Our Work as Obedience
Work. Today, many are dodging it.
Mike Rowe, the “Dirty Jobs” guy, says, “Before the pandemic, there were four million fewer open jobs than there are right now. And now we have four million fewer people in the workforce than we did two years ago.” Economist Nicolas Eberstadt, in his updated book, Men Without Work, explains, “We’re witnessing a new flight from work in modern America.” He says seven million American men between 25 and 54 are “neither working nor looking for work.” This hardly fits God’s design.
As I pointed out In the previous blog, the exodus from work opens a door for churches. In that blog, I briefly described seven Kingdom-of-God reasons for working. This article will expand on the first reason: God tells us to work. We work to obey him.
Obedience Not Legalism
The word “obey” makes some Christians uncomfortable. To them, orders, directives, and mandates smack of legalism. After all, obedience is what dogs and slaves must do when their masters command them. But what if we were to think of God’s orders as signposts toward the very activities we were designed to do? Any command from the true God is good. So what if his orders point the way for us to express who we really are as beings made in his image? In that case, obedience would be a mark of fulfillment and freedom.
God’s commands serve us as rails serve a train. Remove those rails and the train goes nowhere. Rails give the locomotive and its cars direction and set them free to fulfill the purpose they were made for.
What purpose did God build into us from the outset? Genesis 1 permits us listen in on that planning meeting in heaven: “Let us make mankind in our image . . . so that they may . . . .” How would many of us finish that sentence? Some might say, “so that they may worship.” Others might answer, “so that they may spend eternity in heaven.”
But God completes the sentence another way. He says, “so that they may rule . . . .” (Gen. 1:26). And two verses later, God tells our foreparents to “Fill the earth and govern it” (28, NLT). Ruling and governing (dictionaries define one term by using the other) get carried out through working—putting our wills and minds and bodies into the chores of overseeing what belongs to God. So when God commands, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work” (Ex. 20:9), obeying is simply living out what he created us to be and to do.
How does our ruling/governing role translate into our working lives? For starters, we need to think beyond the work of kings, presidents, and dictators. Ruling includes managing, controlling, leading, directing, influencing, deciding, overseeing, taking responsibility for, and so on.
For example, take the work of architects. They apply their extensive knowledge of materials, space, light, and human needs to those places we live, work, and play in. They decide how to make buildings safe in earthquakes. They control whether a door opens in or out—a crucial choice if people need to flee an office building should it catch fire. They oversee the application of building codes designed to protect human life. They collaborate with many others, exercising much influence over the progress of mechanical, structural, electrical, and interior design. In short, their work involves ruling or governing how buildings are structured here on God’s earth.
Work Command Not Obsolete
Is the command to work found only in Old Testament law? Hardly. It echoes throughout the New Testament. In the following passages, work is not optional for Christ-followers. I have bold-faced the words that emphasize work as imperative:
“Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need” (Eph. 4:28).
“You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders . . .” (I Thess. 4:11-12).
“For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat’” (II Thess. 3:10). That’s command language, making work a matter of obedience.
“Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good, in order to provide for urgent needs and not live unproductive lives” (Titus 3:14).
Paul, Jesus’ hand-picked messenger to the Gentiles, worked hard in the manufacturing business. He reminded the Thessalonian Christians that he worked both day and night shifts. He used words like “laboring” and “toiling” to describe his work of stitching tents together. And he revealed one of his motives behind all his hard work: “to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate” (II Thess. 3:9). Setting an example is not exactly issuing a command, but it does reflect Paul’s certainty that God expects Christians to work.
Working Out of Faith
Working to obey God’s command does not have to spring from legalism or self-effort. In his praying for the Thessalonian believers, Paul remembered their “work produced by faith” and their “labor prompted by love” (I Thess. 1:3). In other words, their work and labor flowed out of their faith in Christ and love for him. But even among the Thessalonians—as in the U.S. today—some were apparently shirking their work. Four times in his two letters to the Thessalonian Christians, Paul uses the word “idle” in dealing with those who had given up on working.
God’s command to work reminds us what it means to be human. He made us to work. Yes, we are to do many other things as well, but working lies at the core of who we are.
“This is love for God: to keep his commands” (I Jn. 5:3).
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GIFT IDEA
A timely Christmas gift for that young person who is asking: “Why work?”
