Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work

by Timothy J. Keller

Second, we believe that lower-status or lower-paying work is an assault on our dignity.

Another result is that many people will choose to be unemployed rather than do work that they feel is beneath them, and most service and manual labor falls into this category.

Work of all kinds, whether with the hands or the mind, evidences our dignity as human beings—because it reflects the image of God the Creator in us.

Work has value in service or knowledge

We are called to stand in for God here in the world, exercising stewardship over the rest of creation in his place as his vice-regents.

We share in doing the things that God has done in creation

While the Greek thinkers saw ordinary work, especially manual labor, as relegating human beings to the animal level, the Bible sees all work as distinguishing human beings from animals and elevating them to a place of dignity. Old

Work has dignity because it is something that God does and because we do it in God’s place, as his representatives.

No task is too small a vessel to hold the immense dignity of work given by God.

Simple physical labor is God’s work no less than the formulation of theological truth.

work has dignity because it reflects God’s image

in us, and also because the material creation we are called to care for is good.

The Bible sees death not as a friend, but as an enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26), because the created world is a brilliant and beautiful good (Genesis 1:31), des...

According to the Bible, this world is the forerunner of the new heavens and new earth, which will be purified, restored, and enhanced at the “renewal of all things” (Matthew 19:28; Romans 8:19–25).

As we have seen, this means that Christians cannot look down on labor involving more intimate contact with the material world.

We are both body and soul, and the biblical ideal of shalom includes both physical thriving as well as spiritual.

the Holy Spirit is said to convict and convince people of sin and God’s judgment—which is something a preacher does. So here we have God’s Spirit both gardening and preaching the gospel. Both are God’s work. How can we say one kind of work is high and noble and the other low and debasing?

We were built for work and the dignity it gives us as human beings, regardless of its status or pay.

We have the freedom to seek work that suits our gifts and passions.

be open to greater opportunities for work when the economy is weak and jo...

no longer have any basis for condescension ...

The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.

So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

Work is our design and our dignity; it is also a way to serve God through creativity, particularly in the

creation of culture.

For our spiritual growth there was a divine Word to obey (verses 16–17). For our cultural and creative development there was the physical work of the tending of the garden

Human beings “filling the earth” means something far than plants and animals filling the earth. It means civilization, not just procreation.

Some have complained that this text gives human beings a license to exploit nature. But that is not what it is talking about.50

God owns the world, but he has put it under our care to cultivate it. It is definitely not a mandate to treat the world and its resources as if they are ours to use, exploit, and discard as we wish.

He gives the world form. Where it is unshaped and undifferentiated, he distinguishes and elaborates.

The creation of Adam and Eve as gendered beings leads to biological procreation, another way in which we are, as beings in his image, carrying on the work he began at the beginning. And

So the word “subdue” indicates that even in its original, unfallen form, God made the world to need work.

its potential is undeveloped, so it needs to be cultivated like a garden.

we are to be gardeners who take an active stance toward their

charge.

all work. It is creative and assertive.

It is rearranging the raw material of God’s creation in such a way that it helps the world in general, and people in particular, thrive and flourish.

we are continuing God’s work of

forming, filling, and subduing.

Whenever we bring order out of chaos, whenever we draw out creative potential, whenever we elaborate and “unfold” creation beyond where it was when we found it, we are following...

According to James, one of his lifelong and faith-derived values is “making beautiful things of enduring value.

A biblical understanding of work energizes our desire to create value from the resources available to us.

beauty, and so make possible the theories

The naming of the animals in chapter 2, verses 19–20 is an invitation to enter into his creativity.

Through our work we bring order out of chaos, create new entities, exploit the patterns of creation, and interweave the human community.

In the same way, what if you see a human need not being met, you see a talent or resource that can meet that need, and you then invest your resources—at your risk and cost—so that the need is met and the result is new jobs, new products, and better quality of life? What you are doing, Mouw concluded, is actually God-like.

If ministers don’t yet see business as a way of making culture and of cultivating creation, they will fail to support, appreciate, and properly lead many members of their congregation.

What’s more God has not left us alone to discover how or why we are to cultivate his creation; instead, he gives us a clear purpose for our work and faithfully calls us into it.

Nevertheless, each person should live as a believer in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to them, just as God has called them. This is the rule I lay down in all the churches.

we gain more insight into how God provides purpose for our work by calling us to serve the world.