:
- How work becomes an idol in our culture.
- Why your job, whatever it is, can be a sacred act of restoration.
- The biblical vision of vocation as calling.
- Practical encouragement for remaining faithfully where God has placed you.
“Your vocation is a sacred act of God’s restoration of this world to a place of human flourishing.”
Recommended Reading:
Scripture Passage: 1 Corinthians 7 (ESV)
Kingdom Calling by Amy Sherman
[0:18] Well, good morning and welcome to worship at Christ Methodist Church. My name is Grant Caldwell and I serve as one of our pastors here. If you have your Bibles with you, go ahead and open them up to 1 Corinthians 7. 1 Corinthians 7. This week we continue our series through the book of 1 Corinthians and continue where we picked up last week, looking specifically at chapter 7.
[0:41] The church in Corinth, as has been shared previously, the church in Corinth is made up of believers from many different backgrounds, many different relational, social, cultural, religious backgrounds. And coming from those different backgrounds, there's a lot of confusion in the church in Corinth about how following Jesus is different now in their lives. They're asking the questions that now that I am a follower of Jesus, what's new? What stays the same? What changes? What continues post-conversion? What has to stop post-conversion. Last week, we looked at it in the topic relationally. We looked at the topic of marriage, and we saw that Paul told them that becoming Christian doesn't mean that you stop physical intimacy in marriage. It doesn't mean that you separate from your husband or from your wife, but you live into God's design for marriage. That is this true intimacy between one man, one woman, spiritually, relationally, physically, in a lifelong loving covenant. Paul will return to this relational dynamic again, and we'll look at the topic of singleness next week as we look at singleness in the church. But paired, kind of like sandwiched in between those are these verses 17 through 25, where Paul starts to look at their social lives, their relational lives. And as he does so, he also looks at this idea of calling.
[2:09] He looks at vocation, he looks at work, he looks at how they live throughout the week and how they carry their lives as followers of Jesus. What stays the same? What is new?
[2:21] When we look at the topic of work, work has this massive influence in our lives. From the youngest age, we ask and answer the question, what do I want to be when I grow up frequently?
[2:33] Caden, our son, is four, and he's already asking these questions, and we're already asking him. Right now, as any good four-year-old boy would answer, he wants to be an astronaut, of course. And so we get asked, can you be an astronaut? Well, yes, you can be an astronaut. How can I be an astronaut? Well, you have to work really hard physically and really hard with your mind, but you can be an astronaut. Do you know any astronauts? Well, no, I don't know any astronauts, but Pastor Paul used to pastor in Huntsville. I bet Pastor Paul knows astronauts. And Caden loves Pastor Paul. When we told him that Pastor Paul probably knows astronauts, his eyes lit up. He was like, are you serious? Caden loves him. So he actually keeps asking, like, hey, Dad, when is Pastor Paul going to be back from vacation? And I'm like, well, you're not the only one asking that probably, bud. You have that in common with some people probably on Sunday mornings.
[3:33] Careers and work are greatly important. We know it from a young age, and as adults, we continue putting so much weight on careers. And oftentimes, and especially in our culture, we put so much weight that they end up taking a larger than intended role in our lives. They become elevated to the point where our work and our vocation become our identities. In previous generations, it was known like your identity was attached to family or location. You were known as being so-and-so's son or daughter. You were known as being from this place. Now, one of the first questions that we ask when we meet someone is, where do you work?
[4:13] For many people, this elevation of work to this highest point moves into this area that followers of Jesus would call an idol. When we say idols, we often think of like a tiny wooden statue. But when the scriptures talk about the idea of idol and talk about the idea of idolatry, it's much more subtle than that. The scriptures paint the picture of idol and idolatry in a way where it's anything that becomes ultimate in your life. Anytime that you take one of God's good gifts and elevate it to the ultimate spot, it has the power of becoming an idol. Anytime that you take something that you're like, I really enjoy this, I'm really thankful for this, and it moves to a spot of controlling and leading your life, it moves to a spot of I'm not okay if I don't have this, I'm not good if this is not good, this is at the point where idolatry starts to sneak in and starts to take over. And when work happens with that, and when work becomes an idol, it can be especially destructive. Pastor Tim Keller talks about it this way, and he says that when that happens, when work becomes an idol and when your work becomes your identity, he says success will go to your head and failure will destroy your heart.
[5:36] They're both destructive. If work is an idol and if work becomes your identity and you're successful, it's destructive because you begin to have this belief that if I'm good at your job or if I'm good at my job, I'm not just a good lawyer or a good doctor or a good teacher. You begin to have this belief that you're a good person, that because you're an expert in one field means that you're an expert in all fields. Success leads to just a sense of inflated pride or superiority. You begin to have these beliefs that money equals knowledge. You start to have overconfidence in your relationships. Success in work, when work is an idol, can be destructive. But it's not just success. Failure can be destructive. You start to realize that work is more anxiety-producing than it should be. You start to ask the questions when you fail if your very self-worth is at stake. You have an inferiority complex. 6. Keller tells a story about how an author at their church actually quit writing, and when he asked him why, this was the reason. He said that he made the quality of his work the measure of his worth.
[6:48] When work is an idol, when it becomes, when the quality of your work becomes the measure of your worth and you face failure, you're lost. You need success to be sane. So it would seem on the surface that when we get to the topic of work and vocation and calling in 1 Corinthians 7, you'd think that this would be an easy, straightforward, yes, yes, things change. Of course they change. But what we see in the passage, verses 17 through 24, that it is a yes, but it's also a no, but then it's kind of a yes, yes again. So first, verse 17, we see that Paul says, yes, there does need to be a change. The change, though, is that they need to start living in view of their calling and assignment from God. Verse 17 in 1 Corinthians 7 says this, it says.
[7:45] Paul is telling them that they need to return to the calling and assignment that God has given each of them. The Lord has assigned gifts to his people and called them into something special. And see, we're used to using those words of calling and gifts and assignment in a spiritual sense here on Sunday morning. We just talked about spiritual gifts in our Sunday school class. We're used to discussing these things in a spiritual sense within the church. But the context of 1 Corinthians 7 is pointing beyond that. It's pointing that there isn't a divide between the secular and the sacred. There isn't a church hat that you wear when you're in this room that you take off and put on a work hat on Monday morning and live in a different way. The context that he uses in these passages is about vocation, but the language that he uses about calling and about assignment is sacred.
[8:44] And that only makes sense if these two things come together. That it's only if our callings and our vocations and our work are sacred acts of God's restoration in this world that the language that Paul is using in 1 Corinthians 7 makes sense. And incredibly, when we go back to the creation story, when we go back to see God's design for us, what we see is the sacredness of work. We see work being present in the beginning, and we see its sacredness right from the start in a way that just lights up the way that we work. If you look at Genesis 1 and look at the days of creation, one after the other, what you see is a God that's at work. You see a God that's creating in the world and then following that up with ordering after it. The first three days, days 1 through 3, we see God at work creating. He creates the heavens, the sky, the waters, the earth. Then on days four through six, he goes back to those realms and then starts ordering them. He adds in and fills the stars and the planets, the birds and the fish, the animals and humans. And then on day seven, he rests. Note that our work week is still modeled after God's first original work week.
[10:01] God then turns around. Genesis chapter one, verse 28. after his work week is nearing its end and tells humanity that we are to do the same thing. We're to create and we're to order. Genesis 1, 28, 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.
[10:27] God blesses them. And then he tells them, he says, You are to create. You're to be fruitful and to multiply. Which means what we discussed last week, but it also points to the creation of civilization. He says that you're to create a human society. You're to create a human culture. You're to create something, build things, establish things. You're to fill the earth, not just in number, but you're to fill it in culture and society. And then he says to order. Just as he created and then ordered, he says create and then order. He says to subdue and have dominion, to steward and run the world that God created, preserves, and is sovereign over. God, after creating the world, gives the running of this world over to humanity to cultivate it for God's glory and to cultivate it for human goodness.
[11:19] And this means something like massive for our vocations, that even if they're difficult, which they are, and even if they are broken, which they are, they're not contrary or separate from God's design. That work is there, it's present, and it's good before sin enters the story, before the fall enters the story, before brokenness enters the story. We see that work is a good thing that's given to us by God, and that we have a calling and assignment in the image of God who also works.
[11:54] Amy Sherman in her book, Kingdom Calling, brings this out more specifically, because I think it's easy for us to think, okay, God works, I work, I can see that, but then to connect that to the actual work that you do throughout the week, and Sherman highlights these in her book really well. She says that some work is redemptive work, that God's saving and reconciling actions between people and God, people and people, and people and the world, that there's work that's redemptive that brings people together. So there's creative work, God's fashioning of the physical and human world through creativity, those that design and make and build things. There's providential work, God's provision for and sustaining of humanity and creation, all that goes to keep the economic, political, and social order running smoothly and orderly and beneficially. There's just work, that how God maintains fairness and justice and equity in the world. There's compassionate work, the way that God's involvement in comforting, healing, guiding, and shepherding. There's revelatory work, the way that God is at work to enlighten truth, tell stories, create understanding.
[13:05] Sherman's pointing out to us that when we see a God at work, when we read the scriptures and see God in all of his different ways at work, and then we look at our jobs, we see images that are mirrored of each other. That we don't just do a job, we do vocational work that's in the image of a working God, and that when we go through our day, there's something special happening. There's something deeply meaningful happening. It's not just a job. It is a sacred act of God's restoration of this world to a place of human flourishing. The scriptures point out that your vocation is a sacred act of God's restoration of this world to a place of human flourishing. And so, yes, Paul is telling the church in Corinth, yes, there's a change you need to make. You need to see this calling.
[13:55] But the temptation that they think is that okay if i have this calling i need to leave or go do something different and he pairs that yes with with a no and notice what he says in verses 20 and 24 he tells them that each one should remain in the condition in which he was called, brothers in whatever condition each was called there let them remain with god, we often try to find when we ask this question we we go into vocation with this mindset of well i need to find something that's either high-paying, world-changing, or cool. And Paul is saying that instead of seeking after all these things or seeking after this idea of, well, now that I'm Christian, I've got to do this specific job, he's saying, no, no, no, remain. Remain where you are. The word in the Greek is a present imperative, so it's remain and keep remaining and keep remaining as you go. He's saying that you don't have to leave and go do something different to be at work in the restoration of the world. He says, you're already there at work. Continue on. Remain.
[14:56] He then applies it to two specific situations, verses 18 through 23, that involve circumcision and slavery. So there's four different kind of groups that he's addressing in the church in Corinth. There's the Christian Jews that are wanting to become uncircumcised. There's Christian Gentiles that want to become circumcised, there's Christian slaves that are wanting to become free, and there's Christian freemen that are wanting to become slaves. So in Corinth, these were huge divides. These were the largest religious and social divides in the church. And so these groups are asking all these questions of, now that I am a follower of Jesus, what does that mean in these areas? Surely I need to change my station in some way. Um, and I'm going to say, well.
[15:42] Circumcision was the greatest religious distinction in Corinth. It separated Jew and Gentiles, the marker of the people of God, separating them from the rest of the world. But the New Testament makes this clear that this has passed away, like other dietary laws or civil laws in the Old Testament. These things are now fulfilled in following Christ and belonging to Christ in the local church. He clarifies, though, verse 19, that the moral and ethical components of the law, the call to obey Jesus, remains. Verse 19, for neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. He's telling them that the change that they've already made by following Jesus, by living a life in obedience to the calls of Christ, that's the change that they've made. They don't need to seek outward religious change. They don't have to change appearance in any way. That by following Jesus in obedience and in love, that's the change that they've already made, and that's what God is calling them to do. There's no great religious change that they're needing to do. The social distinction of slavery was clearly present in Corinth as well, separating bondservant and freeman.
[16:55] Context here is important. When we see slavery, we think of a certain picture because we live in America. Roman slavery was vastly different. They were paid. They were able to buy their freedom. They were entrusted with large amounts of responsibility. They were brought into the family in the fullest sense, usually taking the last name. Even after purchasing freedom, they usually stayed in the family and accepted and kept the social and economic benefits of being connected with this family. Yeah.
[17:28] On the contrary, the race-based, lifelong brutality of slavery in the American context with the African slave trade, Scripture is clear that that was explicitly sinful. 1 Timothy 1, this passage, explicitly it contradicts the Scriptures. It also implicitly contracts the Scriptures because our God is a God who always moves from bondage and slavery into freedom. It's the God of the Exodus. that's always moving his people into wholeness. Much confusion has been created in this passage, specifically in the American context, and specifically causing much harm to the church's witness. And this is something that just a small amount of understanding really opens up the door to see what Paul is saying and isn't saying here and allows us to make sure we're looking through this with the right cultural lens. Because Paul's encouragement to them in this Roman context with Roman slavery is that they don't need to change their status to serve God faithfully, whether they are free or whether they are slave. Why is he saying this?
[18:40] There's one distinction. So for the Christian Gentiles wanting to become circumcised, the error is theological. Like if you read in Acts 15 or if you read the book of Galatians, Like there's all this confusion about what is the marker of the people of God. And they're confused about that. They're thinking, I need to do this to be right with God. And so one of the three, there's a theological error. The other three, though, they're attempting to make this change because they believe that this change will improve their status or their calling or their place in the church and in the community. They think that if I could make this change, if I could get in this family, if I could have this marker, if I could do this thing, then I would be more influential. Then I would be more wealthily. Then I would be able to climb this right social ladder in Corinth. And to that, Paul is saying, no, that's not what becoming Christian is calling you to do. Remain where you are. Remain where you are called.
[19:40] Two things for that for us and for your work, it's important to know today. Like one, he does tell those that if they can gain their freedom, they should. Which means that for us working, sometimes the brokenness of our work is not
[19:57] general brokenness, it's specific brokenness. And if that's the case, like you're not wrong to leave.
[20:04] Like there isn't a sense that I have to stay or else God will be unhappy with me. Um, sometimes a work or a job is something that you need to, um, pray, seek wise counsel, and then entrust your vocation, uh, to the Lord. It's not wrong to change jobs. It's not wrong, uh, to leave. Um, the other thing though, that's not in this passage specifically, but should be shared with the topic of vocation, uh, is that if your vocation is doing something that is, morally, ethically, or spiritually contrary to God's design or God's will, followers of Jesus are called to leave. Like Acts 5.29 says that when faced with a choice between obeying God and obeying man, followers of Jesus must obey God, which means that if you're in a spot, and even if this is hard, that morally, ethically, or spiritually, what you're doing is contrary to God's design or God's will, followers of Jesus say, yes, it's worth it for me to leave. It's worth it for the sake of the gospel for me to step away.
[21:11] So Paul's saying here, yes, your work has to change. It has to be done in view of this high calling. No, you don't have to leave and go do something else that you think might further you in the community. You're to remain.
[21:25] But there's one more piece that is crucial for us, especially as followers of Jesus. He says that we have to change how we're doing our jobs. And it's because of what's found in verse 23, the truth that we've been bought with a price. That we have been bought with a price.
[21:44] For the followers of Jesus, we live with the present and constant reality that we were bought with a price, the costly body and blood of our Savior. On the cross, Jesus looks at us in our sinfulness, he looks at us in our brokenness, he sees our separation from God, and he pays the price of all of it with his life. He dies the death that we deserve and then rises in new life to give us the same. He pays the price for us to be made righteous, and in response, we confess Jesus' lordship over everything in this world, including our vocations. Colossians 3, 23 and 24 teaches us that being bought with a price, we no longer work for man, but we work for the Lord. And working for the Lord means that Christian work is done differently. It means that for the Christian, while work may be difficult, it carries with the call that everything should be done with excellence, that even the smallest task is worthy to be done well, that even little things in your job should be done with great love. For the follower of Jesus, even when work pulls you into selfishness, there's the call with it to carry out your work with faithful ethics. To not just ask the question, what is a legal loophole that I can do, but to ask a further question of what is the moral and right ethical thing that God calls me to do.
[23:14] For the follower of Jesus, work may feel pointless, but in the Lord, as 1 Corinthians 15, 58 promises, our labor is never in vain. We understand that we are working and we are part of a much grander story that we may not see in this life, but we trust that there's a bigger story at play in what we do. We understand that the opportunities that work gives us for evangelism, for justice ministry in our city, are putting us and placing us in a much bigger story.
[23:46] And what we find is that for the follower of Jesus, that when these things come together, and when you realize that I am called to work and do my work differently, we see that what happens is it's not just that we will be blessed, but the blessing fills us up to where we're flourishing in a way that everyone around us benefits from it as well. Like I mentioned, the book Kingdom Calling, Amy Sherman has a verse from Proverbs that she speaks about a lot. Proverbs 11.10 says this, it says, When the righteous prosper, the city flourishes, and when the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy, shouts of gladness. What does Proverbs 11.10 mean? It means that there's a distinction in play between the righteous and the wicked. The wicked view these things that we've been talking about, vocation, work, and calling, that they're for their own gain. That these things exist for them to lift their status up, to climb a ladder, to exist for their own. And the wisdom of the prophet says that when these people perish, they're shouts of joy.
[24:52] She says, on the other hand, there's the righteous. And the righteous see everything that they've been given, not as something for themselves, but something to be stewarded for the sake of others. And this proverb promises us that as we live into the calling of being the righteous people of a city, when we do our jobs excellently and ethically and with God's kingdom in mind, what we see is not just that we are blessed and not just that we do work that is good and worthwhile, but the entire city around us starts to flourish. The language here for flourishing and shouts of gladness is used in a military context, that it's like when a conquering army wins a battle and there's a victory shout at hand. That's the context used in Proverbs 11, that when followers of Christ do their work in a godly way, when they see that they're vocational giftings, the things that they know, the skills that they can do, the platform and position that they hold, the network of people that they're in a relationship with. When they see these things, not just as, well, these are for me and my benefit, but when they see these things or these are things to be stewarded for the sake of God's glory, the city flourishes.
[26:11] That when they see their calling from God, their unique story in their life, the way that God has given them certain passions that they love and certain burdens that they can't look away from, that when the righteous see these things as things that are not just for their sake, but for the sake of others, the city flourishes. They don't hoard these things, they steward them. They work differently within their context. They volunteer in vocationally specific ways. They look around them and ask the questions of what doesn't exist that could exist, what could be started new, and how could I do that? The righteous see that they don't just work a job, they have a vocation that is a sacred act of God's restoration of this world to a place of human flourishing.
[27:03] All work, work in the home, work outside of the home, work that you're preparing for as a student or in currently or you're in retirement, you have been called and assigned into a place of deeply meaningful ministry, redefined and stewarded with the costly price of Jesus' death and resurrection in view. And the scriptures promise that if we, Christ's Methodist Church, understand this, if we live into this, the result of it isn't just for our good, but it's for God's glory for our city. Like, that would be the thing that would to cause the city to flourish and shout out with joy.
[27:47] Casey and I moved to Memphis nine years ago, and when we moved here and learned about Memphis, this is the picture that we saw. Memphis seemed magical. This is the city of Tom Lee, the man who couldn't swim but yet dove into the Mississippi River to save 30 people when their riverboat was sinking. This is the city of the martyrs of Memphis, the nuns and priests of St. Mary's, that when in the largest epidemic in our nation's history, when thousands of people fled, they stayed behind to take care of the sick and poor that remained. This is a city of the civil rights movement, where men and women declared their dignity with, I am a man on a sign. This is a city of St. Jude, where there's no hopeless causes at all. It's a city shaped by men and women that understand that they have vocations
[28:44] given to them by God for the sake of stewarding for his glory. And as a result of that, the city uniquely flourished. And then we moved here and we saw it. Like we saw it as Casey did MTR and we saw it in schools. We saw it in this church and the way that many of you shepherd and steward your gifts to serve others, we saw it.
[29:09] And it seems like, maybe this is just me, it seems like our city has just been in it in the last few years. And it seems to me that sometimes it feels like the magic or the sparkle has faded. And I think that as we might feel that way, 1 Corinthians 7 is a call for all of us, and especially the church, to remember our callings and remember our gifts. It's a call for all of us to see that we're not here by accident and that there is a call to faithfully remain, that maybe, as Esther 4 teaches, that maybe we've come into the kingdom, maybe we've come into Memphis for such a time as this, that maybe, if lived in light of Jesus's sacrifice and the costly sacrifice of his life for us, we would remember that Jesus died for us, not because we had it all together, not because we were worthy, but precisely the opposite. That while we were unworthy, while we were still sinners, while we were at rock bottom, Jesus pursued us and saved us and died for us. And in response to this, even when things are dark, even when things feel like they are at rock bottom, we remember that followers of Jesus are not the ones that run away. They run towards these things, stewarding our vocations in a way that makes much of him.
[30:38] Today, at the communion table, we have the opportunity to live into these truths together as we receive the sacrament of communion. Where on the night before Jesus was betrayed, he looked at his disciples and told them that they were bought with a price, the price of his broken body and the price of his shed blood. Where Jesus looked to 12 men around him, 12 men that would soon betray him, deny him, abandon him, yet would be the very ones that were called and assigned to do the work of building the church. And he told them, John 17, he said, the father has received glory because I have completed the work that has been assigned to me. Jesus' work on the cross was not in vain. And therefore, when we work, we can do so knowing and trusting and believing that our work will never be in vain as well. You pray with me.
[31:40] Father, you are never distant or inactive, but you are constantly at work to uphold this entire world. You are the creator and the sustainer. You are the redeemer and restorer. And Father, we work because we are made in your image, and we desire to glorify you in the way that we steward our vocations. And so, Father, for the vocations gathered in this room, architects, artists, business, finance, communication, construction, culinary, skilled trades, teachers, engineers, stay-at-home parents, healthcare workers, lawyers, retailers. Father, for all that are here, all that are gathered, we ask that you would equip them and help them see that what they do is not something where they're just going through the motions. It's not just a job, but they are playing a part in your sacred restoration of this world.
[32:35] Father, guide us to remain faithfully where you have called us as an ambassador of the good news of the gospel those who work in a way that is set apart in its excellence and its ethics because our work is for you, Let this be the clearest reality possible for us as we return to work tomorrow so that we may live in view of the costly sacrifice of your Son because we ask all of this in your name Amen.