“Just Another Manic Monday…?”
Thank you to The Bangles for that classic title. Being that it is a Monday, and since I want to hang out in Ephesians for a while, I thought it a good time to talk about work. What better way to get into the topic than with some quotes from one of my favorite comedies, the movie Office Space, from 1999. Go watch it immediately if you haven’t seen it. Here are some philosophical thoughts from the main character named Peter.
Talking to his therapist Peter says, “So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life.” The therapist responds, “That’s messed up.”
Then Peter is talking with Bob, an efficiency expert brought in to help improve and streamline the company. He says, “The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my butt off and [the company] ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now. Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.”
How does work fit into our lives? For quite a while in my life I used to say that work was the direct result of the curse. It was because we sinned in the Garden that we had to work. It was half joke and half serious as I shared my disdain for work. Remember Genesis 3:17-19? God said to Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground…” That was essentially my view of work…it stinks. It’s hard, not fun, and I don’t want to do it. I was very much like Peter in Office Space. And it is true that work is difficult and hard as a result of our sin, but it existed before the fall too. Genesis 2:15 says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” So work existed before the fall. My 18 year old self was a bit off, surprise, surprise. Work itself is not inherently bad…work is a part of our original make-up, but like everything else in creation it became tarnished and became a source of difficulty, pain, and frustration.
One of our biggest problems with work after the fall is how our relationship to it changed. Yes, it became hard, but worse than that we began to use it in a way that it was never intended for…we began to make it the basis for our identity. We began to prove ourselves through our work. You know the old cliché: “You are what you do.” That became a reflexive belief in us, and we applied to all of our relationships, but most importantly to our relationship with God. We think we earn our way into relationship with God through our work. It proves our worth and value. He won’t love us unless we work really hard to be good in every way. The giving of the law exposed this broken belief (Galatians 3:19-26 and Romans 7:7-25).
Work was never intended to carry this weight. It can’t. All this thinking does is limit you in a severe way. You, your being, your identity, you are far more than anything you could ever do. You are of such greater value than your works could ever display. You have to be because if you were fully summed up in what you did, then you would really only be of value when you produced, when you worked. There are great chunks of life when work doesn’t happen. Does a baby’s value hang on what it does? How valuable is a crying, sleeping, eating, and pooping machine to you? Because that’s all we do for a while. And what about when you’re older? Does your value hang on what you do then when you’re retired? Are you only worth something when you’re working? And what about the handicapped or the injured or the sick? Where’s their value, what is their identity if they can’t work? The world around us tells us work defines us and so does our sin, but it’s a lie. We are more than what we do.
What does Scripture say? As we have already seen from looking at the Garden work is a part of life for us…it was intended as something to bless us and the world around us, but it is not the basis for our being. Our identity and value come solely from God. God first made us because he wanted us to exist. That obviously happened before we could do anything for him. We are the result of his good pleasure and creative will. And that truth continues after the fall too. We see this most clearly in Ephesians 2. Paul tells us that we were “dead in our sin.” Dead. What can a dead person do to change their situation? What work can they do to prove they are of value? The answer is nothing! They are just dead. That’s how the Bible paints us in our sin. But Paul shows God continuing his awesome work of creation with us all over again. He says, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (2:4) God re-creates us by his grace. He brings us to new life in his Son Jesus Christ. Again, our value, our identity is completely based in Him, his love for us and his will for us to be alive. No work has been done on our end to make this happen. Paul drives that home saying, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (2:8-9, emphasis mine)
Again, think of a baby. If you looked out the window right now and saw a baby lying in the middle of the road, as horrific as that sounds, would you ask what that baby has done to determine if she is worth saving? NO! You would run out there and pick that baby up and protect her, care for her. We are inherently valuable because God has made us that way. And our great value is displayed in the most dramatic way through His action for us…through the cross of Jesus Christ. We are worth life itself to our Lord.
Work then is not a cause for anything…it is always the effect, it is a result. It is a fruit of faith. Remember what Peter said to Bob? “It’s a problem of motivation.” If we base our identity and value on what we do, if we base our relationship with God, aka our salvation, and our relationships with others on what we do, we will always be performing or working in order to get approval. Or a more negative way to put it, and more accurate to the motivation behind it, is that we are working to prevent rejection. As Peter said… “my only real motivation is not to be hassled, and the fear of losing my job.” Fear is the motivation, and it can only take you so far. Peter was right saying, “that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.” Fear is not freedom.
Because our value and identity, our being is not based on what we do but rather on God’s incredible love for us, it actually sets our work free. Work then can be the result that it was always intended to be. It is the outflow of God’s love and grace for us. Ecclesiastes 3:13 tells us that work is a gift. “That everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil—this is God's gift to humanity.” We simply get to enjoy doing things because they are free from the pressure of having to prove who we are. You are set free to work. Paul re-emphasizes this in Ephesians 2:10 saying, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Our works are gifts from God that God has prepared for us before we did anything. Our work flows from Him.
One of the great implications of this for our work is that what we do is not actually for our own benefit any more. Before it was always about us trying to gain an identity or get God’s approval for our self. Now, because all of that is taken care of in God’s grace given to us in Jesus Christ, our work can finally be for others. We can finally serve. Reformer Martin Luther discovered this as he thought through the implications of being saved by grace—he realized that our works were primarily for our neighbors. He said: “God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.” God doesn’t need them because Jesus Christ has already done all that God requires. Now our work can be directed outward to those around us to bless them. In this way we see our work redeemed and brought back to God’s original intention for it. It blesses us and the world around us, as we saw earlier in Genesis 2.
The last thing I’ll say is when our work is the result of God’s grace in our lives there is a great deal of security in it. The truth that the Lord has prepared good works for us to walk in relieves that fear in us where we worry about what to do all of the time. We can rest in God’s promise that he has prepared good works for us to do and he will lead us into them. Like everything else in the Christian life it all depends on his faithfulness to us. He promises us he will use us the way he wants to…and he does, and he will. That promise is for you this Monday. You can simply rest in that truth, trust him, and ask him to guide you in your work and use it to bless others. Amen.
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