Your Work is Worship
“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.” Colossians 3:23-24 ESV
“Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” 1 Corinthians 15:58
Introduction
This is a subject that has been important to write about for me as I speak with people, and hear the full range of feelings about work, from obsession to dread. My main encouragement to the clients who dread their jobs is this; your daily work, from the most miniscule and low job, to the greatest and highest, is just as much worship as anything you sing in church, or whatever you consider “spiritual” work, whatever that means. This is not just work that you are paid for. It includes any endeavor that you have. We see this throughout the Bible. I want to highlight a few of those verses here. We’ll start in Genesis.
Fruitful Sub(do)ing
In the first chapter of Genesis, we read this; “God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:28) God’s call to us to here is to subdue, or rule, the earth. This call is for all mankind, throughout every generation. My wordplay in the title of this section is rough to read and not cringe, but I believe this verse, in line with the rest of the verses that we will take a look at, calls us as servants of God to do things. We build communities, societies, and civilizations, while we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength (work), and love others as ourselves (hard work), bearing much fruit. We don’t only do work in macro-endeavors like societies, but in the smaller dominions. We build families, small businesses, careers, resumes, friend groups, and disciples of Jesus.
Our relationship to this world changed with the fall of man in Genesis 3. We are in a world where our work is hard. In Genesis 3:17-19, God says to Adam: “cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” But as with all things with God, it is not hard without reason. We have a foretaste of deliverance from this curse in the resurrection of Jesus as described in Romans 5:15-17. In addition to that, we have a promise of renewal of this same earth, and of mankind, 66 books later in Revelation 21. But how do we view our difficult labor now in between those two points?
The topic of fruit is spread throughout the Bible. As it relates to work, being fruitful here does include having children as addressed to Adam and Eve, but we also see that being fruitful is all work (Psalm 1:1-3). Psalm 1:3 says, “In all he does he prospers.” The word to point out is “all” and the second is “prospers.” We need a definition for prosper in this sentence. Prosperity is not defined by monetary gains, fame, or “success” in its traditional form. This is prosperity in the sight of Lord, as we will see under the next heading.
This call to all men is in whatever vocation they find themselves in, we are utilizing the resources available to us that has come from the Earth that God has called us to rule. This calls us to do it in a way that pleases God in every act. When our work is for the Lord in every action, we do work that is good and honest. We bear fruit in multiple ways. It’s an all encompassing presentation of our bodies (lives) as living sacrifices, pleasing to God (Romans 12:1-2). This is not an exhaustive explanation of the topic by any means. It would need libraries of books to begin to scratch the surface.
Whatever you do
The first verse I quoted at the start of the post is one I have written on the top of my whiteboard that I have hanging in my workspace. I believe it’s worth putting here again. Colossians 3:23-24 says “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.” This verse pretty much says it all. Ultimately you are a servant of the Lord. You work for him. We submit to our earthly bosses and treat them as we would like to be treated (Luke 6:31), but ultimately our allegiance and every action is for the Lord. We do this “heartily.” I understand that not every task is going to feel like we’re washing Jesus’s feet, but I believe, in a very real sense, we are pleasing Him with every action. The “reward” and “inheritance” spoken of in this verse refers not only to the earthly blessings that the Lord give us, like our every breath, but the reward of Himself in heaven with joy “unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8-9). The astonishing part of that passage is that it says we can experience this joy now as we wait for the fullness of it with Him.
Not In Vain
Something I repeat often in session is “Suffering is never in vain.” We have an example of this in the second verse I quoted at the beginning. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul describes the resurrection and renewal of the world, and our bodies, in a physical sense. He encourages us with, “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” As we saw above, the curse made suffering a part of our experience. The application for this verse, as I see in my own work, and yours, dear Christian, is that every morning, we wake up to worship through work. Whatever we experience throughout our day is a spiritual act of worship. The hardship that we experience is not in vain. Every yelling at us from our boss, every mistreatment by the kids we are teaching, every failed attempt, every achievement, is all pleasing to God when we do it as for Him and not for the work itself as an end, but as a form of worship.
Earlier in 1 Corinthians 3:10-14, Paul tells us of how our lives and work are built upon Christ as a foundation, and that our work will be tested. Work that is built upon Christ will stand. Work that is not will be extinguished. “According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.” I will end with the parable Jesus gives us as to what we will have to look forward to. Jesus describes different kinds of workers and what they did with the task given to them. We want to avoid keeping our resources unspent, so that, at the end of our lives, we can present this as a life of worship to the Lord, hearing “‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:23).
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