We want to have a biblical view of work, because we want to have a biblical view of everything, since Paul commands us to be transformed by the renewing of our mind and especially because our everyday work-life is so central to our very existence. But, understanding Christ’s call to the workplace is even more important when we realize how hard, exhausting, frustrating, and disappointing work can be even when we are in a job we love. And many of us don’t love our jobs, perhaps enjoying them once in a while, but often just tolerating them. Most of us could use a heavy dose of motivation in our work lives. So, let’s take a biblical look at our calling to the workplace.
The story is told about a man walking past a construction site and seeing three men hauling sand in wheelbarrows across the property to where it was being mixed with cement to form mortar. The interviewer asked the first man, “What are you doing? He answered, “What do you think I am doing? I’m moving the sand from this pile to that pile over there. About the time I’m done, they will tell me to move it somewhere else.” The interviewer asked the second man, “What are you doing?” He answered, “What do you think I am doing? I am earning a living to take care of my family. A man has to put food on the table some way.” The interviewer moved on to the third man and asked, “What are you doing?” He answered, “I am building a cathedral. You should see the plans for this. They are spectacular. This will undoubtedly be the most beautiful building in our town.” Three men doing the same task. Now who do you think was the most motivated at his job?
We are made so that seeing the purpose behind our work MATTERS. It matters enormously, when it comes to our motivation—especially during the hard times. For some reason, the Bible-believing church keeps losing its understanding of our calling from our Lord to the workplace.
FOUR BIBLICAL TRUTHS ABOUT OUR CALLING TO BE WORKERS
A. Our work is what we were created FOR. The very Bible, itself begins with a story about a WORKER—God himself. Not only is God’s act of creation described in Genesis 2:2-3 as work, his cosmos invention is presented to us in the context of a regular workweek of seven days. Tim Keller, writes, “This view of work—connected with divine, orderly creation and human purpose—is distinct among the great faiths and belief systems of the world.” For instance, The Geek and Roman attitude towards work were shaped by Aristotle, who taught that it was demoralizing and demeaning to work with your hands or work for pay. Aristotle set “working” in opposition to “the life of contemplation,” which he argued was the happiest possible life. As a result, Greek and Roman society was organized so that a few could enjoy the blessings of leisure, while work was viewed as demeaning and left to those in lower socio-economic positions and to slaves.
How contrary to the Biblical view that, in the beginning, God worked. Work was not something beneath God, or the result of a curse. To the contrary God worked for the sheer joy of it and afterwards stood back to admire his work. In Genesis 1:31 we read, And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. Not only did God work in the creation process, he is still working today. Jesus said of the Father, My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working (John 5:17).
So, God the Worker is the one who creates man—in his own image—to be a worker. We read in Gen 1:27-28 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them;male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Adam and Eve are given specific work to do because they are made in God’s image. This phrase, in his image, has a cultural background to it in the Ancient Near East, where the rulers set up statues of themselves in places where they claimed the right to exercise authority. The image came to represent the ruler himself, as a symbol of his presence and authority. Some rulers, themselves, claimed to be “images of God,” i.e. ruling on behalf of God himself. As the image-bearers of God, we are called to be sub-rulers, to exercise dominion for God. Now we see that the description of God’s work of creation—a process by which God created the earth over time—is a pattern for the WORK of human beings—his image bearers. As one scholar says:
We are called to stand in for God here in the world, exercising stewardship over the rest of creation in his place as vice-regents. We share in doing the things that God has done in creation—bringing order out of chaos, creatively building a civilization out of the material of physical and human nature, caring for all that God has made. This is a major part of what we were created to be (Every Good Endeaver, Tim Keller).
All work has dignity because the material creation we are called to develop and care for is good; it is a mirror of God’s glory. But also, because we were created like God to be workers. Christians value all work, no matter how menial, because they worship at God who, at his very core is a worker. They want to be like him. Thus, Christianity eliminates the status associated with various types of work. Phillip Jensen makes an interesting observation about the incarnation. He asks,
If God came into the world, what would he be like? For the ancient Greeks, he might have been a philosopher king. The ancient Romans might have looked for just a noble statesman. But how does the God of the Hebrews come into the world? As a carpenter.
We are created to image God the Worker
B. Our second observation about our call to the workplace is this: Through our vocation we serve God and are used by God to care for his creation. Martin Luther, in his Large Catechism, when discussing the petition in the Lord’s prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” writes,
When you pray for ‘daily bread’ you are praying for everything that contributes to your having and enjoying your daily bread….You must open up your mind and expand your thinking, so that it reaches not only as far as the flour bin and baking oven, but also over the broad fields, the farmlands, the entire country that produces, processes, and conveys to us our daily bread.
Psalm 145:15 praises God saying, The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. But how does God feed us? Through the farmer, the fertilizer manufacturers, the farm equipment producer, the truckers, the marketers, computer programmers, retailers and all the others who contribute to bring us food. Luther writes, “God could easily give you grain and fruit without your plowing and planting, but he does not want to do so.” Our vocation is what God uses to care for his creation.
This truth becomes even more apparent in I Corinth 7, where our vocation is identified by Paul as our calling from God. Here, Paul is counseling non-Christians that when they come to faith, they do not need to change what they are doing in life—their marital status, job, or station in life. He says, let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. Paul takes two theologically loaded terms and uses them to describe the call to everyday work. In other texts, Paul has talked about God calling people into a saving relationship with him and assigning them spiritual gifts to do ministry and build up the Body of Christ. But here, Paul uses these same terms not to describe spiritual ministries but to portray common social economic tasks—what we might call secular work, naming them God’s callings and assignments.
The parallel seems clear. Just as God equips Christians with gifts for building up the community of Christ, so he also equips all people with talents and gifts for various kinds of work, for the purpose of building up the human community. The Bible teaches us to view work as a calling from God, Himself, to serve others, helping them to flourish through utilizing our gifts and talents. Luther and the other Reformers argued passionately that this text refutes the idea that the call to ministry, which had bred a two-tiered understanding of spirituality, is any more sacred a calling than the call to secular work. To this day some Christians do not understand the importance to God of developing his creation. Exalting the spiritual world over the physical world, and denying the cultural mandate, they still believe that the call to ministry is more important than the call to secular work. Don’t yield to this two-tiered fallacy! Your calling from God to secular work matters eternally!
C. The third truth, we want to examine about our calling to be workers is this: Our Work is the way God wants his creation’s potential to be realized. Let’s return to the Genesis 1:28 text for a moment: Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground (Gen 1:28). This is the command to spread the culture of the garden over planet earth. It has been called the cultural mandate.
It is worth noting that the words of verse 28, “fill the earth,” are more than just a repetition of the command to procreate. When creating the plants and animals, the words God usually used were, “let them multiply.” Human beings filling the earth means something far more than plants and animals filling the earth. It means civilization, not just procreation. God doesn’t seem to just be saying, “I want more members of the human species populating the earth.” He wants the world to be filled with a human society shaped by his image bearers. He could have just created a populated earth, but he didn’t. He invested us, as his image bearers with the enormous responsibility to build a culture that would be pleasing to him—to shape and rule FOR him.
The word, subdue (Gen 1:28) implies this same “shaping of the garden and its culture.” The word might be understood to refer to the idea that the forces of nature were adversarial and needed to be conquered in some way. But this command came before the fall when nature became subject to decay. Rather, the command to subdue the earth indicates that although all that God had created was good, it was still to a great degree undeveloped. God intentionally created into the world deep untapped potential for cultivation that we humans are to unlock through our labor. This pattern of DEVELOPING the material of creation was modeled by God himself in the creation process. Tim Keller writes
When God first creates the material world, he does not have it spring into being all ready-made. Rather, it is “formless” and “empty”(1:2). God then addresses these conditions progressively, during Genesis 1—through his work. He gives the world form. Where it is unshaped and undifferentiated, he distinguishes and elaborates. He takes the general and separates it into particulars, for example, “separating” sky from sea (1:17) and light from darkness (1:4)…And where things are empty, God fills them. On the first three days, he creates realms (heavens, sky and waters, earth), and on the second three days he fills each realm with inhabitants (sun, moon and stars, birds and fish, animals and humans) (Every Good Endeavor).
So, the word “subdue” indicates that even in its original unfallen form, God made the world to need work. He made it such that even he had to work for it to become what he designed it to be, to bring forth all its riches and potential.
The pattern for all work is this. We develop the potential of every facet of God’s creation in such a way that is helps the world in general and people in particular to flourish. We don’t go to work just to make a living, or just to get rich, but to advance the common good. We work to serve God who wants the potential of his creation, including human beings, to be fulfilled and enjoyed. We work for the flourishing of every part of God’s glorious creation.
D. Our fourth observation about our call to the workplace is that work is a way of loving our neighbors. Work is the form in which we make ourselves useful to others and others make themselves useful to us. Author, Lester DeKoster, illustrates how indispensable work is for human life in every culture. He asks his readers to consider the simple chair they are sitting in and asks, Could you have made it by yourself? He continues,
How would you, say, get the wood? Go and fell a tree? But only after first making the tools for that, and putting together some kind of vehicle to haul the wood, and constructing a mill to do the lumber and roads to drive on from pace to place? In short, a lifetime or two to make one chair…But now imagine that everybody quits working! What happens? Civilized life quickly melts away. Food vanishes from the shelves, gas dries up at the pumps, streets are no longer patrolled, and fires burn themselves out. Communication and transportation services end, utilities go dead. Those who survive at all are soon huddled around campfires, sleeping in caves, clothed in raw animal hides. The difference between (a wilderness) and culture is work.
This interdependence is the reason that doing our jobs well is an act of love for our neighbor. It is a real, everyday, tangible way to accomplish our mission from Christ. Dorothy Sayers lamented the lack of connection between our secular work and our Christian, over a generation ago. She asked,
How can anyone remain interested in a religion that seems to have no concern for nine tenths of his life. The church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly on Sundays. What the church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables. (Creed or Chaos).
One of the main ways for us to find satisfaction in our work, even if our jobs are not, by the world’s standards, exciting, high paying, challenging, or desirable is to remember that through them we are fulfilling the second greatest commandment, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Even though as Luther argued, secular work is objectively, inherently valuable, it may not be subjectively fulfilling unless you consciously see and understand your work as a calling to love your neighbor. Fulfilling this calling from Christ by doing your secular job well matters eternally!
For Further Thought:
1. How does God use you in your vocation to care for an aspect of his creation, i.e. for the common good?
2. In what way does your vacation help develop the potential of human beings or other parts of creation?
3. In what way do you see that fulfilling your vocational responsibilities is a way of loving your neighbor?
