At the dawn of creation, in humanity’s earliest days, God gave us work to do: “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). Although we now know the curse of toil (3:17–19), work itself is part of God’s good creative handiwork. He didn’t make us to sit around and do nothing.
Fundamentally, we recognize in the human psyche a desire to produce. It’s why workers work—why painters paint, scientists think, gardeners prune, and builders build. While those who reject the biblical narrative may think they can explain how human beings came to be, they can’t really explain why we are driven to work and create. The Bible tells us: God labored in creating, and He made us in His image, as His creative handiwork, to be creative like Him.
The New Testament is also clear about the good and godly nature of work. In Titus 3:14, Paul instructs the pastor of the church in Crete, “Let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful.” This is a statement about not only good deeds but also productive work. It reveals what God intends for us in our labors.
Learning and Devoted Work
It’s easy to overlook that little verb “learn”: “Let our people learn to devote themselves…” If it is learned behavior, then we can say with confidence that, just as devotion to good and godly work isn’t entirely natural, neither is it a result of an emotional surge or an attempt to assuage feelings of guilt.
Some professing Christians appear to do everything on the basis of their glands. If they feel like praying, they pray. If they feel like reading, they read. If they don’t feel like going to work in the morning, they call in sick. They say to themselves, “I just didn’t feel like coming”—as if present emotions were the great touchstone for regulating our existence.
Perhaps even worse is when someone feels guilty about what they have done or failed to do, and then they think they can compensate with a little hard work. This is just as much a response to feelings, and it leads us astray from God’s intention.
By contrast, the Bible encourages us to “devote” ourselves “to good works.” This is devotion not in the sense of Olivia Newton-John in Grease—“hopelessly devoted to you,” such that “my head is saying, ‘Fool, forget him,’ my heart is saying, ‘Don’t let go.’”1 The verb to learn helps us clean that up. We must learn to be devoted just as we learned to brush our teeth, comb our hair, tie our shoes, and so on—not just when we feel like it but, in the words of the children’s song, even on “a cold and frosty morning.”2 It is learned behavior that produces a dutiful response marked by devotion—in this case, to doing “good works.”
Purposeful Work
Godly work, however, is not only learned behavior; it is also purposeful behavior. The words “so as to” are a purpose clause, connecting the action to the reason for the action: “to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful.”
Christians are, in other words, to earn through learned, disciplined action. This is at least part of the “good” Paul has in mind. As a result of their being able to earn, they will then be able to provide, not only for themselves but also for those who are in particular need. This is the absolute opposite attitude from entitlement. Rather than supposing that resources should come to us automatically, by right, it says that we work for them in order to give them to others.
We must learn to be devoted just as we learned to brush our teeth, comb our hair, tie our shoes, and so on.
Paul makes an even more striking statement of this reality in 1 Timothy 5:8: “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” Similarly, in 1 Thessalonians 4:11, he instructs his readers, “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.” Of course, provision can come in many forms, not just in the form of wages. Clearly, though, Paul understood and taught that one of the signs of a genuine work of grace in a person’s life is devotion to the kind of goodness that provides for oneself and one’s dependents—and beyond!
God is interested not only in our spiritual labors but also in our literal labors—in our honest work to earn a living and provide for our loved ones. In fact, He’s written it down in the Bible; that’s how concerned He is about it! So we ought not to despise honest work as “secular work.” It is what God has called us to do, for the purpose of serving our neighbor.
For God’s Glory
The routine labors of life are divine providences to us. They bring glory to God and set forward His purposes. Earlier generations sang with conviction about how “the trivial round, the common task will furnish all we ought to ask.”3 While God puts extraordinary callings on some lives, most believers don’t need to go anywhere else or do anything else if they will only do the honest work entrusted to them—and if they will do it to the glory of God and for the good of their neighbors. God is not keeping score based on some notion of worldly status. He is looking for servants who honor Him in the places where He has set them down.
This article was adapted from the sermon “Everyone Matters” by Alistair Begg.
John Farrar, “Hopelessly Devoted to You” (1978). ↩︎
“Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.” ↩︎
John Keble, “New Every Morning Is the Love” (1827). ↩︎
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