Image God Through Your WorkSample

Even though Eve and Adam received the mandate to work in, care for, and steward God’s creation, they did not remain obedient. Adam and Eve chose to disobey God’s command by eating what they were commanded not to eat. They decided to skip over the work they needed to do to become more like their Father, “knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5, emphasis added). But notice this, when the Lord pronounced judgments after their sin, the place where that judgment fell was primarily in the area of the work they had been given. They lost the painless blessing of work. They lost the easy fruitfulness that had been built into creation. The woman would experience pain in her labor, both in childbirth and also in her relationships with her children and her husband. The man’s work would be cursed, and his labor would be painful too. Instead of the earth producing fruit, it would produce “thorns and thistles” (Gen. 3:18). And the fruit it produced would now be born begrudgingly, only after significant sweat and pain (Gen. 3:19). Romans 8:19 tells us that the creation itself is also under the curse and is waiting like us to be set free from its “bondage to decay.” In fact, it’s even “groaning together with labor pains” (Rom. 8:20–23).

This terrible curse continues even to this day. We see it when our computers crash and when weeds grow in our fields. We see it when we invest in machines meant to lessen our workload, such as washing machines or dishwashers, only to have them overflow and flood our homes. We see it when our marriages fall apart or when our children walk away from us. We see it when the business we’ve labored to build goes up in smoke or is stolen from us by those we trusted. Work is not what it once was. Every part of our labor is tinged with sorrow and frustration. We’re groaning while we wait for the resurrection of our bodies, this earth, and our work here.

Our experience with work today is not as it was designed to be. We sigh as we feel the weight of sin’s curse. We know that no matter how hard we labor, in many ways, our work is futile. It won’t last or turn out as we plan, but the good news is that this bleak picture isn’t the final one. We can turn our eyes in hope to the One who makes all things new.