What is work for?

What the Bible says

Many people treat work as a kind of curse, and Monday mornings make it easy to see why. But the Bible says work existed before the fall. After creating the man, God did this.

Then the LORD God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it.

Gen 2:15

The garden was a place to tend, not a playground. God himself is a worker. Jesus said, "To this very day My Father is at His work, and I too am working" (John 5:17). Human beings were made in God's image (Gen 1:27) and blessed with the charge to fill the earth and rule over it (Gen 1:28). Work is a human share in God's own work.

Why, then, is work so hard? The Bible does not hide what happened when people turned from God.

cursed is the ground because of you; through toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.

Gen 3:17

Both thorns and thistles it will yield for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

Gen 3:18

Notice what is cursed: the ground. Working was not the punishment; the toil within it was: thorns, sweat, failure. Work remained a gift, and its pain became a sign of a broken world.

The New Testament gives work a new light. Paul writes to the Colossians:

Whatever you do, work at it with your whole being, as for the Lord and not for men,

Col 3:23

because you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as your reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

Col 3:24

If it is done for the Lord, no work is small. Jesus himself was known as "the carpenter" (Mark 6:3), and Paul supported himself by making tents even while he preached (Acts 18:3). Work is also for others. Paul tells the one who used to steal to work "with his own hands, that he may have something to share with the one in need" (Eph 4:28).

The church's witness

The church has long honoured work. On Genesis 2, Matthew Henry writes: "Even in paradise itself man had to work" Matthew Henry. He goes on to say what that means for ordinary labour.

if they do it with an eye to God, they as truly serve him in it, as when they are upon their knees.

Matthew Henry

In the medieval church "vocation" was used mainly of priests and monks, whose work was widely thought holier than that of farmers or merchants. The Reformer Martin Luther opposed this and taught that a Christian is called in every kind of work: the farmer, the magistrate, the mother and the servant each serve their neighbour in the place God has given, and that service is a divine office. This is usually called the doctrine of vocation. The Catholic Church has also taught the dignity of work; in 1981 Pope John Paul II issued an encyclical on human work, Laborem exercens. The two traditions meet in holding that work belongs to human dignity and is a way of serving others.

Matthew Henry is just as honest about the toil that followed the fall. "Labour is our duty, which we must faithfully perform," he writes, and he calls its toil part of man's sentence after the fall Matthew Henry. He adds that Christ bore the thorns and the sweat for us.

In the original languages

The two verbs of Genesis 2:15, "cultivate and keep," are avad (עָבַד) and shamar (שָׁמַר). Avad means both "to work" and "to serve," and shamar means "to guard, to protect." The sense is not conquest but service and care. Some scholars point out that these two verbs appear together later for the duties of the Levites in the sanctuary, and so read Eden as a kind of holy place. That reading is still debated.

Ecclesiastes calls the labour of life amal (עָמָל), "toil," and its outcome hevel (הֶבֶל). Hevel literally means "breath" or "vapour," something that cannot be grasped and soon vanishes. The Preacher does not mean that work is worthless. He means that its fruit cannot be held for ever. So he can say, "Nothing is better for a man than to eat and drink and enjoy his work," and add, "this is from the hand of God" (Eccl 2:24).

The word klesis (κλῆσις), "calling," appears in 1 Corinthians 7:20, where Paul says each should remain in the situation he was in when called. Scholars read it there as God's call to faith in Christ, or as the situation in which that call found a person; either way it is not yet a word for a job. Luther's use of it for ordinary occupations draws on the wider biblical teaching about serving God in every place, but this verse alone does not teach a doctrine of occupations.

Common objections

"Work is a curse, and a life without it would be blessed." The thought comes from real experience. Many jobs are dull, unfair or hard on the body, and the Bible does not deny it. But it places work in the garden from the start, and in the curse it separates the ground from the toil. Even the law of rest does not despise work: "Six days you shall labor and do all your work" (Exod 20:9). Paul's words, "If anyone is unwilling to work, he shall not eat" (2 Thess 3:10), are addressed in context to the idle who could work. They do not condemn the sick or the jobless.

"'Work as for the Lord' excuses unjust labour." This is a serious objection. Colossians 3 was written to slaves, and the verse has sometimes been used to keep people patient under oppression. But the same letter tells masters: "Masters, supply your slaves with what is right and fair, since you know that you also have a Master in heaven" (Col 4:1). To the slave Paul says, "if you can gain your freedom, take the opportunity" (1 Cor 7:21). Working as for the Lord does not make an unjust arrangement holy. It tells us that God sees what no one else sees, and that a worker's dignity does not depend on an employer's verdict. For how Scripture treats slavery, see Does the Bible approve of slavery?.

"If work matters so much, are those who cannot work worthless?" This may be the most painful question, for the jobless, the ill or disabled, and the retired. The Bible does not rest a person's worth on work. Dignity comes from being made in God's image (Gen 1:27), and salvation comes by grace, not by labour. The psalm says, "In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for bread to eat — for He gives sleep to His beloved" (Ps 127:2). Nor can the pain of wanting work and finding none be put down to personal laziness. The church should carry that burden together (Why do we need the church?), and Christians should work for honest workplaces and a fair society. The worth of someone who cannot work was set by God, and it does not shrink.

Going further

Work is God's gift and a way to serve our neighbour. Yet work cannot save anyone, and it cannot prove anyone's worth. As the Preacher concludes, we cannot hold the fruit of work for ever, but we can find satisfaction in our labour as the lot God gives (Eccl 5:18). Rest belongs to the same gift. The seventh day declares that work is not our master.

Some questions to ask yourself: For whom am I doing my work? Do I try to prove my worth through it? What can I do for a neighbour without work?

To read further, see Why should we rest? and How should I think about money?