Sacred Work
As image-bearers of God, work is in our nature.
“In the beginning, God created...”
You see, the very first thing God shows us about himself in the scriptures is that he is a worker. Our first picture of the maker of all things is the image of our God putting his hands in the dirt. He started by creating hospitable spaces for life to flourish, then he created living things to enjoy those spaces— the plants, land creatures, birds, fish, and the crown of his creation—man and woman.
When God put Adam and Eve in his garden, He told them to work it and tend to it and to cultivate the earth and create culture as they exercise dominion on His behalf over the world He had made. By God’s design, we have been placed in a world that’s in development— a world that’s heading somewhere. Randy Alcorn put it this way, “The Bible starts in a garden and ends in a Garden City.” Everything is under construction. And the creative and restorative work that we do in the world reflects the mission of God in the world to restore what has been subjected to futility.
If we bear God’s image, then work is necessary not only for our obedience but also for our fulfillment. God did not put work in the world after sin entered in— he put it in the heart of paradise. Human work is part of the ideal human existence. We flourish when we are doing creative or restorative work that mirrors the work of Creator and Restorer God. We flourish when we contribute to the job we were all given to do at our creation— to lovingly use our hands, imaginations and resources to leave people, places and things in God’s world better than how we found them. To represent our creating and restoring God in the world he authored.
That means that every kind of work that helps the spaces of man better reflect the Garden City where truth, goodness, order, beauty and justice will triumph, is work that we should celebrate as good.
If history began in a garden and will end in a garden city, then every creative and restorative work we undertake in this life is a nudging toward that city. And if we learn anything at all from the life of Jesus, we must learn that there is nothing so simple that it cannot be sacred. Whether you are arranging music, managing a team, sweeping a floor or tending to children, you are doing the sacred work of the Lord.
After God completed His work of creation, He looked at what he had made and said it was very good. He was satisfied. He looked at his work and celebrated. As image-bearers of God, we are also designed to take God-glorifying pride in our work.
And yet, it seems our work constantly fails us, and we fail our work. It seems we are unable to produce work that truly satisfies. Ruin crouches right behind even our best work. Roofs leak, children wander astray, lawns grow weeds, food spoils, cars break down. This is the curse of sin. From the moment Adam and Eve sought independence from God, work, just like every other good thing in God’s creation, has been under a curse.
So as Christians, as agents of reconciliation who have been freed from the bondage of sin and death, we press on under the oppression of cursed ground to produce work that directs the eyes of the world to the Creator and Restorer of all things, where true fulfillment and perfect work will be completed.
The scriptures promise that every good work that God has begun in us, He will be faithful to complete. (Philippians 1:6). So we press on in confidence that our help is on the way. And as God, the architect of the Garden City, completes what is ultimately His work, He will look to us through the finished work of Jesus and say, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” (Matthew 25:23).
