Good Work
I once had an acquaintance who was part owner in a small restaurant and vineyard in southwest Ohio, right on the banks of the Ohio River. On one visit he gave me a tour of his operation. It was in the months before the turn of the millennium, and he was expecting a big party. He had been working hard on making champagne. He opened a bottle of the stuff that didn’t go quite right to give us a taste of the difference between that and the “good” stuff. It was a little bit off, but it wasn’t bad. I asked him why he hadn’t simply destroyed it if he was dissatisfied with it. He said that he was keeping it in reserve in case he ran out of the good stuff at the New Year’s Eve party. He would break out the inferior if he didn’t have enough of the superior. “Aha,” I said, “I see thou hast not saved the best wine for last.”
When our Lord set about turning water into wine, it wasn’t just a good work, in the sense that it was a kind thing to do. It is true that he didn’t want a host to be embarrassed by running short of wine. But he also made a wine that was really worth drinking. In other words, it was good work in the sense of being a quality job. There is a lesson in this for the Christian.
We are tempted to see work as the result of the Fall. We often think of it as a curse, but it’s not. It’s true that God cursed Adam to work the ground from which he was taken, and that he would earn his bread by the sweat of his face. Thorns and thistles would be his constant companions. I remember that every time hail destroys my tomato crop but leaves my dandelion crop unscathed. My peppers require constant loving attention. My milkweed multiplies unbidden.
But that is not the whole story. Adam was given a job to do in the garden. He was to keep it and tend it. Even before the Fall, there was work. Therefore work isn’t so much a bad thing as it is a good thing marred, and a thing which our Lord will fully redeem one day. Of course we mustn’t press a parable too far. Parables are creatures with sharp eyes and weak backs, and we break their backs if we press them too hard, but by the light of at least a few of the parables of the Lord Jesus, we will not spend eternity in idleness. There will be work to do. Cities will need to be ruled, angels will need to be judged, and who knows what else might need to be done? Our Heavenly Father is infinitely creative and he knows us better than we know ourselves. We will not be bored, of that I am sure.
But what of right now? On this side of eternity? How do we set about cooperating with the Lord Jesus in the process of the redemption of work in this life? What does he expect of us? Well, for one thing, he expects us always to do our best work. Colossians 3:23 tells us, “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men.” But there are other matters to be taken in to account as well.
The first thing I’m going to say might not be very popular, but I’m going to say it anyway. Not every kind of work is legitimate for a Christian man or woman. “Of course,” you say, “no Christian should be a drug dealer or an internet pornographer.” Yes, that goes without saying. But there are other kinds of work that are not unambiguously evil, but which I believe are unfit for a Christian.