Why do Christians work? This article looks at the motives for our labour, but also discusses the cultural mandate and the way the Reformation looked at work.

Source: Waar leef ik voor (Kok Kampen). 4 pages. Translated by Wim Kanis.

The Meaning of Work A Christian Perspective

We Work In Order To Eat🔗

The well-known words of Paul, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (2 Thess. 3:10) have come to mind for people of all times and ages. Work, or labour, was and still is for a great part of humanity, a difficult reality. The sentence pronounced over Adam after his Fall into sin in Paradise has put a stamp on all human labour, until the present time: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread” (Gen. 3:19).

Also further on it becomes clear from the Bible that labour and trouble are often twins. Life is difficult and can be compared to the day labourer or the slave, panting for some shade and waiting for their wages, says Job (7:1f). The farming population in the Bible — and the greater part of people indeed found their subsistence in agriculture — has known all about the searing heat, failed harvests, and fields that had been eaten bare by insects. Some of the words used in the Bible for “labour” have a close connection to plodding, to wearing oneself out. The people of biblical times have experienced what it means that you had to work yourself in a sweat for your daily bread.

It is true that in our Western-European world sweat is often not such a big deal now that machines have taken over much of the tedious and laborious work. But anyone who looks beyond his own small world will know that presently the great majority of the world’s population still has to plod and struggle to be able to provide for their essential needs. And even today in the much better circumstances of the West, there are millions who — when asked about the meaning of their labour — will still make the connection between working and eating.

In our society the social amenities are of such a nature that nobody needs to fear death by famine if he is not working. But yet many people need to devote all of their energy in a worsening economic climate in order to earn money so that they can meet the basic needs of their existence.

Other Motives🔗

Where it concerns the meaning of work, we do need to pay attention to other motives than only the simple connection between working and eating. The great medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas already pointed to four motives that urge us on in our labour.

Labour is needed in the first place to provide for our livelihood. Thomas also references Paul’s word, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (2 Thess. 3:10).

But labour is also needed to safeguard us against the danger of idleness. When you have nothing to do, you can easily get into all kinds of trouble. This ancient argument is still very valid when we think of the boredom that strikes especially younger people, who either cannot find work or do not want to work. A vacuum results — one that is often being filled with violence in the streets and destructiveness.

In the third place Thomas Aquinas mentions a motivation that will likely strike a lesser chord: when someone is working, he also keeps his body in check. Just as you need to limit your urges by fasting and by being awake, so you also keep them in check by doing useful labour. Therefore the desires of the flesh need to be kept under control by hard labour.

In the fourth place, says Thomas, we labour in order to consider the poor. One who does not work cannot give alms either. We do not just work for ourselves and our direct relatives, but with the money we earn we need to set aside something for others. We find this same motive in the Heidelberg Catechism, where is says in QA 111 that we are to work faithfully such that we are able to give to those in need.

With these four motives Thomas provides a broader meaning to labour than that he only points to the connection between work and food. Yet it is striking that he does not attach any positive sense to labour in itself. In all four of these motives labour is a means to achieve something else. We labour in order to eat, in order not to steal, to remain physically pure, and in order to give financial aid to others. Labour is a means but nowhere is it a goal that has an intrinsic value all on its own.

Such an interpretation of labour coincides with the value that people of the Middle Ages applied to the spiritual life over and above the physical life. The active life of “common” labour was valued much lower than the “contemplative” life, in which man directed his spiritual attention to God and his service. The monk stood much higher on the spiritual values ladder than the labourer. Mary, who sat at the feet of Jesus, made a much better choice than her sister Martha who was zealous about housekeeping affairs (see Luke 10:38f).

The fact that man rolls up his sleeves is a good thing, also according to Thomas. There is no demeaning or disdain when it speaks of the labour of our hands. A monk also often needs to provide for his sustenance in this way. But the actual life lies beyond the work of our hands. Thinking power is of greater value than muscle power. Anyone who lifts up his face toward heaven does better than one who keeps his eyes on the plow. When Thomas and others speak about a calling, it will be about the calling of those who are spiritual, who are actively engaged with God and with prayer. 

The Reformation🔗

The Reformation rejected the notion of higher and lesser value, and looked at “common” labour differently from how it had been observed in the Middle Ages. Labour received a much higher level of importance because in the working with one’s hands people recognized as much of a calling from God as that which was evident in “spiritual” labour.

Typical for this new insight is the following expression from Martin Luther: “When an ordinary, coarse craftsman such as a cobbler or smith is sitting in his home, even if he is dirty and covered in soot, even if he stinks badly on account of sweat or tar, but yet he thinks to himself, ‘My God has created me as man, he has entrusted me with a home, a wife and a child, and he has commanded me to love them and to maintain them by my labour’ — such a man is busy in his heart with God’s Word. And whether he smells on the outside, on the inside he is pure like balsam before God.” In this quote Luther does not yet provide a new ethos of labour. And yet the atmosphere in which he speaks about the labourer smelling like sweat and tar, is markedly different from Thomas Aquinas’ tone. The malodourous labourer has just as much a direct relationship to God as the man who occupies himself with religious business. The labourer stands in an even better light than the monk, who forsakes his calling in the world because he does not want to connect his task to home, wife and children!

Calvin and other reformers have spoken about labour in the same vein as did Luther. They did not write a comprehensive dogmatics of labour, but neither did anyone before them.

It would take a few centuries yet before this subject became a unique theme, as it did with Karl Marx and others. When man is busy with his occupation, even if he does so simply with his hands, he fulfills a calling that God assigns to him.

We can argue the question whether we do well to classify each profession as a “divine” calling. In one of my publications I have pointed out that in the culture of the 16th century it was easier to speak about a profession as “divine” than would be possible in our time. When you are working with the soil, or when you are baking bread, it is easier to speak of your job as a “divine” profession than when, for example, you are a worker in a factory looking after a small part in the machine shop, without having any insight into the big picture of the final product. There are many people employed in activities where they do not know the meaning of what they are contributing. They may well ask whether their work is useful, and whether it is in harmony with God’s will. In such a case it is not immediately self-evident to speak of your own job as a “divine” task.

However, all of this does not take anything away from the confession of the Reformation that man, also in his daily job, however humble it may be, is placed before God. One’s calling is not merely about going to church, prayer, reading the Bible, but also about the daily activities. True life does not just start after our work; for all of life, inclusive of the working day of the plodding labourer, may find its place in light of the calling, the “vocatio” of God.

The Cultural Mandate🔗

The enormous flight which Western technology and culture have witnessed in the 19th and 20th century has led to the fact — I could almost say, automatically — that Christian thinkers asked themselves the question whether the entire development of culture did not flow according to a set plan from God, which he had intended with the creation. It is understandable that people started to speak in lofty terms about the meaning of human labour.

Naturally attention is drawn to the given of Genesis 1, where God gives the newly created first people Adam and Eve the following mandate: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28). Man (which includes both man and woman) was placed in the world with a task that reached beyond the simple working for a slice of bread. He needed to develop the whole world. He was therefore not placed in paradise to lead a life of “dolce farniente”, a blessed state of doing nothing. No, man was placed in the Garden of Eden to work it and to keep it (Gen. 2:15).

In order to accomplish this high calling, man had been created in the image of God. With this, he was given a unique place among the other living creatures. He became God’s viceroy to subject the earth, to bring it into culture and to rule over the other creatures.

Perhaps no one has written in a grander style about this mandate than did Dr. Abraham Kuyper in his three-volume work, De Gemene Gratie (Common Grace). He was influenced strongly by idealism and romanticism, in which the thought was inherent that man and world would evolve in a progressive sense. Did not the great discoveries in technology nourish this thought? Kuyper gave shape to this theological framework of development by speaking about the facts of salvation but in addition also about another, very different matter: that God had already predetermined the course, the program, of this world. In addition to God’s particular grace, which was directed toward the salvation of fallen men out of their lost position, Kuyper also spoke of God’s common or general grace. Owing to this common grace, man kept his task to develop the world through his labours and to get out of it what God had put into it.

Labour: More Than Difficulty🔗

Within this brief framework I cannot provide a discussion on Kuyper’s view. The thing that concerns me at this moment is the loftiness with which Christians such as Kuyper and others speak concerning human labour. Everyone will understand that in this way labour is lifted to a higher degree than the simple connection with which I started this chapter, namely the connection between work and food. It is also clear that labour is not only a means toward something else, but that it also has an inherent goal. The meaning of labour is something grand: with it, man executes what God has tasked him to do in Genesis 1 in the further development of the world. This way we can understand why someone such as J.C. Sikkel declared at the First Christian Social Congress of 1891, that in Genesis 1 and 2 the care for one’s sustenance and for others is like an afterthought, a sideshow, while the main issue is the labour in service of the Creator, toward the perfection of God’s work!

I am convinced that Kuyper and Sikkel go a step further than the reformers. I am not saying expressly that it goes against what they had written about work because the reformers, who through their view about labour as God’s calling, paved the way for a definite interpretation of this calling. Even when we do not share Kuyper’s total vision of common grace, the fact remains that we can use lofty words for the meaning of human labour.

Why would I not be able to speak along his lines about our cultural task, or our cultural mandate? Does Genesis 1:28 no longer have any meaning for us? And is there not also, as we look at all of world history, a notion of development, brought about by the ardent labour of man? Man did indeed subject the wild animals, and he can protect himself so much more from so many natural forces than when he started with his work. He subdued the seas and shortened distances with his ingenious modes of transportation. Thousands of artists created and continue to produce works of lasting value, as seen is many museums, palaces and other great works of architecture.

Definitely, there are incredibly many types of routine-work that can be as necessary as it can be depressing in obtaining the most basic sustenance for life. But that does not mean that it colours all of our labour. That was not the case for all labour in biblical times. In that time too, labour was often more than the sad result of the Fall into sin. Yes, there was sowing in tears, but also harvesting with shouts of joy (Ps. 126:5). There were those who worked with the grapevines or among the fig trees, so that later they could enjoy their rest (1 Kings 4:25). They have looked at their labour differently when the harvests produced little result, or when enemies raided the country and took off with the harvest. Much labour ended up as futile, but people could also pray, “Establish the work of our hands” (Ps. 90:17)! And we do well to pay attention to the fact that in the New Testament the kings of the earth will bring their glory into the new Jerusalem (Rev. 21:24). Much beauty on earth that has been achieved as a result of toiling circumstances will apparently be of lasting value.

Stewardship🔗

The significance of human labour can also be expressed in the term “stewardship”, a term that was only used sporadically in the (post-) reformational era, but that has now become a common term among Christians. With this term we confess on the one hand that everything belongs to God and has been given to man to manage. Sometimes we meet the expression that in his labours man is God’s fellow-worker. This characterization appears acceptable to me when we connect it to Genesis 1 and to Psalm 8. In these portions of Scripture man’s high rank is pictured. And do we not confess that this high position of man has been renewed by Christ to the image of the Creator (Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:24)? Would this not also apply to Gen. 1:28 and to Psalm 8, where the rule of man over the entire created world is shown? And with reference to Hebrews 2, is not Christ himself the man of Psalm 8, to whom all things are subjected?

Why would Christians, who owe the meaning of all of their life to Christ, not be able to place their labour in the perspective of a restored rule over all that was created?

I started out by showing what can be humbly observed in regard to our labour: we work in order to eat. In the end I have arrived at some very lofty sayings: labour as an intrinsic goal, a cultural mandate, man as steward and co-worker of God. This high evaluation of labour needs to be defended against a number of critiques. That is the topic of the next chapter.

Add new comment

(If you're a human, don't change the following field)
Your first name.
(If you're a human, don't change the following field)
Your first name.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.