The Theology of Work
When I was 10 years old my dad came home from work one day and asked: “Jonny do you want to go to a Bible conference with me in Milwaukee?” He promised that if I drove to the conference with him he would buy me a pack of basketball trading cards. We were living in Chicago at the time, so I did some quick math: “Three hours there…three hours back…six hours in the car for a $2 pack of cards…no brainer!” But much to my surprise, my dad wasn't taking me to a Bible conference but to the Los Angeles Laker game against the Milwaukee Bucks.
After the game, we went into the Laker locker room and met Shaquille O’Neal and the rest of the Laker team. If you knew 10-year-old Jonny, this was the greatest day of my life. A gift I will never forget.
But the greatest gift my dad gave to me wasn't a Laker game experience or any single object or event, for that matter, but something else entirely. The greatest gift my dad gave me was a lesson learned over many years - that being a Biblical work ethic.
We live in a country that is progressing towards socialism but this of course is not how our country was founded. Our country was founded upon something that was known as the protestant work ethic. The earliest settlers of our country were known not only for their religious fervor, but for their diligent labor. They were known for being hard workers.
Sadly, this conviction has been largely abandoned today not only by those outside the church, but by those within. Furthermore, in Christian circles today there seems to be an overemphasis on the good, necessary, and Biblical subjects of rest and sabbath at the expense of providing a Biblical worldview of work. I hear many millennials and Gen Z’rs asking me if I have read the recent books on rest, sabbath, shalom, and busyness, but am rarely asked: “Jonny, have you read this new book on the God honoring and human dignifying theme of work?”
Now to be fair, many people today find themselves in opposite gutters along the highway of Biblical work; those gutters being laziness and idleness on the one side and workaholism on the other. Some people spend their lives chasing meeting after meeting or shift after shift and others spend their lives binging show after show, or scrolling reel after reel on their phones.
Side note in this regard: The average person reading this article scrolls their smartphone and peruses Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime, or Peacock a total of 7 hours a day. That's over 2,500 hours a year, which means that over the next 4 years, you’ll spend one year looking at a screen. Assuming you reach the average U.S. life expectancy of 78, the average person in this room will spend 15 of those years watching television. There is indeed a reality, where we are distracting ourselves into spiritual oblivion. Many people want to change the world for Christ, few have the self-control to get off their phones.
In this article, I want to provide a brief theology of work. If you are to live faithfully for Christ while you are here on earth, you must have a biblical framework for what you will spend the majority of your life doing, that being, work.
1: Works Designer
I love the gospel of Mark. One of the unique things about Mark’s gospel is that he uses a specific word 41 times throughout his writing. That word is εὐθύς (euthus). This word appears a total of 10 other times throughout the rest of the New Testament, but 41 times in Mark’s gospel alone.
εὐθύς means immediately or right away. In the first chapter alone, Mark uses the word “immediately” to describe what Jesus was doing 11x.
What's the significance there?
Mark wants you to understand something. Jesus wasn’t waltzing through life, He was working. He was on a mission and was on a divine timetable.
In John 9:4 Jesus says: “I must work the works of My Father.
In John 4:34 Jesus says: “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.”
Jesus will say exactly this in John 5:17, “My Father is working still and I am working.”
When we talk about work, we must understand fundamentally that the God who made us is a worker. Jesus was a teacher for three years, but he was a carpenter for 20. His hands were not soft, they were calloused, splintered, and hardened by labor. Jesus, in whom all the fullness of deity dwells, represents to us that God is not relaxed, He is working.
How does God work?
God The Father worked when He created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1). He works right now as He sustains the universe by the word of his power (Heb. 1:3). He works as He providentially channels the hearts of kings and kingdoms to accomplish His perfect plan for His glory and our good (Prov. 21:1, Romans 8:28). He works as He answers prayer and accomplishes redemption (Mark 11:24, Ephesians 1:3-7).
God The Son is a worker because John 1 says: “all things were made by him and apart from him nothing has been made that is made.” Jesus was working as the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament. In His incarnation, Jesus worked as a carpenter. In His ministry, He worked as a teacher and a healer. After His ascension, He continues to work as He prepares a place for you in glory.
God The Spirit is a worker. The Spirit hovered over the waters in creation (Gen 1:2). He is transforming hardened hearts (Ezek. 36:26). He is illuminating our minds to scripture (Psalm 119:18). He is interceding for us with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26-27).
You will not understand the nature of God until you understand that He is a worker, not in the sense where He is expending energy (because He has no body), but in the sense where God is constantly upholding, sustaining, and orchestrating nations, kingdoms, and individuals to accomplish His perfect plan.
God is not relaxed, He is working.
2: Work’s Design - Genesis 1-2
Before the forbidden fruit, before the serpent, and before “Cain crushed Abel with the leg of a table” (as my grandpa used to say), men and women were placed in a garden and the first instruction given to them by God was what? “Be fruitful and multiply.” Every successive imperative in Genesis 1:28 is going to flow out of this. They’re to“be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth,” “subdue” the earth, and then “have dominion” over all the animals. God placed Adam and Eve in the garden to be His image bearers, to represent who He was and the immediate instruction He provides is that they are to work. God did not place Adam and Eve on a beach, He placed them in a garden.
The phrase “let them rule over” is used 5x and points to the significance of the assignment that was given by the Creator. God assigns work before the fall and original sin. This mandate has never been withdrawn nor need to be repeated, it is still a part of God’s will for our life.
From the opening pages of Scripture, we see that work is a good thing given by a good God. Therefore, idleness is a sin, laziness is ungodly, and labor is noble and godly. Labor is part of our dignity as humans! Only men write symphonies and shoot movies. Only men and women can build buildings, assemble automobiles, and bake pizzas (thank the Lord for pizza am I right?). (1)
This is part of the nobility of being a man and this is what it means to be an image bearer of a Creator God. Whenever we create something new we are imitating God's creativity, God’s wisdom, skill, strength, and intelligence. The curiosity that spawns the creation of a new instrument, carved from the wood of a tree with strings from an animal gut (yes animal gut), represents the creative power and personality of the God who made us. Whether that is paper from a tree or laptop screens from sand, when we work and create we are imitating God’s creative activity. Of course, God creates out of nothing and we create out of existing matter. (2)
Animals can do some work. Dogs can help you hunt or even grab you a snack from the fridge, oxen can help you plow, horses can pull carriages and beavers can build dams. But do you know what a beaver cannot do? Make a cell phone. Why? Because they are not made in the image of God. You are.
God has made you to work and He tells you to work. This alone provides your work with dignity and it doesn’t matter whether you’re a surgeon or a server at a restaurant. Furthermore, when you employ the skill, gifting, and intelligence God has given to you, you allow God to not only provide for your own needs through your job but also to bless others while you do it. When the farmer grows, when the builder builds, and when the sales guy sells, God is not only providing for your personal needs, but also blessing others through your work! (3)
“There is no work better than another to please God: to pour water, to wash dishes, to be a souter [cobbler], or an apostle, all is one; to wash dishes and to preach is all one, as touching tho deed, to please God.”
3: Work’s Distortion - Genesis 3
As previously noted, The Fall of man did not introduce work, it changed its nature. God’s image bearers were workers before The Fall and they will be workers after God makes everything new. But now, since man is driven East of Eden and consequently no longer in the direct presence of God, we don’t enjoy all the blessings that God had brought to the garden. Work is now done by the sweat of our brow. There is now a difficulty for God’s people to work in God’s world. Thorns and thistles (literal and figurative), speed bumps, and challenges are now thrown into the workplace, which makes the labor of our lives challenging.
After The Fall, God frustrates what He created us to do. Women are going to have pain in childbearing and men are going to experience pain and difficulty in their toil. No longer will the earth or our bodies cooperate with us.
This makes work hard.
4: Work’s New Dimension
So how do we bring God glory now? How do we work in a post-fall, post-curse environment?
This is a question that matters. Whether you are a businessman or housewife, you will stand before God and be judged on whether or not you have done the work assigned for us to do. Can we really say that we belong wholly to God if we don’t honor him with our effort and labor 40 hours a week?
It also must be understood that our work is more than just a place to win people to Christ, our labor itself presents the opportunity of honoring God. People pray for the team before they embark on a mission trip, and for the pastor before he preaches, but why not pray for the baker on his way to bake? Or the salesman on his way to sell? In God’s eyes, there is no distinction.
I want to look at four brief elements of how the Christian is to work: (5)
We Glorify God By Working With Enthusiasm:
Paul says in Colossians 3:23: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” Solomon, nearly 1000 years before had stated something similar in Ecclesiastes 9:10: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might…”
The Christian is to work with a level of gusto.
A reporter once asked the legendary conductor of the New York Philharmonic Leonard Bernstein what was the most difficult instrument to play. Bernstein’s response was insightful and surprising: "Second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find one who plays second violin with as much enthusiasm . . . now that's a problem. And yet if no one plays second, we have no harmony."
It’s easier to work hard when we have positions of prominence, but the Scripture speaks to those who live their lives behind the scenes as well. Do you work at a restaurant? Are you a trash man? Lawyer? Doctor? Work with enthusiasm!
We Glorify God By Working With Enjoyment:
Ecclesiastes 5:18 - “Here is what I have seen to be good and fitting: to eat, to drink and enjoy oneself in all one’s labor in which he toils under the sun.”
Work is a privilege God extends to us for our own enjoyment. Work can and should be fulfilling because it is part of the dignity of man. However, I’ve often heard the axiom "enjoy what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life.” I always pause when I hear this familiar phrase because if you’re looking for a job that will never feel like work I’m afraid you’re going to need to ask Elon Musk to transport you to another planet. Every job has its thorns.
So then how can we enjoy our work, regardless of our job?
Solomon, after detailing that work is given to us for our enjoyment says: “The conclusion when all has been said is fear God and keep His commandments.” (6) The key that unlocks the door to fulfillment is the fear of God because as we grow in our fear of God, we grow in our desire to imitate Him in our work and bless our fellow image-bearers through our work! This lofty view of work fosters a spirit of enjoyment amidst the challenges of working in a fallen world.
We Glorify God By Working With Excellence:
Work that is truly Christian is work well done. Genesis 1 describes God’s commitment to excellence when it says, “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31).
Christians ought to be the best workers wherever they are. They ought to have the best attitude, the most integrity, and the greatest degree of dependability. Sadly, statistically, there is little difference in the work ethics of Christians and non-Christians. I know Christian business owners who steer clear of hiring Christians because they waltz into the workplace less motivated and more entitled than others. How could this possibly be?
Sloppy work represents spiritual dysfunction. Work is not only a matter of obedience to God, but also functions as the front door to our Christian testimony. If the watching world thinks Christians are lazy and slack in their work, what does that tell them about the God Christians serve?
Is your job difficult? Does it seem menial? Is it the same thing day after day? The Lord tells you to do your work with excellence, to work with joy, and to work as a way to worship Him.
Have you been passed over for a reward of recognition? Then continue to work with excellence and look forward to the reward to come, not from your boss, but from the Lord of all creation!
We Glorify God By Working With Integrity:
“Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eyeservice, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free.”
This instruction Paul gives assumes that there will always be a lingering temptation to work for the wrong reasons and for the pleasing of the wrong people. But the believer works as if God’s eye is always upon them. Paul begs us to consider the thought of someone who spends all day staring at Facebook and then pretends to work hard the moment their boss rolls around the corner. Your boss might be fooled for a while, but God is not. Christians honor God when they work as if God is always watching.(7)
Christians are to work with honesty, transparency, truthfulness, and integrity. This separates them from the unsaved world and represents that we understand who we ultimately work for.
You don’t ultimately work for your manager, your immediate boss, or even the CEO. Every boss and every CEO is middle management in view of the boss of all creation! Your work is not ultimately done before the eyes of your peers, supervisors, or managers, but before the eyes of your Creator.
Your work matters to God. Your attitude while you work matters to God. You are a creature created by a Creator who is Himself a worker and you model Him as you work with enthusiasm, enjoyment, excellence, and integrity.
References
Tim Killer and Wayne Grudem discuss this in greater detail in their respective content on this subject. In his book “Business for the Glory of God,” Grudem details that one of the privileges of being made in the image of God is that humans, unlike animals, are able to imitate their creator by employing their own creativity.
In his book “Every Good Endeavour,” Tim Keller goes into greater detail on this very idea.
The reformers spoke often about this reality and Keller comments further along this very idea.
Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures
R. Kent Hughes discusses some of these similar principles in his outstanding book: “Disciplines of a Godly Man.”
Ecclesiastes 12:13
What’s fascinating is that Paul isn't writing to CEO’s in corner offices but many slaves under the thumb of potentially harsh masters and yet, the instruction of Scripture is all the same.
