Day Four: Our God Loves to Work

Work is not part of the curse. It preceded sin and the fall of man, and Jesus taught that work is eternal. Heaven is no retirement village in the sky; it is where God’s work will be done more efficiently because sin is gone. Like removing sand from the gears of a trans­mission, everything runs more smoothly.

God first reveals Himself in Genesis as a Creator, Worker, and Entrepreneur. The Greek word used in John 5, ergazomai, means “to toil; be engaged with; minister about.” The earth will pass away and be transformed, but the created cosmos which encompasses it will eternally be tended by Almighty & Family. The working nature of God goes into the next age. In Revelation, we see the church coming down to her earthly abode out of the heavens, with Christ in her center, ruling over and from the earth. The promise of a work-free heaven is heresy and reveals a lack of biblical scholarship and knowledge of God.

Work is the incarnation of my intangible soul into God’s universe; it allows the inside of me to be revealed to the outside world. Who do you suppose sees the “real you” most clearly—your pastor who sees you a few hours per week on your best behavior or your boss who sees you eight hours per day when you’re feeling good, bad, or ugly? Suffice it to say, work reveals your soul.

Our labor reflects our motives, attitudes, and goals. In fact, economics is much more about people’s souls than the anal­ysis of currency or stock market trends which measure results more than causes. Ideas have consequences, and spiritual values show up quickly in our labor. Of all the world’s major religions, only Christianity has a theology of labor. Why? Because work is a holy, everlasting calling, and God loves to work. Christians commonly fall prey to the idea that their work in the world is carnal. We must strike a deathblow to the second-class view of work. God loves and honors tradesmen and business professionals just as much as those who earn their living in ministry!

In Jesus’ Parable of the Laborers, he illustrates that God hates unemployment. Many of us relate to this passage from the point of view of the laborers and the “injustice” of their equal pay for unequal work. However, this is a socialist attitude that reveals more about our problem with envy than justice. The heart of the parable is the landowner’s deep agitation over those standing idle in the marketplace. Concern over profit or the fruit of his personal vineyard is never mentioned; rather, his supreme concern is unhired lives—men and women “rotting” in life.

God hates to see people without a job. Our modern solution is to hand out welfare, but paying someone not to work robs their dignity and damages their soul. God the work-lover sees the tragedy of unused gifts and a system that creates dependency and helplessness instead of aid. Our culture has lost its work ethic—the root of economic productivity of the industrialized world. Many view work as a curse, with getting to the weekend and obtaining material things the goal of their labor. Revival of the biblical work ethic is a key to economic turnaround, and fundamental change will not happen until the church repents and begins to view work as a blessed calling.

Thought of the Day: Work is a holy, everlasting calling.