It is probably a fictitious story, but a wife who had her husband cremated was asked if she wanted
his ashes in an urn. She said, “No. I want them put in an hour glass to set on the mantel. That lazy
rascal never did a day’s work in his life, but I’m going to keep him busy from now on.”
George Bernard Shaw said that an eternal vacation is a good working definition of hell. We
won’t stop to debate his theology, but simply accept the truth of the idea that he is conveying. Man
needs a vacation, but his greater need is for a vocation. God made man to work. The first thing God
did with Adam was to give him a job. Gen. 2:15 says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in
the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” Man started with no sin and no unemployment. Some feel
we have made a lot of progress since then since we have many people who do not have to work.
They think of work as degrading, and they consider utopia to be where there is universal
unemployment, and all you do is loft and enjoy life. The next best is to keep enough people working
to meet your needs. Like the man who said it will be some time before his leg is well enough to go
back to work. When his friend asked why that was, he replied, “Because compensation has set in.”
You hear a lot of talk among workers about how they loathe to work, and many practice what
they preach. Many talk of the day when they were retired as if they at last will be free to live. A
good number of such men are bored stiff even on vacation. There seems to be an ambivalence in men
at this point. He hates work and loves work at the same time. We know where the love of work
came from, for God made man in His image with the capacity to create and the love of doing so. The
historic Protestant viewpoint is that there is dignity in manual labor. Jesus spent the greatest portion
of His earthly life as an carpenter. When Peter said of Him that He left us an example that we should
follow His steps, he was not referring to His manual labor, but there is no reason to doubt that this
aspect of our Lord’s life also has an important lesson for our life. William Torrent wrote,
My Master was a worker with daily work to do,
And he who would be like him must be a worker too.
Then welcome honest labor, and honest labors fare,
For where there is a worker, the Master’s man is there.
Jesus not only dignified labor by His life but by His choice of disciples, for He picked them, not
from idleness, but from the labor force. He called them from their jobs. He wanted men who were
prepared to work, for He says in John 5:17, “My Father worketh heitherto, and I work.” Work was
at the very heart of God’s plan. The kingdom of God, like Eden, was to be without unemployment.
It was not His intention to call men out of darkness into light so that they could relax and do nothing,
but that they might see the need to labor in bringing others out of darkness. Jesus was a worker, and
He chose workers to be the means by which He would build His church.
The question remains of why men hate work in spite of the fact that God has ordained it, Christ
dignified it, and the church has honored it from the beginning. The answer appears to be that it is
because the world has perverted it. The world philosophy has a knack of turning good into evil. It
has created a moneytheistic society in which the almighty dollar has determined the course of
industry. Men who have studied the problem of modern industry are saying that the worker is
dissatisfied with his work life because it has lost its meaning. His work is often boring because it
seems so routine, useless and uncreative. The only motive that keeps him at it is his wages.
It has been proven that work that is meaningless is not just neutral but positively harmful to the
worker. Dostoevsky, the Russian author, has pointed this out in the House Of The Dead in which he
describes his reflection while in the prison camp in Siberia. He writes, “I have sometimes thought
that the way to crush and annihilate a human being completely would be to set him to do an
absolutely senseless and useless thing. If her were condemned to poor water from tub to another and
back again, or to pound sand in a mortar, or to carry a heap of earth backward and forward, I am
convinced that he would either commit suicide within a few days, or murder some of his fellow-suffers
in order to suffer death at once and be delivered from his moral torture, shame and
degradation.”
The guards in Hitler’s concentration camps proved his judgment to be accurate, for they kept
prisoners busy at completely meaningless work until it was so intolerable that they would run against
the high-voltage wires around the inclosure and electrocute themselves. Work without meaning is a
positive evil. Douglas Steer in his book Work And Contemplation relates a story from a labor expert
named Whiting Williams. It is a perfect illustration of how necessary meaning is to work. A squad
of day laborers were hired one morning and put to work digging holes about 3 feet deep. When it
was finished the foreman inspected it and ordered the workmen to fill it up and come to another point
and dig another hole of the same depth.
This went on for most of the morning, but then the foreman noticed the workers in a huddle.
Their spokesman came over and said, “We’re going to quit, you give us our money, you ain’t going
to make fools out of us.” The foreman was surprised, and then understanding broke over him and he
said, “Don’t you see that we are trying to find where the broken pipe is located?” “Oh,” he said, and
hurried back to the men for a word of explanation. He returned and said, “Where do you want us to
dig next?” The knowledge that what they were doing had purpose made them glad for the work.
Meaning is the key to the love of work, and lack of meaning is the cause for the hate of work.
No man can be happy who must devote half of his conscious life to a job that is trivial, harmful
or meaningless. Does Christianity have an answer for the modern worker who is becoming more and
more a victim of the impersonal industrial machine? Yes it does, for as we have said, God made man
to love work, and He has given man work to love. God calls no one to a meaningless task. He gives
work of such meaningful nature that our attitude can be like that of Winifred Holtby who prayed,
“Give me work till my life shall end, and life till my work is done.
God solution to this problem of work is the same as His solution to all human problems, and it is
the Gospel. Paul has been spelling out the truths of the Gospel and the great hope it gives to the
believer. He stresses the objective reality of the resurrection, for this is the basis on which all of life
gains ultimate meaning and purpose. If it is not true, Paul says you faith is in vain, all of life is a
deception, and there is no hope. He goes on to give evidence for the reality of the resurrection, and
what the outcome of it will be for the believer. The great hope of a meaningful eternal life with
Christ without any of the limitations of our weak and sinful bodies. We look to the future of victory
over death and hell, and over all the enemies of God. Then in the last verse he draws a practical
conclusion to all he has said, and in this verse we find a meaningful work and an adequate wage.
The Lord’s work is that work that will give life meaning regardless of how we make a living.
God does not promise to give us a great job, but He does promise to make our job great if we do His
work. The great tragedy is that the work of the Lord is limited to Sunday, and to a handful of
workers. This is not the biblical picture at all. Paul says, “Therefore, my beloved brethren.” He
was not addressing a ministerial association. He was addressing the congregation of all the people.
No where do we find that the work of the Lord is the job of the few. It is the work of everyone, and
no matter how little your talent and ability, if you are in the kingdom of God by faith in Christ, you
have a job. There is no one unemployed in the kingdom of God. If you are doing nothing for Christ,
you are doing nothing for eternity.
There is a work therapy farm called the Gould Farm near great Barrington, Mass., which is
operated by Christian people for the purpose pf aiding mental patients to regain their ability to face
society again. The method they use is to get people to do meaningful work for the good of the group.
When the patients first come they are often like the man who just sat and watched everyone else. He
felt lost and like a stranger, and he did not catch the spirit of the place. After a week of this a storm
came up and split a limb on a large tree and it endangered the main house. He was asked to give a
quick hand. He was hesitant, but because of the danger of the situation he began to work and became
engrossed in doing his share. He later said, “Why you feel that you belong as soon as you do
something for the place.” So it is in the church of Christ. You really become a part of the church
when you enter into the work of the Lord. That farm would be a total flop if the staff did all the
work, and so it is in the church.
When you see a church that is growing and meeting its goals you know it isn’t because God
loves the people in that community more than others. It is because the people have caught the vision
and everyone is abounding in the work of the Lord. They are working and witnessing. Work is the
essence of success in any field. Michael Angelo said, “If people knew how hard I worked to get my
mastery it wouldn’t seem so wonderful after all.” Alexander Hamilton said, “All of the genius I haveis merely the fruit of labor.” We could go on quoting great leaders in every field and find this same
truth. Wilfred Funk, editor and publisher said, “I have never discovered a genius who spoke of
talent, or even of inspiration, but only of brutal work.” If we want to gain the ultimate blessing of a
meaningful life, it means that we must abound in the work of the Lord.
Notice that Paul says always, and not just on Sunday or Wednesday. It is not just when there is
activity at the church. The Lord’s work is to let light shine all week. That which can give meaning
to your manual labor is to do it for the glory of Christ. It is to do a good job in order to have
credibility as a witness. A Christian who gripes and complains and shirks his duty in the presence of
non-Christians is not going to impress them with any jargon about the meaning Christ can give to life.
When Paul says always we must take it literally and realize that whenever we are in presence of
unbelievers we are engaged in the Lord’s work. All of our attitudes and actions are revealing to them
what Christianity is.
We sing, “I’m pressing on the upward way, new heights I’m gaining everyday.” If your
neighbors and fellow employees heard that would they be impressed, or would the suspect you were
measuring with a micrometer, which means the gain would not be perceptible to the human eye. This
kind of growth can hardly be compatible with Paul’s use of the word abounding. It means to flow
over the edge. If one is always flowing over the edge in the work of the Lord it will be observable. It
is this attitude in other realms that has caused such rapid progress. Edison’s wife urged him to take a
vacation. He said, “Alright, but where should I go?” She said, “Decide where you would rather be
than anywhere on earth and go there.” He responded, “Very well, I’ll go tomorrow.” The next day
he went to work in his laboratory. If only we could live as if the work of the Lord meant as much to
us. The reason for much lethargy in the church is the same as the reason for such in industry. Men
feel the wage is inadequate, and there is no good return for the effort put forth.
Paul says this is not so, for our labor in the Lord is not in vain. Nothing done for Christ is
meaningless and without a worthy wage. Philips puts it, “Be sure nothing you do for Him is ever lost
or wasted.” Herodotus said, “The bitterest sorrow that a man can know is to wish very much
to do something and not be able to do it.” But there is a worse tragedy than that, and it is to do it and
then find out it wasn’t worth doing. This is never the case for those who will do the work of the Lord.
It is such a privilege to serve Christ that it would be worth paying to be allowed to do it, but Christ
grants all believers the job of meaningful and worthwhile work of doing His will. The kingdom of
God will never cease to offer people work and wages that will give life meaning and satisfaction.
May God grant that we will see the blessing of making every day a labor day for the Lord.
