Why and How Work Matters
Your graduation marks the first day of the rest of your life. What can you expect? Or perhaps more importantly, what is expected of you now that you are no longer a student? We understand the need to work and earn a living, but surely there’s more to life than working? Everyone needs to breathe in order to live but no one expects to live just for the purpose of breathing. It is our prayer that as you work through the material, you will be challenged to think deeply, reflect broadly, and grow spiritually.
Start by sharing with each other:
Why did you choose to study at Uni? What do you hope to be doing in 10 years time?
Complete the sentence:
God created the world because…? Work is hard because…?
How you respond depends entirely on which context you choose. If he is a spy, the acceptable response might be to kill him, but such an action would be rather murderous if he was merely mentally disabled.
This is important because we likewise cannot understand work unless we have a right context in which to look at it. This is where biblical theology comes in.
Challenge yourself:
Explain the Christian gospel as you understand it. Do you think it provides sufficient explanation for the way the world is?
Read GENESIS 1:26-28
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Questions from Genesis
Does the command in verse 28 describe
The previous state of humanity that is now lost?
Our current state?
A future state we will one day occupy?
What connections (if any) do you see between your everyday work and this command in verse 28?
True or False:
Christians ought to get married and have kids.
Christians ought to work in saving the environment.
God has given humanity permission to do with creation as we see fit.
How does Genesis 1:26-28 apply to us today?
Read PSALM 8
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Think about Psalm 8
How does David’s view of creation and God influence his view of humanity?
Why do human rights have priority over animal rights?
How accurate is the second half of the psalm as a picture of humanity today?
Read HEBREWS 2:5-9
5 For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. 6 It has been testified somewhere,
“What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? 7 You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, 8 putting everything in subjection under his feet.”
Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. 9 But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
The implications of Hebrews
What does Hebrews 2:5-9 tell us about Psalm 8 and how does it change our reading of Genesis 1? (hint: who does the author think is the man in Psalm 8?)
If Jesus is the one to whom God has given dominion over all things, would you change how you read Gen 1:28?
What if Gen 1:28 is not a mandate for humans but a promise fulfilled in Jesus?
In Conclusion
We hope you’ve seen in this study how humanity’s mandate to work in Genesis 1:28 finds its fulfillment not in our work, but rather in Jesus Christ (Heb. 2). This is the narrative context without which we cannot understand work as we tried to illustrate with histrionicus. The question is not, as many people think, finding God’s place in my work, but rather it is finding my place in God’s work. The next two studies will take us closer to the heart of the matter as we seek to discover God’s call on our life (if any) and what will become of work at the end.