A theology of work: part 3 - service

Work and the gospel

The gospel, of course, is about God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the one by whom and for whom the entire creation has been made.  He is the perfect image of God.  He is the perfect man.  In contrast to the first man, Adam, he came and perfectly ruled the creation under God – in his sinless life, in his sacrificial death, in his resurrection to glory, now at God’s right hand in heaven.  If we want to see a man perfectly ruling the world under God, Jesus is the one to whom we must look.

Significantly, there are a few places where Jesus describes his life and ministry using the category of work.  In John 4:34, for example, he says:

My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.

In John 17:4, he prays to God his Father:

I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.

This is not a new idea in the Bible.  Even in the Old Testament, God’s work in the world is not just limited to his initial work of creation, or even his ongoing work of sustaining the creation.  It includes his special work of salvation (e.g., Josh 24:31; Isa 10:12).

But the Lord Jesus comes along and draws together both threads.  His work is the perfect fulfilment of the work God had given to mankind as God’s image-bearers, to rule the world under him.  And his work is also the perfect fulfilment of the work that God has done in salvation history.  As a result, any thinking that we want to do about our work must now take place in and through him.

In terms of our big work as humanity, the work of ruling the world under God, that only happens now as we accept in faith and obedience that Jesus Christ is Lord.  If our ability to rule the world in the way God intended was broken by us stepping out from under God’s authority in sin and rebellion, it follows that the only way for it to be restored is to come back under God’s authority.  This is exactly what the gospel calls us to do, as we acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the one who rules all things.  Therefore our rule of the world now is carried out as we submit to his rule of the world, and as we seek to please him in all things and serve him in all things.

What does all that mean for our Monday to Friday work?  It means our whole approach to work is now completely transformed.  One passage that shows this very clearly is Colossians 3, where Paul gives instructions to wives and husbands (3:18-19), to children and fathers (3:20-21), and then to slaves and masters (3:22-4:1). 

Admittedly the category of household slaves is not prominent in modern Australian society, though there are similar roles in other cultures, and there are important differences between this role and the situation of work that most of us are familiar with.  Yet Paul’s instructions to slaves in 3:22-25 are clear:

Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. 

An important question worth probing with these instructions from Paul is what place they have in Colossians.  This was a group of Christians in danger of beginning to follow all sorts of human traditions and rules about how they live (e.g., 2:8-23), in part because of a belief that Christ was not sufficient.  Part of Paul’s solution is to show that Christ is totally sufficient (e.g., 2:9-15; 17).  In fact his is more than sufficient; he is absolutely supreme in all things, a truth expressed no more clearly than in the declaration of 1:15-20, that:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.  For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.  And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.  For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

In other words, here is a letter that blows our mind with this incredible teaching about Christ - about how exalted he is, and how supreme he is, and how his rule and authority over the church, and indeed over all things, is utterly without contest. 

But then we come to the back end of the book and we find all these instructions about the minutiae of daily life, and about my duties as a wife or a husband, or as a child or a father, or as slave or a master.  But how are the minutiae of my daily life, in whichever of these roles that I have, connected to the supreme Lordship of Jesus Christ in ch1?

Paul’s answer is that they are completely connected.  In fact, when we get these roles right, they will be the very expression of our submission to the supreme Lordship of Jesus Christ.  And so the slave is taught to work hard, and to obey their earthly masters.  They are to do this not only when they are being watched, as people pleasers.  But since Jesus Christ is Lord, and since he is always watching us, they are to work hard all the time, with sincerity of heart, working as to the Lord.

And this is where the teaching of the book of Proverbs fits in as well.  The book of Proverbs has got all sorts of things to say about the way that we work.  And it’s got all sorts of things to say about the dangers of sloth and idleness.  But we must remember that Proverbs does not just give us an abstract set of timeless principles to help us live a successful life.  Not it’s about life lived under the rule of the gospel, life lived in the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom.  The kind of work Proverbs directs us to is exactly the same work that Colossians directs to.

The gospel doesn’t mean that work is now to be despised.  It means that our approach to work is transformed.  In fact for most of us, work will be one of the main areas of life in which our submission to the supreme Lordship of Jesus Christ is to be expressed most consistently.  When a Christian goes to work on Monday morning, they do so as someone who fears the Lord, who loves the Lord, who serves the Lord, and obeys the Lord.  That means their motivation at work is not to please men but to please the Lord.  And so they will work hard all the time.  And they will work sincerely, and with honesty and integrity and godliness and humility and gentleness and patience.  For work is an expression of their Christian faith.

This understanding of work under the rule of the Lord Jesus makes sense of some of the other things.  In Eph 4:28, for example, Paul gives this instruction:

Let the thief no long steal, but rather let him labour, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

For some, who used to steal, their new commitment to honest hard work is the very expression of their repentance and their submission to the Lordship of Jesus.

In 1 Thess 4:11-12, Paul instructs the Thessalonians:

to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.

Here, a commitment to work is part of Christian godliness expressed before a watching world, as well as part of our learning to live independently, without relying upon others.  In 2 Thessalonians Paul says even more about this topic, showing that work keeps us busy and, therefore, godly, whereas idleness simple makes us busybodies and gossips (2 Thess 3:6-13).

So the gospel does not overturn our commitment to work.  It re-shapes it and transforms it, and makes our work an expression of our submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

And yet this same submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ introduces a tension to our work as well, for the Lordship of Jesus Christ is directed fundamentally not to this world but to the world to come.  Paul signals this, too, in Colossians 3, speaking in 3:23-24 of both eternal reward and judgment. 

In other words, the gospel teaches us that this world is set to pass away, which is why Jesus calls us to seek first the kingdom of heaven, and to store up for ourselves treasures in heaven rather than treasures on earth.  This in itself ought to be a constant rebuke to the worldliness by which we can so easily idolise our jobs or our professional lives, or the way that we can let ourselves be defined more by the work that we do than by Christ Jesus our Lord.  It ought to rebuke any tendencies in us to let our jobs feed our greed and materialism.  All of these things are a particular danger for those of us who are university trained and professionally employed, and who put the work that we do so close to the centre of how we see ourselves.

The gospel confronts all of these worldly tendencies, and it teaches us to keep living in this world, but for the world to come.  As a result, for all of us, high on our list of priorities, is a new commitment to seeing the gospel go out into whatever pockets of community we find ourselves in, including our workplace.

This actually liberates us to think in what may be a fresh way about one of the questions that often gets asked concerning Christians and work.  The way the question often gets asked is whether I should keep doing my job as a physio, accountant, teacher, engineer …, or whether I should quit my job and go into full-time financially-supported gospel ministry.  The problem with asking the question that way is it can hide the real issue.  The real issue is whether we are seeking first the kingdom of God; whether we are storing up for ourselves treasures in heaven; whether we have let the Lordship of Jesus Christ completely transform our priorities and values in life, and our sense of identity.

You can do these things as a physio, accountant, teacher, engineer …, and you can do these things in full-time financially-supported gospel ministry.  And you can not do these things as a physio, accountant, teacher, engineer …, and you can not do these things in full-time financially-supported gospel ministry.  It’s terrible that we must admit such things, but it’s true.

For all of us, the gospel should completely transform our priorities in life, including our priorities at work, so that now in everything that we do, life is to be lived ‘to the glory of God’ (which means for the salvation of many; 1 Cor 10:31-11:1), and as an expression of our submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  For all of us, that ought to produce a commitment to sharing the gospel that is willing to forsake our friendships, our reputations, our status, our popularity, our being considered as wise in the eyes of the world, even perhaps being considered for this or that promotion.  For some of us, the gospel will cause such a significant disruption to our priorities in life that we leave the secular workforce and go into full-time financially-supported gospel ministry.

But that final choice, in and of itself, is actually the small question.  The big question is about us and the Lord Jesus Christ, and whether we are seeking his kingdom first in all things, including our work.