The Bible’s Teaching About the Believer’s Office

Our Lord taught us that when we face important questions about which there are confused opinions we need to go back to the beginnings and see what God’s Word says about His creative purpose. That is the way He treated the knotty questions about divorce in Matthew 19. He cut His way through the theologians’ rationalizations of divorce (when they wanted one) by asking, “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh? So they are no longer two, but one. “Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

God’s Creative Purpose

In considering the role the Lord intended for the ordinary believer, about which there is also so much confusion, we ought to begin at the same point, the expressed purpose of the Creator. “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over . . .’” the other creatures. This principle that man is created “in the image of God,” long assumed as a basis for Western civilization’s respect for human life is now being denied. The result is that despite continued talk of “human rights,” (our government defends the “right” to murder over 15 million unborn, and) all real appreciation of the Creator‘s purpose with the individual‘s life has virtually disappeared. The Word of God reminds us of that Creator’s design, to restore a sense of our meaning and purpose in God’s world.

Man “in God’s Image”

What does this “image of God” really mean and what is His purpose for it? The Bible quickly goes on to tell us of mankind‘s fall away from God—so evident through later history and especially today. Then it traces the history of God’s promises and their fulfillment in the sending of Christ our Savior, to bring us back to God. In detailing the results of this reconciliation to God the Apostle Paul wrote to the Colossian Christians, “Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Col. 3:9, 10). In the similar letter to the Ephesian Christians, Paul wrote that these believers were taught “to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:23, 24). In other words, the Apostle teaches us that through the saving work of Christ the “image of God,” defaced and lost through man’s fall into revolt against God, is being restored. That “image” is to be thought of, not as a visual image, but as consisting in knowledge, righteousness and holiness. That is, each individual Christian is being restored and called to know God, to serve God, and to love God. That is his and her high “calling” or “vocation” and “office.”

The Image after the Fall

At this point the question might be raised whether, since the “image of God” is being restored in the Christian, this means that the non-Christian is no longer the “image of God.” Some Christian theologians have concluded that they are not, but the Bible seems to indicate that matters are not quite that simple. After God judged and destroyed man and his world by flood, He established capital punishment for murder to protect human life saying (Gen. 9:6). “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.” Despite the fall into sin, it is evident that mankind is still to be respected as, in some sense, the “image of God.” The same point is evident in the letter of James (3:9). There we are warned not only against killing, but even against cursing our fellow men “who have been made in God’s likeness.” Each man and woman with his and her unique capacities as a human being is to be respected as the image of God, but the trouble is that each one of these unique human capacities is being misused and misdirected. Mankind without God may make amazing discoveries and become very learned, but having lost the knowledge of God, lives “as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity with a continual lust for more” (Eph. 4:17–19). Despite all of his learning, man is still in the dark, “without hope and without God in the world” (2:12). The same kind of perversion appears in the use of other human abilities, such as the ability to manage and rule. Has that management ability enabled us to live peacefully and safely in the world? The ability to “love” and establish relationships continues, but consider how that too, is perverted and misdirected. Thus the Bible spotlights the pervasive and destructive results of sin in the present and the worse consequences in the judgments of the future.

“Anointed” for Saving Office

From this plight, Jesus Christ is promised and comes to save us. His official name or title is “Christ,” meaning “the anointed.” That word “anointed” calls attention to the ceremonial way men called and equipped by God in the Old Testament were officially placed in office. Exodus 30:22ff. details the prescription for a special oil or perfume. It was to be used for no other purpose than to symbolize that the people or things anointed with it were separated from all secular use and reserved for the special service for which God called and equipped them with the Holy Spirit. In this case especially the priests were ordered to be so set aside. They had to read God’s law to the people to remind them of their obligations to Him and they had to offer the sacrifices which represented the way by which the people who had transgressed those laws might be forgiven and brought back to Him. In addition to the priests, the kings, called to govern and protect the Israelites as God’s people, had to be ceremonially appointed to office by similar anointing. We also find the prophet, Elijah, who had to speak for God to the wayward people, ordered to anoint Elisha to succeed him in that role (1 Kings 19:16). That role of prophet is perhaps introduced most interestingly in Deuteronomy 18. The Israelites were warned that when they entered the land of Canaan they would find the people there resorting to all kinds of pagan fortune–tellers and spiritists in effort to find guidance. They were warned that God detested such practices and promised that they would be provided with real prophets like Moses who would speak for God in counseling and guiding them.

Christ, Our Prophet, Priest and King

When Jesus comes He is announced as the “Christ,” the Anointed, of whom all of these Old Testament officials were only limited anticipations. While they were only men like ourselves, He was uniquely God the Son, “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb. 1:3). Our Heidelberg Catechism (LD. 12, Q. 31) nicely summarizes the Biblical teaching about Him. “Why is He called ‘Christ’ meaning ‘anointed’? Because he has been ordained by God the Father and has been anointed with the Holy Spirit to be our chief prophet and teacher who perfectly reveals to us the secret counsel and will of God for our deliverance; our only high priest who has set us free by the one sacrifice of his body and who continually pleads our cause with the Father; and our eternal king who governs us by his Word and Spirit, and who guards and keeps us in the freedom he has won for us.”

On the basis of this official, saving work of Christ as our Prophet, Priest and King, the catechism, again following the Scriptures, immediately ties His role and office with that of each Christian believer. “Why are you called a Christian? Because by faith I am a member of Christ and so I share in his anointing. I am anointed to confess his name, to present myself to him as a living sacrifice of thanks, to strive with a good conscience against sin and the devil in this life, and afterward to reign with Christ over all creation for all eternity.” Thus each believer in Christ is being renewed in the image of God to again know, love and serve Him.

The Christian’s Similar Office

Knowing Christ as his Prophet, each Christian is also called to be a prophet to “confess Christ before men.” Our Lord, “the light of the world” (John 8:12), also tells His followers, “You are the light of the world” (Luke 5:14). At the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost the Apostle Peter had to explain, “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy’” (Acts 2:16, 17). Each Christian is called to be God’s prophet in this world. That does not mean to be a prophet in the popular sense of predicting the future, but in the broader, more basic sense of “speaking for God.” Since Pentecost this is not the role of only a few exceptional people, but the “office” of each believer. Each Christian, reconciled to God to live with Him as His child, is now called to serve Him as His priest. We become, as the Apostle Peter wrote, “a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5, 9). Similarly, the believer is saved to “live and reign with Christ” as king, called to share in the labors, battles and triumphs of His kingdom. Christ “loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father” (Rev. 1:6; cf. 5:10). “You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.”

What we need to stress in all this is that these things are written not only about a few leaders or people in special positions, but about every Christian. This is what every believer in Christ is called to become. Whether you spend your days in a shop or office, school or house, or on a farm, whether you are a student, laborer or retiree, this is what Christ saves you to be. This is the too generally forgotten “office of the believer,” our Lord’s “calling” to become a prophet, priest, and king for and with Him.

God’s “Calling ”

Georgia Harkness in her book john Calvin, the Man and His Ethics, following Max Weber, pointed out that in the Reformation, “calling” (Latin “vocation”) began to be used “in the sense of a life-task,” stating that this was “a new concept-the religious significance of one’s daily task.” She observed further that Calvin went beyond Luther in saying that one must not serve God only in his vocation but also by his vocation (pp. 181, 182). Later she quoted Calvin’s comments that “Every individual’s line of life, therefore, is as it were, a post assigned him by the Lord.” Consequently, “there will be no occupation so mean and sordid (provided we follow our vocation) as not to appear truly respectable, and be deemed highly important in the sight of God” (p. 211).

This double use of “calling” in the sense of the Lord’s calling “to a godly life” and to an occupation is not really new. It is really a return to and application of what the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 7:17–24, “Let each one remain in the same calling in which he was called . . . .” The “calling” of the Lord to salvation through faith in Him becomes for every believer a call to His service as his daily business. We must be awakened to realize that the call of each believer to be the Lord’s prophet, priest and king elevates him or her to such a position that it makes other differences in position or circumstances relatively unimportant. “Were you called while a slave? Do not be concerned about it, but if you can be made free, rather use it. For he who is called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord’s freedman. Likewise he who is called while free is Christ’s slave. You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men.” Thus every Christian’s role and work is recognized as God’s “calling,” and we are admonished. “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men; knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve” (Col. 3:23, 24).

Let us give this often overlooked “high calling” of each believer in Christ some further attention in coming articles, considering its place in the church, in Christian missions and in our duties in the world.