Pioneer Christian Monthly - September, 1991

Christians and Labour
Daniel Meeter

Romans 12:1-13

Labour Day is a secular holiday - we regard our labour and Labour Day as something secular. But for the Christian there is really nothing that is secular. Jesus Christ is Lord of all. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it. Even your daily labour belongs to the Lord: your commerce and your business, no matter what your boss thinks, or whether your customers and employees believe it. God has much to say about your labour.

Maybe you think that labour is a necessary evil. You put in your hours because you have to get the bread on the table. Maybe you think that labour is bad and leisure (the opposite?) good! "The more labour I can avoid, the better," you say. I can understand your thinking if your job is on the assembly line, or digging ditches, or endless hours sitting in front of a computer terminal. It is a sad fact of life that much of our lahour is mindless, unsatisfying and sometimes backbreaking.

However, God meant labour to be good. That is why God gave us arms and legs and muscles - that is why God gave us brains: to do hard work. God made us in such a way that if we don't exercise we will be sick. Yes, God meant us to have leisure too, for God commanded us to take one day of rest every week - not to do nothing but to restore the soul. This kind of leisure is not selfish leisure, rather it is leisure with a purpose. God commanded Israel to take three weeks of holidays every year that they might go up to worship and celebrate in Jerusalem, and God would renew them so that they could get back to work.

God did not put Adam in the Garden to be idle. To the contrary! He gave him lots of work to do. God said to Adam: "till the garden!" meaning, work at it, cultivate it, develop it, take care of it, weed it, and work up a sweat. What Adam had to dc in the Garden God wanted u,. to do in all the world. God created us for labour, good labour - to serve our God, to serve your fellow human beings, and to serve the world that God has placed in our care. Labour was meant to be a way of loving God above all and loving our neighbour as ourselves.

But with the fall of Adam the calling of human labour became corrupted and accursed. Labour turned into painful toil, service turned into slavery, and the woman's labour of bearing children turned into a painful agony. History, ever after, illustrates how the curse of human sin has corrupted human labour.

Thus labour broke the law of loving your neighbour as yourself, and became a means of oppression. People in a position of power were able to get other people to do the labour for them. As a result the benefits of all labour did not go to the labourers who earned them, but to the powerful few who did not do any labour. This is what we call the exploitation of labour. It is what Marxism and many other economic systems have tried to remedy. But you know what happened, Marxism did not solve this problem, it only rearranged the problem, and even aggravated it. No economic or political system will ever solve this problem, because as long as human sin remains in the world corruption will continue. At the same time, however, God's law requires of politics and economics that they make laws that minimize the problem, so that, within limitations, you can practice loving your neighbour as yourself.

Labour broke the law of loving God above all and became an idol. We see that today with workaholics. Work is the idol that offers this empty promise: if you serve me, if you ignore everything else and pour yourself into your work, I will offer you wealth and richness and power over other people. Indeed, the world will call you successful, but your soul will die. Romans 12:2 admonishes us: "Do not be conformed to this world." That means: do not give in to this idol, love the Lord above all!

The goal of labour is to add richness and abundance and invention and variety to the world God gave us, and to develop the potential of creation for the sake of love. But when labour disregards God's law it loses its goodness. The work itself loses its satisfaction and the labourers lose their humanity. The dehumanization of labour is very critical in our day with machines and computers and factory assembly lines. But it was there in all of human history, when people had to slave away in the fields of others instead of their own. 'Mis happens when labour of production and goods and services are no longer done for their own sake, but for the sake of profits alone: the quick buck, that extra little bit of market share. It is true there has to be an element of profit to production, and it is good to have competition, but more often than not these have turned into cancers that destroy the Tabour they live on, and also destroy the creation around us.

The only hope for human lahour lies in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for sin. His sacrifice to save us has prompted, through the work of the Holy Spirit, our sacrifice to thank Him. That sacrifice of thanksgiving consists in the offer of your body as well as what your body does: your labour, your substance, your production. That is what it means to offer your body as a living sacrifice. These sacrifices, although not perfect, are acceptable and holy through Jesus Christ.

Do you hear what I am saying? People speak of the ministry as full time Christian service. And it is. But so is farming. People speak of missionaries who are in full time Christian service. And they are! But so are housewives and welders. Every worldly occupation. The reason is not because you might hand out tracts at the workplace, or witness in the lunchroom, but because the very work of your hands and your backs and your brains is meant to be a sacrifice unto God.

Now that may seem more evident in some vocations than it is in others, depending how much a person can put of himself in his work. For example, it may seem that farmers, and craftsmen, and artists could more readily sacrifice their work unto the Lord since so much of themselves is in their work. I could visualize that the New Jerusalem employs many artisans and musicians. But what about persons who work on an assembly line? They have no say in what they do, they just do what they are told. How can work on the assembly line become a pleasing sacrifice unto God. To tell the truth, I can't imagine any assembly line in the New Jerusalem. However, never forget that God is gracious. If He sees in your heart the desire to offer your work to Him, He, through Christ, will transform your labours at the assembly line into a sweet smelling sacrifice, holy and acceptable to Him.

Paul admonishes the Christian "not to, be conformed to this world." How do you live that out on the job? What does it mean? Is it to be loving and patient and charitable and forgiving on the job? Yes, it is that! Does it mean perhaps that you witness on the job? Yes, it also means that. However, I believe that the most enduring witness on the job is not what you say to a sinner during coffee break, but how you do the job you have been given. The most enduring witness is your attitude toward your work. Do you make the very work you do a sacrifice to the Lord in obedience to I-Es Word? That is the point. Mind you, that does not require "loud demonstrations." In fact, people may question your motivation if you became too demonstrative about how you feel about your work. You are not trying to make an example of yourself to your co-workers, you are offering a sacrifice to the Lord! What you are doing is for Him! Again, how might we express that? Here is how I think of it. If I were a bookkeeper, maybe at the bottom of every page I would put a tiny little cross, way too small for anyone else to notice, but a reminder for me that this page of figures is a little prayer of thanks to God that I can work, that I can contribute to the economy, that I offer my work to God, and that all the figures, on the page are as accurate and honest as I can make them.

By offering our labour to God we quietly show our devotion to Him. Jesus has put His reputation in our hands. Through what we offer to God, we demonstrate "what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect". (Romans 12:2) Perfect is not flawless, but it means the best job you can do - completed and fulfilled. Jesus sacrificed His own fife because "God so loved the world." We also must serve the world, but if we are to serve it, we cannot be conformed to it, for then we will be its slave. In order to serve the world truly, we must be transformed and continue to be transformed as servants of Jesus Christ. And if we fail, if our gift is not perfect, freely confess the sin that is in it. Offer it as a humble sacrifice to Jesus Christ, and God will accept it and call it holy for His Name's sake, and use it for the coming of His Kingdom and the building of the New Jerusalem.

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