However that may be, let each of you lead the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God called you. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision.
In 1 Corinthians 7, the Apostle Paul uses the language of calling in an unusual way. “Our calling,” according to Paul, refers to the occasion in which we first put our faith in Jesus Christ. Where some of us might talk about “becoming a Christian” or “accepting Jesus into our hearts,” Paul talked about God calling us. This reminds us that, when it comes to faith, we aren’t the initiators, but the responders. Moreover, it underscores the fact that all Christians have experienced the call of God in their lives.
I grew up in a Christian tradition that emphasized “accepting Jesus into your heart.” That was our way of talking about the first time we received God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. It was, some might say, the moment of our conversion. So, in July 1979, when I went forward at Calvary Chapel West Covina, that’s the time I “accepted Jesus into my heart.”
The Apostle Paul uses different language to refer to that experience of saying “yes” to the gospel for the first time. We find an example of this usage in 1 Corinthians 7:17, though the NRSV translation makes it difficult to see. This translation reads, “[L]et each of you lead the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God called you.” It’s possible to understand the Greek original of this verse in that way. But a more literal and, I believe, more accurate translation is found in the Common English Bible, “[E]ach person should live the kind of life that the Lord assigned when he called each one” (7:17, CEB). Whereas the NRSV has God calling us to a distinctive life, the CEB sees calling as God’s act of bringing us to faith in Christ in the midst of our distinctive life.
We see this worked out in 1 Corinthians 7:18. There, Paul asks, “Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised?” That is an accurate rendering of the sense of the Greek, which reads literally, “Was anyone called, having been circumcised?” In other words, calling refers in this case to God’s action of summoning a person to faith in Christ through the gospel. Whereas I might say that I accepted Jesus into my heart in July 1979, Paul would say that was the time of my calling or even just “my calling.”
Why is this important? There are many reasons. I’d like to mention two here.
First, thinking about our experience of coming to faith in Christ as God’s calling us reminds us that we are responding to God not initiating a relationship with God. From one perspective, on a hot summer evening in West Covina, I decided to follow Jesus. Yet, from another perspective, I was not so much deciding as responding to God’s call. The initiative was God’s as he called me through the preaching of Raul Ries and through the internal stirrings of the Holy Spirit.
Second, when we recognize that our conversion was an experience of calling, this underscores the fact that all Christians are called by God, not just those with particular callings to various kinds of church and missionary work. When you felt drawn to “accept Jesus into your heart,” you were in fact hearing and responding to the call of God on your life. God was calling you into a relationship with him and into a life of sharing in his work in the world.
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