The Fruit of Fearful Faith: Work

13 The Fruit of Fearful Faith: Work

When we continue to learn how to faith down our fears, there is a very special relationship between the preceding fruit of worship and this fourth fruit of work. Tragically, these two fruits of fear have been largely divorced in our world today when in reality they are very compatible. God never meant that there should be a division between worship and work, the sacred and secular, or the worship place and the marketplace.

To the Christian, all of life should be sacred. There are no longer any partitions between Sunday and the other six days of the week. All of life is an act of worship! For the mature Christian, everything we do is to be an offering of praise to God. From God’s perspective, work is a sacred assignment, regardless of what it is. It is not what we do that makes work become worship, but why we do what we do. The crucial question is, For whom we are working—ourselves or Christ?

Sadly, we often live and act as if work came after the Fall, as if God condemned man to work as a result of his sin. For Adam and Eve, their judgment was a life of hard labor from dawn till dust as a result of their sin.

But that false mentality reduces work to a curse rather than a blessing. The Bible is clear that God assigned man the dig-

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nity of work long before sin ever entered the world:

God blessed them [the man and woman] and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Genesis 1:28).

Those words, “subdue” and “rule over,” obviously imply work. And yet, when this commissioning was given, Adam and Eve had never sinned. They had not yet been tempted. They had not rebelled against God or His plan for their lives as His creative coworkers. They had not yet been seduced and deceived by Satan’s lie about God. They had not been expelled from the Garden of Eden for their disobedience and rebellion.

Through Adam and Eve, God assigned work in a perfect environment devoid of sin, pollution, disease, or death. And as a careful study of Genesis will reveal, their work was without sweat, which came only after the Fall (Genesis 3:19).

However, even though work was not the punishment for sin, it was certainly adversely affected by sin. Therefore, like every other dimension of human existence, work is in desperate need of grace to redeem it and separate it from its bondage to sin.

Let’s look, then, at a few instructive verses about the relationship between work and the fear of God:

• (Advice of Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, to Moses) “Select capable men from all the people—men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain—and

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appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. Have them serve as judges for the people at all times, but have them bring every difficult case to you; the simple cases they can decide themselves. That will make your load lighter, because they will share it with you. If you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied” (Exodus 18:17–22). • (Restoration of the Temple under Jehoiada) “When the amount had been determined, they gave the money to the men appointed to supervise the work on the temple. With it they paid those who worked on the temple of the Lord—the carpenters and builders, the masons and stonecutters. They purchased timber and blocks of dressed stone for the repair of the temple of the Lord, and met all the other expenses of restoring the temple. . . . They did not require an accounting from those to whom they gave the money to pay the workers, because they acted with complete honesty” (2 Kings 12:11–15). • “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers and sisters, to keep away from every believer who is idle and disruptive and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it.

On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the

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right to such help, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat’” (2 Thessalonians 3:6–10). • “Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence [phobos] for the Lord” (Colossians 3:22). • “Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear” (1 Peter 1:17).

If our workforce in America were filled with this kind of reverential fear of the Lord, then there would be more excellence in work rather than mediocrity. The employees would work with “sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.” Likewise, the CEOs would realize that they too must one day give account to God, who “judges each person’s work impartially.”

I believe that we Christians should be the ones who set the very highest standards of work in the marketplace. If we are worth our salt and worthy of our light, then we are not really working for a paycheck, benefits, perks, or retirement. That’s what the people of the world work for. We are working for the Lord! The reverential fear of the Lord is what motivates us.

Every Christian should read often the words of the Apostle Paul that remind us that God will one day “test the quality of each person’s work” (1 Corinthians 3:13). Each of us as workers, whether we are the CEO or the custodian, should

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have these Bible verses posted in some prominent location at our workplace:

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving (Colossians 3:23–24).

And along with those verses should be the phrase:

EXCELLENCE FOR CHRIST!

If we would let that kind of reverential fear of the Lord motivate our work, whatever the nature of our job, then there would certainly be a more positive testimony for Christ in our workplace. The divisions between Sunday and Monday would be broken down. The distinction between church and our workplace would be gone. Our worship and our work would become one for God’s glory and the good of others.

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