When Strivings Cease

A THOUGHT ABOUT WORK AND TOIL

I've been thinking about the subject of labor. Since I would spend a huge bulk of my lifetime working, I realized that I need to learn to commit myself to it with a deeply spiritual mindset, or I would risk building up my fleshly self-confidence in my daily work.

First, back to the garden. Even before the Fall, there was work to be done. Adam and Eve were to be fruitful and multiply, subdue the earth, and have dominion over every living thing. So work, in that sense, is a natural thing. Humans were meant to do things.

After the Fall, what's the difference? The difference is that work now entailed suffering and vanity. Discomfort and tiresomeness became part of work, and the reality of death now seems to make work meaningless.

To summarize, labor is good, but because of the curse, it has become burdensome. In a fallen world, work is both good and bad (not with regards to morality, but to nature). Now, therefore, seeing it as it really is, we will be able to do it as it should be done.

What is good about work, then? To put it simply, legitimate work is good because it glorifies God. Creation, the first of God's works, declared His glory in the world, manifesting His goodness and power. Our work can also reflect God's glory in these two aspects. (1) When we expend our physical and mental abilities in our work, we are in fact reflecting God's powers, as people made in His image. The excellence of one's working ability shows us a "glimpse" of God's strength and wisdom. (2) When we work with a right attitude, with fairness, and with the goal of benefiting those around us, we exhibit the kindness and justice that is found in God's heart, so to speak.

To see it from another perspective, we must also understand that God's glory is not something that's static. It is dynamic, and it has a kind of explosive growth. And when we receive a revelation of God's glory, we must have an outlet for it, because it will overflow. How terrible it would be to be awed by God's glory but not be able to express it! The joy would be perpetually bottled up inside of us. But as it is, God gave us a variety of outlets, creating us to praise, to dance, to embrace, and also to work. Work is one of the ways that a Christian expresses his joy in the Lord. We take that happy energy, and we use our bodies and minds to glorify God.

What's bad about work, then? But before I answer that question, understand that when I say "bad", I don't mean that God created it as a bad thing. It is a good thing. But the effects of the Fall meant that work entailed negative elements. But as we will soon see, God meant it for good.

The first bad thing about work is that one necessarily suffers in doing it. "By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread..." No kidding, all God-honoring vocations are tough. And if you want to do it well, you'd need to overcome spiritual, mental, physical, and environmental obstacles. You need to overcome selfishness in order to benefit those around you by means of your vocation, you need to overcome laziness in order to have a disciplined work life, you need to swallow your pride in order to accept the fact that there's room for improvement, and so on. You need to push your mind to the limit, and you have to strive in order to keep awake and energetic during work hours. And you need to face various problems that keep you from doing your job smoothly ("thorns and thistles").

The second bad thing about work is that—in an earthly sense—it is ultimately fruitless. "For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return." This matter is discussed at length in the book of Ecclesiastes. Death appears to nullify any earthly purpose that work could possibly have. If we work to feed ourselves and stay alive, we will still die eventually. If we work in order to hoard riches, we still die, and the fruits of our labor are left to someone else to enjoy. If we work in order to have a great name, we will still eventually be forgotten through the ages. If we work so that our posterity may enjoy what we've earned, even they will die in the end. The rewards that such hard work brings seem fleeting, temporal, meaningless. We taste a little of our vineyard, then we return to the ground. All the hard work, and nothing lasts.

Yet there is a hidden blessing in the curse, if I may put it that way. Because of this curse, God's glory can shine even brighter, rather than be obscured. Again, God's goodness and power is manifested in a new way because of these "bad" things.

Because of the existence of suffering, the love of Christ shines ever so brightly. The labors of our Lord on earth were beset with much pain, especially His atoning work on the cross. If there was no suffering, Christ's ministry on earth would merely be an enjoyable task, and we'd never know the extent of His love for us, how far He would go in order to reconcile us to God. But as it is, the hour of greatest glory in the history of mankind was when Christ suffered the worst suffering imaginable on behalf of those He loved.

As Christians, the body of Christ, we are called to manifest the same glory. In terms of work, we manifest that same goodness and love when we suffer the hardship of working, not for selfish reasons, but in order to benefit those around us spiritually and physically. In doing this, we reflect Christ, and also conform to His image day by day.

Also, the fruitlessness of man's work was meant to show the effectiveness of God's work. This aspect of the curse is quite ironic, I would say. When Adam ate of the fruit, he demonstrated that he relied on himself, thus declaring autonomy. In response, God, in a sense, let mankind rely on his own strength by removing him from the garden, thus forcing him to plant his own food. And yet in the end, man's strength proves to achieve nothing, as his hard labor would end in vanity.

Thus, in a sense, we are actually bound to fail in everything we do, whether in our spiritual lives or in our vocations. We will never do things perfectly, never achieve anything of eternal value, never be able to keep the moral law of God fully, never be able to do a flawless work in our respective jobs. There will always be room for improvement, always the realization will come that we haven't actually reached the standard.

But God does a perfect work. Christ kept the law perfectly, and His work effectively defeated the powers of sin and death. And when He comes again, everything that is wrong about the world will be done away with. There will be no more strategizing about how to stop crime, no more efforts to save the environment, no more concerns about incurable diseases, no more philosophical debates about what the truth is, no more critics of art. God will renew the world, and then there will be rest. In doing what we failed to do for thousands of years, He greatly glorifies His power. And that encourages us to rely upon Him.

Now, in case that sounds quite discouraging, my point is this: all flesh will fail, and only God's Spirit will do a lasting work. But we do have the Spirit. Therefore, not everything in what we do will end up as a failure, because the Spirit works through us to do good works. These good works please God and glorify Him because they are covered by the blood of Christ. Therefore, we will bear fruit of lasting value if we work by faith, in which case it is actually the Spirit who is working.

So, in conclusion, why do we work?

Because in doing work, we reflect and rejoice in God's goodness and power; in enduring the hardship of labor for the sake of others, we imitate Christ, the Suffering Servant; and in our failures, we are encouraged to find a sweet rest in the perfect works that God has done, and the works that He will do. In the end, we know that all of our labor, however imperfect, glorifies God somehow.

And that's all that really matters. Soli Deo Gloria!