Work (theology)

“ Labor is a curse until communion with God in it, which is possible through Jesus Christ, makes it a blessing and a joy. Christ, in the sweat of His brow, won our salvation; and our work only becomes great when it is work done in, and for, and by Him. ”

“ MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Verses 10–12.
Christianity and Work.
Christianity is the Gospel of work. Its clarion-call thrills along the nerves of human life and summons the world to labour. It gives to work meaning, purpose, dignity, and exalts drudgery into a blessedness. While full of sympathy for the feeble and maimed, it has no pity for the indolent. Its Founder and first apostles were giants in labour, and their example animates the world to-day with a spirit of noblest activity. It is not the drone, but the worker, who blesses the world. ”

“ So, in spite of his ravings, notwithstanding his eruptive style, and his sorrow for what is, he has given us, in a masterly piece of prose, this noble "Gospel of Work."
His sentences, alive with enthusiasm, and terrible in their seriousness, contain great reaches of thought, poetry, prophecy, like that of the ancients; and all are full of the praises and rewards of labor. "Consider how, even in the meanest sorts of labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work! ”

“ God’s Word recognises the universal law of work. By frequent precept and cheering promises, it consecrates our daily labour. Mindful of the old Latin maxim, “Laborare est orare,” “toil is prayer,” the Christian learns from the record of God’s Will that honest, faithful, diligent, God-fearing, and God-honouring work is itself a worship acceptable to the great All-worker. Toil, hard toil, is duty. Even the heathen world confessed that the gods gave nothing to men without it had been earned by severe exertion. . . . God enjoins diligence upon us by precept and by example. ”

“ Let us lay aside all our prejudices. If God is working it matters little whether or not the work is done in the exact way that we would like to see it done, or in the way we have seen it done in the past. ”

“ Your labor is not in vain - Your labor in the Lord is not in vain; you must not only work, but you must labor - put forth all your strength; and you must work and labor in the Lord - under his direction, and by his influence; for without him ye can do nothing. And this labor cannot be in vain; you shall have a resurrection unto eternal life: not because you have labored, but because Christ died and gave you grace to be faithful. ”

“ We have hardly the right to call ourselves Christian men and women unless we can relate our week-day labours to the fact of Christ.
So let us try to strengthen that link. Let us look at our daily work in the light of religion.
First, let me remind you that our work is by divine commandment. It is not something that God allows us to do when we are not worshipping. It is His ordinance that we should all work at something. The business of life is labour of some sort. I do not know if we all realise how the Fourth Commandment begins--"Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work." ”

“ So that God's working is an argument and motive to the man to work, and not an argument to him to lie by idle and do nothing. And here is the holy art and divine skill requisite in this business, to wit, for the believer to be as diligent and active as if he could bring forth fruit in his own strength, and by his own working; and yet to be as abstracted from himself, his own grace, ability, knowledge, experience, in his working, as if he were lying by like a mere block, and only moving as moved by external force. ”

“ How could I, at a time that was still teaching the Hebraic doctrine that work is a curse, instead of the new gospel—always dimly divined by children before our teaching has corrupted them,—that being busy is being alive, and that all work may be play if only we are shown how to pick out the kind that is play to us, and that doing nothing is a kind of death. ”

“ Does not this show that literal working, as we work in and for the world, is not what God demands; that it is rather a mental assent, an entertaining and exercising of feelings, a believing, a thankful, a sanctifying remembrance of Christ’s work; a trust in it, a carefulness to do nothing that will render it ineffectual for our salvation, that is required of us? ”

“ Further, He works on the world through His people by the Word; they plant and water, He 'gives the increase.' And He is working in the world, for His Church and for the world, by His wielding of all power that is given to Him, in heaven and on earth. So that the work that is done upon earth He doeth it all Himself; and Christian people unduly limit the sphere of Christ's operations when they look back only to the Cross, and talk about a 'finished work' there, and forget that that finished work there is but the vestibule of the continuous work that is being done to-day. ”

“ Accordingly those who devote themselves publicly to the aforesaid spiritual works are thereby exempt from manual labor for two reasons: first, because it behooves them to be occupied exclusively with such like works; secondly, because those who devote themselves to such works have a claim to be supported by those for whose advantage they work. ”

“ If Jesus is to be the world’s example, more and more men and women will find in their legitimate toil one of the sacraments of life.
Already we have come to feel that the Bible doctrine of work, especially as that doctrine is incarnated in Christ, lays stress upon the man as well as upon his task. It asks, “What is the man doing with his work?” It also asks, “What is the work doing with the man?” The reflexes of activity often become a topic of teaching. Paul said that the man reaps the harvest of his own sowing. ”

“ Ask us now with frankness what we are, what is our faith, and listen well to our reply, which will not be less sincere.
We believe in one only God, the supreme and sovereign Workman, whom we do not confound with his work; the work is divine, but it is not God. ”

“ They think their presumption justified because it is for religion's sake. Job administers a sound rebuke, and it extends to our own time. Special pleaders for God's sovereign and unconditional right and for His illimitable good-nature, alike have warning here. What justification have men in affirming that God will work out His problems in detail according to their views? He has given to us the power to apprehend the great principles of His working. He has revealed much in [Pg 172] nature, providence, and Scripture, and in Christ ”

“ No matter what labor we are required to perform, we are in the very position, and doing the very work, God requires at our hands. It is necessary for our development and increase in the faith of the Lord Jesus. ”

“ Now all machinery-work of this kind is, to a man filled with a real love of the essence of Christianity, something of a hindrance to him in what he most wants to be at, something of a concession to his ordinary self. ”

“ Verse 9
For we are laborers together with God - We do nothing of ourselves, nor in reference to ourselves; we labor together in that work which God has given us to do, expect all our success from him, and refer the whole to his glory. ”

“ However unpalatable these final conclusions may appear to pious readers accustomed to seek in the Book of Job for the most striking proofs of some of the principal teachings of the Christian dispensation, it is difficult, not to say impossible, to study the work in its restored form and arrive at any other. ”

“ The inspiration of labor is faith in God, faith in man, faith in the moral order of the world, faith in progress. The religious man should have a sane view of life, should have convictions, and the courage of his convictions. He should believe that his work all counts toward some great purpose.
The impulse to reverence and prayer is an essential fact, as real as the inborn tendency to physical and mental action. Its development is necessary to the complete man. The religious nature obeys the great law of power through effort, and increases strength by use. ”

“ When you cease from labour, fill up your time in reading, meditation, and prayer: and while your hands are labouring, let your heart be employed, as much as possible in divine thoughts.
Further, Take heed that you faithfully perform the business you have to do in the world, from a regard to the command of God. We should always look upon ourselves as God’s servants, placed in God’s world to do his work; and accordingly labour faithfully for him; not with a design to grow rich and great, but to glorify God, and do all the good we possibly can.
*Again, Never expect happiness from the world. ”

“ And yet, here we see how God made use of so small a thing as this, to make seven persons Christians, and to save their souls forever! Of the God who can work in this way, it may well be said that he loves to work by little things. It is the way in which he is working continually. ”

“ It is literature with which theology is so blended that none can say, Here is one, there the other. The passion of that race which gave the world the idea of the soul, which clung with growing zeal to the faith of the One Eternal God as the fountain of life and equally of justice, this passion in one of its rarest modes pours through the Book of Job like a torrent, forcing its way towards the freedom of faith, the harmony of intuition with the truth of things. ”

“ One of the greatest benefits of work with the hands, or of objective and constructive work with the mind, is that it saves us from unending hours of thinking. Work should, of course, find its fullest justification as an expression of faith. If we have ever so dim a vision of a greater significance in life, of its close relationship to infinite things, we become thereby conscious of the need of service, of the need of work. It is the‌ easy, natural expression of our faith, the inevitable result of a spiritual contact with the great working forces of the world. ”

“ Instead of being workers against, seek to be "workers together" with God in your own souls; to have His "work of faith and love," and everything beautiful and holy, perfected in you. Believe in Jesus Christ as the living Person who alone can and will save you, by pardoning your sins, and giving you His Spirit to make you like Himself. Begin your work by assuming that God is working in you to will and do ”

“ It may therefore be profitable if we turn to Christ's own manner of working, and His own emotions in His merciful deeds, set forth in this remarkable narrative, as containing lessons for us in our missionary and evangelistic work. ”

“ We may not all have this attitude toward our work, but we are all idealists enough to wish that we felt just that way. The singing workman is not altogether a figment of the imagination; neither is his spirit impossible in the day that now is. The men who regard work as a blessing, and not as a penalty and a curse, are found in many trades and professions. They are the forerunners of the Eden life. Certainly the main teaching of the Bible, that labor is designed to aid in the bringing in of the kingdom of God, must give to the honest laborers in every realm an exalted joy. ”

“ I have a few words to say concerning our spiritual labors. I cannot, however, define any difference between temporal and spiritual labors. I call it spiritual to accommodate my language to the ideas of the people. Anything that pertains to the building up of the Lord's kingdom on earth, whether it be in preaching the Gospel, or building Temples to His name, we have been taught to consider a spiritual work, though it evidently requires the strength of the natural body to perform it. ”

“ Though they gave up a large portion of every day, and of every night also, to prayer and worship, yet they found they could not pray aright without work. And ‘working is praying,’ said one of the holiest of them that ever lived; and he spoke truth, if a man will but do his work for the sake of duty, which is for the sake of God. ”

“ For the Apostle does not conceive of the work and labour and patience which are respectively allocated to these three graces as being superimposed upon them, as it were, by effort, so much as he thinks of them as growing out of them by their inherent nature. The work is 'the work of faith,' that which characterises faith, that which issues from it, that which is its garment, visible to the world, and the token of its reality and its presence. Faith works. It is the foundation of all true work ”

“ Then the Holy Spirit must work in us efficiently and mightily. Paul makes the principle of universal application. “Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.” All labour for Christ which does not spring from the Holy Spirit working in us, is nugatory and vain. Our prayers and activities are so feeble and resultless, because He has not worked in us and cannot work in us His glorious work. ”

“ May God give us wisdom "to work while it is day," to labor diligently in the duties to which we have been called, and when we have done this, may we be saved in the celestial kingdom of our God, through Jesus Christ. ”

“ In the work of the kingdom of God on earth the true worker is in point of importance first. Apart from the wise, holy, beneficent soul, even the truth of the Gospel is but a dead letter. It is in the intelligence, loveliness, magnanimity and sweetness of a human spirit, touched finely by His own grace, that the Holy Ghost finds His chief instrumentality. Preparation for a good work is usually begun in early life, and the worker, whose story is to fill the following pages, unconsciously learnt her first lessons for this service in her father's house. ”