Reuniting Daily Work and Good Deeds
The Following is the Script for this Video:
When you think of a doing a “good deed,” what springs to mind? Maybe helping an elderly person off the bus? Or planting a tree? Or putting back a stray grocery cart?
These three are samples of the good-deed suggestions offered on a host of websites. One site offers “52 Good Deeds to Do Every Week.” Another nearly doubles that with “100 Random Acts of Kindness and Good Deeds You Can Do Today.” Not to be outdone, yet another site presents “200 Tiny Good Deeds that Add Up to Big Change in the World.”
Such lists provide many useful ideas. But judging by what they suggest, “good deeds” apparently refers only to those acts of kindness we do “off the clock” on evenings and weekends. What people do during working hours is missing from the good-deed lists on these websites.
But if helping an elderly person off the bus is a good deed, isn’t the work of driving the bus also a good deed? If pushing a stray grocery cart is a good deed, isn’t the store owner’s work of providing carts also a good deed? And if planting a tree is a good deed, isn’t the work of growing the seedling in the tree nursery also a good deed?
All this prompts two questions. First, how did good deeds get separated from work? And second, why does splitting good deeds from work matter?
In the 1500s, Martin Luther made it clear that salvation is a gift of God received through faith—not by our good works, no matter how good they may seem to be. Of course, Luther also held that good works result from salvation. But since then, the terms “works” and good works” have seemed dangerous to many Christians. One pastor wrote, “If you want to make an evangelical nervous, mention the concept of good works.” Using the term “good deeds” instead avoids the risk of others thinking we are saved by works.
Could those negative overtones of “good works” help explain a difference between the King James and New International translations? In many places, the King James Translation, translated in 1611, reads “good works.” In those same places the NIV, translated around 400 years later, reads “good deeds.” Consider just five brief examples.
Matthew 5:16:
King James: Likewise also the good works of some are manifest beforehand; and they that are otherwise cannot be hid.
New International: Good deeds are obvious, and even those that are not cannot remain hidden forever.I Tim. 6:17-18:
King James: Charge them that are rich in this world . . . that they do good, that they be rich in good works.
New International: Command those who are rich in this present to do good . . . to be rich in good deeds.Heb. 10:24:
King James: And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works.
New International: And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.I Pet. 2:12:
King James: Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that . . . they may by your good works glorify God.
New International: Live such good lives among the pagans that . . . they may see your good deeds and glorify God.
In all five examples, where the NIV says “deeds,” it is translating the Greek word, ergon. Ergon, however, is not limited to off-the-clock “good deeds.” It covers a whole range of actions: work, labor, task, deed, and so on. Is it possible, then, that the bad PR surrounding “good works” helps explain why some translators since the Reformation have preferred “good deeds”?
I wonder, too, if the split between good work and good deeds may have come from the idea that paid work cannot be a good deed. Let’s say that after you’ve done some good work, someone compensates you for it. Does it count as a good deed? No, some might say, because good deeds are done from the heart, not for pay. Thus, work done for a wage or salary disqualifies it as a good deed.
Now let’s explore that second question: Why does splitting good deeds from work matter? Suppose we see “good deeds” only as things done during off-work hours. That would mean, then, that all our at-work hours—typically 90,000 during a lifetime—can seem spiritually empty. Doing good through our work, loses meaning. Thinking this way can demotivate us for our daily work. And that matters!
Yet Jesus wants us to know that he rewards both good deeds and good work. Giving a thirsty person a drink would usually be considered a “good deed.” Jesus promises a reward for that: “Anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly not lose their reward.”
And the promise of reward also applies to the work Christians do. Paul, in explaining how Ephesian slaves are to follow Jesus in their daily work, says: “The Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do.” And to Colossian slaves he says something similar: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.”
In the beginning, God made us in his image so that we could do the good work/good deed of managing and caring for his earth. When eating the forbidden fruit allowed sin to barge in, it shackled our ability to do that good work. God, though, did not give up on us.
In Christ he made us into new creations. As Eph. 2:10 says so plainly: “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works.” Again, that word in Greek is ergon.
So all this matters because putting good deeds and our daily work into separate categories tears apart what Scripture joins together. Understanding ergon reunites good work and good deeds. In Christ, our good deeds are good work. And our good work overflows with good deeds. They are not the means into our salvation, but the outflow from it.
The writer of Hebrews urges us to “consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good ergon. That means all those God-pleasing, others-serving, actions, whether on the clock or not.
Chapter Fourteen:
CLOSE THE DIVIDE
The daily work/good deeds divide appears to be an offshoot of the sacred/secular divide.
