Made to Work, Called to Keep

The first job in the Bible was gardening.

Before there was sin, before there was a curse, before a single thorn grew, God planted a garden in Eden and put the man in it. He didn’t put him there to lie in a hammock. He put him there to work.

“The LORD God took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” (Genesis 2:15)

Two jobs: work it and take care of it. Develop it and protect it. Make it fruitful and keep it safe. That was humanity’s calling from the very beginning, and it was given in paradise.

Work is not a curse

Many people think of work as a punishment, something we have to put up with until the weekend or retirement. There is a curse on work in the Bible, but it comes later, in Genesis 3, after the fall. God told Adam, “Through painful work you will eat from it all the days of your life. It will grow thorns and thistles for you” (Genesis 3:17-18). Since then work has been hard. It is frustrating and tiring, and sometimes it seems pointless.

But the curse made work painful. It did not make it bad. Work itself was God’s idea, and it was part of the world He called “very good.” When God first blessed the man and the woman, He gave them work to do: “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and every living creature that moves along the ground” (Genesis 1:28). Theologians call it the creation mandate. It means that ordinary work, farming, building, cooking, teaching, coding, cleaning, caring for children, is a way of carrying out God’s first command.

God Himself is a worker. He worked six days to make the world, and Jesus said, “My Father has been at work right up to now, and I am at work as well” (John 5:17). Jesus spent most of His life in a carpenter’s shop. When we work, we are doing something God does.

Why work matters for money

This book is about money, so why start with work? Because in the Bible, the normal way God provides for us is through work. Money is not meant to fall from the sky. It is meant to be earned.

Paul is blunt about it. Some believers in Thessalonica had stopped working, perhaps because they thought Jesus was coming back any day. Paul wrote:

“For even while we were with you, we gave you this instruction: ‘Anyone who will not work should not eat.’ We hear that some among you are living undisciplined lives: they are not busy working, they are busy with everyone else’s business. We command such people, and we urge them in the Lord Jesus Christ, to go about their work quietly and to eat bread they have earned themselves.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10-12)

That is not cruelty to people who cannot work. The same Bible commands generous care for the sick, the old, the widow and the orphan. It is a word to people who could work and choose not to. Work is part of our dignity. To earn your bread is to stand on your own feet and not be a burden on others. Paul told the Thessalonians to “earn your living with your hands, as we instructed you, so that outsiders will see you live rightly, and you will not need to rely on anyone” (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12).

Proverbs puts it in a single line: “A slack hand leads to poverty, but hard-working hands bring wealth” (Proverbs 10:4). It isn’t a guarantee. Some people work very hard and stay poor, and the Bible knows that. But as a general rule, diligence and provision go together.

Work as worship

Here is the great secret of Christian work. Paul wrote to slaves, people with the hardest, least rewarding jobs in the Roman world, and told them their work could be offered to Jesus:

“Whatever you are doing, put your whole self into the work, as for the Lord and not for people, knowing that you will receive from the Lord the inheritance as your reward.” (Colossians 3:23-24)

If that was true for a slave, it is true for you. The spreadsheet, the shift at the till, the lesson plan, the nappy, the night on the ward: all of it can be done “for the Lord.” Your boss may never notice. Jesus will.

This means there is no such thing as a secular job for a Christian. There are only jobs done for Christ and jobs done for ourselves. A plumber who fixes a leak honestly and well, and charges a fair price, is serving God just as truly as a preacher in a pulpit.

Keeping as well as working

Remember the second half of Genesis 2:15: “to work it and take care of it.” Adam was not only to develop the garden. He was to guard it. Stewardship includes both.

In money terms, working is earning, and keeping is managing what we earn. Some people work hard and then let it all leak away through carelessness. Others are careful keepers but never really work. God’s design is both: to produce and to protect, to earn and to manage.

That second half is what most of this book is about. But it starts here, with the dignity of work. You can’t manage what you haven’t earned, and you can’t give what you haven’t got. Paul said that one of the best reasons to work is to have something to share: “Thieves must steal no more. Instead they must work hard, doing something good with their own hands, so that they have something to share with anyone in need” (Ephesians 4:28).

Look at that. The ex-thief does not just stop taking. He starts working, and he works so that he can give. That is the whole Christian view of money in one verse.

When work becomes an idol

There is a warning here too. Work is good, but it can become a god. Some of us work far too much, not because God has called us to it but because we are afraid, or ambitious, or we get our sense of worth from our job. The psalmist says, “It does you no good to get up early and stay up late, eating food earned by anxious work; He gives sleep to the one He loves” (Psalm 127:2).

God built a day of rest into the week right from creation. Rest is a weekly reminder that the world does not depend on our labour. We work hard, then we stop, and we trust God with what we didn’t finish.

A voice from the past

The eighteenth-century writer William Law asked his readers to look honestly at how they spent their money, as plainly as a farmer can tell you where his fields are:

“Every one also can as easily tell how he lays out his money, and whether he considers how to please God in it, as he can tell where his estate is, and whether it be in money or land.”

William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

Practice this week

Before you start work each day this week, whatever your work is, pray Colossians 3:23 over it: “Lord, I’m doing this for You.” At the end of the week, notice whether it changed how you worked, or how you felt about your work.

For groups

• Did you grow up thinking of work as a blessing or a curse? Where did that idea come from?
• What would it look like to do your particular job “for the Lord” this week?
• Read Ephesians 4:28. What does it tell us about the purpose of earning money?
• Are you more likely to make an idol of work, or to avoid it? What would balance look like for you?