Work as Love Made Visible: A Biblical View of Work

One of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that our relationship with work is deeply confused.

We complain about work. We look forward to holidays. We dream about retirement. Yet when people lose their work—through unemployment, illness, redundancy or retirement—they often discover that they miss far more than the income. They miss the relationships. They miss the rhythm of the week. They miss knowing that somebody needed them and that what they did made some kind of contribution.

At the other extreme, some of us allow work to take over our lives. Our job becomes the way we measure our value, and being busy becomes evidence that we are important. We become so identified with what we do that we’re no longer quite sure who we are when we stop doing it.

So which is it? Is work a burden we have to endure until we can finally retire, or is it the place where we find our meaning?

As I’ve been reading Arthur Brooks alongside the opening chapters of Genesis, I’ve become convinced that the Bible gives us a much richer answer. Work is good, but it isn’t God. It is part of what we were created for, but it was never intended to carry the whole weight of our identity. Work can be deeply meaningful, but that meaning isn’t simply determined by our income, title or status.

The big biblical idea is not simply that God wants us to work hard. It is that work is one of the ways we bear the image of God.

Work Was God’s Idea

We often think of work as part of the curse. We picture Adam outside the Garden of Eden, sweating away among the thorns and thistles, and assume that work was one of the things that entered the world after humanity sinned.

But that isn’t where work begins.

Before sin enters the story, God creates human beings in his image and immediately gives them things to do. They are told to rule, fill the earth and subdue it. Adam is placed in the garden to work it and take care of it. God even brings the animals to Adam and invites him to name them.

Ruling, filling, cultivating, caring, discovering and naming were all part of human life before anything went wrong. The frustration we experience in work is part of the fall, but work itself is part of God’s good creation.

That distinction matters because it means our desire to make something, improve something, understand something or care for someone isn’t simply the result of social pressure. It grows out of who we were created to be.

One of the first things the Bible tells us about God is that God works. He brings order out of chaos. He fills what is empty. He creates life, beauty and abundance. Then he makes human beings in his image and entrusts his creation to them.

We were created to represent God in the world, and part of bearing his image is joining him in his work.

We don’t only work because there are bills to pay. We work because we were created by a God who works and who invites us to participate in what he is doing.

Eden Was Only the Beginning

There is a detail in Genesis that I had never really noticed before.

The Garden of Eden wasn’t the whole earth.

God planted a garden and placed Adam and Eve within it. The garden was ordered, beautiful and abundant, but humanity was then told to fill the earth and subdue it. It seems that the garden was intended to be a starting point. Human beings were to take what God had begun in Eden and extend it into the wider world.

I think that gives us a wonderful picture of what work was meant to be.

God’s work in Genesis produces order. What was formless takes shape. Light is separated from darkness, land from sea, and the world becomes a place in which life can flourish.

God’s work also produces beauty. Genesis tells us that the trees were “pleasing to the eye.” God didn’t create a merely functional world. He created colour, texture, variety and delight. Apparently, God cares about things being beautiful as well as useful.

And God’s work produces abundance. The trees were not only pleasing to the eye; they were also good for food. Creation overflowed with life and the capacity for more life.

Order, beauty and abundance. That is what God’s work produced, and at its best, our work does something similar.

A scientist helps us understand the order within creation. An engineer solves a problem. A builder creates a place where people can live. A farmer cultivates the land and produces food. An artist makes something beautiful. A business owner creates a product, a service or an opportunity that did not exist before. Even mowing the lawn involves taking one small patch of creation and bringing some order to it.

Of course, our work isn’t only concerned with the physical world. Genesis also tells us that human beings were made for relationship. “It is not good for the man to be alone.” That means some of the most important work in our society is relational work.

Teachers don’t simply pass on information; they help young lives take shape. Nurses don’t simply administer medication; they bring care and hope into moments of fear and pain. Counsellors help people find a path through emotional chaos. Social workers, carers, pastors and parents spend much of their time cultivating relationships in which people can grow and flourish.

The results of this kind of work can be difficult to measure. You may not be able to point to a building you completed or a product you launched. Sometimes you won’t see the fruit until years later, and sometimes you may never see it at all.

But relational work is real work. When someone helps bring healing, hope, order or beauty into another person’s life, they are doing something that reflects the heart of God.

Arthur Brooks describes work, at its best, as “love made visible.” I think that is a beautiful phrase. Whenever we see something that could bless another person and then use our time, imagination, energy and skill to bring it into being, love takes on a visible form.

Sometimes You Simply Need to Make Tents

Of course, work is also how most of us earn a living, and there is nothing unspiritual about that. We need to pay the bills. We need food, housing and clothing. Where we are able, we have a responsibility to provide for ourselves and for the people who depend upon us.

Pay and working conditions matter enormously, particularly when people are struggling to meet their basic needs. It is much easier to talk about finding meaning in your work when you aren’t worried about whether you can pay the rent.

The Apostle Paul made tents. I don’t imagine that tent-making was the great calling of his life, but it enabled him to support himself while carrying out the ministry God had entrusted to him.

Sometimes you simply need to make tents.

Not everyone has the luxury of waiting for a job that perfectly matches their gifts and passions. There are seasons when the work available to us may not feel particularly meaningful. Faithfulness can simply mean doing what needs to be done, providing for the people we love and doing our work as well as we can.

At the same time, most of us eventually discover that money alone isn’t enough to make work satisfying. Once we are earning enough to live, we begin looking for something more.

Brooks identifies two internal rewards that contribute to meaningful work. The first is what he calls earned success: the satisfaction that comes from accomplishing something worthwhile. You had an idea, developed a skill or recognised something that needed doing. You put in the effort, and now something exists that wasn’t there before.

It might be a house, a report, a lesson plan, a loaf of bread or a newly tidied bedroom. It might be a child who finally understands something you have been patiently explaining or a difficult conversation that leaves a relationship healthier than it was before. Whether the achievement is enormous or apparently ordinary, there is something deeply human about making a positive difference to the world around us.

The second reward is service. We want to know that our work benefits somebody else. We want what we do to matter beyond ourselves.

This is where Paul’s words to the Colossians become so important:

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord.”

I love how expansive that is: whatever you do.

Paul isn’t only talking about church work. He doesn’t create one category for spiritually important work and another for everything else. He says our ordinary work can be offered to Christ.

For followers of Jesus, there is therefore a much bigger question behind our work. It isn’t simply, “Do I enjoy my job?” or even, “Am I successful?” The deeper question is, “Who am I serving through this?”

If this is where God has placed me for this season, how can I serve him here? How can I bring a little more order, beauty or abundance? How can I make somebody else’s life a little better?

That applies even to tasks nobody notices.

I love the story of a wealthy young woman who went to work with Mother Teresa. She was given the job of cleaning toilets and found it almost unbearable. Then she watched Mother Teresa notice a dirty toilet and simply clean it herself.

It changed the young woman’s life because she realised that if you follow Jesus, you are never too important to do something that needs doing.

Your Path May Look Different

One of the traps we fall into is assuming that everybody’s working life should follow the same pattern.

Some people choose a profession when they are young, develop within it and spend their working lives progressing along a fairly straight path. Others remain in the same kind of role for decades. They may not be particularly interested in promotion, but they become exceptionally good at what they do.

Some people move between jobs because of family, location, relationships or lifestyle. Others have what Brooks describes as a spiral career: a series of different careers in which the skills and experience developed in one chapter are carried into the next.

That last pattern is probably closest to my story.

I started in radio. Then I became a youth worker. After that I managed youth workers, helped lead an international organisation and eventually became a pastor—which was quite a head shift.

At the time, those changes didn’t always make sense. Some were deliberate steps. Others felt as though God had sent in a helicopter, lifted me out of one place and dropped me somewhere completely different.

Looking back, though, I can see how the chapters connected. The communication skills I developed in radio, the lessons I learned in youth ministry, the leadership experience I gained and the people I encountered along the way all became part of the preparation for what came next.

Very little was wasted.

Ephesians tells us that:

“We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

God knew you were going to turn up.

He has shaped you through your gifts, personality, relationships, successes, failures and experiences. The good works he has prepared for you will not necessarily look like the work he has prepared for somebody else.

That is why Hebrews tells us to run with perseverance “the race marked out for us,” fixing our eyes on Jesus. There is a race marked out for you. Your task is not to run somebody else’s race, climb their ladder or reproduce their version of success. Your task is to keep your eyes on Jesus and remain attentive to the path he is opening in front of you.

I have sometimes found that a right next step both excites and frightens me. Something comes alive when I imagine it, but another part of me wonders whether I could possibly do it.

That feeling doesn’t automatically mean God is calling us in that direction. Fear and excitement aren’t infallible guides. We still need Scripture, prayer and the wisdom of people who know us well. But I have learned to pay attention when an opportunity stirs both excitement and a healthy amount of, “Oh my goodness, could I actually do this?”

Conversely, when I imagine a particular future and feel completely dead inside, I have learned to pay attention to that too.

The question isn’t simply whether an opportunity would make us more successful. It is whether this is part of the race Jesus is asking us to run.

The Goal Is a Whole Life

Work is good, but good things make terrible gods.

That can be particularly difficult to recognise with work because our culture rewards overwork. Nobody hears that you drank an entire bottle of gin last night and says, “What an outstanding drinker.” But work sixteen hours a day and somebody may give you a promotion.

We can even turn exhaustion into a badge of honour. When someone asks how we are, “busy” has become the approved answer. It signals that we are useful, needed and important.

Sometimes there are seasons when we simply have to work hard. Deadlines arrive, children need care and organisations face crises. I have certainly experienced periods when the demands were unusually heavy.

But I also know that I can allow work to occupy too much space, partly because I love what I do. Workaholism isn’t only a temptation for people who are driven by money or status. Sometimes we overwork because work gives us a sense of competence and significance. It can also become a way of avoiding other parts of life that feel more difficult or uncertain.

Jesus didn’t say, “I have come that they may have a successful career.” He said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

The goal is not simply to have a successful work life. The goal is to live a whole life.

That means making space for worship, family, friendship, rest, play and the parts of us that cannot be measured by productivity.

Occasionally, it is worth doing an honest audit of where our hours are going. We may need to stop assuming that rest will magically appear and actually place it in the calendar. We may need to book the holiday, keep an evening free or protect time with family and friends.

We may even need to decide what we are going to do for leisure. Otherwise, we can arrive at our day off so exhausted that all we can manage is collapsing in front of a screen.

Join a choir. Play golf. Go surfing. Try pickleball. Read a novel. Have coffee with a mate. Do something simply because you enjoy it and not because it will make you more productive.

Work matters, but work isn’t the whole of life.

You Are More Than What You Do

One of the first questions we ask when meeting somebody is, “What do you do?”

It is innocent enough, but it reveals how quickly we organise people according to their occupations.

Teacher. Builder. Doctor. Accountant. Cleaner. Pastor. Student. Retiree.

And if somebody says they are retired, what do we ask next?

“Yes, but what did you do?”

We want the label because it helps us work out where a person fits. But when we reduce someone to an occupation, we miss something fundamental.

Genesis tells us that every human being is created in the image of God. Our dignity doesn’t come from our title, income, qualifications or usefulness. It comes from God.

That means people are never merely employees, customers, managers, patients, voters, teachers, postmen or pastors.

We can also do this to ourselves. We can allow a role to consume our identity until we no longer know who we are apart from it. We become the regional manager, the senior teacher or the successful business owner before we are a spouse, parent, friend or child of God.

I experienced something of this when I first became a pastor. I nearly quit almost immediately because I simply couldn’t imagine myself as “a pastor.” Eventually the title became familiar. Now, if somebody asks what I do while I’m getting a haircut, I can comfortably tell them I’m the pastor down the road.

But that still isn’t who I am.

I’m Matt. I’m a husband, father, grandfather and friend. Most importantly, I am someone made in the image of God and deeply loved by him.

Your work is important. It may be one of the primary places in which you serve God and contribute to the world. But it is what you do. It is not who you are.

Why We Need Sabbath

God built a practice into the rhythm of human life that reminds us of this truth.

Sabbath.

Sabbath is the decision to stop even though the work is not finished. And let’s be honest: the work is never completely finished. There will always be another email, another task, another person to help and another thing that could be improved.

We stop because we need to remember that the world continues without our effort. We stop because our worth does not depend upon our output.

Eugene Peterson warned that work is one of the places where we feel most God-like. We create, organise, lead and accomplish. That makes it one of the easiest places to develop what he called “God pretensions.” We start imagining that everything depends upon us.

Without Sabbath, our work can become the entire context in which we understand ourselves. We become so absorbed in what we are doing that we lose sight of what God is doing.

Hebrews says that “there remains…a Sabbath-rest for the people of God.”

If you literally cannot stop working, something is wrong.

We all need regular moments in which we are not the pastor, teacher, manager, business owner, employee or person everybody depends upon. We need time when the badge comes off and we are simply ourselves before God.

Israel didn’t only have a weekly Sabbath. Its calendar included festivals and celebrations when people stopped working, gathered together, ate and remembered the larger story of which they were part.

I used to think annual leave wasn’t in the Bible. I’m beginning to think it may be far more biblical than I realised.

It also helps to have friends outside our professional circles. We need people who cannot advance our careers, increase our influence or open strategic doors. We need people whose only contribution to our lives is that they know us and love us.

In other words, go to church.

Unless you’re a pastor. Then it gets a little more complicated.

Still, all of us need relationships in which we are known as people rather than positions.

There Is No Retirement in the Kingdom of God

I’ve often said that there is no retirement in the Kingdom of God.

I don’t mean we should never retire from paid employment. Retirement can be a wonderful season of life. After decades of work, it is entirely appropriate to enjoy a different pace, spend time with family, travel and make room for things that employment may have pushed to the edges.

What I mean is that we never retire from following Jesus.

If you are still this side of the daisies, God still has meaningful work for you to do.

It may look very different from what it did twenty years ago. It may involve caring for grandchildren, mentoring somebody younger, praying, volunteering, serving your neighbourhood or encouraging leaders who now carry responsibilities you once carried.

Calling doesn’t finish. It changes shape.

Retirement can present a fresh spiritual challenge because there is no longer an employer structuring your time. The same can be true before we enter the workforce, during unemployment or when illness limits what we are able to do.

Without a title or timetable, the question becomes wonderfully direct:

“Jesus, what have you got for me today?”

That is a question we can ask in every season of life.

Love Made Visible

There will be days when your work doesn’t feel like love made visible—or love made invisible—or anything else.

The goal is not to discover a mythical job in which every task is inspiring, every colleague is delightful and every Monday morning fills you with excitement. I’m fairly sure that job doesn’t exist.

The goal is to keep moving towards meaningful work while also bringing meaning to the work already in front of us.

Arthur Brooks helps us understand that satisfying work usually gives us more than money. It allows us to accomplish something worthwhile and contribute to the lives of others.

But Scripture takes us further.

Paul tells us:

“We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.”

An ambassador represents another kingdom wherever they are sent.

That means your workplace is one of the places in which you represent Jesus. Whether you are a mechanic, teacher, cleaner, parent, student, accountant, carer, retiree, volunteer or pastor, you carry the presence of Christ into that place.

So perhaps the most important question is not, “How can I find the perfect job?”

Perhaps the better question is, “How can I represent Jesus well in the work he has given me today?”

How can I bring a little more order into the chaos? How can I create something beautiful? How can I cultivate abundance? How can I treat the people around me as those who bear the image of God?

And then, when the day is done, how can I stop and remember that I am loved apart from everything I have accomplished?

That, I think, is the biblical vision of work.

We join God in what he is doing. We cultivate the patch of creation he has entrusted to us. We serve the people he has placed around us. We do what is ours to do with our whole heart, and we trust him with what remains unfinished.

Because work, at its best, is love made visible.