Why We Work by J.E. Rose

God’s Covenant of “Work”

It was around 1990 I began researching and writing materials for parents to help them teach their kids how to work and how to treat it as a “calling” from God. I started my own company, “Joblink” for which I had great dreams and ambitions. I self-published a book, “Choosing Your Life’s Work”  In those days I knew nothing about Amazon.com and personal websites. So, I did my best to market the old-fashioned way–pounding the pavement, doing lectures and going to exhibits. What a ton of work it was! 

After a year or so, I was losing more money than I could afford. I had a family to support. I decided it was necessary to close up shop. At the time, it seemed like all I had to show for the entire effort was a few unopened cartons of books and more than a few regrets. 

But only recently I came to appreciate what an important benefit I got from that whole experience. It was a concrete life lesson on the very subject I was promoting: work. But as my disappointment revealed, work is not just big dreams and fancy business cards. There are no guarantees that a business will succeed. And as my experience proved, for us, work brings a constant reminder not just of what it can do but what it cannot. 

Back then, I had more understanding of what career scientists said about work than what God had to say. In recent years, as I've studied more deeply the “theology of work”--particularly in the context of what is called “covenant theology”, my eyes are open as never before. 

The First Work and the First Worker

Though a casual reading of what the Bible says about work will often look to Adam as the first worker, and the first work as tending the Garden of Eden, that’s not totally accurate.. Adam wasn’t the first worker; God was. Nor is it entirely accurate to assume that the first work God did was create our world: making stars and planets, and oceans and animals. His first work was before creation itself. It is the answer to the question: “what was God doing (working) before he made the world?”  We learn the answer in John 17, when Jesus made reference to his experience prior to creation: 

21 that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that you sent me. 22 The glory which you have given me, I have given to them; that they may be one, even as we are one; 23 I in them, and you in me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that you sent me and loved them, even as you loved me. (John 17:21-23).

In saying, “I in them and you [Father] in me” Jesus gave a glimpse of the pre-creative activity of the triune God. Some theologians call it a “perichoretic relationship.” Notice what that activity or work produced: glory! It could be argued that this is what God always intended work to be, reflected in his eternal relationship within himself. Work is for glory–not for ourselves but for God and others. 

The Covenant of Works

God was the first worker, and when he made human beings in his image (Genesis 1:26,27) an essential part of that image was work. We read about this in the next chapter: 

¹⁵ Yahweh God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it. ¹⁶ Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; ¹⁷ but you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.” (2:15-17).

God issued Adam a command to work: to cultivate and keep the garden. That involved a host of duties, even taking care of the animals. Though the word “covenant” does not appear here, covenant theologians believe this passage reflects a covenant made between God and Adam. They call it the “covenant of works” (Hosea 6:7 refers to this as a covenant). There were two parts to the covenant, both demanding perfect obedience: fulfill the garden duties (often called the “creation mandate”) but avoid eating the forbidden fruit. Obedience would give Adam everlasting life and advance him into deeper and greater fellowship with God. Disobedience would result in death. 

Social media icons today like Mike Rowe are right to emphasize the significance and dignity of work–especially the “dirty jobs” no one wants to do. Work is how we live and care for our families. But often neglected in popular culture is that work is a fundamental duty of creatures to our creator. No wonder Paul said, “If anyone does not work, neither should he eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10).

The Broken Covenant of Works

Adam worked but he didn’t obey God completely. We know that he ate from the forbidden tree and incurred the death sentence. If you know the story, you know this was not the end. Even though the penalty was delivered, God had a "surprise." Genesis 3 tells that God was prepared to make another covenant with Adam: 

¹⁴ Yahweh God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed above all livestock, and above every animal of the field. You shall go on your belly and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. ¹⁵ I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:14,15)

These words provide the context for every chapter and verse of the Old Testament that follows. The offspring of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent thousands of years later would turn out to be the son of God himself: Jesus of Nazareth. The “work” of redemption he accomplished is what we now call the “covenant of grace.” 

Though the covenant of works was broken it did not disappear. The awareness of this covenant is engraved in every human soul as one of the features of the image of God. In Paul’s detailed theology of redemption in Romans we learn that God planted truths about himself and our duty to him in every human heart so we are without excuse before him (Romans 1:19,20). I think this includes the duty of work. However, as God warned Adam, work would now be very different from what it was before: 

To Adam he said, “Because you have listened to your wife’s voice, and have eaten from the tree, about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ the ground is cursed for your sake. You will eat from it with much labor all the days of your life. ¹⁸ It will yield thorns and thistles to you; and you will eat the herb of the field. ⁹ You will eat bread by the sweat of your face until you return to the ground, for you were taken out of it. For you are dust, and you shall return to dust.” (Genesis 3:16-19)

As good and necessary as work is, as much as diligent work provides its own satisfaction, since Adam broke the covenant of works, work is now plagued by the consequences. Most of us aren’t farmers, plowing a field, sweating under a hot summer sun. But we all feel the curse in our dominions. Some do not work hard enough; others work too hard. Some work is dangerous to our health. Some workplace situations and relationships are toxic. The list of curses is endless. 

As we navigate our daily work, we do so under the shadow of Adam’s curse. We carry an unceasing reminder of the broken covenant in our very bodies. I will be fully retired soon and no longer earning a paycheck. Though it has its advantages it brings many troubles. 

If I were writing Choosing Your Life’s Work today, I think I would be much more careful to explain why Adam’s curse will haunt our worklife until we die. This is not meant to make us cynical about work, to give us an excuse for laziness or inactivity. It should be for us what God intended for Adam. The daily toil, the sweat and weariness under the heat of labor, was to be a continual reminder to Adam that he was not sufficient in himself. He failed, yes. But that failure was the means by which God would show the glory of his only son. Jesus was the “last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45) whose work accomplished perfectly what the first Adam’s (or ours)  could not.