11 …”and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 12 so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.” (1 Thessalonians 4:11–12 (ESV)
The following message is by Pastor John Piper. He is founder and teacher of Desiring God and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy. His article is entitled Why God Wills Work. This is Part 2.
To Provide for Our Needs
The second reason God wills work is that by working we provide for our legitimate needs. When Adam and Eve sinned, God imposed on the human race a condition of hardship that continually reminds us: things are not all right while there is sin. The Lord said to Adam, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground” (Genesis 3:17–19). Before the fall, man lived in a garden where God provided his food on trees. All Adam and Eve had to do was pick and eat. That’s why the essence of work is not sustenance of life—God gave himself as the sustainer. Adam and Eve were free to use their time in creative pursuits without the anxiety of providing food and clothing.
But when they chose to be self-reliant and rejected God’s fatherly guidance and provision, God subjected them to the very thing they chose: self-reliance. From now on, he says, if you eat, it will be because you toil and sweat. They are driven from the garden of ease to the ground of sweat. They exchange fruit trees for wheat fields where thorns and pests and drought and plowing and sowing and reaping and threshing consume their days. The curse under which we live today is not that we must work. The curse is that in our work we struggle with weariness and frustration and calamities. And all this is doubly burdensome because now by this very toil we must keep ourselves alive. “In toil you shall eat of the ground . . . In the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread.”
But hasn’t Christ come to lift the curse (Galatians 3:13)? Doesn’t he restore us to our original pre-fallen condition with God? The answer is: Yes, but not all at once. Christ delivered a mortal blow to all evil when he died for sin and rose again. But not every enemy is yet put under his feet. For example, death is part of the curse under which we live. Has Christ’s coming lifted the curse of death? Yes, but only partly now. We still die, but the “sting of death,” the hopelessness of death, is removed because our sins are forgiven in Christ and he is risen!
It is with the necessity that we work to provide for our needs. Christ says, “Don’t be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, or about your body, what you shall put on . . . Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom” (Matthew 6:25, 32f.). He says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). He says, “Know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58). In other words, God does not want his children to be burdened with the frustration and futility and depressing weariness of work. That much he aims to lift even in this age.
But just as death will be a reality to the end of this age, so will the provision of our needs depend on our gainful employment. The coming of Christ does not mean that we can now return to paradise and pick fruit in someone else’s garden. That’s the mistake made at Thessalonica. So, Paul wrote them and said, “Even when we were with you, we gave you this command: If anyone will not work, let him not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work in quietness and to earn their own living” (2 Thessalonians 3:10–12). Able-bodied people who choose to live in idleness and eat the fruit of another’s sweat are in rebellion against God. (See Luke 10:7.)
God has not completely removed the curse in this age. He has softened it with a promise. The curse says: If you want to eat, you must sweat (Genesis 3:19). The promise says: If you sweat, you shall eat (Proverbs 12:11).
So, the second reason God wills work is that by working we provide for our legitimate needs.
To Provide for the Needs of Others
The third reason God wills work is that by working we provide for the needs of those who can’t provide for their own. The promise that if you sweat, you shall eat is not absolute. The drought may strike your village in sub-Sahara Africa; thieves may steal what you’ve earned; disability may cut your earning power. All that is part of the curse which sin brought onto the world. But God in his mercy wills that the work of the able-bodied in prosperous times supply the needs of the helpless, especially in hard times.
Three passages of Scripture make this plain. In 1 Timothy 5:8 Paul speaks to children and grandchildren regarding the aged widows: “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” In Acts 20:35 Paul refers to his own manual labor and then says, “In all things I have shown you that by so toiling one must help the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.'” Then in Ephesians 4:28 Paul doesn’t settle for saying: “Don’t steal, work!” He says, “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his hands, so that he may be able to give to those in need.”
So, it’s plain: the third reason God wills work is that by working we provide for the needs of those who can’t provide for their own. Work is a way of love.
To Build Bridges for the Gospel
Finally, God wills work as a way of building bridges for the gospel. In our work we are usually in the world. We rub shoulders with unbelievers. If we do our work in reliance on God’s power, according to his pattern of excellence, and thus for his glory, we will build bridges for the gospel so that people can cross over and be saved. In 1 Thessalonians 4:11, 12, Paul exhorts the believers “to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your own hands as we charged you; so that you may command the respect of outsiders, and be dependent on nobody.” There is a very close connection between the way we do our work and the attitude that unbelievers will have toward the gospel that makes us tick.
God’s will in this age is that his people be scattered like salt in all legitimate vocations. As long as we are mentally and physically able, we should work, in reliance on his power, according to his pattern of excellence, and for his glory. In this way God wills for us to provide for our own needs, and beyond this, for the needs of others who can’t provide for their own. When we enter our work in this spirit of humble trust in God and love for others, the truth of Christ will be adorned and bridges will be built for the gospel.
May the Lord’s truth and grace be found here. Have a blessed day in whatever you do for the glory of God (I Cor. 10:31).
Soli deo Gloria!
His Word Today 